‘Lectronic Bulletin! Some Marinas Totally
Destroyed in La Paz by Hurricane Marty
September 22 – La Paz, BCS
– Marina de La Paz, 120 slips, is 95% destroyed.
– Abaroa Marina, 40 slips, is destroyed.
– Marina Palmira, 117 slips, and which has a big breakwater,
is in excellent shape with very little damage to boats.
– Several boats in Astilleros Dry Storage have been knocked over.
– Cabo Isle Marina in Cabo San Lucas, 120 miles to the south,
had strong winds and lots of rain, but no damage to boats. The
town will be up and running again in a week.
Hurricane Marty, widely tracked for the
last several days, blew through La Paz from two directions with
unexpectedly ferocious winds early this morning. Neil Shroyer
of Marina de La Paz estimates the winds at 125 knots, and called
it a “once every 25 year hurricane.” Shroyer has been
in La Paz for 38 years, and said there hasn’t been anything like
Marty since Lisa in ’76 – a storm that killed 10,000 in La Paz
after an earthen dam broke.
Shroyer told Latitude 38 that Marina
de La Paz, which has 120 slips and had 100 boats, “is 95%
destroyed and all the boats have been damaged to some degree.”
One or two small ones may have sunk, a handful were dismasted,
and something like 20 had roller furling jibs unfurl. “Almost
all boats have some damage, most of it caused by the docks breaking
and boats and rigging slamming into one another. You know the
classic hurricane photo where all the boats are piled in a corner?
That’s what we have here.”
Shroyer reports the the wind started at
about 11 p.m. last night, blowing a steady 30 knots, and built
to a steady 60 knots by 0400. Based on weather reports, they
assumed that this was about as bad as it was going to get, sort
of like Ignacio last month. But by 0500 it was suddenly blowing
at an estimated 120 knots from the northeast. “We had to
crawl off the docks,” said Shroyer.
After two hours of wind from the northeast
destroyed the docks from one direction, unfurling jibs on many
boats, and causing six foot waves to break over the floating
breakwater, there was an unusually long lull as the eye passed
over. The marina crew ran down to the docks to try to make repairs,
and some skippers tried to get their boats out.
Before long, however, it was blowing at
about the same 120 knots, but from the opposite direction, the
southwest. Any docks that hadn’t broken before, broke under this
onslaught from the other direction. Forty boats and parts of
their docks from the Abaroa Marina to the west broke loose, slamming
into the already loose boats in the corner of Marina de La Paz.
“The 35 boats on our A Dock are all
in a pile,” says Shroyer. “The 40 boats from Abaroa’s
Marina took out our B Dock and the 25 boats in her. All our docks
are broken, with some boats still tied to pieces of dock or to
bent pilings, but most are just pushed up against each other
in a pile. A few docks may have survived at the very outside,
but there’s no way we can even get to them. All of the boats
have been damaged to some extent, but in many cases it’s scratches,
broken rub rails, tangled rigging, and that kind of thing. One
or two small boats may have sunk.”
Neil’s parents, Mac and Mary Shroyer, who
built the marina, were in San Diego at the time, and hope to
be able to fly back tomorrow. Neil expects the marina, with all
the docks broken, to be out of commission for some time.
Most if not all boats anchored in La Paz
Bay are believed to have gone ashore, but first hand accounts
are hard to come by.
Norma Flores, Office Manager at Cabo Isle
Marina in Cabo San Lucas, said they had strong wind from about
midnight to 0400, but that it wasn’t much stronger than 75 knots.
“The marina and boats are fine, the road into town is fine,
but there’s lots of water all around and the electricity is off.
We’ll be back up and fine in a week.”
Manuel Canto, “one of the team”
at Marina Palmira in La Paz said that although there was lots
of wind and water – much, much, much stronger than Ignacio –
their large breakwater prevented seas from coming into the marina.
There is some slight damage to the marina itself, but all the
boats are fine. We had our crew run around all last night retying
boats, so they all did fine.”
Marty is continuing up the western shore
of the Sea of Cortez, posing a severe threat to boats at Puerto
Escondido. Hopefully it will blow out before it reaches the many
other cruisers up in the Bahia de Los Angeles area. But if you’re
still in the hurricane’s path, our hearts are with you.
We hope to have photos from La Paz tomorrow.
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