Cruising Sailors Forum Archive

Aha, the roller furling gear. Yes, there is always

someone to lazy to remove it or to cheap to pay someone to watch his boat and remove it. We were parked in the mangrove like folks parked along mainstreet in some small town. We all had done everything we could think of to protect our's and our neighbors boats. Then some charter boat crew dumps a boat right up wind of us and puts one of the two anchors on the bow down and takes off. When the storm began picking up steam the roller let go right away. The guy up wind of me called on the radio and asked if I could help him do something about it. He was concerned that it would cause the boat to break loose and come down on him. I knew that if that happenend I would be right in the mix as well. We worked our way over to the boat using the mangrove trees keeping in the lee of the boats and were able to board. It was impossible to do anything with the sail to save it so I just took out my knife and when the tip hit the sail it just exploded. I was smart enough to remove everything off my boat and either store it down below or tie it to a tree next to us. Then I would get in the dinghy and cruise around looking at what other people did. If I saw something that I thought would help I would go back and do it to my boat. At the very end I sunk my dinghy next to the boat tied off fore and aft and to the mangrove tree. My plan was to climb into the trees if everything went south. It never went that badly for me but boats all around were taking huge hits with many of them sunk. Some beaches had boats stacked up three deep high and dry totally distroyed. Not so much fun to look at. I think Hugo took 17 people if I remember correctly.

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