Sailboat Survivor....

[frankthetank]

heres the email i recieved from Bill Dietrich, he rode out charley in his sailboat.

Hello !

Sorry it's been so long since I email'd or
updated my log file, but the library here
was closed for more than a week after
hurricane Charley, so I was incommunicado.
Even the phones have been down.

Magnolia and I came through the hurricane
just fine. The only damage occurred when
I crept out to tie the dinghy down better
in the middle of the storm, put my hand on
the stern grill to steady myself, and bent
the rod that holds the stern grill up.
No other damage to my boat.

But it was a scary experience. We had winds
somewhere around 100-110 knots, I think.
Howling white horizontal rain for long periods
of time. The worst was when a storm surge
current held the boats sideways to the wind;
we rolled ferociously. One of my friends fell
inside his boat and hurt himself. A couple
other friends gathered their most important
stuff into a bag in case they had to abandon ship.

Out of 40 or 50 boats in the harbor, 4 or 5
sank or dragged anchor and were smashed against
the shore, and were total losses. A couple more
had significant damage. Several had sails shredded
(a lot of people didn't take down their roller-furled
jibs, foolishly).

The worst of the hurricane missed us by no more
than 15 miles or so. On the day of the hurricane,
about 6 hours before it hit, the forecast went
"cat 2 - now cat 3 - now cat 4 - now right turn
and it's going to hit you" over the course of
an hour or so. A lot of people are not happy
with the weather forecasters.

Ashore, the town of Ft Myers Beach took about
2 feet of water through the streets and buildings,
ruining lots of first-floor furniture. Some roofs
were damaged and water badly damaged the interiors.
But I haven't seen any houses actually torn down
by the storm.

Since I have no TV, and have been without internet
and newspapers for 9 or 10 days, you probably know
a lot more about the storm than I do !

My log file should be updated today; see
http://www.geocities.com/bill_dietrich/ ... liaLog.txt

Bill Dietrich