Wore out and headed back to st Pete. It has been an emotionally draining month, that is for sure. Robin has a ton of pictures and will be able to tell a much better story than me, but I figured I wanted to get something published pretty quickly.
Our story started in st Pete the week leading up to our trip back to big pine. Robin and I stopped by Sam’s and filled two shopping carts with supplies and I got the word out at work asking for hurricane relief help. Folks came through in spades
Thank you to the folks at American Express, Morgan stanley, the building team at 200 central, old friends and amazon prime, and the random social media folks who dropped off supplies all week. special thanks to my work elves Julie, Becky, Tricia, Tess, mylinh, ternie, and our neighbors John and Jen who helped us unload organize and repack the truck and trailer.
The drive down was hard to describe, things looked Florida normal until we hit the stretch between Florida city and key largo. It looked like a big windstorm hit and then it steadily got worse as we traversed through the keys. But it was about when you hit grassy key it was like crossing a line between bad and horrific.
Couple call outs – islamorada pretty much standing, bud and Mary’s not bad, Anne’s beach boardwalk gone, post card marina gone, upper matecumbe over washed, rainbow bend over washed, duck key not bad, marathon pretty trashed. But when you crossed the 7 mile things went bad quickly. Sunshine key rv park, Bahia Honda park, the big pine fish camp pretty much all flattened.
Here is a couple examples – 105th street in marathon
This is our street, george road, in big pine …
Our place – we were lucky. We lost our roof, a window, and took a lot of water damage. But our place is still standing!
We spent the weekend beginning the clean up, but mostly distributing the supplies. Our neighbors have a landscaping company and a bunch of their guys lost everything. To say they were appreciative is an understatement! It really made us happy to give back!
It took us a day and a half to get it all distributed, and it was a great feeling to have an empty trailer!
We also cooked dinner for the neighborhood and it was a big hit. Both nights we had a big crowd, and it definitely lifted spirits! Nothing like a cold beer and a full belly to uplift the mood.
Interesting tidbits … what is wrong with this picture ?
When I park the boat on the lift, I put the white pole on the letter “a” in Parker. The wind pushed it about 4 feet aft. If I wouldn’t have cleated it to the sea wall the boat would have been gone.
Another … my gloves are still there! Left them drying on the gaff in the cockpit. You could see them in the cockpit on video cameras. Laura and Kyle were making bets about how long they would stay there, and even mailed me a replacement pair as a joke! Here they are 150mph gloves!
One more story. No power and it was hot and stinky … so I opened windows to get some air in. I borrowed a portable ac from work and when we turned it on robin went to shut the windows.
She started fussing at me that she couldn’t find the window. I thought she was nuts and went over to check. Sure enough the fricking window fell out and. It is at the bottom of the canal! So much for Miami-dade 180 mph windows! Cardboard window installed for the night ..,,
Last one – our big mahogany tree really got trimmed. The iguanas did not seam to mind. Check this guy out .,
I will update more when we get home and decompress. But I did want to leave you with this … the keys are still the keys. Driving out today we got a glimpse of our gin clear water and those beautiful blues. Life goes on, let’s clean things up, repair, rebuild and most importantly – go fishing!
Gorham Fishing Team 