From the February, 1998 GOFC Newsletter
Russ and his friends were rumored to have been seen scrambling around at Suwannee, recently, trying to save their boats during one of the recent weather pummelings from El Nino, that have hit Florida and continue to do so. This account happened on the same night that a three-man crew watched their grouper boat sink out from under them at the Middle Grounds. They jumped into the cold water on very short notice, climbed into their life raft, activated their EPIRB, and were quickly rescued by Coast Guard helicopter and flown into Tampa. Russ's story:
I've lived in Florida since 1957 but I have never actually been in a hurricane. I have never been on the coast and watched the wind tearing roofs off houses, watched the storm surge water come up the street and start pushing cars around, and watched people at "storm parties" break out the life vests. The closest I had come was watching the movie Titanic, where there is plenty of water surging in and lots of people putting on life vests. (For a fisherman, Titanic is a sad story: they don't catch any fish and their boat sinks.)
All this changed on Monday, Feb. 2nd. When I got home at 5:00 my wife said "Bo Bruner called and said they are expecting very high tides at Suwannee and you need to get over there and pull the boats out."
Since at this point the wind was blowing pretty hard and the rain was very heavy in Gainesville, I could well believe real high tides on the Gulf. After a quick change of clothes I hitched up the brand-new boat trailer. Now the reason I bought, the trailer is so if there was a hurricane or a bad storm then I would be able to get my boat out of the slip at Suwannee and away so it would be safe. Not buying a trailer would surely be an invitation to big storms: COME ON TO SUWANNEE AND WRECK RUSS'S BOAT!' But I had bought the trailer and big storms were coming anyway — don't know how I screwed that up.
On the way over, the wind blew harder and the rain got heavier the closer I got to Suwannee. It also got dark, other than your average lightning flash every ten seconds or so. As I drove into town I noted with relief that the street lights were on. Without electricity, it is real hard to lower a boat safely down to the water: no motor to lower the cables and no light to see what is going on. Bo and his wife Marty were at the house, looking at the canal water over the dock and just coming into the yard. This was about two hours after local high tide and they figured that the next high tide would be a dilly as the wind was forecast to swing around from the east to the south or southwest and start really pushing the water in instead of out.
Since I had left my van and trailer down at the marina, we took my boat down first and I drove it down the canal to the marina. As I drove I noticed the wind blowing chunks of roofing off of boathouses. While this looks neat on TV, the sight of an eight foot chunk of corrugated metal roofing scything through the air at you gives a different feeling than "neat." Possibly feelings of renal system sphincter muscle failure?
When I got to the marina, we backed the trailer in and got the boat out. The water was slightly over the top of the boat ramp and about halfway up from the canal to the Suwannee Shores Marina building. Bo backed his trailer in and went to get his boat. I walked to the back of his truck to make sure we had enough cable out of the winch to connect to the boat and noticed that the water behind the truck came up to an inch below the top of my boots. I went up on the bank to wait and twenty minutes later when Bo came up with his boat I went back down behind the truck. Instantly my adrenalin pumped nerves noticed some crucial information: the water level was now an inch over the tops of my boots! While I pondered the meteorological import of this I noticed the wind blew Bo and his boat right over to the concrete wall away from the ramp. He had to back off and really gun it to keep the boat headed towards the trailer, but we did get it up and out.
Since Bo and Marty had come in separate vehicles, we formed a caravan out of Suwannee: one car, one truck pulling a 24' walkaround and one van pulling a 19' CC. Bo had arranged for us to leave our boats at Jimmy Green's house, about 12 miles outside of Suwannee. Since two of Bo's four trailer tires were flat and there was no way to fill them, we went slowly, about 20 mph. It was just as well since I got to inspect the various conditions. The water in the canal was up to or over street level in places, and some puddles were getting really good-sized. The wind was a sustained 25+ knots with gusts easily to 35 or more, still out of the east. Even with rain gear and boots on, I was pretty wet, top to bottom, and the van and the boat were rocking with the wind. On the way out of town I did not stop at the Waterfront market for a Moon Pie and an RC the way I might usually do. Hey, it was too much fun to watch the weather!
When we got to Jimmy's, we unhooked the boats and began the rest of the drive to Gainesville. I thought, OK, we've got the worst part over, now it's a milk run. But as I drove towards Gainesville, the weather deteriorated. The rain was very heavy and coming almost horizontally towards the front of the van. The wind velocity picked up with swirling gusts which pushed the van off the road three times. (Lots of surface area on that sucker.)
Once I felt the two wheels on the left side of the van both come up off the road. While the actual time they were off the road was less than a second, it seemed somewhat longer. And while I'm not susceptible to motion sickness, I did notice a peculiar sensation associated with this particular motion. I found out when I got home that a squall line had moved northwest, eventually through Gainesville, and I had been running through the back of it. Once I got to Newberry, the squall line had passed in front of me and the drive was considerably easier.
There are lots of folks who have been through much worse than this, I'm sure. If you, dear reader, are one of them, I can assure you I would be the first to admit it. I'm thrilled for you. I've had all the "hurricane" experience I care for. The next time we have a low pressure center," don't look for me out in it, I'll be in the shelter having a Red Cross doughnut.
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