For the third time in one month, we returned to the mangrove swamp at Culebra to wait out the passing of another hurricane. Fourteen lines secured the boat to trees and three anchors. Twenty-four hours before Marilyn arrived at St. Croix, a meteorologist with the National Hurricane Center in Miami, being interviewed on a Voice Of America shortwave broadcast, said that Marilyn was "far weaker" than Luis with maximum winds of "only" 80 mph extending out "only" 30 miles from the northeast side of the eye. He said no strengthening was expected "for the next day or so." I was confident the boat could handle winds of more than 80 mph even on one anchor, let alone three, plus eleven lines tied to trees. So I went against my better judgement and dropped plans to evacuate.

Right up until Marilyn hit Culebra, there was plenty of room in the mangrove channels, and a way for boats to get in. But boats were not showing up in the same numbers as they had for Luis the week before. It seemed as if many both ashore and on the water did not take this threat very seriously.

At 5 PM as the eye of Marilyn was near the east end of St. Croix, the airport on the southwest of that island reported winds of 82 to 97 mph. With maximum sustained wind extending only 30 miles out from the eye, Marilyn was not expected to strengthen as it passed St. Croix. But as the rain and wind increased to tropical storm strength at Culebra, the Miami Hurricane Center reported that the storm had been upgraded to category 2 with winds of 105 mph and strengthening. By that time, it was raining and tropical storm strength winds were blowing from the north and northeast at Culebra. It was too late to evacuate ashore, but I packed a bag of valuables in case I would need to swim for it as I did during hurricane Hugo at St. Croix in 1989.

After passing over the east end of St. Croix, the track of Marilyn's eye became less certain. Best estimates put the path between Culebra and St. Thomas, then out to sea northeast of Puerto Rico. One report said the eye had a diameter of 25 miles. If that was true, the eye could have passed over both Culebra and St. Thomas at the same time! But at Culebra, there was never a period of calm as is experienced when the eye of a hurricane passes overhead.

At 10 PM we began getting winds of more than 75 mph and by midnight it was never dropping below 100, with gusts to 150 and more. All night it was the terrorizing scream of the wind mixed with the sound of rain as if being sprayed with bullets. During the height of the storm, when the wind direction was coming from astern, I feared the main hatch cover would blow off. To be able to escape through the main hatch, I didn't lash the cover down and for five hours straight, I stood at the hatch, holding the cover down by hand. A towel stuffed in the crack between the main hatch cover and the top of the fashion board did not prevent rain, leaves and bits of the mangrove trees blowing in across the main salon and splattering the bulkhead eight feet away. With the worst gusts, the smell of the bleeding trees filled the cabin. As frequent lightning flashes lit up the night, it was apparent the storm tide had raised the boat to near the tree tops. By 2 AM, my clothes were soaked from the rain coming in through the crack above the fashion board. Then radio WVWI from St. Thomas which was doing a fantastic job with eye witness accounts on the effects of the storm, went off the air.

Marilyn kept screaming at the top of her lungs for two more hours before showing the least sign of tapering off. Incredibly, after expending so much energy and dumping so much rain, as Marilyn passed she was getting stronger and in the next report from Miami, was upgraded to category 3!

As the eye of the hurricane passed Culebra to the northeast, the wind direction which started out in from the northeast, backed from to north, and then the strongest wind blew out of the northwest. As it began tapering off, the direction backed more to west and southwest.

Two Danforth anchors on 1/2 inch nylon line with no chain and tied to the stern cleat, were buried in the mud of the channel and took the worst of the whole thing.

Boats within the mangrove channels at Culebra did well. The largest number of boats damaged were those anchored outside the mangroves in the northeast corner of Ensenada Honda where several big boats were blown ashore. With the strongest winds from the northwest, some boats were swept toward the harbor entrance where they ended up high and dry on the reef. A boat named Tumbleweed was reported to have been swept out to sea with a local man aboard. Jack Strickland, a long time Culebra resident and diving concession operator went down with his boat. Ashore, at a civil defense shelter built with hurricane Hugo relief money, the roof blew off, forcing the people sheltering there to huddle in the bathrooms during the height of the storm. Two hundred homes were either completely or partially destroyed. But within a couple of days afterward, power, phones and water were restored to most of the island and the ferry to Fajardo was back in service. Although four planes were wrecked, damage at the airport was not bad and it was soon back in operation too.

At Fajardo, on the northeast coast of Puerto Rico, the most damage was caused by flooding from the torrential rain.

Damage was worst at St. Thomas where 3 boaters who stayed aboard during the storm died. More than 90 were said to have been injured, and 60 or 70 people were rescued from the harbor at Charlotte Amalie clinging to life rafts or debris in the harbor. One report said there was nothing left floating in Elephant Bay, a large anchorage near Charlotte Amalie. Another said 3 boats survived there. Within sight of one ham radio operator still able to function aboard his boat near Ramada Yacht Haven, he counted 37 boats up on the waterfront. And the 82 foot Coast Guard cutter Point Ledge was on its side up on the dock. Which brings up the question, why were ANY boats left there in that harbor which is completely open to the sea?

In down town Charlotte Amalie, looters gutted the stores. Sporadic looting continued there for many days afterward, even in spite of a dusk to dawn curfew and law enforcement officers on loan from Charleston South Carolina, the US Marshal's office and the FBI.

The storm destroyed the St. Thomas hospital and water desalination plant. Electricity, phones and water services were still out there a week later. All the USVI radio stations including Virgin Islands VHF marine radio went off the air. VI Radio came back into partial service several days afterward, but most other radio stations were still not broadcasting anywhere in the USVI.

At Red Hook Bay on the east end of St. Thomas, only about 5 boats of 70 or 80 in the harbor were left floating. 36 of them were on shore. American Yacht Harbor's docks were destroyed and at Independent Boat Yard, 30 boats that had been lifted out before the storm had fallen onto the ground.

There were conflicting reports about Cruz Bay and Hurricane Hole on St. John. One woman died at Coral Bay when she and her husband tried to swim ashore after their boat sank. Upwards of 20 boats ended up on shore.

St. Croix was hit by the less devastating southern portion of the eye of Marilyn, but sustained considerable damage. Two were reported to have been killed there and many more were missing. The docks at St. Croix marine in the harbor at Christiansted were reported to have been destroyed along with a new boardwalk constructed after hurricane Hugo destroyed the originals in 1989. All the boats in the harbor at Christiansted were said to have been sunk or blown ashore. The yacht club at Teague Bay which suffered badly during Hugo, looked similar after Marilyn. The clubhouse roof survived, but half the boats there were sunk or on the beach. At Green Cay marina, several sailboats were dismasted. Ashore, 25 percent of the homes were reported damaged. Power, phones and water were wiped out.

As soon as Marilyn had passed, rumors among cruising boaters were rampant that another storm already named Noel was heading our way. Noel did form out of depression #16, but not until more than a week later. The forecast was for Noel to go far to the northeast of the islands.

WEATHER REPORTING BEFORE, DURING AND IMMEDIATELY AFTER THE 1995 HURRICANES

As Luis and Marilyn approached land, the Hurricane Center in Miami began issuing intermediate updates along with their regular position reports. They were officially being issued at 2, 5, 8, and 11 AM and PM local time. But somehow, Rick Ricardo, broadcasting on local radio station WVWI (1000 khz) from St. Thomas, was consistently relaying those reports over the air up to a half hour before the official times. He did the best job by far of any reporter on the local commercial radio stations. But the forecast position reports for the storms were not being reported by any of the commercial radio stations. In order to get that information, it was necessary to listen to either the US Coast Guard shortwave reports (NMN) from Portsmouth Virginia, or to one of the ham or marine SSB radio nets.

The Coast Guard reports are scheduled for 12 and 6 AM and PM local time, an hour later than the Miami Hurricane Center issues the text for them. God forbid the Coast Guard should be the only source of your weather reports when you are out of range of any others, because the job they did was disgraceful. At several critical times during the passing of both Luis and Marilyn, their signal was either completely absent, or went dead half way into the broadcast. Many times (including on September 3, 13, 14, and 15 plus many others), the report was a rebroadcast of a previous report. In several instances, the 6 AM report was a repeat of the 6 PM report of the previous day, 12 hours old! A hurricane moving at only average speed can travel 150 miles in 12 hours. And the relatively new method the Coast Guard has been using for computer synthesized voice to make the broadcasts more intelligible, instead produced the opposite effect, with strange and unnatural pauses in the speech where they shouldn't be, making it very hard to understand. Apparently the people in charge at Portsmouth just plug the text into the computer and never bother to check the results of their work.

But weather reports from David on his boat "Misstine" broadcasting on marine SSB (4003 khz at 1215 UTC and 8104 khz at 1230 UTC) were a very great help to many boaters. His reports included the forecast tracks for up to 48 hours in advance plus very professional analysis every day. On the other hand, the ham radio operators and their nets seemed to be lagging behind in both the quality and timeliness of their weather reporting. The performance of VI Radio from St. Thomas on their VHF NOAA weather channel isn't even worth mentioning.

After Marilyn did her damage, all the commercial radio stations in the US Virgin Islands were silent. For several days, WOSO (1030 khz), the English language news and weather station broadcasting from San Juan Puerto Rico was the only station able to be heard in the USVI with news about what was going on. Then WSTX (1340 khz) broadcasting from the west end of St. Croix came back on the air passing messages to and from families and friends in and out of the Virgin Islands.

When they got their antennas back up and generators running, ham radio operators were helpful in getting the news out, but many of them, especially the maritime hams, seemed to be reveling a bit in over statement. In one instance, a maritime ham reported the Ramada Yacht Haven Marina had been completely destroyed. But later the docks, the Castaways Restaurant and Bridge bar on the docks were reported okay. An old regular on the maritime mobile ham nets made the comment in the aftermath of Marilyn that it was "a sad commentary there is only ham radio for communications." But immediately after the storm, CellularOne telephones were in operation and able to call in and out of St. Thomas and the other islands by connecting with other cellular phones. This was a major change from previous years when cellular phones were not as widespread. Another major change from recent years was the prominence of marine SSB radio. Following the weather report by David from Misstine each morning, an impromptu net of marine SSB broadcasters grew which was more effective than the marine ham nets in getting the word out about boaters injured and boats damaged.

MARILYN VS. HUGO

Comparing hurricane Marilyn to Hugo in 1989 was being done even before Marilyn arrived at St. Croix. Both storms followed similar tracks and arrived on the same dates, even on the same days of the week. But there were many differences. Marilyn carried a lot of rain and lightning with it, but Hugo was mostly wind. There was a constant fine rain being driven during the entire onslaught of Hugo, but much of it was salt water spray. Hugo was 500 miles across with a much more compact eye that produced winds that were measured by numerous instruments on St. Croix at well over 200 mph. Hugo's winds began in the northwest and as the eye tracked across the southwest corner of St. Croix, the wind at Salt River on the north coast began veering toward the north and reached maximum force from the east. They were not gusty winds, but constantly driving and increasing, with a terrifying sound like being inside a jet engine in flight. Afterward, there was hardly a mangrove tree left with leaves on it. Above on the hillsides, the island was wiped clean. Indeed, about double what we had from Marilyn at Culebra would have equalled Hugo at St. Croix!

Listen to a Voice of America radio report recorded live during the passing of Hurricane Marilyn that devastated the US Virgin Island of St. Thomas in 1995. (About 500kb Real Audio files. Right click and then click on "save target as...") Part One | Part Two | Part Three