Rick was originally a Category 5 hurricane but had fortunately decreased to a tropical storm by the time it made landfall in Mazatlán in the early morning hours on October 21, 2009. Here at Marina El Cid, we experienced a few hours of very heavy rain on Rick's leading edge; had a short period of calm with clearing skies as what was left of the eye passed overhead; then got a few hours of high winds and a little more rain on Rick's trailing edge. Rick moved much faster than the forecasting models had predicted. He arrived almost a half-day early at around midnight and was gone by about 11 a.m. At about 0300 when GB went outside to check our mooring lines he saw some fairly high waves in the entrance jetty and fairway, but the surge seemed negligible in the El Cid slips.
Having seen how the El Cid staff at both the marina and the hotel worked this weather event, I would never put my boat anywhere else. The El Cid people are full of win.
One of many first things El Cid did during the 24 hours before the storm arrived (while we removed all the shade covers & other loose items from topside), was send their staff up all the palm trees to trim back all potentially loose fronds and drop any suspicious-looking coconuts. (See the guy with the ladder in the pic on the left?) They removed all the resort furniture from the hotel area and all the garbage cans from the docks – essentially, they took care of anything that could potentially blow into the water or become an airborne missile. Just like they say in their published hurricane plan, they significantly increased their staff throughout the marina and offered each liveaboard the use of a hotel room for the duration of the storm. Nobody took them up on their offer; we all wanted to stay with our boats, but still. When the storm arrived in the middle of the night, each dock had at least one El Cid worker patrolling the boats, checking lines and fenders.
At 0640 our barometer dropped to 984 mb. That's low. When the eye passed over a half hour later, El Cid's marina manager, Geronimo Cevallos himself, stopped by each and every occupied boat to inspect for any damage and to ask if everyone was doing OK.
The highest gusts that anyone on our dock at Marina El Cid saw was in the mid-50-knot range. In contrast, further inland at Marina Mazatlán, people were contemporaneously reporting over the VHF gusts to the mid-70s. A couple days after the storm one guy in Marina Mazatlán reported having experienced a gust of about 110 knots but that has not yet been verified by independent sources. In any event with wind speeds in the 70s ol' Rick was right on the verge of not being a tropical storm and being a hurricane. The difference, landlubbing readers, is how long the 70+ wind speeds lasted.
Aftermath: there was nothing but minor canvas damage to a couple of the boats here at Marina El Cid, and Hotel El Cid's only apparent casualty was one guamúchil tree that snapped its trunk. We later heard that other nearby hotels and condos had windows blown out and/or some flooding
issues, and there were assorted blowdowns along certain streets. Power was out throughout the city for a while, but El Cid's
marina and hotel had power restored in about four hours. We heard that in Mazatlán's old harbor, which is open to the southwest whence Rick came, 9 fishing boats that had been at anchor had sunk, as had a couple of derelict unattended sailboats. So Marina El Cid's protection – thanks in large part to their people – turned out to be better than anywhere else.
Sweet.
m
Leave a Reply