2025 ST MAARTEN LAND VACATION

DAY 6: RIDING OUT THE HURRICANE

Have you ever noticed that we seem to bring hurricane's and tropical storms on vacation with us? I think it's becoming a trend. After experiencing a mere category 1 hurricane last year...and that was quite the doozy to experience let me tell you and the Tropical Storm in St Thomas prior to that...I SWORE we weren't going to vacation in the Caribbean again in hurricane season. I was going to pick one of the ABC islands that is conveniently located off the hurricane belt. But...here we are again doing it up big in a Mitsugirly way. 🙄😁 Again, I'm swearing not to do this again next year.

Well once again I was blessed with the diarrhea God's all night. I swear I'm prepped for a coloscopy at this point. Seriously. It's bad. It hurts. I'm burning. I can't take it anymore. This is pure misery at this point. The minute I lay down I'm right back up within the hour. What did I eat? What did I drink? I guess I'll just have to get up and sit out on the balcony the rest of the night. No wait, I can't do that. I won't make it to the restroom in time. UGH!

When daylight started to hit, and I won't say sunlight because there was none, everyone finally started to get up and I didn't feel alone anymore. At least I had people to complain about my sleepless night to. Man I was so tired.

I made pancakes for breakfast and was hoping they would stay in me instead of running straight out the other end. I made the first batch and Sakari decided she would learn how to make them too and did a second batch. Sakari has never been much of a cook and Karl actually comes over to cook for her at times. I told him he better get used to it. He told her to learn...and now's a good time to start. "Start with pancakes. I have faith in you." She actually did good. So now, they will be able to live off pancakes, ramen noodles and eggs! The rest is up to him. 😜

It was definitely a dreary day out, very cloudy with spurts of rain and downpours and then back to being cloudy again. All the boats were gone from our bay except for 2 of them. I believe these particular boats had people living on them. We would see people on them daily and they never seemed to leave from the boat. Good Luck to them!

It actually felt good out. There was just the right amount of breeze blowing and it wasn't scorching hot out. Now if that rain would just go away!

I didn't see any of the "new" vacationers out in the water...yet. But, it was still early.

One of the boats eventually headed out. To where, I'm not sure. I don't even think they were opening the bridge up anymore.

So, what can we possibly do today on a cloudy rainy day? I thought about going to the Rotary Point and maybe do a hike at Babit Point. The rain had stopped, it was cloudy but nice out and the cool breeze...well I figured perfect hiking weather and we love to hike. I looked at directions on how to get there and a path to follow and what neighborhood to park in for the best entrance.

We gathered our drinks and packed our cooler and off we went. As we headed down the road a light in the car came on and said "low tire". Just our luck. I turned the car around and headed back to the rental to let them know it's saying I have a low tire. They replied "We are closing the office at 2pm today because of the hurricane". Um ok, I don't need the office, I need air. Finally they had me pull around and down a hill and put air in the tire and we were on our way again.

Up and over the mountain we went, no pigs in site, then I decided to stop at the grocery store for more pop and something to make for dinner. Darnit, I forgot those darn grocery bags AGAIN! My family swears I have early stages of dementia and I'm starting to think so myself.

As soon as we walked out of the store it was pouring! Well, there goes that idea. I guess we should just head back to the resort and wait it out. I did notice it was getting windier and raining a lot harder on the way back. Yea, this wasn't going to be a day we would be able to do anything I'm sure of it now.

Once we made it back to the room, the winds really picked up. I was keeping a close eye on the weather online and it stated that Erin had increased to a category 4, 30 miles wide and over 160mph winds now. From what I was reading, it went from a category 1 to a 5 in less than 12 or 24 hours (depending on where you read it) on Saturday later in the day.

Rapid intensification is defined as a storm with winds increasing 35 mph over a 24 hour period. Erin blew that out of the water. In fact, the storm intensified 55 mph in 13 hours and over the past 24 hours it has increased to 85 mph. How impressive she is getting!

Per reports online:

Only a few other hurricanes have pulled off a stunt like this in the past.

*Maria in 2017 went from a Cat 1 to a Cat 5 in about 18 hours.

*Wilma in 2005 is still the record-holder, jumping from a tropical storm to a Cat 5 in just about 24 hours.

*Charley in 2004 ramped from a Cat 2 to Cat 4 in just 5 hours before making landfall in Florida.

*Erin has now joined that club of storms. Go Erin!

Well, it looks like THIS was going to be our day:

Sometimes it would get so bad you couldn't see out of the windows. The waves in our once nice calm bay were becoming ferocious now. They were crashing against the retaining rocks and it would be a mess before it was over with. Now I'm not sure if you can see it or not, but YES there IS someone out there swimming in the water on the furthest side. Geesh! Seriously?

By 3:15pm this is what it looked like out there in the ocean. She was massive. Yes, we are one of those little islands.

Sakari says "Oh no! Not the whale tale" (When we first arrived she said the rocks in our bay looked like a whale tail and that's what we referred to it the rest of the vacation...I mean she was right).

The smaller rocks were beginning to crash up onto the beach.

Well there really was nothing to do but sit around. I wished now that I had brought some card games as I usually do. Mom failure. Did I mention the tv stations? There was no smart tv so we couldn't even sign in to any of our subscribed apps like Netflix, Hulu, Peacock or Discovery Plus. Most of the tv channels didn't work but a few news channels, multiple sports channels, a cartoon channel and a random channel that would sometimes have something descent on. Yea, we were in internet hell at this point as that's all there was to do...oh, and randomly run to the bathroom of course.

St Maarten kept us informed as well stating that it was a tight storm with hurricane winds only extending out from the center 30 miles to the northeast and 17 miles to the southwest. None of the Lesser Antilles will see hurricane force winds. Hallelujah.

5pm and here we are (in the yellow)

Well the day was passing by so slowly but eventually it was time to make dinner. I mean Karl has been hungry most of the day of course. Time to teach Sakari more food making skills. She definitely helped but mostly watched. I think she can accomplish another meal now. Mac & Cheese, garlic green beans and corn on the cob goodness.

7:20pm

8:50pm and here we are...We are located in the yellow area where you see Anguilla. Yikes!

As we were sitting on the couch and I was basically pacing because I absolutely hate staying still for long and no, bathroom runs does not count as doing something...we started hearing noises inside and found that the sliding glass door in the living room that goes out to the balcony was actually the type that opens up ALL THE WAY! Like it disappears completely into the wall. However, there was something going on inside. I looked down and seen that water was coming in on the tracks.

Sakari started hearing dripping sounds over by the chair she was sitting in by the large windows in the living room. Oh great. Now one of the big windows was also dripping from a screw at the top of the window and both of the window seals had water in them. I had to throw down some towels because it was leaking onto the floor. This brought back so many memories of last year. It's a good thing this hurricane wasn't hitting us head on. We would be in a lot of trouble!

Well it was time to just relax HA! Like we haven't been doing that all day to begin with. It was an entire day wasted and I was pouting over it. But, somehow I got caught up on watching the Amy Bradley story online, which led into more missing person shows, which led to living on a cruise ship show. I was just all over the place but I managed to keep myself entertained until it was time for bed. 💤