RAIN

Well we knew it couldn't last but we never thought our first encounter with rain would be the biggest storm of the century in this part of the world.  It started raining on the morning of February 2nd.  We were safely tied to our slip in the marina and we thought it would be a good chance to get ahead on school work since we couldn't really to to the pool.  We had just put up our new awning the day before.  We had never even used it until we got here but since we knew we'd be in this marina for a while we decided to put it up.  Initially it helped keep the rain out while allowing us to keep the hatches open. That did not last long.

By the middle of the day the rain was coming down pretty hard so we decided that even with the awning up we had to close our four big hatches.  This made it a little steamy down below but with the fans on it was bearable.  After dinner it really started raining hard and the wind was really starting to pick up.  At 10:00 pm Phil and I decided that we had to take the awning down or risk having it torn or worse still having something else break because we had tied the awning to it.  So in the pouring rain we went out and took it down.  We then had to shut all of our portholes because the rain was coming down so hard - and horizontally - that rain was coming in the sides of the boat.  The wind gusts were getting to be 35-40 mph by about 11:00.  That's when the show really started.

Lighting like I have never seen before began to light up the sky to the north.  It lasted until about 1:30 a.m.  The kids slept through the whole thing but the lightning combined with the torrential rain and the wind I didn't finally go to sleep til after 3:00 a.m.  We awoke to another day of POURING rain which lasted the entire day.

After it was over and done we learned  that where we were there had only been "intense" rain but that further south there had been "torrential" rain that had caused mud slides.  North of us in La Cruz - one of the anchorages we had been in only a few weeks ago - saw the worst of the storm.  One boat went aground when its anchor chain broke but the family on board was saved when a large wave washed them off the beach and they were able to start their engine.  Another ship sustained damage when one ship slipped off its anchor and dragged into their boat bending the stantions and life lines of the boat that was hit by the boat that was dragging.  In La Cruz the winds got to 70 mph.  We heard from a couple that was in the marina there that their boat was heeled over in the slip so far that they were worried they would be in the water.

Our friend's on Qualchan were in Tenacatita for the storm.  This is a picture of Qualchan taken by another boat in the same anchorage of what it looked like in Tenacatita.  There boat was not hit by the lightning but it sure did look like it was.

Ryan has been learning about erosion and boy did he get a chance to see the real thing.  Half of the hillside next to the marina came down with the rain.  It took the marina days to clean up all the dirt that washed down.  The water in the marina took longer to clear.   No one is going to forget where they were for this storm.