Thank you for sharing this, Bruce.  So glad you and your wife and the senior 
citizen residents and Tampa-area people in general were spared.  And of course 
it’s wonderful to hear that your C&C Astralis survived the hurricane.  It’s a 
valuable lesson, what is really important.

To not detract from this thread, I’ll start another thread with a not-so-good 
tale of Irma’s impact.

Cheers,
Randy Stafford
S/V Grenadine
C&C 30-1 #7
Ken Caryl, CO

> On Sep 14, 2017, at 6:51 AM, Bruce Whitmore via CnC-List 
> <cnc-list@cnc-list.com> wrote:
> 
> Hello all,
> 
> I thought I would share our story about Irma:
> 
> As we prepared for Irma late last week, we went from “It looks like it’s 
> going to miss us, but let’s prepare anyway”, to “this could be really bad, 
> but we’ll be OK at home”, to evacuation in anticipation of a catastrophic 
> hit.  In that process, we resigned ourselves to the idea that flooding and/or 
> structural damage to the house plus the total loss of our boat was highly 
> likely.  That realization was both sobering and enlightening.  We figured out 
> we could prepare for an extended uncertain future and fit much of what was 
> really important to us (other than Astralis, of course!) in one car, and we 
> gained a lot of clarity as to what is, and is not really important to us. 
>  
> Thankfully for us (though not for many here in Florida) Irma weakened 
> dramatically after ravaging Marco Island about 3:30 PM and moved inland.  We 
> were fortunate enough to be able to seek protection in a senior living 
> facility where my  wife works.  As I helped my wife assist the resident 
> senior citizens (many with memory & physical disabilities), we put on calm 
> faces while we anxiously waited for nearly 12 hours, expecting Irma to 
> devastate Tampa.  Then we watched as four things slowly happened:
>  
> Irma took a path inland a bit, robbing it of warm moisture from the Gulf, and 
> directing the eye away from Tampa
> The storm sped up from about 8 mph to 12-14 mph, indicating the storm would 
> not stay long, and its strength would dissipate
> Sheering winds bought dry air in from the east, which by late in the evening 
> could be seen as wrapping nearly all the way around the eye reducing the 
> power of the hurricane
> The winds dropped on the west/southwest side of the storm, virtually 
> eliminated the destructive storm surge that had been predicted – Massive 
> amounts of water had been sucked out of Tampa Bay, but the expected 8+ feet 
> of storm surge didn’t materialize, and it returned without much fanfare
>  
> The final chapter of this short story is that we got to Astralis, our 1994 
> C&C 37/40+ yesterday, and found that she was floating nicely, the rudder had 
> been jammed over from sitting on the sandy bottom but was otherwise OK, and 
> we there was evidence of 2 previously unknown minor deck leaks over the stern 
> berth.  Everything else was remarkably fine.  The marina had already replaced 
> a torn-out lonesome post, and it was clear to us that had the storm hit much 
> harder, things would have been very, very different. A little bit of further 
> irony struck us as we realized that when we bought her on February 1st, she 
> sat down in Marco Island.  Had we not moved her to Tampa, she would have 
> likely been a total loss.
> 
> This was our first hurricane, having moved to Florida from Chicago only 2 
> years ago.  We had a chance to see, first hand, how communities pull together 
> to prepare for hurricanes, hunker down and help ease each other’s fears as 
> they grasp the idea of losing their homes and most prized possessions, and 
> help clean up the aftermath.  Yet, our local damage is nothing like that 
> incurred by so many others across the state. 
>  
> Gratefully,
>  
> Bruce Whitmore
> 
> (847) 404-5092 (mobile)
> bwhitm...@sbcglobal.net
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