A first- Hurricane prep!
When you only get one go around in life, you want to experience as many firsts as possible. At least, I do. There is always something, someone, some place, to be had. You just never know when it will be your last first.
Hurricane preparation?! That was a first. One the one hand, if you choose to make your home in south Florida, I guess that is to be expected. However, Len and I intentionally chose to make our home in Turkey Creek. It is clean, country living and a boater's paradise because it is known as a "hurricane hole." We are literally out in the middle of nowhere, thirty miles west of Lake Okeechobee, forty five miles east of Ft. Myers, twelve miles from LaBelle (the nearest town), and one mile from the Ortona Lock. Many seasonal boaters choose to put their boats 'on the hard' up river at Glades Boatyard during the late summer and early fall months as there has not been a major hurricane event here since 1926. And for that reason...
We don't carry hurricane insurance.
We don't carry flood insurance.
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Our home is a good six feet higher than our canal,
and it is on concrete stilts. We feel safe; especially safe
with regards to flooding. However, high winds and all
of our glass has me really concerned 😔
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My friends in our beloved Keys cannot say the same. The
Keys have taken a hit time and again Andrew, Charley, Dennis,
Wilma. Now it looked as if Hurricane Irma was bearing down on
them, due to make landfall early Sunday morning, September 10th.
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| I saw on FB that some boater friends from Banana Bay in Marathon (where we kept Marquesa) were moving their boat north to escape the storm. Their plan was to stay at the Ft. Myers Yacht Basin. I was concerned for their safety, and reached out to them to come to Turkey Creek. |
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| The previous owner of our home has another home, dock, and other properties next to us. Our neighbor contacted him and he agreed that they could stay for as long as need be. We currently have our mast in his driveway, as we intend to do some rewiring and installation of LED lights and such. The building to the left is the neighborhood hurricane shelter also built by this same man. Dave and Terri were more than appreciative to have a place to safely tie their home. |
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| By Wednesday afternoon, TD Dream came steaming in our canal, not long after Len and I got home from school. |
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| It was good catching up with friends. We're so glad they chose to come our way. They'll fit right in the new 'hood :) |
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| Len took Terri and I in to town to pick up a few things before Irma decides to arrive. It was a little unsettling seeing hurricane shutters on the grocery store. Most businesses were boarded up, too. |
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| Looks like water is scarce! It's a good thing Len and I have been filling and freezing empty milk jugs the last several days. |
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| No bread was to be found either. |
Len and I had so much work to do to prepare our home and boat. We hadn't really gotten too concerned up until Wednesday night. The college cancelled classes on Thursday due to so many evacuees and the need to make final preparations. That gave us all of Thursday for me to help Len with the hurricane prep. I began storing extra water, rounded up a 'go bag', moved the guitars to a safer place, removed the canvas off the boat and stored it below, and prepped the boat down below for a bumpy ride on the dock, if it came to that. Len removed the dinghy and lashed it with the skiff on the trailer. He lashed the canoe and a stack of dock boards we had just purchased. He and the neighbors moved the mast off the sawhorses, and lashed it to two trees on the ground. He moved tools, grills, the lawnmower, garbage cans and such from under the carport. Together we moved the porch furniture into the house, we finished securing the new walkway to our dock, and we secured the dock with extra screws and boards. Of course all of this was done in the blazing hot sun and humidity. Even with this much done in just one day's time, it left Len with SO MUCH LEFT TO DO on his own if I was to leave for Indiana. I felt guilty for leaving.
By late Thursday night, Len said I needed to go. It was still a Cat 5 off the coast of Cuba, taking aim at the Keys and then heading our way. He was concerned for my safety, and he didn't want to put Willis through the stress of a plane ride, and then the stress of God only knows what we'd be facing if the storm reached us. I hurriedly threw a few clothes in my backpack, packed my computer bag and electronics, packed the cat carrier, and tucked my school book bag deep in the recesses of the guest bedroom closet hoping we didn't lose our roof.
I barely slept a wink.
I got dropped off early Friday morning at the airport in Ft Myers. I waited until the very last minute to go through security. I called Len one last time, crying, asking if this was the right thing to do. He insisted I get on the plane. He said he would work hard to get everything in order, and he would hold down the fort until I returned.
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| Late Friday afternoon he sent me this photo. He was able to scrounge up six sheets of plywood from the neighbors, to at least board up the south side of the house- where the wind was most likely to hit. He put another sheet of plywood across our front door. It opens 'in', but in south Florida all exterior doors are required to open 'out', because of hurricanes. |
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| He also disconnected and stored our solar panels, and he removed the two sun screens from the south side of the house. Len was a busy, busy boy; bless his heart❣ |
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| Dave and Terri were busy removing the canvas from TD Dream and setting out extra lines- lots of extra lines and fenders. |
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| Len did the same for Kantiya. The bimini and dodger rails were lashed down, and the helm was covered and sealed. The dinghy and grill were removed and stored. Her deck was as low profile and stripped down as possible. |
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| You'd have to zoom in on this photo to appreciate the spider web of boat lines tied and cross tied across the canal, to other docks, and even trees. Turkey Creek looked well prepared- it seems all that was left to do was WAIT. |
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| The final prediction had Irma tracking to the west, but not far enough west for our comfort. Given the size of the storm (it's 375 mile width) ALL of Florida was going to suffer damage. |
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| The outer bands of rain had already begun early Sunday morning. Len and to run out and dig a trench to the canal between our property and the neighbors as his storm drain was not working and the water was nearly to our carport from all the rain. The wind and rain continued to build all afternoon. Terri sent me this photo from TD Dream at about 2:45pm. The wind was really gusting, rain was coming down sideways, and the boat was really beginning to rock in the waves on the canal. By 3:00pm, Dave and Terri and Len all bailed out and decided it was time to head to the hurricane shelter. The worst of the storm was yet to come- still another 4 hours out. My last text from Len was that a piece of our metal roof was coming off on the north side, and the huge mango tree next door had already been uprooted, as had the two trees the mast was lashed to. It was hard to believe it was going to get worse. |
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| Soon after that, they lost power. While they had a radio to listen to the news broadcasts, it could barely be heard over the storm. The hurricane shelter was starting to leak, and Len and Terri did their best to keep mopping up water. I was watching WINK News live on my phone, and Len wanted me to text him updates of the radar so they could know how much longer it was going to last. It made landfall at Marco Island just before 6pm, then against all odds, the most powerful northeast quadrant of the eye wall was heading right over LaBelle. I did a screen shot at 6:49pm, the red 'comma' of the eye wall was just beginning to go over Labelle. The gray view on the right is the camera atop WINK news in downtown Ft. Myers. What a scary sight to see 🙀 |
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| At 7:16pm, the strongest wind was coming through LaBelle. Winds were 90-100mph sustained; gusts were even higher. I texted Len that the thickest part of the storm band was just passing over Labelle and to HOLD ON! I sent the above photo at 9:16pm, telling him the worst was almost over...the tail of the comma would take another 30 minutes. He texted back, "Sitting in the dark waiting for the worst to pass." I was never so relieved to hear back from him! As the meteorologist explained, because Irma was now primarily over land, it was weakening to a Cat 3 and the southerly back wind to the eye would not be nearly as strong. I passed that information along, and waited in silence. The waiting was THE WORST. |
I spoke to him for the last time at about 10:30pm that night. He decided to leave the hurricane shelter and return home before the back wind picked up. Power was out, and the house was hot and humid, but it was dry for the most part, from what he could tell. He wasn't planning to start the generator until the morning; he was exhausted from the two days of prep, stress and worrying. While I was on the phone with him, he made a quick check of the interior of the house- ALL OF THE GLASS DOORS WERE INTACT AND STILL STANDING! With that off of his mind, he flopped on our bed to call it a night. The wind was picking up, something was banging on our roof, the neighbor's roof was banging, the rain was coming down hard again, and he was laying in a huge wet spot on our new king sized mattress. He put on his headlamp, but couldn't see any water coming in from the ceiling or wall anywhere. He flipped off the light, and said goodnight. He sounded wrecked.
Soon after, cell service was knocked out too, and it was over 24 hours before I heard from him again. At least I knew he was safe, and I had no reason to think the back side of the storm would be as damaging as the first pass. Our home was still standing, the roof suffered some damage, but he was not harmed, nor were any of our neighbors and friends, so I just had to wait it out.
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| By Monday morning, though I had no contact with Len, I sat glued to my phone and computer searching for news and images of south Florida. When I came across this, my heart hurt. Marathon suffered a 14 foot surge. Somewhere down there is Marquesa. I hope she survived. A surge like that will decimate the Keys, which is all at about sea level. I was SO thankful that Dave and Terri left Banana Bay; I wonder if anything is left of the marina. 😢 |
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| By Tuesday afternoon, cell service was restored, but power was still out. Kathleen, a neighbor in TC, saw my worried posts on Facebook and went to our home to snap this photo. I couldn't believe it! Len had already cleaned all of it up! He said he and the neighbors hauled four loads of trash and yard debris to the dump. While he had worked his fool self to prepare our property, he barely rested before working his fool self on the cleanup. When I finally got a hold of him, he had repaired our roof and two of the neighbors roofs, cut away branches and downed trees with the chainsaw, and used his truck to pull what remains of the mango tree back upright to be replanted. THAT MAN OF MINE <3 |
The good Lord willing, Len will be there to meet Willis T and I, so long as I am not rerouted again. Over 6.5 million people are without power. The east coast of Florida had extensive flooding with 12-15 inches of rain on top of a 5-6 foot storm surge, including Miami and Ft. Lauderdale.
Fingers crossed, I'll be home soon.
Thank God so many lives were spared; it was one helluva storm.
G'nite, y'all!
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