Hurricane Tomas

Earlier in the season the systems formed off the African coast every couple of days and came rolling across the ocean straight at us here in Grenada, then usually at or before a few hundred miles off they’d skew northwards, turn into tropical storms/hurricanes and blast someone else instead of us. I felt like a skittle in a bowling alley that knew the guy playing couldn’t bowl for nuts, but concerned that he might fluke one. Still we had so much advance warning that we could always run south out of the way.

Later in the year, like now, the systems don’t get organized until they are close to our longitude. On Thursday night we got word that some bad weather was heading our way, on Friday morning tropical storm Tomas was born, predicted to hit us about midnight, with some of the more panicky forecasts predicting we were to be hit by six in the evening. So no time to run, just dig in wherever you are. As it happened we had come into a marina to do some work. So I had a half dozen unfinished jobs about the boat, on deck, on the pontoon. We had to stow everything.

I would have preferred to be at anchor. Then all I’d have had to do was put out all my anchors and clear the decks. At home the marinas are built of sturdy stuff inside of nice strong harbours, here not all of them are so sturdy, and this one is just in the bay, no harbour. In 2004, Ivan, a category 3 hurricane, sent this entire marina into the mangroves. However Tomas is a far cry from a category 3 hurricane, and we are fortunate in that there is no boat beside us, so we were able to tie to marina fingers on either side of us. I quadrupled my lines, 2 warps and 2 springs out of each of the four corners of the boat, and a few more lines besides. I was pretty knackered by the time we’d finished clearing away all the half done jobs, and I was in bed sleeping like a baby by 8.

And then the weather came! Or more correctly it didn’t! At least not to us. Sure, Barbados got hammered, but here, well it went all grey, and there were quite a few showers on Saturday. The weather gurus were astonished that we were reporting flat calm, no wind at all when they had predicted 40+ knots, gusting to 60. However they assured us of winds of 20 to 40 knots Saturday night. Well they were consistent : Wrong again! Another eerily calm night. It’s a strange feeling, to be within a hare’s breath of this monster, it smashing another country to pieces a short distance away, while we cower under a rock hoping it won’t come for us.

Another strange thing, my own sentiments, shared by just about everyone I talk to. Relief certainly, but tinged with an almost disappointing anticlimax. I mean we spent all day Friday building up our fortifications, psyching ourselves up for a life and death struggle against one of Natures worst tantrums, and then nothing! I mean there I was, looking forward to a lifetime of boring every dinner party with how I tackled hurricane Tomas when he was only a mere lad of a tropical storm. And then the little fucker didn’t show up!