To me the Atlantic Ocean is a living being. She can be calm and serene one moment, angry and dangerous the next.

Last week the National Weather Service scheduled a coastal flood watch to be issued for Sunday and Monday. WFTV Ch. 9 news told us of this on Thursday Sept. 27. This meant to me a lot of rain, but not a lot of rain was in the forcast, at that time. The meteorologist clarified this by saying we were to have high winds beginning Sunday morning. Now this made more sense to me. Unless you heard that though, you didn't know ahead of time about the winds.

We all know that Mother Nature doesn't watch the news, the winds began around 9:30 Saturday morning, by 11AM they were about 30-35 MPH along the coastline, bringing with them rain showers throughout Volusia County heavily pounding our beaches, eroding our coastline. 

Sunday morning the winds were still howling as I watched the early morning news. They showed our beaches getting washed away, but then they also showed a private boat had taken a pounding and had been blown on shore somewhere in north Flagler County. At some point on Sunday a high wind warning was finally posted.

That was the 4th boat to come up on shore in my area since I've been here.

I wondered had there been a high wind warning posted sooner along with the coastal flood watch, would the owner of that boat been out in the ocean? I then wondered if the owner knew about the website the National Weather Service has? This one here, The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Admistriation's National Weather Service.  

If you follow that link and scroll down to the middle of the page you will see current marine conditions and marine forecasts. A must for all that love to go boating!

Here are the first three boats that have been beached:

This is The Obsession

The owner had just bought her with his savings and was sailing her home. He hit rough seas, stayed awake for 2 days trying to keep her in the ocean.

Apparently he just couldn't stay awake any longer and this is where his new baby ended up.

He had no insurance, I don't know how they finally got her off the beach.

This is the story of the Pac Man:

I actually watched the rescue involved with this Bertram and the Volusia Beach Patrol. Talk about impressive!

While 2 miles out to sea the Bertram lost both of her engines, just as a front like we had over the last weekend moved in.

The front pushed her closer and closer to the shoreline and they dropped anchor at the sandbar not too far off shore.

In this photo you can see the Beach Patrol (red dot) on a jet ski waiting for 1 of 2 men to jump off the boat to the jet ski.

I was using my Kodak Easy Share, I didn't have a good zoom lens then. This is the best I could do.

The grey nose you see of a boat in the upper left corner is that of a Coast Guard vessel standing by just in case.

The Beach Patrol successfully brought both men ashore. In this photo, one of the two men was very shaky and fell straight to his knees after getting off the jet ski. I can't imagine what was going through his head.

During the night the wind & rough seas continued to pound at the Pac Man and her anchor. The anchor chain finally gave in, and this is where I found the Pac Man the next morning. I felt so bad for the owner.

A salvage company came in with a back hoe to take her off the beach. The owner had her insured.

It was so sad to see them smash her to pieces. This was someones pride and joy. Sure it was 10 yrs old, but up until the day before this they really enjoyed her.

This is the Two Pirates.

This is what happens when the anchor is not dropped correctly (to the bottom of the ocean) and the captain and crew all go to bed.

That was the story in the paper anyway.

A special salvage company had to come and take all the oil and gas off carefully then dumpsters had to be brought to the beach and they began carefully taking her apart piece by piece.

We weren't able to locate the boat that washed ashore over the weekend, Steve and I did go out in the wind on the bike, but after 30 minutes along the coastline in the wind we turned around and headed for the White Eagle. One can only handle winds buffeting you around like that for so long.

We are scheduled for another round of high winds this weekend (October 6th and 7th), instead of taking a chance on beaching your boat, visit one of the many Century 21 offices around Florida for our state wide Open House Extravaganza!