Hi Bruce:

I live on Tierra Verde and keep my sailboat at Gulfport Marina.

We too got lucky even though we spent two nights in the hallway of a high 
school/shelter because we were concerned that storm surge would swamp our 
island. (Next time, we're going to New Orleans  ...)

But about half the boats in the free anchorage outside Gulfport are MIA. 
Haven't been out sailing yet, but I suspect many of them are on the beach or on 
the bottom. I saw a C&C 27 wrecked by dragging into Gulfport pier the day after 
the storm.

St. Pete Marina supposedly lost half a dozen boats.

You're not a real Floridian until you've been through a hurricane or two. Now 
you've been baptized.

Jack Brennan
Former C&C 25
Shanachie, 1974 Bristol 30
Tierra Verde, Fl.










Sent from my Samsung Galaxy Tab®|PRO

-------- Original message --------
From: Bruce Whitmore via CnC-List <cnc-list@cnc-list.com> 
Date:09/14/2017  8:51 AM  (GMT-05:00) 
To: cnc-list@cnc-list.com 
Cc: Bruce Whitmore <bwhitm...@sbcglobal.net> 
Subject: Stus-List An Irma story with a good ending 

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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