leaving a boat unattended in the caribbean in hurricane season



I thought this article would give some good advise to those leaving their yacht In the Caribbean for hurricane season.

If you are going to do this, leave your boat properly stored ashore. I say this as if you leave your boat in the water, no matter how good the caretaking staff is they just do not have enough labor to properly secure boats for hurricane.

As described in my article ‘Securing for Hurricane’, leaving a boat on a mooring or on its own anchor is a no-no, too much chance of someone dragging down on you.
Securing to docks is possible, but only if the boat can be secured BETWEEN two finger piers.
Stuffing in the mangroves is fine. But to do a proper job of stuffing a boat in the mangroves or securing between piers takes half a day. If the caretaker has ten boats to take care off, that is five days work to secure ten boats, and even then he cannot stay on board all ten boats and tend lines.
Properly stored ashore is the way to go. The first thing to do when the boat is hauled is to pull a transducer or speed gauge as I could write a long article of horror stories of owners who arrived back in November to discover their pride and joy filled up with water to bunk level!!!!

Properly stored boats ashore are insurable against named storm damage no matter where they are stored, even within the hurricane box.
Boats can survive hurricanes when stored ashore, if proper preparations have been made. In Porto Del Ray Marina many years ago they installed in their dead storage area a series of dead men throughout the yard. If a hurricane approaches all the boats in the storage area are securely tied down to the dead men, so that they can not shake out of their cradles and the multi hulls can’t fly.

Virgin Gorda Yacht Haven and Crabbs Marina dug holes and put the boats in the holes. This had mixed results. The boats that were sitting on tires with their RIGS OUT survived with minimal damage, those that had their rigs in and were chocked up in their holes on wooden A frames suffered damage as the holes filled with water, the boats almost floated, rocked back and forth on their A frames boat were damaged, but not total losses. Unfortunately Crabbs no longer exists, the yard went belly up and it is now a storage area for containers.

Putting a boat in a hole is not the be all and end all, as is illustrated by the case of poor Moonshine. A hole was dug in Jolly Harbor; she was put in, supported by timbers. Hans Lammers who for many years was manager of the yard, stated categorically before hurricane season, that boats should not be stored in holes in Jolly Harbor as the flat area there was a flood plain and the boats would float out of the holes. This is exactly what happened to Moonshine who was severely damaged. Cathy and Ian Ferguson spent a couple of years rebuilding her, and stored her in Grenada for the hurricane season hauled up out of the water. Unfortunately the rig was left in and the chocking inadequate, Moonshine fell, along with about another 198 boats and was a total loss.
Throughout the years in various yards there have been major disasters for boats stored ashore. In the vast majority of cases, the rig was in the boat, the boat started shaking and the screw jacks started backing off. In some cases the jacks were not chained together and started sliding out, in other cases the screw jacks settled into the soft earth. The more the more they settled more the boat shook and over she went.

Some yards cured this problem by welding the screw jacks together, wiring the screw jacks so that they would not unwind and most importantly putting plywood pads under the three feet of the screw jacks. This all sounds very logical but in the practical sense I wonder if it is possible to put pads under the three legs of each screw jack.

Look at Grenada; there were roughly 400 boats stored ashore, a minimum of 7 jacks to a boat, 2,800 screw jacks, three legs, three pieces of plywood to screw each screw jack that’s 8,400 pieces of plywood-if each one were twelve inches square, that’s 8,400 square feet of plywood-I doubt if there is that much plywood on the island of Grenada! Plan ahead.
In Spice Island evidently 198 out of 200 boats fell over, in St, Davids 38 boats fell over. An analysis by someone that was in Grenada and inspected both yards would make for interesting reading.

In May, before I left the island of Grenada I looked at the new Spice Island yard and realized that it was a disaster just waiting to happen. The land was mainly newly filled land, soft and flooded in many places. The boats were stored cheek to jowl, two to four feet apart with their rigs in. Never mind a hurricane; just a couple of days of hard rain, which Grenada frequently gets during hurricane season, the stands would start sinking into the ground. If a 50 or 60 knot wind blew, then as soon as one boat went over, others would go over like dominoes.

People are wondering whether or not the insurance companies will continue to insure boats stored out of the water in or near a hurricane area? The answer is yes, IF the boat is properly stored and you have a good broker who can convince the underwriter that the boat is properly stored.
To properly store a boat requires the co-operation of the boat owner and the yard. First of all the rig should be pulled out, this will drastically reduce the windage on the boat, the capsizing tendency in the case of a blow or a hurricane. It also gives a really good chance to really inspect the mast rigging, tangs etc.

This operation should NOT be expensive. If the ship’s crew does the work and prepares the spar it is only a half-hour job to yank the spar. This fact is illustrated by the fact that in the year we laid Iolaire up in Ireland (as previously mentioned to avoid hurricanes, but she still found one) we pulled the rig at the same time as the club was having it’s annual haul; hauling out Dragons and 30 to 35-feet fiber glass boats. The person in charge of the hauling said that we would have to pay extra for the time it would take to lift Iolaire’s rig out main and mizzen, in comparison to the time it takes to haul a Dragon and put it on the trailer.

Myself and my two sons, DIII and Richard, prepared the main and the mizzen for lifting. Once the last Dragon came out we moved Iolaire alongside the dock, and in thirty minutes we had both masts off and lying on stands. The club charged us no more than they charged the Dragon owners to haul out.

In the spring, we reversed the process; again we had everything prepared. We had both masts in the boat in thirty minutes. In the light of this there is no excuse for not pulling your rig when storing a boat ashore in the Caribbean.

Regarding chocking, screw jacks are adequate IF a sufficient number are used. Certainly on a thirty footer it should be three to a side and one to the bow, on a forty footer it should be four to a side and one in the bow, fifty footer, five to a side and one or two in the bow.
Stands must be securely welded together and screws must be wired so that they cannot unwind. A twelve-inch square plywood pad must be underneath EACH of the three legs. Finally sand screws should be driven into the sand on either side of the boat; the boat secured to the sand screw tensioning devices with nylon straps, tensioned by come alongs as found in the trucking industry. If on a hard standing eye bolts must be secured into the hard standing and the straps secured to the eye bolts.

The boats should be stored far enough apart, so that if a neighbor falls over is doesn’t knock your boat over. The neighboring boats MUST also have their masts pulled as otherwise if they fall over the mast will land across your boat, and will likely knock your boat over. Secured in this fashion underwriters will approve and will be willing to extend insurance coverage.
Needless to say, most of the yard managers will not like this type of set up as it will require them to space the boats relatively far apart, meaning that for the given area they will only be able to store about half the number of boats that they have stored in the past.

The cradles described in Nanny Cay, look like another solution, but more expensive. Even in Nanny Cay cradles I think that the underwriters if coverage is desired will require that the mast be pulled.Well there is a lot of sensible stuff in this article, but I think Don is talking more as an insurance agent than as a perennial yachtsman that wishes to leave his yacht here in the Caribbean. Do we really want to take the mast out every year? Not only do we pay for boat storage but also mast storage. Also paying for a rigging company to take out the mast wrap it up and the do the reverse and tune it every year ,no thanks! Not only are we being asked as yachtsmen to pay 2% of the value of our boats every year but also to pay for non essential works and mast storage. I think you will find that all yachtsmen concur, that if a yacht is stored on concrete with adequate stands that are welded together with one inch water pipe, and all sails are removed to reduce windage this should be accounted an acceptable risk by any of the insurance companies. Boats should be stored in yards that have learnt from their mistakes and made improvements to cover any risks that had not been understood. Insurance companies can only do this by listening to yachtsmen that have chosen yards in which to store and by assessing the risks on an individual yard basis. After all most yachtsmen are themselves good at assessing risk when it is their vessel at stake and have more to lose than the insurers themselves.

If I were the insurance agent I would definitely change my strategy, after being clobbered year after year. What somebody needs to sort out in the insurance world is to “not put all ones eggs in one basket”.

In the nineties from 95 to 2000 we in Antigua had five years of serious hurricane activity. Basically there is no way to know each year what the pattern will be but if you study the weather, you can definitely discern a pattern from year to year where hurricanes are more likely to strike. We in Antigua could definitely see a propensity for storms passing through the Caribbean chain lower down than they used to. How is it that those making policy could not. You can’t just look at the statistics after the fact, when the goal posts are moving all the time. Don’t forget that 15 years ago “routing charts” were something that one could rely on for predicting weather in certain parts of the world. Nowadays you would be better off with a Ouija board.

The weather patterns in bygone years were more predictable. Now hurricane strike probability is more like roulette. It is certainly easy to see emerging patterns after the season has started (look at those hurricanes hitting the southern coast of the U.S late in 2005).All these recent changes to the weather pattern should be taken into account by underwriters.
So after our spate of hits and near misses in the north of the windward chain of Caribbean islands, the insurance companies decreed that every yachtsman should go south of a line if he was to obtain cover. How ridiculous when; if you watch the pattern the hurricanes themselves were going lower year by year.

As a yachtsman one was crowded/herded down south into yards and marinas that had absolutely no experience of what it takes to secure a yacht for a full on hurricane and away from yards that had taken all the precautions having learnt the lessons. Now after the Grenada fiasco I hope that the people that make policy and create arbitrary lines will have learnt their lesson before Trinidad has a serious strike.

Here in English Harbour we have one of the best hurricane holes in the Caribbean and enough experience to organize the boats staying in the water for the hurricane season. If the Marine Trades Association here in Antigua were to organize a formal and responsible body that oversaw the mooring of yachts left here to satisfy the insurance companies that risks of boat damage were being minimized, many businesses within the association bemoaning the lack of boats staying in Antigua, would in fact have a reason for staying open in the hurricane season.

All this potential marine trade is being driven south by the insurance companies. I hope that this year and in the future we will see a change of policy that really looks at the risks of lumping all yachts into one area of the Caribbean. Here in Antigua we have learnt many lessons and at Antigua Slipway we will certainly sure up any boat left with us to minimize any risk of damage. Yachtsmen, talk to your insurers, reason with them and bring your boats for storage during hurricane season. At Antigua Slipway we will weld stands with 1” water pipe so that you can leave the rig in. We at Antigua slipway will protect your yacht from hurricane damage we have night time security so theft is not a problem like so many other Caribbean yards. Call Deon Hector for a full quote for storing your yacht in the Caribbean at 268 727 1845.

Welcome all Caribbean Yachtsmen

Italian Antigua Press