Chapter 3: Hurrican Ivan

I awoke this morning to the unmistakable crashing sound of waves. Which
struck me as being unusual because the only waves here in Belize break on the barrier reef that lies about
1 mile offshore and provides just that, a barrier/buffer for the outer islands
and mainland of Belize.
I glanced out the blinds and instead of the placid turquoise water which
is the Carribean Sea
I witnessed what we used to call in Apachicola
Bay "chocolate
milk." The sea bottom had been churned up and was a muddy brown
color as if it had been sucked up into a Liquidora (a.k.a blender) along with a
healthy helping of green seagrass, floating logs, and plastic bottles &
bags. All of which was slapping against the seawalls, expending its pent-up
energy and frustration into the air, backwashing, doubling up, and
leaping to heights that made the children squeal as they tightroped
along the walls, happily tempting fate. I looked to the starboard to
see my neighbor pulling his boat out of this turmoil with his Dodge
Ram-tough pick-up truck, a frayed rope, and a few old palm tree timbers
lodged rolling under the hull (that's right, no fancy aluminum float-on trailer
with alloy wheels needed here) as the water levels and waves threatened to
seize his "Baby Denis." Further down the beach 2 bronze men
struggled with about a 20 footer that had already succumbed, its belly on the
bottom and the engine struggling to take its' last breath at the surface.
Men dropped their Belikin beers and scrambled on every dock attempting to save
their livelihoods--charter fishing skiffs with poling platforms, ecotourism
v-hulls with bimini canvas tops, and 30 foot dive boats equipped with air tanks
and twin 150 Mercs. They throw extra line and anchors off the bows and sterns and
retie lines farther from the docks, bows facing the onslaught of
rolling seas and high tides. The boats with working motors fly
with an unsurpassed urgency along the rough surface and look as if they are
skipping like stones to the back side of the island where protection
lies amongst the mangroves. The boats with motors that don't work
get towed by those that do at a sea turtles pace. It seems that the
water-taxi channel is much busier today than the beach front front road, due in
part to the fact that the water finds its way closer to my front porch with
every breach of the seawall and the beach road only reappears when half of its
sand is run out of town and sent back to the sea from whence it came. I
can see the waves breaking on the outer reef clearly which means that they are
big, real big. 10 foot faces easy, with brilliant white foam looming as
they meet the coral heads, they break in slow motion from this far away
and form tubes that peel for hundreds of feet down the line, with an offshore breeze
that delicately blows the lip of the foam up & back behind the
curl another 10 feet high into the air, kissing the sky with mist. In the
vast distance, beyond the reef and waves, on the horizon, I see downright mean,
slate-blue storm clouds, no doubt the outer bands of Ivan the Terrible. I
hear he is heading for Cancun and breathe a sigh of relief, if this is what a
category 4 storm does to San Pedro "just passing by," I'd hate
to see one make landfall! The island is barely a foot or 2 above sealevel, much
of the housing is within 100' of the shore, docks are built 2' above
MHW (mean high water), the mangroves have been bulldozed for better ocean
views, and the only thing that saves all of this from becoming submerged on any
given windy day is that well-designed, engineered by Mother Nature
herself, living coral reef. After the tide subsides a bit and I've
stored a few appliances off of the floor in case of flooding, I venture
outside. Picking my way through the puddles I watch with a smile as the
local boys use anything that floats to ride the 2 foot waves breaking at the
docks end--windsurfing boards 5 times bigger than them, 2x4 wood planks
(original Hawaiian Style), and large pieces of styrofoam flotsam &
jetsam. The local girls wait for the larger waves and run screaming down
the length of the dock as the water hits the shallows, bulges, and barrels
after them forcefully spitting up through the cracks and coming dangerously
close to beating them to the end. The scene unfolding before me, filled
with childrens laughter and hoots of delight, only make me further yearn for my
precious 7'1" longboard that I left behind in Florida to pursue other
ventures, and that hopefully my bro-in-law is getting some good use out of
in 'cane Francis right about now.
Well,
the tide is rolling back in and the sun is coming back out, and despite the
rather large natural disaster spinning at 150 miles per hour in the
distance, it still manages to be another beautiful day here in
paradise!