Well, we arrived in Mid July having just missed hurricane Charley by a week. It hit the West coast of the state having passed through the Keys first. Tropical Storms Danielle, Eugene and Gaston were all still swirling in either the Gulf of Mexico or causing devastation in the north eastern states of the USA . Four storms in the space of two weeks should be enough for a season we thought…….how little we knew.

During the storm season (June 1 st – Nov 31 st ) the news and weather channels run tropical weather updates that monitor weather fronts coming from Africa . It's these fronts that, due to various conditions, including the increased sea temperature, form into tropical storms and generally travel across the Atlantic and then the islands building up speed as they go. They begin as a tropical depression until the wind speed builds up to 65mph. At winds above this speed it gets a name and becomes a category 1 hurricane, starting at ‘A' the storms get named in alphabetical order with a predetermined list of names, as the wind speed increases the storm rating increases up to 165mph+ level ‘5'.

Within a week of our arrival hurricane “Francis” began to form off Africa, the predicted path taking it right over Florida and our boat. From knowing little about hurricanes we were learning fast about how to prepare to boat and the likely devastation that a hit would cause. In this part of the world the hurricanes spin anticlockwise and the place not to be is just north of the eye when it makes landfall. This is where the strongest winds and most devastation will be. Any storm can be dangerous but getting a direct hit by a force 3, 4 or 5 could have finished our adventure before it started.

The boat is about 1 mile inland at Fort Lauderdale and located on what is known as the “Inter Coastal Waterway”, a series of inland rivers which crisscross Florida . Being inland should give us protection from the storm surge (waves and high tide which could be 25ft higher than normal) and hopefully some of the wind.

Over the next week we watched the continuous weather news as Francis got stronger with the predicted path still heading for us in Fort Lauderdale . We had plenty of people to give us advice on how to prepare the boat. Many have been through near misses before and proceed to give us some helpful and some not so helpful information. The consensus is that if we get the full force it doesn't matter what you do, most of the boats won't survive as the surge will rip all the moorings out anyway.

Trying to be more positive Howard spent numerous hours reading up any information on hurricane preparation that he could, whilst Suzanne watched any satellite channels other than weather forecasts to escape the doom and gloom. We bought almost 1000ft of new rope and stripped Leadership of her sails, ropes, seats and any thing which is not part of the main structure of the boat.

We had a plan to pull the boat out into the middle of our section of river and secure it in the middle by putting out ropes to the other side; this should protect it from being smashed against the dock by the wind. Assuming the other boats were securing themselves well was a worry as they could be swept into Leadership and could cause just as much damage.

Francis was by now a category 4 hurricane with winds about 130mph. Satellite images showed the massive size of the storm measuring 400 miles across and still growing. It was bigger than Florida the predictions placed landfall in Florida as imminent.

Unbelievably off the coast of Africa 4 other storms formed and the news reports looked like a production line for tropical storms as Hugo, Ivan, Jeanne and Karl formed an orderly line and started a 2 week journey in our general direction. Hugo looked like it was going out into the Atlantic, whilst the other 3 were forecast to hit Florida again. In a normal year Florida would see maybe 1 storm making landfall, this year 4 hurricanes were forecast to hit and the season wasn't even half way through…………..as the yanks say…” Holy Crap ”……….

Back to Francis and mandatory evacuations were ordered for many coastal areas. We secured the boat in the middle of the river and booked into a hotel further inland to ride out the storm. With winds high enough to flip our boat upside down, put it on the dock or on top of a house, this was a very worrying time (massive understatement). With all possible preparations made all we could do is watch the TV in the hotel and wait. We had booked for three days so had packed a few clothes, a couple of books, some food and vodka as we knew nowhere would be open to eat and vodka was certainly needed by this time.

Francis had been moving at about 10-15 miles an hour for the last 2 weeks and was just off the coast of Florida , about 70 miles east of Fort Lauderdale . It took position over the Bahamas and stopped………for 2 days it didn't move whilst we were stuck in a hotel room watching the continuous updates. The 65 mph outer bands of the storm were already hitting us and pulling off roofs and knocking out power supplies all around us. Finally the storm started to move again and hit land 70 miles north of us. It was most odd seeing the driving rain and the clouds first going one way and then the other once the eye had passed. We were incredibly lucky……….a few trees around the boat were knocked over but Leadership suffered no damage.

We decided there wasn't any point in putting the sails back on as the next storms were heading our way. As were Joy and Claude; who very quickly became versed in the skills of fixing things on the boat including: toilets, air conditioning and how to prepare for a hurricane. Fortunately after similar preparation on the boat, more time spent in a hotel, with Joy and Claude this time, Jeanne also missed us. Ivan caused huge devastation with a death toll of over 1,000 in Haiti but missed Florida as did Karl. Jeanne did hit hard albeit north of us again. Boats in the coastal marinas took a real bashing and the unlucky were sunk or were washed away, some still attached to the docks they were moored onto. We spent the next 2 weeks putting the boat back together.

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