Hurricane Jimena is fading away, and we just got a call from our boat surveyor, Allan Smith, in San Carlos, Mexico. 

The storm has taken a major toll on the seaside town. The power is out. Cell phones don’t work. And the water is off. Flooding has closed the highway and collapsed a bridge on the main road into town—the road leading to the marina where our new boat is moored.

Needless to say, the possibility of trucking our boat from San Carlos to Tucson and on to Seattle seems highly unlikely in the immediate future. Here’s a photo posted online that shows the damage:

More photos can be seen here.

We assume the road will have to be repaired relatively soon, since the entire downtown area of San Carlos is currently cut off and inaccesible, but who knows when that will be? A few posts suggested there’s an alternate route but that it’s currently flooded and unpassable. So at this point, plans to move the boat are on hold until we know more.

In the meantime, we’ve been scouring online forums and blogs for any information we can get about the storm’s damage and aftermath. We’ve been reading with great interest the Conger family of Seattle’s blog, Toast Floats. In a case of incredibly bad timing, Karen “Toast” Conger arrived in Santa Rosalia, Mexico—across the Sea of Cortez from San Carlos —with daughters Jaime, Mera and Aeron just as Jimena hit. Husband Dean remained behind in Seattle working. Toast describes the experience as follows:

 ”Believe it or not, we sustained no discernible damage other than this inexplicably silent SSB. Because we were bow to the storm, we didn’t even destroy our fenders and surprisingly there was no chafe to speak of on any of our lines. We did get very very wet. I’ve discovered leaks in the hatches and holes in the boat we didn’t know existed. But with a few days of concerted effort, we should be back to normal.

The girls spent most of the storm in the (marina’s) cool room. However, the three story building was like being in an alfalfa sprouter, water pouring in through the top and then progressively down each wall later. At about 10:30 p.m., the ceiling on the bottom floor where we had the kids resting collapsed, precipitating a move to the ladies bathroom. The bathrooms were reinforced with tile due to moisture and sustained no storm damage. The kids were hot but they were safe.

Dulci (the family’s cat) did not like the hurricane. She particularly hated the cool room where seats and tables made small islands in a one-inch sloshing lake of flood water. She liked the bathroom much better but was happy when I moved her with me to the boat at 1 a.m. after the storm passed.

We’re now in recovery mode. We woke this morning to mud, rocks and debris absolutely everywhere. The harbor is closed for at least a week while they dredge out the debris and the storm dross outside the harbor dissipates. We have food, water, and power for at least two weeks after which we’ll probably head north to Bahia de Los Angeles.”

Clearly, the howling winds and heavy downpour have caused a tremendous amount of property damage in the area. Allan figured it would take several days before services were restored.

That he managed to find a land line phone that worked was probably a minor miracle.  But the connection was terrible. He sounded like he was underwater, and I struggled to make out exactly what he was saying most of the time.

He did have good news for us—our new boat, Three Sheets, rode out the storm just fine in the marina. Others weren’t so lucky.

The nearby dry storage yard, Marina Seca, which sits about a mile away, was apparently flooded. Boats were tossed from their stands by the rushing water and there are reports that some washed out onto the main road. I found a grainy picture online showing what looks like a cabin cruiser sitting across the boulevard.  It was taken from a distance so the image isn’t great, but it does indicate just how bad things are in San Carlos.

Although hard to see in this picture, a boat from Marina Seca reportedly washed onto the main road in San Carlos.

It was a similar story at the Marina Mart, a marine store and storage yard, where this picture at the top of this post was taken.  You can see even more photos here.

Just a few days ago, as Hurricane Jimena loomed, I was kicking myself for not having the boat hauled out and stored in Marina Seca. I assumed it would be safer on the hard than in the water. I was wrong. Luckily.

I wish I could have gotten more details from Allan, but the phone connection was horrible.  Right now, our thoughts go out to all those who were hurt or suffered damage from the storm.