Spare a thought for @Lookout and family

Wahey! I'm alive!

Thanks for the concern and well wishes. It's been a rough week!

We had house damage with the first hurricane, Fay, which hit a week ago on Sunday morning. It was billed a tropical storm and not much attention was paid to it. Unfortunately, it was a little more and hit in such a way that it wreaked a fair bit of damage. Five houses on every side of us lost substantial parts of their roofs and other such damage. We were lucky in the respect, though we lost part of a boundary wall.

Meanwhile, full hurricane Gonzalo continued to build up to a Category 4 (out of bloody 5!) Hurricane to the south of us. Hatches were well and truly battened down. Gonzalo struck on Friday afternoon. I haven't been through a hurricane like that since I was a kid, where the atmosphere was electric and there were no responsibilities on my shoulders! Tropical storm conditions began on the Friday afternoon, lasting 27 hours in all. Gonzalo marched right over us. Not to the east, or west, but right over us! The house shook for three hours until the "eye" passed. In Bermuda parlance, it was "a bit brisk!" During the eye, which lasted about an hour, the night was still with sea air. Then the second half! Not sure if Scott Parker gave the half-time team talk, but things went to a whole other level as wind directions reversed and Gonzalo proceeded north. For us, the back end of the storm, a further four hours, hit very hard. The pressure in our house was immense, with every window and door seemingly shaking in different directions. By 2am, things had calmed down to moderate (by hurricane standards) winds and we were able to rest.

Two things seemed to work in the island's favour. Firstly, Fay cleaned house and knocked down anything that was a bit "loose", whether hedges, trees, branches, rocks, walls, windows or roofs. And secondly, Gonzolo passed right over us. The strongest winds are in the Eye Wall, or the sphere around the very centre. In the centre of the hurricane, there is no wind. If the storm had been to the east or west, even a few degrees, we would have endured sustained eye wall winds that would have created much more deadly damage. Instead, we had a bit of respite and the strongest winds were mitigated just enough by this.

Thankfully, we live to fight another day.
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