Hurricane Fiona

This aerial photograph shows Fiona, including the eye, just above the Dominican Republic. This is after as a tropical storm it drenched Guadalupe and Dominica in the eastern Caribbean; strengthened into a hurricane; really hammered Puerto Rico (the island on the right) and battered the eastern third of the DR. From here it hit the Turks and Caicos; grew into a Category Four, blasted Bermuda; and over the past couple days has been hammering Canada's Atlantic coast. So far Fiona has caused 19 deaths, 16 of which were in Puerto Rico, and over 100 million dollars in damage. 

This is a screen shot of one of the apps we use for weather. The number "1" is over the eye of Fiona and the number "2" is where Starship is located. The distance between the two was only 53 statute miles. However, being on that side of the hurricane is far less dangerous than the other. Plus, the bay where Starship is docked is very protected by the surrounding hills.

This is the Bahia de Luperon, which is located in the northwest corner of the DR, about 45 miles east of the Haitian border. Though the bay and it's fingers are quite large, probably only half of the water is deep enough for most boats. Columbus's first permanent settlement in the western hemisphere was less than 10 miles to the east. He no doubt entered this bay in 1492 and/or 1494. The body of water in the upper left of this photo is the Atlantic Ocean and the entrance to the finger where Starship is docked is in the lower left.

Starship (see the pink dot) is spending this year's hurricane season at dock in this finger of the bay. As you can see it is very protected. If it looked like a hurricane was going to make a direct hit, which we are told has never happened here, we made arrangements for Starship to be moved off the dock and tied up in the mangroves on the other side of the channel.

These photos were taken after Fiona had passed. Looks good.

 The only sign of damage appears to be where the fender board may have rubbed against the hull. So not a big deal. Luckily that was the case because we don't have boat insurance this hurricane season. The reason being, that since we decided not to rush through the Caribbean, we knew we weren't going to make it out of the Hurricane Box for hurricane season, so we wouldn't be covered for named storms anyway. The insurance companies consider the hurricane season to be July 1st to November 1st and the box they want you out of is south of Cape Hatteras and north of Grenada. From now on though, we'll have insurance regardless of where we're at because there's many other things that can happen to a boat other than damage from named storms.