More insight and details from hurricane damage in Florida’s panhandle.

Florida’s Panhandle Hammered by Hurricane Michael from Yachting Journal
by Lisa Overing, an award-winning marine journalist and copywriter.

You only have to spend a short time talking with Randy Mims to know that he has the soul of a true sailor. Randy not only built his 27ft gaff-rigged cutter, Ideath, but each year he single-hands the cutter from North Carolina to the Northern Gulf Coast and back again. “Ideath” is pronounced Ide’ath and loosely translates as “house of ideas”. Having survived numerous storms, Randy is no stranger to hurricanes and we are relieved that he made it through Michael safely. On his solo voyages, Randy stops along the way to visit maritime museums and, indulging his passion for music, he volunteers to sing in community church choirs. He also takes time to share his travels with his friends and has agreed to allow Cruisers Net to post his emails. For more photos and more on Randy, go to http://towndock.net/shippingnews/ideath?pg=1 from TownDock.net in Oriental. See previous installment: Surviving Hermine.

Dear Friends,
I am sure that by now many of you must think that I have sailed off the edge of the world or that “Ideath” sank and there there was no one to send out an update. While it is true that I have not been on a long voyage in what seems like forever, I have been here in Apalachicola playing music, making jewelry, and sailing one day about every week and doing all kinds for projects on “Ideath”. Last Sunday I was telling my friends that after four months I had finally completed the project of replacing every piece of rigging on the boat. I have lost track of how many splices and line end whippings I have made. I listen to the NOAA weather radio every morning. At first they were saying that a tropical storm that could become a minimal Hurricane was headed up here to the Panhandle of Florida. Tropical storms and even Cat 1s don’t pose much of a problem for “Ideath” safely nestled three miles up a marsh creek. She has weathered many storms tied out in Scipio creek between the dock and the six hundred pound concrete block that I cast in the mud on the other side. Depending on whether the storm will pass east or west of us, I will put an anchor up or down the creek. On Monday morning I began preparations for the storm. Having spent all the time setting up the new rigging I was reluctant to take it all back down. I took down the sun awning and lazily got out the bigger dock lines and took tools and paint off the boat to tidy up down below. By noon they were talking about Category 3 Hurricane “Michael” that was headed right for Apalachicola. Preparations went into high gear. Still not wanting to down rig the boat, I wrapped each of the headsail halyards around their stays which will keep them from vibrating much like the spirals that you see on tall smoke stacks. The forecasters seemed to think that it would indeed pass to the west of us if it didn’t go right over. Jim Cantore was broadcasting from Panama City about fifty miles to the west. Hedging my bets I added fifty feet of chain to anchors and put two anchors down stream. One was to the southeast and the other was as close to south as I could get in the confines of the creek. I put a third anchor up the creek to the north “just in case”. It is quite a balancing feat to load an anchor with it’s normal 30 feet of chain and an additional 50 feet of chain and 200 feet of nylon line into a kayak and paddle into a fifteen knot wind and get it all out of the kayak without turning it over, three times. Tuesday noon found me as prepared as possible and hearing that the storm was now a Category 3 and was expected to become a Four.
Tuesday evening saw the beginning of some rain bands and a definite increase in wind. Still it was nothing that “Ideath” and I hadn’t been through before. I set up a schedule for the night, getting up every hour to check chafe protectors and adjust lines as it became necessary. I was very glad to see the dawn as the schedule went out the window at about 3 Am when I was checking every half hour. I was still feeling confident of my setup and after eating some pancakes for breakfast, I spent a lot of time out in the cockpit marveling at the sheets of wind driven rain. Every once in a while a Tern or Gull tried valiantly to fly to windward only to be blown back. Once a Manatee came up right beside the boat and looked right at me before the driving rain made us both blink and down it went. It was a good thing that I managed to eat a Peanut butter sandwich around twelve thirty because by one o’clock things had changed remarkably. The wind had become a solid wall of screaming noise. To move about the boat I had to crawl from hand rail to rail. I couldn’t look in the direction of the wind and could only look down. I was wearing boat shoes and a bathing suit with a tee shirt under a foul weather jacket and the rain felt like needles hitting my legs and face. By now the water was over the dock and actually over the bench that is bolted to the dock. As the fury grew it also started to veer around to the south. Because the water was now above the marsh grass there was a three mile fetch all the way from town, and the chop was now about two feet high. Of course “Ideath” could care less about two foot waves, but the situation became a lot more intense when the dock to which we were tied began to come apart. Getting some of the strain off of the dock lines seemed imperative as the pilings were starting to undulate with the waves that were hitting them. The engine at about 2400 RPM seemed to do the trick. The only problem was that the water was so full of bits of marsh grass that the raw water filter was plugging up about every five minutes. I have two filter screens and got to where I could change out a clean one for one stuffed with grass in about 45 seconds. Worrying that the dock would fail completely, as the wind continued to swing around to the southwest and west, I put the little danforth anchor I had left in the water right off the bow. But knowing that it would not be effective in those conditions, I made the decision to do the only thing that I knew could work. I got out a long piece of three quarter inch line from my sea anchor and carefully laid it out on the deck. Shedding the foul weather jacket and putting on a life jacket, I hand over handed down one of the dock lines to the swaying dock and then swam the end around a palm tree and tied it off. Now that there was something solid again to hang on I could let “Ideath” swing out into the creek with her bow into the new wind direction. Happily as the wind came around more to the west it lessened the fetch and the waves became less. With the west wind I knew that “Michael” had made landfall and by three- thirty the twenty to thirty knot gusts seemed like gentle puffs compared to what we and just been through.
When you live on a boat it is not necessary to be going anywhere to have to use sailoring skills and have adventures. As it turned out the eye of “Michael” went ashore about thirty miles west of us in Mexico Beach. I understand it practically destroyed a big hotel there. I certainly have a lot of cleaning up to do and a dock that will have to be rebuilt, but I am grateful that “Ideath” is sitting peacefully at the buckled dock and not languishing out in the middle of a marsh or smashed up against a bunch of trees. I hope the next update I send out is about a fun voyage. I have had all the Hurricane season I want!
Peace and Love to all of you. I have missed showing up where you are,
Randy

Storm Fury