Fisherman tried to ride out Irma on his boat. Then it started flipping over.

[mfcorey1]

Andres Lopez thought he could ride out Hurricane Irma aboard his home, a 25-foot fishing boat.

He was wrong.

As the wind howled, his cabin began to resemble the interior of a washing machine. Water poured in, and he was thrown violently from side to side.

Read more here: http://www.miamiherald.com/news/weather/hurricane/article172984166.html#storylink=cpy

Lopez did not want to abandon ship, his beloved Run Running, but it was listing to starboard at an extreme angle. He climbed up on deck and took three seconds to survey his options.

“Drown or go,” he said. “I told myself, ‘I got to go, I got to go. I’m going to die, but I got to go.’”

Lopez jumped into Biscayne Bay and began swimming. He looked back in time to see his boat — his house — flip over. Arms flailing in the whitecaps, his head swallowed in the waves, Lopez barely made it 100 yards to Clarington Island, a sliver of land that acts as a wind break for the Coconut Grove Sailing Club marina. There he spat out saltwater, caught his breath and clung to a tree for maybe an hour, maybe two. Then, as the storm surge lifted the bay as if it was rolling into an apocalyptic high tide, Lopez plunged in again. He rode the wall of water another 200 yards into Peacock Park, where he found dry land beyond Bayshore Drive.

He was alive. He couldn’t believe it.

“You’ve seen that movie ‘The Perfect Storm?’” Lopez said. “This was my disaster movie.”

Lopez, bedraggled and hollow-eyed, recounted his tale of survival Tuesday as he sat by the mangroves near the same spot where he and his dinghy had been washed ashore. The waters had receded since Irma battered Miami on Sunday, but Lopez had no way back to his boat — or what was left of it. He made a little encampment in the park with his only belongings — the wrecked dinghy and two bikes he had tied up to a light pole the day before the storm’s arrival. Some kind person had brought him a plastic lawn chair, a blanket, a cap, a gallon of water and food. He pointed to the raw cuts on his legs and back. His tan leathery skin looked like that of over-boiled potatoes.

“I lost everything. My entire life was on that boat,” he said. “When I find a way out, when I can repair my dinghy, I want to try to go and turn her over. I want to save her.”

Read more here: http://www.miamiherald.com/news/weather/hurricane/article172984166.html#storylink=cpy

[janterry]

1. how could a fisherman not know better

???

[Scurrilous]

2. There are a lot of old abandoned boats anchored in Biscayne Bay.

He was living on one and now that it sank he has nowhere to go. Fisherman: he occasionally threw a line in the water to catch a few fish.

[janterry]

4. oh

I lived in FL for 16 or so years, but in N. and Central FL.

[NutmegYankee]

3. They live on them, anchored off shore where it's free to live.

People do strange things to save their home.

[janterry]

5. sort of understandable

though I've lived through enough hurricanes to know better than to mess with anything above a Cat 1. (And even that can get pretty scary!)

[FLPanhandle]

6. I watched a couple of guys ride out a Cat 3 in the bayou behind my house once

I was a bundle of nerves in the midst of the storm in a raised up, well built house.

I would occasionally see their lights on the boat during the night and I thought for sure they wouldn't make it. Somehow they managed to make it. I wouldn't try that in a Cat 1.