As a public service this is my cautionary tale…Would I do it again...No way.

Sept 25th 1987 I’m visiting my family in Bermuda. Hurricane Emily is bearing down and is forecast for a direct at about 10:00am. At 7:30am my brother knocks on the door. He’s going to move his 23’ inboard to a sheltered cove in Southampton about 10 miles away. Not wanting him to go alone I go with him, we have plenty time right. Heading along the north shore we are about a mile offshore when we notice the sky getting dark and the breeze picking up. We radio our position to friends in Southampton. No worries were ok.

We round Spanish point and start the final stretch across the Great Sound. It’s very dark now and the wind has picked up to about 20-30. Our friends check our position again, a little anxiety evident in his voice this time. Half way across the Great Sound we pass Pearl Island a few hundred yards to port we check the compass bearing to the narrow rocky entrance to the harbor now only about 2 miles away. It’s getting real ugly real fast. The radio crackles again. This time all decorum is gone…”where the f**k are you guys?”

A couple minutes later the bitch hits us and everything goes white. The spray is horizontal. Fortunately the waves have not had time to build too big but we are blind. We hold the compass course and decide that either we hit the opening to the cove or we run the boat up on the rocks and jump off. I wonder who will take care of my kids as I pull a life jacket on. A few minutes later, through the spray, we see the rocky shoreline on both sides of the boat. We had hit the narrow entrance to the harbor dead on.

Don’t mess with Mother Nature.