Omar, The Seeing-Eye Hurricane

Safe! In Wednesday’s ‘Lectronic, we reported that every boat in the U.S. and British Virgins Islands, includng our R&C catamaran ‘ti Profligate, was 24 hours away from getting hit by Hurricane Omar. Seeing that the Virgins are the bareboat capital of the universe, that meant a lot of boats were in severe harm’s way.

About six hours from Omar‘s landfall two things happened, one of them very bad, and one of them very good. The bad was that Omar unexpectedly intensified to a 115-knot category 3 hurricane. The other was that he started to veer to the east. So in the wee hours of Thursday night, we were glued to the internet as one computer model showed Omar still about to whack our boat, while four others predicted that he wouldn’t make a direct hit. The veering to the east turned out to be the correct prediction, and Omar‘s 20-mile wide eye passed about 50 miles to the east of the British Virgins.

The fact that it passed to the east rather than the west meant all the boats in the Virgins were on the soft side of the hurricane. It also helped tremendously that Omar had a concentrated eye. We still don’t have a full report from the BVIs, but we’re told that the south side of Tortola didn’t get hit by much more than 50 knots, and that the seas weren’t a problem. So damage was very light, and nothing like what had been expected. Indeed, BVI Yacht Charters, our management company, had all the boats back to their base and was open for operation less than nine hours after this category 3 hurricane passed. Damage to St. John and St. Thomas in the U.S. Virgins was even less because they were further from the eye.

There’s a lot of praying when a hurricane approaches, and in the case of Omar, the prayers seem to have been answered. By veering to the east, Omar managed to thread his way through the Northern Leewards to the open Atlantic without causing any serious damage to either the Virgins or St. Martin on the other side of the hurricane. Well done!