Sept 7, 2022: We went into Loreto Monday morning and stocked up on groceries. (People that went yesterday said the town was completely cleaned out.) We topped off our water and fuel tanks as it is expected there will be no power and therefore neither of those will be available for some time. I just took the picture below so you can see we have not yet reached the worst part of the storm. That is expected to be directly west of us around 1 o’clock tomorrow morning. It could be a cat 3 at that point but because it’s on the other side of Baja and we are so well protected by mountains in this marina we don’t expect any major damage. Power is already out and we’ve been getting rain and wind since 0630 yesterday. Crazy how long it takes for one of these things to completely pass you by.
Sept 9, 2022: Hello world! I slept for 12 hours last night after enduring a bleary, sleep deprived day of walking around with others like zombies looking at damage and swapping war stories. Hurricane Kay was directly west of us from about 0100 to 0500 yesterday morning. We saw sustained winds in the 50 kn range and a max of 66 kn. My recordings are only for the previous hour so it’s possible we did have higher winds and I just never saw the screen. Others on the docks are reporting highs of 70 and 80 kts. It certainly hit much harder than anyone expected given we are 200 miles from the eye and about 1/3 of that was land. Blessedly, we have absolutely no damage to FKL which we attribute to the luck of not having a boat next to us, remaining on board, and thoroughly preparing. The worst damage seems to have been six different blown out head sails on five other boats. Unfortunately, two of those boats were directly in front of us and accounted for three of the sails! (Lots of shredded canvas and bits of solar panels to clean up.) Basically the wind catches underneath an edge of the rolled up sail that sits diagonally on the very front of a sailboat. Somehow it manages to unfurl the upper section of sail which then shreds itself beating in the wind. The initial sound is like a cannon and then it’s just a cacophony until either the sail destroys itself, someone manages to get it down or the wind dies. Two other guys and I managed to get two of the three down during lulls in the storm. There is minor damage to docks, lots of destroyed dodgers/biminis/plastic windows and tree debris everywhere. No idea when power will be restored and with all the clouds we haven’t been able to make much solar. But in the scheme of things all is well and we are now making plans for what appears to be the next big storm hitting here a week from Sunday. OMG, does this cycle ever end???
The significance of the photo of the boat in the dark is the angle of heel. We are being pushed maybe 30° to the left and you can see that the boat behind us is double that. His rail (boat edge) was very close to catching under the dock which could have caused chaos for all of us at this end of the finger.
