Hurricane Odile Hits Celebration

They say San Carlos is the safest hurricane harbor in the Sea of Cortez and we are very happy that we decided to spend the hurricane /tropical storm season here. It’s already been a very active season and, until now, all of the tropical storms had moved out to the Pacific.

That is until Hurricane Odile. It was the worst hurricane to ever hit the Baja Peninsula and caused major damage in many of the places we visited. It’s still too early to determine the full extent of all the damage but in the boating community we’ve heard there are at least 22 boats aground in La Paz and 3 boaters missing plus damage to boats and/or marinas in Cabo San Lucas, Puerto Escondido, Santa Rosalia and, sadly, right here in San Carlos. Fortunately, here in San Carlos nobody was hurt, the vast majority of boats are fine, and there was no major damage to infrastructure.

But, we did have some personal experience as the dock that we were staying on got seriously damaged – while we were still attached to it. Funny enough, we didn’t know until one of our fellow boaters knocked on the hull at 6:30 in the morning and strongly “suggested” that we unplug the boat and get ready to move. There was a lot of wind and the boat was blowing around but it didn’t seem any worse than other storms we’d experienced so when we asked why he said we need to come out and take a look.
Well, they say a picture says a thousand words so these pics and short video will give you an idea of what we experienced.

Obviously, we weren’t hurt and the boat is fine but it was a harrowing experience because our boat was still attached to the dock while it was breaking up around us. As a matter of fact, we (along with other boaters) spent most of the day using our own ropes and extra lines to hold the docks together until the storm passed.

The good news is, by the end of the day, the marina was able to move a number of boats into safe spots, accommodate us on the fuel dock for the night, and move us into a new slip this morning. And, in an incredible display of their resilience, the marina has already fixed one of the two docks that were damaged and it appears that the other dock will be repaired very soon.

And, in an even more incredible display of resilience, we hosted a happy hour for all the boaters who helped while we were still temporarily tied to the fuel dock.

Seriously though, our thoughts and prayers go out to everyone that was impacted by this major storm, especially the less fortunate in Cabo San Lucas and on the Baja Peninsula. We don’t have any details yet but we’ll be making a donation to the Red Cross and hope you and all our fellow boaters will do the same.