The night the hurricane hit

Roger Hughes prepares his schooner for 150mph winds

It was with considerable trepidation that my wife and I left our 45ft schooner Britannia all alone to face a Category 4 hurricane in a marina at Titusville, on the east coast of Florida, near Cape Canaveral, USA.

The monster storm named Matthew heading our way had already wreaked havoc and caused many deaths in Haiti and the Bahamas, and it was now barrelling north with a projected landfall in the USA exactly at Cape Canaveral.

From past experience we knew we were in for a severe hammering, because even if Matthew only passed nearby, the beast was so large, with very strong winds extending some 40 miles from the eye, it would still impact us. Wind speeds were forecast at around 100-150mph along the coast, with the possibility of even more devastating gusts. Another phenomenon associated with hurricanes are local tornadoes, which are sometimes even more severe than the actual storm they spin off. They are usually short lived, but can cut a clear swathe through a neighbourhood, leaving some houses standing and next door flattened.

With the approach of hurricane-strength winds, a very serious consideration for boat owners is whether to lift the boat onto the hard, or leave it in the water. Different parameters apply to each storm, and the boat’s location, even in the same marina. For example, it is not just a question of whether your lines will hold in hurricane-force winds, but whether the actual marina will hold! This is not an idle concern either, because many marinas have been completely whipped-out by hurricanes, with countless boats and bits of the marina, tossed ashore in piles, or sunk under the intense wind, rain and monster storm surges.