Lee and Peter Sailing Trip was for Four not Two Years. Now an Italian adventure

The news got worse and worse about Hurricane Maria. Eventually possible Hurricane Category 5 will hit directly to Puerto Rico. First time in over 85 years of history. And the European and American Hurricane models both predict that it will hit the land of Puerto Rico directly. We decided to pack as much as possible from the boat and load into the car. All the clothes and all the items we want to keep for future boating.

Cynthia and Mike, who went through Hurricane Irma in St. Maarten, are fine and finally came to Puerto Rico by a cruise ship, Royal Caribbean from St. Maarten. We finally got connected. We received an email to pick them up at 8:30 am. They sent us the email at 5:30am from the cruise boat the same morning. We saw the email at 8:30am. We drove to San Juan immediately. We finally meet them and their stories of ordeal is horrible and incredible. They went through everything and they could not get off the Island earlier because they have a dog and cat with them.

They lost their boat, Minx which they have sailed for 11 years. When they left the boat at the Marina, they took few clothes thinking that they would be back after a few days. Minx hit the concrete dock really hard during the storm and got holed and half sank. They lost everything in the boat.

After leaving the boat, they evacuated into an apartment with another boat family. During the storm, the roof of their apartment blew away. So everything got wet by the heavy rain without a roof. They did not have enough food nor water. They barely collected the rain water to drink and wash. They also saw all the looting going on in St. Maarten.

Back to Hurricane Maria, Peter worked very hard with an attempt to save our boat and to take care of everything in the boat all morning. I had a sense that our Boat, Notre Voyage is not going to survive a Category 5. We had a lunch and went to the Marina to check last minute things and position the boat in the middle of the slip and left.

Our car is full of food and boat things in the trunk and the backseat. We brought the guitar and my paintings of course. We have got the same room in the third floor of the hotel we stayed in during Irma. With an empty 5 gallon water container that we filled with water in the room and took a shower. Prepared not to have water for a while. We also have 5 gallons of water in the car.

In the evening, it started to blow hard. This time we are really prepared. We brought a burner to cook and boil the water. We had two big steaks in the freezer so we brought them when we left the boat. We cooked the steaks with some green peppers. We have a lot of non perishable foods and drink so we could survive quite a long time.

After watching CNN for a while, we went to bed. Woke up few times and went back to sleep and read the NHC reports. The windows and outside door into the room are shaking quite violently and water is being blown through the cracks. Peter stuffed some towels into the door surrounding but we still have about 1 inch of water on the floor in the room.

About 5:00 am we heard the big bang sound just outside. It woke us up and things were looking scary. We decided to move the mattress to the bathroom to get away from the window and door. It is a large bathroom so we could comfortably sleep. It is cozy and comfortable enough in the bathroom and reduces the awful wind howling and banging sound from outside.

We slept a little more and realized that there is no wifi any more no cell service. The last connection to NHC indicated that the wind will change in direction completely as the eye passes over us. The wind was from the north, straight into our door and Windows, Now the wind is from East right along the balcony but feels much calmer. The wind will switch to the south eventually at about 10:00am. We have to move the mattress back to the bedroom since the bathroom has a large window facing south!

It is after 10:00am and we are back in the bedroom. TV does not work but the air conditioning works. Still a lot of scary sounds but blue sky. Made a call to Cynthia and Mike to see how they are doing but no connection. Their Hotel moved them to another hotel which has the biggest generator and cistern in the city. They should be doing fine. They deserve to do all right this time.

Thursday morning, the road from the hotel is completely blocked. Local people got out their chainsaws and had it passable by midday. Peter thought it would take days. We tried to help but only got in the way so a 6 pack was our contribution.

The road to Fajardo is a mess. Huge concrete power pylons across one carriageway. We often had to drive under cables not much higher than the car and over cables strewn across the highway.

It is a miracle to see our Boat, Notre Voyage is floating proudly after all the Hurricane winds. Minor things like losing one solar panel and the dinghy is under the water. No structural damage! We did not expect this at all we expected a total loss. Fernando’s, our neighbour, boat has a bad crack on the side of hull. We have not seen him yet but he will be disappointed a lot.

We can start to sleep in the boat tonight Friday. We are selfsufficent in the boat so we will have electricity and air conditioning with the generator. It is going to take weeks or months to restore electricity in the city. A lot of the concrete electrical poles are broken in half or fell down on the floor. There us no power, no water in Fajardo.

We still have no news about how badly damaged is Puerto Rico but we are doing remarkably well. There is no cell phone no radio no TV no Internet no nothing. We sent a message on our satellite communicator Inreach to our family so we feel that we are organized well. Cynthia and Mike answered to our satellite message. They are doing fine and the hotel even has wifi for them.

It has been two weeks after the Hurricane but we do not have any communication at all. Though we have not suffered much since we are prepared well. We have enough gas to go to the Airport,10 gallons of drinking water and a lot of non perishable food. We heard that the electricity will take 6 months to install completely.