Just six weeks ago I shared about our family’s difficult decision to move off of our boat. After four years living aboard full time, completing the Great Loop and cruising thousands of additional miles, it was time to put down roots in a house. Reluctantly, we fell back in love with dirt life.
But country singer, Thomas Rhett, summed it up best, “you make your plans and then you hear God laughing.“
Hurricane Helene AND Hurricane Milton created storm surge that flooded our beautiful home on the water.
I can’t exactly say that getting flooded twice in two weeks is ideal. In fact, it’s been a roller coaster of emotions and way more intense than I could ever imagine. But, we feel so incredibly blessed in every way. I could go on and on about how grateful we are for all of our family and friends, all of the prayers, and all of the ways we’ve seen God working through these disastrous weeks.
Hurricane Helene
We were in St. Simons Island, GA as Hurricane Helene began approaching the Gulf. If it had been a vacation, we would have considered driving home. However, we were there serving families who’d just lost a child to cancer. Our Lighthouse friends encouraged us to do what we needed to do. But we felt certain we were exactly where we needed to be.
We arrived back home to about 4-6 inches of water throughout our house. It’s really hard to imagine that little water doing THAT much damage. I don’t need to rehash what we lost, and how much it turned our world upside down. Ultimately, it was SO much less than what many others were experiencing. I only share that it was hard on all of us, physically and emotionally.
Our friends were lifesavers and helped us so much! We worked, round the clock, drying out and salvaging as much as we could. Right about the time I had the whole house put back together, the contractor found water.
Funny story: The same day the contractor said the floors needed to be replaced, the ports went on strike. Remember that 30 seconds of panic? I immediately ran out and bought floor, just in case there was a flooring shortage in the weeks to come. After 3 trips to the store and when the 120th box was finally loaded into my car, the employee asked if I’d looked at the weather. He suggested I wait to have the floor put down. It was the first I’d heard of this “unnamed storm.”
Hurricane Milton
We went to bed on a Friday night with Milton only having a 30% chance of developing. By the time we were on our way to Miami for a regatta the next morning, it was up to 60%. And before we left Miami to come home that night, it was a named storm. Talk about escalating quickly!
Brent stopped for gas just outside of Miami and I suggested we book some hotel rooms. It was really more of a “just in case” thought. We picked Homestead, Fort Pierce and Orlando. My brother lives in Valdosta, GA so that was our 4th option, but also our favorite.
Church the next morning was a little surreal. Our pastor was preaching remotely from East Tennessee where he’d gone to help out after Helene. Everyone sitting in the building knew a huge hurricane was heading our way again.
Brent and I decided we were going to prepare for the worst as best we could, and evacuate as soon as possible. At that point, based on the forecast, we ruled out Orlando and cancelled the hotel to free it up for someone else. We spent the next 15 hours putting everything we own up as high as possible. It was insane!
Another funny story: In the midst of all of this, we had an extra boat on our dock. Some new Loop friends purchased a boat, but it was right in the path of Helene. They managed to find a captain to move it, but then dock was destroyed. With nowhere to tell the captain to go, Jeff called Brent. The captain dropped the boat on our dock, and the owners had just arrived when we began discussions of evacuating.
So on Monday morning, Jeff and Kathy literally drove their boat unassisted for the first time ever fleeing from Hurricane Milton. Poor Kathy stayed up all night watching YouTube videos about how to lock! We are all considering this day a VERY memorable start to their Loop and it will be a lot of fun to throw a party when they cross their wake at our house next year!
Evacuating to Fort Pierce
We spent quite a bit of time praying about the very best option for evacuation. A lot of people have asked how we happened to pick Fort Pierce, so I thought I’d share:
- As I mentioned, we’d pre-booked hotel rooms in 3 cities. Orlando seemed to be in every single model’s path, no matter where Milton was making landfall. Homestead left us no where to go except south to the Keys IF the storm tracked more south. Fort Pierce was central. We knew we could always make a last minute decision and go either north or south on interstate 95 if something changed.
- Valdosta was our first choice because of family. But the most direct route to Valdosta is 75 North and we absolutely didn’t want to do that for a lot of reasons. First of all, we knew there would be tons of others evacuating north of us and it didn’t feel right to add additional vehicles when it wasn’t necessary for us. Gas availability was also an issue we knew we’d run into. And lastly, it put us further away from home.
- We wanted to stay as close to home as possible while still being very evacuated. As we saw with Helene, the ability to get into the house quickly and get the water out is a big deal.
Fort Pierce became the natural choice. If we had to do it all over again, knowing exactly what we know, we’d choose that option a million times. It ended up being perfect!
Fortunately, after leaving our house on Monday morning our Loop friends found a nearby dock in Indiantown and we were able to pick them up and get them into a room at our hotel. Everyone has to do what’s right for them in these kind of situations, but gosh, it was so much more fun having friends with us!
The Longest Week
You might be thinking this is shaping up to be a really long post. I can assure you, it has nothing on last week! We watched the weather. Ate. Watched the weather. Pretended to try to focus on school/work. I stopped getting excited or nervous about the tiny changes in the track. There was almost no scenario where our home wasn’t going to to get enough storm surge to be flooded.
At one point, I was prepared that we would lose everything. The storm was THAT big.
It is also very weird being in a position where you’re praying the storm turns away from you. I wouldn’t wish this on anyone. And we have close friends up and down the west coast of Florida with exactly the same thoughts. It was the most bizarre week!
Tornados made Wednesday an interesting day, but we were always safe. We never lost power, but our parking lot at the hotel flooded. Brent moved both of our cars to higher ground pretty early on. We packed up and left after breakfast on Thursday, anxious to get back home.
Overall, it could have been so much worse. We ended up with about a foot inside the whole house, and almost 20″ in the garage. Fortunately, the contractors were already working on our house from Helene so it was really just a matter of adding additional renovations.
Which brings me to the funniest story of the whole post…
Our family is moving back onto Light & Salty.
Yep. Right after publicly announcing that we’d closed that chapter of our lives…God had other plans! And I have to say, after a few days of letting it sink in, I’m REALLY excited!
It is not lost on us just how fortunate we are to have a second home floating in our backyard. Believe it or not, this isn’t the first time we’ve “moved” twice in one year. And the crazy thing about this move is that I already know where everything goes!
Our amazingly kind friends have been letting us crash at their house while we get everything ready to liveaboard. We’ve rented another storage unit despite saying the words “never again” last time! And the organized chaos begins. We are praying big that construction will go quickly and we’ll be back in our house soon.
As usual, our lives are proving to be a super fun adventure (or misadventure…depending on how you look at it!) We can’t say “thank you” enough to all of our friends and family who’ve been checking in and flooding us with prayers (no pun intended!)
You might also enjoy reading:
The One It’s Time To Write (The prequel…if you will!)
We Decided To Live on a Boat (The first time!)
Preparing for a Hurricane (Our first hurricane on Light & Salty)
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