Posted on 10/06/2022 1:11:18 PM PDT by Tolerance Sucks Rocks
FORT MYERS, Fla. – A man and his cat rode out the fury of Hurricane Ian last week in his sailboat, which was his home before the storm.
Ian was a monstrous Category 4 hurricane with 150-mph winds when it slammed into Southwest Florida on Sept. 28. The terrible winds pushed ashore feet of water from the Gulf of Mexico as it made landfall. Widespread destruction was left behind.
Ron Latta, of Fort Myers, said he had been living in his 32-foot boat named "Lattatude" for four years, and decided to stay with his home.
"You don’t leave your boat," Latta told FOX Weather correspondent Max Gorden on Monday. "I mean, it’s all I have."
Latta said he knew things were getting bad about 10 a.m. the day of landfall as the wind and storm surge increased. By that point, it was too late for Latta to make it to shore.
"It was horrifying," he said. "It really was. It lasted like 12-14 hours."
(Excerpt) Read more at foxweather.com ...
He hove to?
‘”You don’t leave your boat,” Latta told FOX Weather correspondent Max Gorden on Monday. “I mean, it’s all I have.”’
Ok, Ron, but you do realize that you can move a boat, right?
Yeah, why didn’t he sail to Alabama?
Park the boat in a sheltered marina, then find safety. If he had a motor, he could attempt to sail around the storm.
You can buy another boat, drowning is pretty much final.
“”You don’t leave your boat,” Latta told FOX Weather correspondent Max Gorden on Monday. “I mean, it’s all I have.””
I am glad it turned out well for him. He is lucky. A boat is not all he has. He has his life and he could have lost it worrying about a stupid boat.
“A boat is not all he has. He has his life...”
For some, a life without a boat is no life at all.
No.
He would have been fine in Pensacola.
He didn’t have to hove to.
Once you realize the path of the storm it’s impossible to sail away from it, given the cone of uncertainty just about everywhere he could have escaped to was in the potential path
Crossing the open Gulf of Mexico, how long would that take given the projected path potential path of the storm
Yeah. The out-of-towners here don’t realize the plots for this thing were all over the map. Moved from Tampa 150 miles south over 2 days. They had maybe 12-18 hr.s to prep and/or hope it’s path would move again as it’d been doing for day after day.
In the keys they drive their boats into the mangroves. I rode out a nasty 70 mph thunder storm in mangroves once. It was fantastic protection. Much better than a dock.
People don’t realize unless you have a situation like you describe it’s not that easy to evade a hurricane in a boat, sailing across the open gulf in front of a hurricane world be suicide
“He has his life and he could have lost it worrying about a stupid boat.”
A boat is not stupid if it is your home.
And the next day he scoops up all the shrimp in the ocean and becomes a millionaire shrimp boat captain.
No pics of the cat?
I saw video of boats left in mangroves. Some looked abandoned.
On Instagram there’s a guy who rode it out on his boat in Ft Myers. May have been close to this one, but his boat stayed in the water..
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