I am planning a trip to Cozumel Sept 1st through Sept 6th. We will be staying at the Reef Regency. Can anyone tell me what the status is on the island since hurricane Emily came through. If its not back up I may want to cancel. Any information would be greatly appreciated
Cozumel update
- Thread starter TOP MG
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TOP MG:
I just talked with someone who returned from Cozumel on Friday. He was there for one week. He stayed at the Scuba Club Cozumel which is just south of downtown. He indicated that there was very little (if any) damage in town. As he would take the dive boats to the dive sites south he said that you could see damage to some of the resorts and beaches down south.
I'm leaving for Cozumel this Friday and I'm staying at the Residencias (which is just south of the Reef Club). My property manager is telling me that everything is OK.
scubacoz22
Contributor
We are leaving for Coaumel on Sunday the 14th will give a trip repoert when we get back. Anybody out there who just got back who can tell me which are the best Reefs to dive? Kathy
TOP MG:
Just returned about 2 am this morning from 10 days in Cozumel. The clean up was great. We saw lots of piles of limbs and debris that had already been picked up and sorted to the sides. The trees looked like they had been given a good shaking. I guess a 140 mph wind will have a tendency to do that.
I noticed on the way down that about 15 to 20 seats were vacant.
My wife and I own a house there and we spent our time working on renovations..She can verify that it will stand up to at least a Category 4 hurrican with only one broken window pane. While she was out of power for three days we could find nothing wrong on the outside.
All the stores are open except for a very few. The traffic, electric, police and taxis looked like business as usual.
My good friend, Jeremy Anschel who owns Living Underwater told me he had an almost full boat every day. In 10 days I saw a few partly cloudy days and it rained one night. Otherwise it was beautiful.
Jim Baldwin:
You realize of course that the cat 4 portion of Emily missed San Miguel, plus all the wind was from the east. Had the eye hit square on (as the predictions up until pretty near landfall had indicated), the damage in town would have been much more extensive. It was a lucky thing and a near miss, for which we are all grateful.
ggunn:
Although my wife said there was ankle deep water in the kitchen and it looked like a fire hose coming through the windows she and her mother managed to get everything swept and shoveled out throughout the night it hit.
I know on the south end there are simply places that are no longer there. My neighbor who is a brick mason lost a good part of his roof. We were certainly greatful that we didn't take a direct hit.
ggunn:
Sorry Gordon, I have to disagree with you.
170 mph winds were actually recorded in Cedral. Hurricane force winds extended out 60 miles from the eye. The entire island of Cozumel is not even 60 miles long. While the north eye wall itself crossed over Punta Sur, those cat 4 winds definitely extended into San Miguel...we are approximately 20 miles from Punta Sur. Concrete and rebar are why the structural damage was minimal.
By the way, we dove Maracaibo shallows two days ago. Visibility was incredible and the reef looks untouched. I was amazed. Conditions are better than at Palanacar.
Christi:
Well, you were there, of course. ;^)
One thing is true, though, and that is that due to the track the storm followed all the wind in town was from the east and came across the back of the island. One of the things that made Gilbert in 1988 so bad was the direct hit it made on the island; the winds and wind driven waves in the western eyewall hit San Miguel from the north. There is still concrete and rebar out in the water in front of Caribe Blu from that storm.
(Aside: when Javier Segura built La Perla (now Caribe Blu), he designed the headboards on the beds so that they were easily removeable, and he cut the panels that made them up the same size as the glass sliding doors on the ocean side of the rooms so that they could be used for storm shutters. Alejandra and her guys didn't know this, so they cut them up to use for cosmetic building materials when they remodeled the rooms.)
The other thing is that the wind speed around the eye follows a gradient and falls away as you get away from the center. The figure of hurricane winds extending 60 miles from the center reflects where that gradient falls below 74 mph. The fastest winds (the ones that are quoted to categorize a storm) are at the inside edge of the eyewall, and they drop off in velocity fairly quickly as they are observed at greater distance from the center. When a hurricane makes landfall, the zone on the coastline where the most damaging wind hits is pretty small, even in a really big storm, which Emily wasn't. Another piece of good luck there: Punta Sur was near the inside edge of the eyewall, and that 20 miles is enough to make a significant difference.
Please don't misunderstand me; I don't mean in any way to belittle the horrific experience you guys went through or the benefits of stronger construction techniques in hurricane zones (look at what Andrew did to the crackerbox houses in south Florida). The storm hit on Cozumel was not as bad as it could have been, though, had it tracked a little more to the north, and that is a very good thing.
chugmeister
Contributor
Glad to hear things are looking better. We will be down there on the 21st thru the 28th. Will have tons of pictures when we get back.
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