UPDATE: Taking it on the Chin from Tropical Storm “Beryl”

Holy crap "Beryl" has Reverse - We are the triangle on left-Beryl's path is dotted line.

Ok we were minding our own business heading up the Florida ICW to Jacksonville from Vero Beach. Tuesday night we anchored in the Indian River just south of Cocoa Village. Wednesday night at New Smyrna Beach where we saw our friends Jeff and Cindy on “Salty Dog”. Thursday night at Palm Coast where we relaxed and planned our weekend in Jacksonville with the Kids. Our plan was to take advantage of the free dock downtown Jacksonville on the St. John’s River and enjoy the “Jazz Festival” and Scotland vs USA soccer match with the kids. I spent some time planning the route to take advantage of the swift currents of the St. Johns River arriving at the dock at slack tide on Saturday afternoon. I checked the weather before retiring and there was mention of a possible Tropical disturbance forming over the weekend. The Low Pressure System was off the coast of the Carolina’s and there was a slight chance it could track southwest towards Florida. We hit the sack Thursday night with a plan. As usual I was up around 5:30am Friday morning to check the weather and low in behold now the slight chance had changed to a 70% chance of a Topical Storm affecting NE Florida by the weekend. I checked all the sites I normally trust for weather and crap we really need to change plans. Jacksonville it will be, staying at the well protected Beach Marine Marina. We called, made reservations and quickly made preparations to shove off.

The Bridge of Lions St. Augustine, FL

With our new plan we needed to head straight for Beach Marine and bypass anchoring. Our ETA at Beach Marine was 4:00 pm Friday. All went well until we reached our beloved Bridge of Lions in St. Augustine, Florida. Mind you this is a pretty bascule bridge. It was refurbished between 2006 and 2010 with the construction causing all kinds of headaches for boaters, pedestrians and drivers alike. The untold accumulated wasted time and aggravation this project caused would be astounding if calculated if terms of lost revenue of the people who had to wait for one reason or another. Not to mention the untold volume of fuel spent by cars and boats waiting for either the bridge to open or the bridge to close. Couple this with the additional cost to refurbish the bridge(5 years and $80 million) verses building a new one (3 years and $20 million)  and it’s enough to really piss off taxpaying citizens who have to deal with it now, when it could have been an aggravation of the past. 

Hang on the rant is almost over. Don’t blame FDOT though, they declared the bridge structurally deficient and functionally obsolete” in 1999. A new taller bridge with the same architectural beauty was planned by FDOT however there was an uproar to refurbish the old bridge and these butt-heads won. They are the same people who complain like hell when they have to wait an extra minute for a boat to pass. Well the aggravation and delays continue. On Friday we were within two minutes of reaching the bridge as it opened for a sailboat on the north side at 11:30 am. As always, I hailed the tender to request passage. He responded by saying “Captain you ain’t gonna make it” and  began closing the bridge. Now mind you he knew he was not opening the bridge at 12:00 noon and his decision not to wait an extra minute or so would cause us to have to wait an hour for the 12:30 opening. And so it was, this S.O.B. wouldn’t wait an extra minute and we sat for an hour waiting on the 12:30 pm opening. We have passed through almost every draw bridge on the east coast of Florida numerous times over the past three years of cruising. They have discretion cause we have experienced it. Florida has the most courteous bridge tenders we have found except for “The Bridge of Lions” and the “Boca Raton” bridges. The hatefulness and arrogance of these bridge tenders just ooze down the sides of these bridges. These guys need to find other forms of employment  and I’m going to do my best to make it happen.  Well enough ranting for now and back to “Beryl”.

Chris and Nikki

Chris and Ginny

We arrived at Beach Marine and shut down the engine at 5:00 pm Friday May 25. The wind had been hawking all day and we were glad to have a slip for the evening. Saturday brought prepping “Wind Dust” for Beryl and enjoying our grandson’s (Zak) baseball game with Chris and Nikki. The afternoon we shopped for needed supplies. After a late lunch with Chris, Nikki, Skye, Jake and Zak on Sunday we all walked the beach to see the pre-storm rage. It was pretty impressive and we heard the local lifeguards had saved over one hundred people whose IQ seem lacking when it come to danger. Anyway we were back at the boat around 4:00 pm and hunkered down for the head on assault of Tropical Storm “Beryl”.

JP, Zak, Chris, Skye, Jake and Ginny before "Beryl", Nikki is behind the camera

Never Mind the Wind Flags They were off by a factor of 4 to 5

I checked the wind velocities of a couple offshore buoys and confirmed the wind speed was in the 40 kt range and from the northwest. We dialed in a local FM Station on the radio and had our VHF Radio on.  We also had our Chart plotter with XM Weather and our Autohelm Anemometer on to measure wind velocities.  With our XM Weather Service on our chart plotter we could see “Beryl” as she made her approach. We were going to take her best shot head on. Not exactly what one would want to do, but with the hand we were dealt that was the way it was going to be. 

As the eye wall came on shore

78 knot gust (89.7 mph)

We chose Beach Marine because it is a well protected marina and we had a good slip assignment so we felt ok. If things were to get too bad we could always go ashore and wait the storm out. As we listened to the Radio, the forecasters kept changing their wind velocities higher and higher for “Beryl”. According to our trusted weather source “Accuweather Premium” we would experience sustained winds in the 60 to 65 mph range with gust in the low eighties. We had received this forecast on late Friday and it stayed pretty much the same until the storm hit. Other sources forecast winds in the 40 kt (45 mph) range when “Beryl” came ashore. What we experienced was almost verbatim to Accuweather Premium’s forecast from late Friday. When the eye wall hit us just after 8:00 pm Sunday the sustained wind speed was 50 to 60 kts (57 to 69 mph) with a maximum gust of 78 kts (89.7 mph). Needless to say the 78 kt gust sat us one our ear. Wind Dust heeled over in the slip as the dock lines groaned from the strain. The wind howled through the rigging with a shrill eerie pitch.  This went on for several hours until the eye move onshore. 

More Rain

That’s when I had a good chance to tighten the dock lines as they had stretched due to being wet and the pressure on them. For the rest of the night we experienced winds in the 40 to 50 kt range and finally gave up the ghost and hit the bed. We woke Monday morning to a southeast wind which was mostly blocked by several adjacent buildings. Rain at that point had been relatively light and the wind was relatively tame. I inspected Wind Dust and found no visible damage. We had a fantastic dinner with Chris, Nikki and the grand kids and returned to Wind Dust before the heavy rain hit. Most of the night we had bands of rain come through along with several severe thunderstorms. Tuesday morning we woke to lots of rain and reports of flooding in Jacksonville. The wind is still kicking this afternoon and there are more severe thunderstorms in the area as “Beryl” works its way to the northeast and out of Florida nearly 48 hours after first hitting.

Tuesday Morning May 29, "Beryl" still kicking it up. Please leave!

We have experienced many hurricanes in the past and “Beryl” was not in the same league. However, she did have her moments and she was unique in her longevity and path. Being a early season storm and an “Home Grown” storm (developing just of the east coast) certainly will make her remembered here in Jacksonville, Florida for a long time. We heard this afternoon “Beryl” will go in the record books as the strongest preseason tropical storm to hit the east coast of the United States.

UPDATE: Our Hope Town Visit is Complete – Lookout Green Turtle

Well we briefly left Hope Town and headed over to Treasure Cay. We had planned to stay a week or so and come back to Hope Town to visit our friends from Raleigh, NC who come the last week of April every year. Wednesday we sailed in light east winds from Hope Town to Treasure Cay and had to lay off shore a couple hours until the tide was high enough to get in the channel. 

Around 5:00 pm we started our run through the Treasure Cay channel and made it without parting mud or sand with our keel. What a disappointment to find the anchorage pack to the gills with mainly Sunsail Charter boats and a few cruisers.  Crap, all this way to have to turn around and find another anchorage. The forecast was for light winds 10 kts or less until the next nasty cold front approached on late Friday into early Saturday. Guess what? As we left the Treasure Cay channel the wind was kick’n a good 25 kts from the east. It had been building all day but really picked up quickly in the late afternoon. I’m thinking where did this come from and where do we need to be in case the forecast is screwed up. We decided to head for Water Cay which is about 6 nautical miles east of Treasure Cay and about  9 nm west from Marsh Harbor. The anchorage would give us good protection from a clocking NE->E->SE->S wind. We pounded our way east for about an hour and found a great anchorage waiting for us in the lee of Water Cay. Only one other boat anchored there and we had a great star lit evening on the hook. 

We weighed our options on whether to head back to Treasure Cay or do a quick provisioning stop in Marsh Harbour and head back to Hope Town for the Blow. The forecast was for some really ugly weather late Friday through late Monday so everybody and their brother was looking for a safe place to hide. We decided we would try the new docks at the Hope Town Inn and Marina. Friday morning we weighed anchor and headed for Marsh Harbour. The hook was down by 11:00am and we hit Snappers for lunch before the provision stop at Maxwell’s. We had just sat down when our friends Ellen and Erick from m/v “Westwind” came in. They were meeting friends who were flying in and staying on their boat for a few days. We met Ellen and Erick in Stuart, Florida last year and spent almost a month there with them and many others cruisers waiting out bad weather. It was great to see them again. After lunch we hit the bank and Maxwell’s and hung out on the boat until the tide was sufficient for us to head for Hope Town. We pulled into slip 219 by 6:30pm and were glad to be on a dock for a few days.

As predicted the strong cold front brought some ugly weather. Sunday morning around 4:00 am we clocked a 51 knot gust and recorded sustained winds in the gale force range for several hours. We always keep our VHF radio on at night and especially when bad weather is forecast. Around 5:00 am in the pitch black darkness with the wind howling 35 to 40 knots we heard a call for help from m/v “Second Look”. “Second Look” was on a mooring in the harbor. A large Great Harbor Trawler (that should have been at a dock) drug their mooring block past several other boats and slammed into “Second Look”.  Now you have a big mess. Two large vessels tangled together in almost total darkness slamming into each other with the wind blowing like stink. If they stay tangled who knows how many other boat they will take out before going aground or into perimeter shoreside docks. Truman Majors to the rescue. Truman owns the fishing vessel “Lucky Strike” and also owns the green moorings in the harbor. We always use Truman’s moorings because he maintains them very well and his mooring blocks are massive.

“Second Look” was safe on one of Truman’s moorings until the big Great Harbor trawler who was on another companies mooring slammed into him. Truman came out in the howling wind and managed to get the two boats free of each other before a bigger problem happened. The Great Harbor trawler left Hope Town as there were not many options for them in a very tight harbor with the wind blowing like hell. I spoke to Mike on “Second Look” several days after the incident and he told me those a-holes never called him about taking care of any damages. They simply skipped town. What a bunch of jerks. 

Everyone knows you are responsible for the damage your vessel causes. You take a mooring at your own risk. If it breaks which this one didn’t (the guy improperly short tied the mooring pennants at low tide and the wind hit at high tide causing his trawler to float the mooring off the bottom) you are responsible for the damage.

Anyway around day break the radio lit up again with a call from someone land side reporting a sailboat either aground on the reef or anchored on the Atlantic side (windward side) of Elbow Cay. Not a good place to be with the dangerous seas and wind. Truman Majors to the rescue again in less than 2 hours. Truman and one of the other BASRA (Bahamas Search and Rescue Association) men braved the sea conditions on an Albury 23 to have a closer look and determine if anyone was onboard who needed assistance. Once they were on scene they requested BASRA contact the Bahamian Defense Force as something didn’t appear quite right. There were apparently people onboard. Truman and the other gentleman towed the vessel to safety around the north end of Elbow Cay to the lee shore where the Defense Force apparently took over. The last we heard they moved on the next day. They were apparently just scared sailors who got caught in a Blow that everyone on this side of world knew was coming a week in advance. These guys were very lucky they didn't lose their boat or lives.

All I can say is God Bless Truman Major for selflessly helping others in need of assistance.

We enjoyed staying at the Hope Town Inn and Marina resort. Arron, Sam and the bar staff were great. While not yet complete, this place is really shaping up be an awesome destination. The architect Michael Myers is very talented and has created a spectacular design for the resort. 

We met several new boats and had a great time getting to know Tom and Linda on WindSwept. After the blow we moved to the mooring field and have enjoyed hanging out with walks through town and walks on the beach. We ran into our friends Corbett and Robin on “Cookie Monster” and they invited us over for Sundowners where we met Graham and Valerie on s/v “Bonnie Lass”. Turns out ‘Bonnie Las” stays in Brunswick for hurricane season too.

Our Hope Town visit would not be complete without seeing our friends, Debbie and Lance and Jeff and E.A.  These guys come every year and we have a blast drinking and listening to their tall tales. The weather gods haven’t been real nice this year but we got in several good visits with them and feel our Hope Town visit is now complete. So tomorrow we will head out for Green Turtle Cay where we are to meet up with Sandy and Ray on s/v “Megerin” and start our track back to the U.S.