Andy has been at the marina every day and some days a couple of times. This was a crazy storm. It turned south of us at the last minute and made landfall in Fort Myers just one mph short of a cat 5! We went out to the boat on the 28th (wed) as the hurricane was making landfall. Not the most brilliant of ideas but really we had very little wind and rain.
When we got to the dock that evening (on the 28th) we found that some boats that were on the hook just outside of the ICW we already hard aground against the beach and on their sides. There was no water, the hurricane sucked out the water from us and we were left with just a few feet of water under our keel and were just sitting upright in the soft muddy and sandy bottom. She was heeled pretty good at about 10 degrees we estimated. Inspection that day reveled that we had some lines that were being cut (because we didn’t have chafe guards in place) and we had lost one line.
Overall nothing was found to be out place and everything else was hold firm. Although, we still were waiting for the storm surge to come back and there was always possibility that could happen but as Ian was coming on land now we were hopeful the worst was over.
On Saturday, 9/30 with us both off work, we inspected the boat, put the sails back up and unpacked the salon that was currently storing everything. We reconnected to shore power and undid the extra lines and removed the damaged ones. We survived much to our relief.
As a reward to ourselves, we decided to head to Annapolis early and start our vacation since we weren’t in any frame of mind to start on boat projects again. We were taking off the month of October for some much needed R&R and will resume our boat restoration in November!