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Over the course of 24 hours in the fall of 2014, the Baja Peninsula was hit with a major Category 3 hurricane, a tornado, and an earthquake. And for a short time—that felt like days or weeks—my friend Autumn was missing amidst the destruction.
It was the fall of 2014. Over the course of 24 hours, the Baja Peninsula was hit with a major Category 3 hurricane (winds 125+ miles per hour), a tornado, and an earthquake. And for a short time—that felt like days or weeks—my friend Autumn was missing amidst the destruction.
Autumn, who was looking after my boat while I was home in the states, planned to ride out the storm at anchor in La Paz Harbor. This sheltered harbor has seen tropical storms before, but never a storm of this magnitude (only two other major hurricanes have hit the peninsula since they began to keep records in 1960).
My friend Autumn mentioned she was itching to be in Mexico close to the sea so I offered to let her live on the Rascal if she looked after it while I was away. We were both stoked on the plan and we met up to sail for a few days and to get the Rascal anchored in a safe place.
Forecast models for Friday, Saturday, and Sunday initially predicted that Hurricane Odile would gradually weaken and move northwest. But each time an update was published, Odile strengthened and inched north towards Cabo San Lucas and La Paz.
As the eye moved over La Paz early Sunday morning, the high-test anchor chain keeping the boat in the harbor broke loose. Autumn managed to beach the Rascal, and then she survived the hurricane-force winds and driving rain by clinging to mangroves until her midday rescue.
While Autumn was thankfully safe and uninjured, several boats in that same harbor sank and multiple people were lost to the storm.
When I first started looking for boats, I figured it might be possible to sail south before hurricane season fired up. I’d spend the summer months in Panama or Ecuador and then continue to Chile. Plans changed when the boat I found was so far north (Bellingham, Washington) that I could never make it south in time.
So I elected to spend hurricane season in the Sea of Cortez. The Sea of Cortez is generally recognized as a safe haven during hurricane season. In fact, only two other major hurricanes have hit the Baja Peninsula since folks started keeping track.
Official hurricane season began that June. Some hurricanes developed and spun out to sea, but nothing came anywhere close to La Paz before I left to return to the States.
My friend Autumn mentioned she was itching to be in Mexico close to the sea so I offered to let her live on the Rascal if she looked after it while I was away. We were both stoked on the plan and we met up to sail for a few days and to get the Rascal anchored in a safe place before I departed.
A historical chart of hurricanes since the National Weather Service began recording their paths—note that the Sea of Cortez only has a few lines passing over it.
The first few weeks passed uneventfully, and Autumn enjoyed the La Paz sailing community and living on the boat (not to mention the cervezas and tacos). During the third week, Hurricane Norbert developed in Southern Mexico, and we spent quite a bit of time discussing it via text message. We monitored its path and watched as its track curved off westward and went out to sea.
Days later another depression that would eventually become Hurricane Odile started to build, but the models predicted the same strengthening trend and northwest path that Norbert took.
Each time I checked for updates, Odile inched further north and increased in strength. In the span of a single day, winds jumped from 65 to 135 miles per hour. As Odile got closer to Cabo, Autumn and I had a talk. It was too late to try to run north or east to safer waters. We could move the boat to a marina or keep it anchored in a well-protected anchorage, where no other boats were likely to drag toward her. Maybe Odile would skim over part of the peninsula?
The last major storm to hit La Paz was in the 1980s, and it devastated the marinas—uprooting numerous pylons, setting docks adrift before smashing them together, and sinking dozens of boats in their dock lines.
This time around, some folks elected to move into marinas while others stayed anchored out or tied to moorings. Autumn chose to stay on the boat.
It takes a pretty substantial anchoring system to weather a storm as serious as a hurricane. I was careful about how I anchored the boat before I left. My primary anchor (a CQR) was oversized—they’re rated to hold boats literally twice as large as mine with several times the displacement and windage. I’d never had it drag before, and thus, it alone should have been more than enough to hold the boat through any ordinary storm. However, rather than just rely on the CQR, I set two anchors in tandem to be extra cautious.
With tandem anchoring, a second anchor is attached to the shank of the first, and they’re both set along the bottom. The primary anchor sets as normal, and were it ever to drag, it would pull and set the secondary anchor. This second anchor would effectively have infinite scope, because it’s pulling perfectly parallel to the ground and exceptionally high holding power as a result. The secondary anchor also helps to keep the primary well buried and should halt dragging as soon as it happens.
Nearly everyone who’s weathered a hurricane agrees that chafe—where a rope rubs against something and eventually snaps—is the biggest source of failure in anchoring systems. Thus, I built the system out of chain entirely with this in mind. There’s also a “snubber” at the top of the chain—a nylon line that acts as a shock absorber to limit the peak loads on the anchoring system.
By Sunday morning it was clear that Odile would come close to La Paz with substantial force. Autumn battened down hatches, charged devices, and removed all extraneous equipment from the deck. I was glued to the computer, checking weather forecasts, and texting back and forth with Autumn every few minutes.
We knew it would be bad (though we didn’t realize quite how bad), but we both felt confident that Autumn was prepared, the Rascal adequately protected, and we’d done everything we could to ensure they were safe.
Until the last minute, most forecast models showed Odile moving to the northwest. In the end, it smacked directly into Cabo. The wind was building in La Paz that afternoon, and Autumn donned her life jacket, complete with emergency beacons, as the storm intensified. Several boats (some unattended, others derelict) started dragging towards the beach while it was still light outside.
Night fell as the winds built out of the northeast, and Autumn could barely make out the boats close to her in the anchorage. One by one, they continued to drag away into the darkness, and she could hear people on the radio calling for help and updating folks on their location.
The Rascal continued to hold strong, and around 1 AM Autumn started the motor to steer into the wind and minimize the amount of strain on the anchors. At approximately 2 AM, someone in the marina reported winds up to 108 miles per hour.
These are Autumn’s words describing conditions on the Rascal during the storm:
On a previous voyage across the Gulf of Mexico, I had experienced a burly tropical depression with sustained winds at 50 knots, however Odile was like nothing I have ever experienced. Cruisers anchored in the bay discussed that the storm would pose a particular challenge because it would pass over us in the depths of night making visibility impossible.
Throughout the night, cruisers with weather stations reported the increasing wind speeds—45, 58, 67, 75, 108, and eventually 125 knots. There wasn’t much rain until around midnight, which coincided with a much larger increase in wind speed. In preparation for the storm, I had stripped Rascal of all her sails and tied all the halyards down to reduce windage, noise, and chaffing with the rigging, which proved fortunate as the howl of the wind and rain literally sounded like a jet plane.
I turned the VHF radio volume up to high in order to hear transmissions over the roar. Calls and alerts from surrounding boats were already coming in early in the night. A good friend, Gunther, called over the radio that he had hit something and was concerned that he was adrift. In his late seventies, Gunther and I had become quick friends over the prior weeks, sharing roasted chickens and tales—he was an incredible storyteller. No one returned his call. I hailed him immediately knowing that the most I could offer was an open ear and perhaps a problem-solving discussion of what to do next. We decided he should throw out his second anchor, which he did. The distress I heard in his voice is something I will never forget. It was the last time I spoke to Gunther.
Through the port windows and white-out rains, I could just barely see the silhouette of boats anchored near me. One by one, they broke free of their anchor and sailed past into the darkness until there were no boats around me that I could see. As each one let loose, my adrenaline pumped a bit, and I would give the Rascal a pat as I perched in the companionway.
The Rascal was rocked by 8-10 foot waves, and I kept my ear tuned to any noise that might mean something was awry on the boat or with the anchoring. Indeed, as the winds picked up to ~ 75 knots, I heard a distinct rubbing and grinding toward the bow. Many cruisers had told me to wear a snorkel mask in order to be able to see and breathe in the driving rains that would come. They were exactly right. With headlamp, life jacket, harness, and snorkel mask on, I crawled from the cockpit to the bow as the Rascal bucked in the waves and the rain pelted me like gravel.
At the bow, I found the chain and snubber had come free of the bow roller and were chafing against the roller’s edge—the snubber being slowly chewed. With every wave, I held the pulpit as the Rascal’s bow dove into the water, and I got a salty dunk. The tension against the snubber and chain released a bit in the wave troughs, and I was somehow able to lift them both back into the bow roller without crushing my fingers. I would go out on deck several times over the course of the night to check the snubber, chain, and windlass, and each time the wind and waves had increased as the eye moved closer.
Autumn continued monitoring her position on the GPS, ensuring lines all looked good on the bow. At 2:22 AM she texted, “Loud noises!”.
At first, I thought she was quoting the movie Anchorman, which I didn’t find funny. It soon became clear that something on the boat had failed and was making loud noises up on the bow.
The pull from the Rascal stretched the snubber so much that the chain was taking the tension. I had tied the bitter end of the chain to an exceptionally strong cleat on the boat’s deck with a ⅝-inch dock line. I never expected it to come tight, but I thought this beefy dock line could hold the strain if it did. It apparently could not, and the parting of the dock line (and the chain’s escape) caused the loud noises Autumn heard.
The snubber, however, was still attached to the chain, and it stretched an incredible amount, holding the boat for about another 5 minutes before it finally parted.
Autumn was still safe and unharmed in the boat, and the boat’s interior was still dry when she sent a message at 2:30 AM that said “Ground”, indicating the boat had landed on the beach. At 2:36 AM, she sent a message asking, “Jump off boat?”. That’s the last I heard from her via text.
The Rascal beached herself on the Mogote (a low spit of land on the far side of the harbor). When she came to rest, she was heeled over at about 45 degrees, and she was taking waves and wash on her stern.
Autumn was still safe and unharmed in the boat, and the boat’s interior was still dry when she sent a message at 2:30 AM that said “Ground”, indicating the boat had landed on the beach. At 2:36 AM, she sent a message asking, “Jump off boat?”. That’s the last I heard from her via text.
The silence that followed was sickening. I wasn’t sure if she’d lost cell service or if she’d decided to abandon the boat. She had a Delorme InReach, which is like a waterproof satellite phone, except it just sends text messages instead of calls. It doesn’t rely on cell towers, but can send a text with a GPS location attached from anywhere in the world in any conditions. She also had a PEPIRB (Personal Emergency Position Indicating Radio Beacon) to transmit her exact location to the emergency response and coordination center at the US Air Force. It’s only to be used in life-threatening emergencies, and it’s the most reliable emergency communication device available for coordinating search and rescue efforts.
The next hour felt like an eternity. At 3:45 AM, I got a call from the Air Force telling me that the PEPIRB was activated. This was good news—Autumn was safe and functional enough to activate it. But it was also bad news—she must be in a dire situation.
The Air Force told me they’d be forwarding the message to the Mexican Maritime Search and Rescue group (SAR), and they gave me a number to call. I called the number, but I didn’t speak Spanish well enough to communicate the extent of the crisis and no one there spoke English.
At 4:35 AM, I got a message from Autumn’s InReach that said “Abandoned boat”. It had a location that put her in the mangroves. I called the SAR group again to give them an update, but with the language barrier, they couldn’t make sense of what I was talking about. When they finally grasped what I was desperately trying to communicate, I gave them Autumn’s latitude and longitude to communicate to the folks in La Paz.
As the day broke, Autumn sent a few more InReach messages, and at 10 AM, she said she’d found the Little Rascal (Rascal’s inflatable dinghy) and was taking shelter in it. At 11 AM, she messaged that she had finally been plucked off the beach. Knowing she was safe, I could finally breathe.
Autumn could hear other cruisers on the radio mention they were putting out extra anchors once they were beached to ensure they didn’t get pulled out into deep water again when the wind shifted. She had the extra anchor (a danforth) prepared, and around 2:40 AM she climbed through the forward hatch to set the backup anchor, and the wind swept her into the water. She briefly attempted to swim back towards the Rascal, but the waves, wind, and current were too much. She ended up in the mangroves.
There, amidst the mangroves, Autumn weathered the worst of the storm. She climbed up a particularly stout mangrove tree in a somewhat protected area. The possibility of hypothermia weighed on her mind—she was soaked, the winds were constantly whipping through, and she didn’t have enough clothes on. Autumn spent about 8 hours in the mangroves and on the beach before SAR finally picked her up.
It seems impossible that the Rascal got beached and pounded by hurricane-force winds without sustaining damage, but that’s what happened. Her exceptionally thick Dutch-built fiberglass hull, her watertight hatches, and her sturdy fittings all combined to protect her from the waves and elements.
La Paz and Cabo fared worse. Roads and houses were damaged, and the airports didn’t come out unscathed. With great effort, I finally got back to Mexico. Autumn met me at the airport, and my bear hug should have crushed this mere mortal. But, as I would learn, she’s no mere mortal.
While Autumn and the Rascal survived Hurricane Odile, not everyone was so lucky. I’m tremendously sad to say that three fellow cruisers died during the storm. They were great people and as well-prepared for the storm as anyone else. Maybe some boats that came adrift during the storm hit their boats, leading to their sinking? We’ll likely never know.
With additional sadness, I should note that none of those who died during the storm were found wearing life jackets. While many things can go wrong on a boat, putting your life jacket on at the first sign of weather, especially a hurricane, might just save your life.
We spent a week dragging for anchors and helping support the folks diving to recover personal items from boats that sank. There were many missions to recover beached boats at high tide, but progress was slow. Near the end of the efforts, I pointed the Rascal north towards Loreto and Guaymas.
As I ventured onward, I felt grateful that Autumn was safe and there wasn’t more death and destruction to La Paz. I learned a lot from that storm, and I’m grateful for that, too. Every day is a new day.
It was the fall of 2014. Over the course of 24 hours, the Baja Peninsula was hit with a major Category 3 hurricane (winds 125+ miles per hour), a tornado, and an earthquake. And for a short time—that felt like days or weeks—my friend Autumn was missing amidst the destruction.
Autumn, who was looking after my boat while I was home in the states, planned to ride out the storm at anchor in La Paz Harbor. This sheltered harbor has seen tropical storms before, but never a storm of this magnitude (only two other major hurricanes have hit the peninsula since they began to keep records in 1960).
My friend Autumn mentioned she was itching to be in Mexico close to the sea so I offered to let her live on the Rascal if she looked after it while I was away. We were both stoked on the plan and we met up to sail for a few days and to get the Rascal anchored in a safe place.
Forecast models for Friday, Saturday, and Sunday initially predicted that Hurricane Odile would gradually weaken and move northwest. But each time an update was published, Odile strengthened and inched north towards Cabo San Lucas and La Paz.
As the eye moved over La Paz early Sunday morning, the high-test anchor chain keeping the boat in the harbor broke loose. Autumn managed to beach the Rascal, and then she survived the hurricane-force winds and driving rain by clinging to mangroves until her midday rescue.
While Autumn was thankfully safe and uninjured, several boats in that same harbor sank and multiple people were lost to the storm.
When I first started looking for boats, I figured it might be possible to sail south before hurricane season fired up. I’d spend the summer months in Panama or Ecuador and then continue to Chile. Plans changed when the boat I found was so far north (Bellingham, Washington) that I could never make it south in time.
So I elected to spend hurricane season in the Sea of Cortez. The Sea of Cortez is generally recognized as a safe haven during hurricane season. In fact, only two other major hurricanes have hit the Baja Peninsula since folks started keeping track.
Official hurricane season began that June. Some hurricanes developed and spun out to sea, but nothing came anywhere close to La Paz before I left to return to the States.
My friend Autumn mentioned she was itching to be in Mexico close to the sea so I offered to let her live on the Rascal if she looked after it while I was away. We were both stoked on the plan and we met up to sail for a few days and to get the Rascal anchored in a safe place before I departed.
A historical chart of hurricanes since the National Weather Service began recording their paths—note that the Sea of Cortez only has a few lines passing over it.
The first few weeks passed uneventfully, and Autumn enjoyed the La Paz sailing community and living on the boat (not to mention the cervezas and tacos). During the third week, Hurricane Norbert developed in Southern Mexico, and we spent quite a bit of time discussing it via text message. We monitored its path and watched as its track curved off westward and went out to sea.
Days later another depression that would eventually become Hurricane Odile started to build, but the models predicted the same strengthening trend and northwest path that Norbert took.
Each time I checked for updates, Odile inched further north and increased in strength. In the span of a single day, winds jumped from 65 to 135 miles per hour. As Odile got closer to Cabo, Autumn and I had a talk. It was too late to try to run north or east to safer waters. We could move the boat to a marina or keep it anchored in a well-protected anchorage, where no other boats were likely to drag toward her. Maybe Odile would skim over part of the peninsula?
The last major storm to hit La Paz was in the 1980s, and it devastated the marinas—uprooting numerous pylons, setting docks adrift before smashing them together, and sinking dozens of boats in their dock lines.
This time around, some folks elected to move into marinas while others stayed anchored out or tied to moorings. Autumn chose to stay on the boat.
It takes a pretty substantial anchoring system to weather a storm as serious as a hurricane. I was careful about how I anchored the boat before I left. My primary anchor (a CQR) was oversized—they’re rated to hold boats literally twice as large as mine with several times the displacement and windage. I’d never had it drag before, and thus, it alone should have been more than enough to hold the boat through any ordinary storm. However, rather than just rely on the CQR, I set two anchors in tandem to be extra cautious.
With tandem anchoring, a second anchor is attached to the shank of the first, and they’re both set along the bottom. The primary anchor sets as normal, and were it ever to drag, it would pull and set the secondary anchor. This second anchor would effectively have infinite scope, because it’s pulling perfectly parallel to the ground and exceptionally high holding power as a result. The secondary anchor also helps to keep the primary well buried and should halt dragging as soon as it happens.
Nearly everyone who’s weathered a hurricane agrees that chafe—where a rope rubs against something and eventually snaps—is the biggest source of failure in anchoring systems. Thus, I built the system out of chain entirely with this in mind. There’s also a “snubber” at the top of the chain—a nylon line that acts as a shock absorber to limit the peak loads on the anchoring system.
By Sunday morning it was clear that Odile would come close to La Paz with substantial force. Autumn battened down hatches, charged devices, and removed all extraneous equipment from the deck. I was glued to the computer, checking weather forecasts, and texting back and forth with Autumn every few minutes.
We knew it would be bad (though we didn’t realize quite how bad), but we both felt confident that Autumn was prepared, the Rascal adequately protected, and we’d done everything we could to ensure they were safe.
Until the last minute, most forecast models showed Odile moving to the northwest. In the end, it smacked directly into Cabo. The wind was building in La Paz that afternoon, and Autumn donned her life jacket, complete with emergency beacons, as the storm intensified. Several boats (some unattended, others derelict) started dragging towards the beach while it was still light outside.
Night fell as the winds built out of the northeast, and Autumn could barely make out the boats close to her in the anchorage. One by one, they continued to drag away into the darkness, and she could hear people on the radio calling for help and updating folks on their location.
The Rascal continued to hold strong, and around 1 AM Autumn started the motor to steer into the wind and minimize the amount of strain on the anchors. At approximately 2 AM, someone in the marina reported winds up to 108 miles per hour.
These are Autumn’s words describing conditions on the Rascal during the storm:
On a previous voyage across the Gulf of Mexico, I had experienced a burly tropical depression with sustained winds at 50 knots, however Odile was like nothing I have ever experienced. Cruisers anchored in the bay discussed that the storm would pose a particular challenge because it would pass over us in the depths of night making visibility impossible.
Throughout the night, cruisers with weather stations reported the increasing wind speeds—45, 58, 67, 75, 108, and eventually 125 knots. There wasn’t much rain until around midnight, which coincided with a much larger increase in wind speed. In preparation for the storm, I had stripped Rascal of all her sails and tied all the halyards down to reduce windage, noise, and chaffing with the rigging, which proved fortunate as the howl of the wind and rain literally sounded like a jet plane.
I turned the VHF radio volume up to high in order to hear transmissions over the roar. Calls and alerts from surrounding boats were already coming in early in the night. A good friend, Gunther, called over the radio that he had hit something and was concerned that he was adrift. In his late seventies, Gunther and I had become quick friends over the prior weeks, sharing roasted chickens and tales—he was an incredible storyteller. No one returned his call. I hailed him immediately knowing that the most I could offer was an open ear and perhaps a problem-solving discussion of what to do next. We decided he should throw out his second anchor, which he did. The distress I heard in his voice is something I will never forget. It was the last time I spoke to Gunther.
Through the port windows and white-out rains, I could just barely see the silhouette of boats anchored near me. One by one, they broke free of their anchor and sailed past into the darkness until there were no boats around me that I could see. As each one let loose, my adrenaline pumped a bit, and I would give the Rascal a pat as I perched in the companionway.
The Rascal was rocked by 8-10 foot waves, and I kept my ear tuned to any noise that might mean something was awry on the boat or with the anchoring. Indeed, as the winds picked up to ~ 75 knots, I heard a distinct rubbing and grinding toward the bow. Many cruisers had told me to wear a snorkel mask in order to be able to see and breathe in the driving rains that would come. They were exactly right. With headlamp, life jacket, harness, and snorkel mask on, I crawled from the cockpit to the bow as the Rascal bucked in the waves and the rain pelted me like gravel.
At the bow, I found the chain and snubber had come free of the bow roller and were chafing against the roller’s edge—the snubber being slowly chewed. With every wave, I held the pulpit as the Rascal’s bow dove into the water, and I got a salty dunk. The tension against the snubber and chain released a bit in the wave troughs, and I was somehow able to lift them both back into the bow roller without crushing my fingers. I would go out on deck several times over the course of the night to check the snubber, chain, and windlass, and each time the wind and waves had increased as the eye moved closer.
Autumn continued monitoring her position on the GPS, ensuring lines all looked good on the bow. At 2:22 AM she texted, “Loud noises!”.
At first, I thought she was quoting the movie Anchorman, which I didn’t find funny. It soon became clear that something on the boat had failed and was making loud noises up on the bow.
The pull from the Rascal stretched the snubber so much that the chain was taking the tension. I had tied the bitter end of the chain to an exceptionally strong cleat on the boat’s deck with a ⅝-inch dock line. I never expected it to come tight, but I thought this beefy dock line could hold the strain if it did. It apparently could not, and the parting of the dock line (and the chain’s escape) caused the loud noises Autumn heard.
The snubber, however, was still attached to the chain, and it stretched an incredible amount, holding the boat for about another 5 minutes before it finally parted.
Autumn was still safe and unharmed in the boat, and the boat’s interior was still dry when she sent a message at 2:30 AM that said “Ground”, indicating the boat had landed on the beach. At 2:36 AM, she sent a message asking, “Jump off boat?”. That’s the last I heard from her via text.
The Rascal beached herself on the Mogote (a low spit of land on the far side of the harbor). When she came to rest, she was heeled over at about 45 degrees, and she was taking waves and wash on her stern.
Autumn was still safe and unharmed in the boat, and the boat’s interior was still dry when she sent a message at 2:30 AM that said “Ground”, indicating the boat had landed on the beach. At 2:36 AM, she sent a message asking, “Jump off boat?”. That’s the last I heard from her via text.
The silence that followed was sickening. I wasn’t sure if she’d lost cell service or if she’d decided to abandon the boat. She had a Delorme InReach, which is like a waterproof satellite phone, except it just sends text messages instead of calls. It doesn’t rely on cell towers, but can send a text with a GPS location attached from anywhere in the world in any conditions. She also had a PEPIRB (Personal Emergency Position Indicating Radio Beacon) to transmit her exact location to the emergency response and coordination center at the US Air Force. It’s only to be used in life-threatening emergencies, and it’s the most reliable emergency communication device available for coordinating search and rescue efforts.
The next hour felt like an eternity. At 3:45 AM, I got a call from the Air Force telling me that the PEPIRB was activated. This was good news—Autumn was safe and functional enough to activate it. But it was also bad news—she must be in a dire situation.
The Air Force told me they’d be forwarding the message to the Mexican Maritime Search and Rescue group (SAR), and they gave me a number to call. I called the number, but I didn’t speak Spanish well enough to communicate the extent of the crisis and no one there spoke English.
At 4:35 AM, I got a message from Autumn’s InReach that said “Abandoned boat”. It had a location that put her in the mangroves. I called the SAR group again to give them an update, but with the language barrier, they couldn’t make sense of what I was talking about. When they finally grasped what I was desperately trying to communicate, I gave them Autumn’s latitude and longitude to communicate to the folks in La Paz.
As the day broke, Autumn sent a few more InReach messages, and at 10 AM, she said she’d found the Little Rascal (Rascal’s inflatable dinghy) and was taking shelter in it. At 11 AM, she messaged that she had finally been plucked off the beach. Knowing she was safe, I could finally breathe.
Autumn could hear other cruisers on the radio mention they were putting out extra anchors once they were beached to ensure they didn’t get pulled out into deep water again when the wind shifted. She had the extra anchor (a danforth) prepared, and around 2:40 AM she climbed through the forward hatch to set the backup anchor, and the wind swept her into the water. She briefly attempted to swim back towards the Rascal, but the waves, wind, and current were too much. She ended up in the mangroves.
There, amidst the mangroves, Autumn weathered the worst of the storm. She climbed up a particularly stout mangrove tree in a somewhat protected area. The possibility of hypothermia weighed on her mind—she was soaked, the winds were constantly whipping through, and she didn’t have enough clothes on. Autumn spent about 8 hours in the mangroves and on the beach before SAR finally picked her up.
It seems impossible that the Rascal got beached and pounded by hurricane-force winds without sustaining damage, but that’s what happened. Her exceptionally thick Dutch-built fiberglass hull, her watertight hatches, and her sturdy fittings all combined to protect her from the waves and elements.
La Paz and Cabo fared worse. Roads and houses were damaged, and the airports didn’t come out unscathed. With great effort, I finally got back to Mexico. Autumn met me at the airport, and my bear hug should have crushed this mere mortal. But, as I would learn, she’s no mere mortal.
While Autumn and the Rascal survived Hurricane Odile, not everyone was so lucky. I’m tremendously sad to say that three fellow cruisers died during the storm. They were great people and as well-prepared for the storm as anyone else. Maybe some boats that came adrift during the storm hit their boats, leading to their sinking? We’ll likely never know.
With additional sadness, I should note that none of those who died during the storm were found wearing life jackets. While many things can go wrong on a boat, putting your life jacket on at the first sign of weather, especially a hurricane, might just save your life.
We spent a week dragging for anchors and helping support the folks diving to recover personal items from boats that sank. There were many missions to recover beached boats at high tide, but progress was slow. Near the end of the efforts, I pointed the Rascal north towards Loreto and Guaymas.
As I ventured onward, I felt grateful that Autumn was safe and there wasn’t more death and destruction to La Paz. I learned a lot from that storm, and I’m grateful for that, too. Every day is a new day.
Dwyer Haney
“Grabbing life by the horns and tickling it behind the ear.”
Before and during his time studying engineering, Dwyer built skis in his garage, tinkering and learning the process. Soon after he landed an outdoor-lover’s dream job – working with Black Diamond Equipment. He put his head down and got to work. The next thing he knew, he was building a ski manufacturing facility from scratch, in China, for Black Diamond. After leading a team of engineers to reach mass production, he returned home, satisfied with his work, but with wanderlust in his heart.
The book, Across Island and Oceans by James Baldwin—a book about a youngish guy who quits his job, sells his stuff and sails away—became a companion on his flights halfway across the world. He took the book as a beacon, a call to arms.
Then, in his mid twenties, he bought a 30-foot sailboat. He learned to sail it in the San Juan islands – west of Bellingham, Washington. Then, with the goal of skiing directly from his boat, he navigated it more than 12,000 nautical miles down the west coast of the Americas—to Chilean Patagonia. A good bit of adventure ensued along the way – from hurricanes to volcanic eruptions and more than a bit of ice-breaking.
In the time since his voyage, Dwyer has focused on building a homestead in the hills of Vermont. He and his wife live in a 500sf timber frame with their dog Spruce. They’ve planted several hundred fruit and nut trees and are looking forward to growing their family, surrounded by an abundant food forest.
Dwyer Haney
“Grabbing life by the horns and tickling it behind the ear.”
Before and during his time studying engineering, Dwyer built skis in his garage, tinkering and learning the process. Soon after he landed an outdoor-lover’s dream job – working with Black Diamond Equipment. He put his head down and got to work. The next thing he knew, he was building a ski manufacturing facility from scratch, in China, for Black Diamond. After leading a team of engineers to reach mass production, he returned home, satisfied with his work, but with wanderlust in his heart.
The book, Across Island and Oceans by James Baldwin—a book about a youngish guy who quits his job, sells his stuff and sails away—became a companion on his flights halfway across the world. He took the book as a beacon, a call to arms.
Then, in his mid twenties, he bought a 30-foot sailboat. He learned to sail it in the San Juan islands – west of Bellingham, Washington. Then, with the goal of skiing directly from his boat, he navigated it more than 12,000 nautical miles down the west coast of the Americas—to Chilean Patagonia. A good bit of adventure ensued along the way – from hurricanes to volcanic eruptions and more than a bit of ice-breaking.
In the time since his voyage, Dwyer has focused on building a homestead in the hills of Vermont. He and his wife live in a 500sf timber frame with their dog Spruce. They’ve planted several hundred fruit and nut trees and are looking forward to growing their family, surrounded by an abundant food forest.
info@HenceSupply.co
Park City, Utah 84098