DANCING WITH FAY
TROPICAL STORM FAY
TUESDAY AUGUST 19, 2008
As you might imagine as the person who designed HURRICANE FINDER I keep a close watch on tropical weather during the hurricane season. The tropical wave in mid-August that became my nemesis began to worry me as it approached Puerto Rico and when my mentors at the National Hurricane Center began to describe a path that would take it west across the Dominican Rebublic and Hatti, then turn north over Cuba and head toward Florida I started to think of the what ifs. Prudent mariners and those of us paranoid about tropical cyclones constantly go over the what ifs and plan for their eventualities. Where is the safest place? How will I get there? What do I have to bring? What do I have to do to make sure that my boat is seaworthy? When should I go? And many other items forgotten now in the aftermath.
For three days the NHC put the center of this storm off the west coast of Florida, specifically three miles west of my slip in Cape Coral.
NEREIS AT CAPE CORAL YACHT BASIN
As you can see there are lots of boats surrounding my little floating home of fifteen or so years and other stationary hard things surrounding Slip No. 48 at the Cape Coral Yacht Basin. Using techniques developed in HURRICANE SURVIVAL GUIDE with the HURRICANE FINDER CHART I determined the hurricane's winds would initially be southerly and then the strongest would come from the east and as the storm passed would continue to back, move counter clockwise, to the northwest and eventually into the southwest. I spoke with my dock mates, showing my calculations, with directions and forces of forecasted winds and when storm surge would occur with a possible forecasted rise of four to eight feet, according to what my friends at NHC were prognosticating. Rise of water causes more damage and deaths than wind during the passage of a hurricane and must be added to the mix of solutions.
CAPE CORAL YACHT BASIN
You can see in the picture above looking west the plethora of hard things in the Cape Coral Yacht Basin and its proximity to the Caloosahatchee Waterway. The Gulf of Mexico is only three miles away.
CAPE CORAL YACHT BASIN OVERVIEW
Here's another view of surrounding waters. The waterway here is over a mile wide at this point. The canal leading to the basin would quickly absorb inflowing water and flood this entire region, if the forecast proved to be correct.
CAPE CORAL YACHT BASIN CLOSE IN
Slip No. 48 on the south side of the center dock, three slots from the outer end, is where NEREIS and I live. My car resides in the parking lot to the left, west, in the third slot from the harbor master's office, under a light. Planning is important. You can see the potential hazards to and from movable objects in this scene. Everyone in this environment is not as capable in protecting their property as others, ropes are old and sun damaged and skill levels vary in mooring techniques. This picture is one of potential disaster.
AFTERMATH OF HURRICANE KATRINA
Need I say more? This could be the Cape Coral Yacht Basin or any marina after a hurricane. Marinas are not safe havens in a storm with all the hard things and boats ready to crash into your particular dream. Need I say more?
What does the prudent mariner do when faced with all these what ifs?
The storm's center was forecasted by my mentors at the NHC, I know this is a repeated phrase but they're the primary game in town, to arrive on Tuesday August 19th three miles to the west of slip No. 48. What's a prudent mariner to do?
On Saturday I shared my conclusions with my dock mates, jumped in my car, and went to gather supplies and scout out other venues to escape to. I bought a case of bottled water, another 100 feet of 3/4 inch nylon line, NEREIS was already stocked with food, water and other supplies. I gassed up the car, bought fifteen gallons of clean diesel in jerry cans, and drove toward Labelle some forty miles to the east, to where I had weathered previous hurricanes and threats of hurricanes. There's a small cove on the south side of the river just to the east of Port Labelle, three miles upriver from the Labelle Bridge where a particular mangrove tree was waiting for my arrival. The tree was gone! You can never count on those things and progress had improved the cove with additional hazards. Additionally the Labelle Bridge was closed to traffic due to repair work and I surmised would not open for my eventual passage.
Next to the bridge is a small dock where I've moored on numerous occasions and where there are additional trees and stumps to tie to. The best part was there were no other boats present. Get away from boats and other obstructions, move away from the predicted center of the storm, get away from storm surge by traversing the Franklin Lock. What could be better? Note I did this scouting and provisioning on Saturday three days prior to the forecasted arrival of the center of the storm, three miles from Slip No. 48 at the Cape Coral Yacht Basin.
LABELLE WATERFRONT
This is the Labelle Bridge. The small dock mentioned above is right next to the west, left,side of the bridge. Note the powerboat on the end of the dock, this is about where I moored. The old ox bow of the original river to the upper right of the picture houses Bell Hatchee Marina and Boatyard where I once resided. I also spent a time of storm threat in the small lagoon near the entrance of this part of the old river.
It's beautiful in this historic place where I've witnessed manatees with child, alligators mating and some weeks later sixty or seventy alligator hatchlings guarded by a very vigilant mom. All of this has been chronicled in TILLER TALES.
I couldn't get through the bridge to my now deceased mangrove tree or even into the ox bow so I opted for the Labelle City Dock.
LABELLE CITY DOCK
Here's a close up. These pics are from Google Earth. This is a great program. Download it and view every scenic area of your youth.
Labelle is an historic town. The building to the south of the dock is Barron Public Library and the area to the right of the bridge Baron City Park where the annual Swamp Cabbage Festival is held. When this part of Florida was first colonized by U.S. citizens at the turn of the century, twentieth century that is, it's hard to realize the twenty first is already here, a hotel stood at the site of the library built by Captain Hendry who was prominent in the development of the Caloosahatchee Waterway. Great history here. Steamboats brought prospective land buyers to the area from Fort Myers to the west. Not much has changed in the hundred years gone by. I wonder how the mortgage industry managed in those times. All of this is chronicled in TILLER TALES in a chapter called MOON OVER NAPLES actually an obituary of an old friend who ran a book store a hundred and fifty feet south of the dock.
Calusa, alternate spelling Caloosa, Indians lived here when Spanish exploiters first arrived . One of them killed Ponce de Leon who was searching for the so-called Fountain of Youth. Don't know if he ever found it in the Thousand Island region about fifty miles to the south of this dock at the edge of the Everglades. Some of the mounds the Calusa built are still present in the area. One just to the east of the Labelle Bridge is now the site of a modern Floridians house. There are wild pigs that live there also along with Florida panthers.
By the way the male members of this pig herd are never invited to any parties. Why you ask? Because they're boars. Hah! Gotcha! Just trying to keep your attention. Interestingly there's a little bar/liquor store about a quarter mile south of the bridge that has a boar's head on the wall. I guess he's invited to the parties that go on there. Lets amend the above statement to invitations only offered to boars when they're dead.
Enough of this drivel. I got everything ready on Saturday and woke before dawn on Sunday to a dead calm. Always the way. Partly cloudy, nice day. I got underway horsing NEREIS around like a canoe out of the slip and pointed east. This boat, like many sailboats, just doesn't like to back up under power.
The trip to Labelle took nine hours, one more that anticipated, through a river populated by power boaters and jet skiers seemingly unaware that the boogie man was approaching with fury from the south. I have to assume they weren't prudent mariners. My philosophy has always been move your boat twenty-four hours before anyone else thinks about it to get the preferred spot.
I arrived at Labelle Sunday afternoon and in calm conditions circled around several hundred feet on the north end of the bridge and dropped a stern anchor with eighty feet of chain and about fifty feet of stretchy nylon rope in the 20- foot deep channel. The chain has to go uphill to the shallower side of the river and thus has greater resistance to breaking free. I then attached eight nylon lines, preferred because they're elastic, to pilings on the dock and trees and stumps on the land. I was facing south and lines to the east and west prevented movement of the boat which would have contributed to failure of the anchor.
Geometry is important in mooring, just as it is in forecasting direction of a hurricane's wind. You can learn how to do it with the HURRICANE SURVIVAL GUIDE. Incidentally what did the acorn say upon reaching adulthood? Geometry. Gotcha! Just trying to maintain your attention.
In late afternoon all of this mooring activity took about two hours. I finished and walked up to a nearby grocery store and got some fish which I cooked with rice and veggies.
The next morning on Monday the storm was still predicted to pass three miles west of Slip No. 48 in Cape Coral and I made sure my lines in Labelle were properly placed and added more. The library's computers allowed me to check on the storm and send e-mails to family and friends. Tami Gilliam, my web master, is in Key West and was even then experiencing the storm as it passed over Cuba and continued on to its destiny.
Ah! I'll sleep well tonight I thought. Not so. I was up checking the marine weather forecasts on VHF radio and early in the AM its path was still as predicted, three miles from Slip No. 48 in Cape Coral. At about six thirty that morning I checked again and there was a "slight" revision of the track. RIGHT AT ME! Well I still was alone, away from other boats and hard things. In retrospect still the only decision I could have made given the same forecast.
The first picture above showing Fay crossing Florida was taken about ten o'clock on Tuesday morning, August 19. Note the clear circle in the center to the west of Lake Okeechobee. That's where I was. We experienced winds of around seventy knots, someone in the area said they had a gust of 84 knots. I was on the dock arranging and tightening lines, nylon stretches, got to adjust, always got to adjust, in all things. Have to change as conditions and situations change.
At the height of the storm, as I moved on the dock, at times fighting for balance in the wind, a TV van pulled up on the berm next to the bridge and started filming me. My heavens. A pleasant young woman and her cameraman came down to the dock and the first thing she said was, "Can I call someone to help?" I think I replied, "Goodness no." In all that chaos I knew it would turn out alright. We spoke for a while, she interviewed me and both of us wished the other good luck as they left.
I never got to see the broadcast being busy with other things, saving my boat's life, but the next morning a woman pulled up in her car and jumping out cried, "I saw you on TV, you're a celebrity!" Wow! I didn't know that. Just doin' my job ma'am, just doin' my job.
FAY'S TRACK
Well as you can see by the above pic Fay has had an interesting journey crossing Florida four times and dumping scores of inches of rain. Flooding is still occurring. Even now as I write this on Monday the 25th of August in Cape Coral NEREIS is riding high in his slip under sunny skies. Lovely day.
Yes I meant to write his slip. Nereis is a guy. We're a team of guys, sometimes profane, both of us occasionally pass noxious gases and look after one another, he in his realm, I in mine.
FAY'S WIND HISTORY
This is a graphic from the NHC showing the wind history of the storm, winds of tropical storm force. Looks like a cartoon snake doesn't it. Very odd storm, it's still wreaking havoc in the states bordering the Gulf of Mexico, dropping still more rain.
THE TRIP HOME
A TOUR OF THE CALOOSAHATCHEE
On Thursday I left Labelle to return to Cape Coral. There was a lot of rain and some wind as Fay danced around Florida, refusing to go away. The first bridge about five miles west of Labelle is Fort Denaud Swing Bridge, another historic name from pioneer days.
FORT DENAUD SWING BRIDGE
A pleasant woman answered my call on VHF channel 9 and opened the bridge in the rain wearing a yellow slicker. She had to push a button on the roadside to close the gates stopping traffic and then walked to the center of the bridge to open it with controls located there. We both wished each other good luck as I passed.
ALVA BASCULE BRIDGE
Another five miles or so I approached Alva Bridge, which opens in the center like two hands opening invitingly to allow passage. A couple of hundred yards east of the bridge when I was going to Labelle I passed a boat moored at a dock on the shore and was hailed by someone who knew my name. It was an old friend from Mexico named Chick who with his wife Anita is rebuilding the boat after their trimaran began breaking apart on a previous trip from Isla Mujeres, Mexico (The Island of Women) to Florida. They escaped with their lives but alas Conk Quest did not. We talked briefly on the radio and they visited on Wednesday after the storm. Chick and I share the same sense of humor. It really is a small world. Particularly among sailing folk.
The bridge tender opened promptly and the morning progressed with much muck in the river and increasingly more rain and wind. Our progress was stalled briefly when the prop picked up tangles of vegetation as I passed pleasantries with a herd of cows on the north shore.
Remember that old line, "Have you herd of cows?" Of course I've heard of cows. Who cares what a cow heard. Like that. You know.
The wind increased even more in early afternoon and my faithful engine was overheating slightly and as I prefer calmer weather when approaching Slip No. 48 decided to spend the night above Franklin Lock at the docks in the campgrounds there.
FRANKLIN LOCK AND CAMPGROUND
Wind calmed briefly as we, NEREIS and I ,approached the docks visible on the promontory, looking like a shark's tail, at the top of the pic. However God has a sense of humor and three times as I sculled into the slip the breeze increased, pushing us out. Just showing who's boss I guess. Eventually I managed to get lines ashore and checked in at the kiosk on the road to the north. I couldn't find my Golden Age Card and had to pay full price, now $24 a night.
I tidied up, added water to my main tank, cleaned out the water intake for the engine cooling and dove on the propeller to clean off accumulated weed that had wrapped around it in my trip through a flooded river. A quick shower with the hose and relaxed in the cabin waiting for calmer weather. Surely Fay would move on. I remember fervently thinking that.
I called the lock tender on VHF channel 13 at seven AM the next morning and he got everything ready for me and a quick transit was made back into salt water.
WILSON PIGGOT BASCULE BRIDGE
The Wilson Piggot Bridge is named after a WWII war hero and the operator opened the bridge in perfect timing with my passage. Sometimes these things mesh just right. Reminds me of a dance done synchronously.
I have an electronic self-steering device called a Tiller Pilot, actually four of them after loosing the only one I had years ago in Belize on a voyage from the Rio Dulce in Guatemala to Mexico. Back-up after back-up. Remember that prudent mariner thing. And yes NEREIS has a tiller, no ostentatious wheel thing for us. Ships have wheels, sailboats should have tillers. There I've said it and glad of it. After a while you tend to become opinionated about some things but always open to new ideas......... when they make sense. Who decides when they make sense. I do!
There is a remote device for the Tiller Pilot with which I can change direction while looking toward my destiny forward that makes the whole thing easier. Pie and cake, a line from some novel of yore. Your what? Yore past of course. Just another joke to pass the time.
I mention the Tiller Pilot here because it plays a part in the narrative later on. Laying the groundwork. Like clues in a mystery story, sowing the seed. You know how it is. Yes you do.
BEAUTIFUL ISLAND RAILROAD BRIDGE
A couple of miles past Wilson Piggot Bridge is the Route 75 Bridge with a fifty-some foot clearance, followed shortly by the Beautiful Island Railroad Bridge, which seemingly is always open as I think only one train passes daily, some sort of sight-seeing thing.
Between bridges is a manatee zone in which these gentle creatures winter in the warm waters given off by a Florida Power and Light plant on the south shore. There's a warning sign that states, "MANATEE ZONE. IDLE SPEED OUTSIDE OF WATERWAY, 25 MPH IN CHANNEL."
It's really nice the powers that be are looking out for these lumbering beasts. I can imagine a manatee family group crossing the dreaded channel, mom, dad and tot, when dad looks up and says, "Hey kids let's speed up to thirty knots to avoid that powerboat." These thing move at a one-year old's crawl pace. How ridiculous is officialdom? Well this is an example. Sort of like, "Read my lips. No new taxes." Well you know.
OLD ROUTE 41 AND EDISON BRIDGES
Progressing west the Caloosahatchee Waterway widens and one of the rain bands of Tropical Storm Fay, the storm that just wouldn't go away, moved in from the northwest. Some interesting lightning, what a treat lightning is on a sailboat with an aluminum lightning rod projecting invitingly above, with attendant huge booms ushering in blinding horizontal rain and a west wind that hovered around 30 to 35 knots for the next two or three hours.
My Tiller Pilot refused to work under such conditions and gave up forcing me to steer manually. Drat! The wind and waves so turbulent that our progress dropped below manatee-speed. Now that's slow. Approaching the first set of bridges wind funneling through the bridge openings with turbulent current induced eddies came close to driving us into the bridge fenders. We crawled through ever on the edge of broaching-to, which would have ruined an already arduous trip.
MIDPOINT BRIDGE
Wind and seas increased with the incoming tide opposing a rushing river as we approached the Midpoint Bridge. Inching through the opening I spied a trawler laying back indulging our snail's pace progress. Not so a large Bay Liner-type powerboat which roared by close on the port side. I could not point into their wake as NEREIS was on the verge of broaching and all sorts of carefully stowed gear rained down on the cockpit floor. These folks could have taken a page from a sports fisherman, equally sized, who called on the radio shortly thereafter and informed me he was passing on the starboard, thankfully at slow, non-wake making speed. Some are polite, some are not, some are school-yard bullies, some are not, some will go to heaven, some will not.
CAPE CORAL BRIDGE
Wind and concomitant seas abated somewhat as we passed through the Cape Coral Bridge, now only a mile or so from home at the Cape Coral Yacht Club, whose fishing pier projects from the point of land on the lower left of this pic. You can see the marina up the canal.
HOME AGAIN
I talk to God frequently and at times he replies. Approaching day marker
number 78A the wind and seas reduced even more. and I sighing fervently made the turn into the canal. I had planned to lasso a piling at the end of the center dock and lay bow-to if the wind remained blowing at thirty-odd knots and wait for calmer conditions before sculling into Slip No. 48, but He given our close relationship decided to give me a break. Thank you Lord!
I put the engine into idle at the entrance to the basin and sculled with the tiller, this is just another reason to have a tiller, into my slip. Lines ready I inched silently into the slip throwing a stern line over an outer piling and walking forward stepped onto my finger pier with a bow line in my other hand. Two friends were chatting at the stern of the power boat next to me and didn't notice me until I said, "Good Morning!" Ah what a relief to be home.
Wind and rain returned ten minutes later as I completed the tie-up process. I did mention that God has a sense of humor. Remember? Well he does, that's why humans have one too. Well I think so! Told you I was opinionated.
It was Saturday, eleven days plotting the storm and completing the journey. Eleven days of anxiety. So much anxiety that on Sunday I was so tired I could barely move. It's Monday now, Fay is still sending rain bands but little wind. I feel great. Full of energy. Ready for more. Well maybe next week.
I just took a break and checked the National Hurricane Center's website and as of this afternoon Tropical Storm GUSTAV has formed in the Caribbean. Where is it headed you ask? Right at the Florida Keys after crossing Cuba, following in the wake of Fay. God has a sense of humor. I remember writing that just recently. Please spare us this one Lord. Please.
LAST WORDS
When I designed HURRICANE FINDER I didn't intend it to be a device which would allow hurricanes to find me. Well maybe these storms had a meeting and decided that we're too good at forecasting them and tried to eliminate the threat by sending Fay to get me. Or not. Who knows?
FRANNIE THE WATCHFLAMINGO
ALWAYS WATCHING OUT FOR YOU
TAKE CARE,
JB
Wow! What an adventure, glad you made it back in one piece! How did the boats / neighbors that stayed in Cape Coral fare?
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The focus of the storm changed abruptly early on Tuesday morning August 19th. Its path moved east and Cape Coral was in the less violent part of the storm's geometry. Usually the right front side of a hurricane is more powerful. They had less wind and rain than Labelle. However the potential for disaster in a marina is always greater during a storm. I will always opt for points elsewhere under sinilar circumstances.
Thanks for your comment,
JB
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Glad you're OK John. We were thinking about you.
I like seeing the route via Google. Very nostalgic. I wish I could have seen your interview on the news! You've always been a celebrity in my book.
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Google Earth is a great program and makes writing these blogs much easier. The Web is a true font of information. I don't know what I did before. Hours and days of labor are reduced to mere minutes.
The Caloosahatchee Waterway will always be one of my favorite parts of Earth. There is always change but the ancient river still exists in bits and pieces.
I wrote to the TV station for a copy of the interview but have not yet heard back from them. I'll let you know when I do.
Celebrity status is only in the eyes of the beholder. Thank you for seeing me that way. To others I'm still just hey you.
Thanks for your comment,
JB
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