This is not meant to be critical. The Northern Gulf Coast generally has mandates to move your boat from the harbor the moment there is a Hurricane Warning. The harbors are generally empty with shrimp boats and pleasure craft removed. Of course there are always a few stragglers. This happened five times last year and no hurricanes hit. Why were all the huge pleasure boats still sitting in the water in Southwest Florida? Are there no rivers or inland bayous available??

400 Mile Wide Storm, originally predicted to land in Tampa, massive storm surge, huge waves, exactly where were they to go to get away...

Tampa is 125 miles north of Ft Myers and Ian turned on a dime as far as hurricanes go, initially Ft Myers was thought to be the place TO GO, not to run from.

The west coast of Florida is parallel to the northerly track Ian was taking (which was similar to Irma and Charlie, as well as others). That means a variance of just a few hours in when the storm turns east, or slightly slower or faster forward speed, can change where it hits by a hundred miles or more. It simply isn't possible to move large boats by water every time the forecast track changes because you're just as likely to be driving into its path as out of it.

The other option is to move the boat around the southern tip of the state and onto the east coast. That's only marginally safer (it's 70 miles from Miami west to the gulf coast), and it's impractical for the vast majority of people who have homes and families to secure.

Sometimes you just have to let nature take its course and with the help of insurance manage to remove that boat purchase terrible mistake from your life.

In all seriousness I do find myself wondering the same thing as ZSMICHAEL with regards to seemingly leaving boats to be destroyed.

I would like to hear what our member Jimmy has to say about this. His perspective would be helpful. Southwest Florida is generally an affluent area and I guess they can afford it. Most of us cannot.

I wonder how many of those boat owners were snowbirds that couldn’t get there in time? I know 2 snowbird boat owners whose boats were sunk.

yeah. Could be. You would think they would have made arrangements. Out of town owners here make those arrangements. It is good money for the local marinas. Local authorities issue an order and the boats move. They have drawbridges to circumvent so they do it early so car traffic is not delayed.

Jimmy is probably busy moving boats back atm.

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Yep. He is also posting a whole lot less. Too bad about your guns getting wet. Hopefully you got to them in time to save them.

The old timers would take the boat out of the water, park it next to a building and sink it on the trailer,ie fill with water. The pictures only show boats that didn't make it.

When I was in the CG and stationed in Yankeetown Fla (it’s north of Tampa/St. Pete and below Cedar Key, we put our trailer boats inside the shop and took the 41’ utility boat to the locks at the Cross Florida Barge Canal and stayed in the locks. Many of the working boats fled. Many doubled and tripled their lines. I can’t remember the name of the storm but it sucked being trapped in a lock choking on diesel fumes. After we rounded up any boats and took them back to the docks. But our area was different because the station was four miles upriver from the Gulf and there was no docks or marinas near the Withlacoochee River.

It this was all before the time of commercial tow boats and rescue..the CG did it all. My first time at parbuckling was after a hurricane. Our coxn was a pro.

I imagine dragging workboats back into the water will keep them busy for months…the fiberglass pleasure boats are gonna all be written off.

In our area, most of the CG boats go up the Pearl River and dock near Stennis. The shrimpers did the same, it is their livelihood. However from time to time they do not make it. One wrecked shrimp boat sat on private property for over two years. As you know these things are expensive to salvage and the county finally hauled it off. These pleasure boat undoubtedly are leaking fuel into the water. Some of the boat owners I feel are irresponsible. The CG will be busy for months as well as the ANT team repositioning the buoys.