We had a CAT 5 hurricane with sustained winds of 160mph. Not many boats here survived. We were in a very protected bayou, but only 3 boats survived out of 18 slips. The entire dock structure was ripped apart. Our boat was stacked with about 5 boats against the shore. All of my dock lines were still in place on the boat. She was totaled due to large hull/deck separation - Boat US was great.
A lot of people don't know how bad it was, and still is here. It was one year ago yesterday and there are still people living in tents here. By pressure I think it was the third strongest in recorded history at the time behind Camile and the 1935 storm in the keys. Mexico Beach is a lot worse because they were on the other side of the eye and a 14' surge as well. My neighborhood rode the entire west wall of the eye for about 4 hours - scary stuff. For a datapoint, our rig was still up with one lower pulled out at the swage. The island packet 35 next to me had the mast shear off at the spreaders. Of course we were all bouncing off of each other, so no telling what all happened. Also, I wouldn't read anything into the hull deck separation. We were probably hit by the island packet 35 or the Catalina 42 next to us in the pile.
Of course the folks in the Bahamas had it much worse.
