Rock You Like a Hurricane!

It was a busy end to a busy week last week. Schedule went something like:

Wednesday: Diving
Thursday: Prepare for hurricane.
Friday: Two projects due. Hurricane.
Saturday: Clean up after the hurricane.
Sunday: Business as usual, study for finals.

So Tomas ended up deciding to take the most ideal path to hit us. It changed from its westernly path through the southern caribbean to head north. It built up strength down there, then the eye went through the straight in between cuba and hispaniola. From there it veered east again at the last minute, and the eye ended up passing right over our island. Haiti got hit, but the storm didn't really lose strength, it hit us at about its peak wind speeds. The day before we spent putting up metal plates on the windows, getting all our stuff off the floor, moving benches, tables, anything the wind could blow into things. We got our four boats out of the water as well. Everyone with boats too big to haul out anchored them in the straight between South Caicos and Long Cay, to serve as some protection from the wind and rain I guess. When we woke up on saturday we continued preparations and then after lunch made an orderly evacuation. We ended up taking shelter in this two story cylindrical buidling over at East Bay, an unfinished resort. As far as a dusty construction site went, it wasn't that bad. There were hurricane proof windows, which meant we got to see outside. We hung out outside most of the day as the winds picked up, and then at about 930 at night we sealed everything up. We watched movies on a projector and tried to sleep as the winds got louder and louder. The actual hurricane hit in the middle of the night. I woke up as the building shook and the winds howled for about an hour, then things calmed down as the eye went over us, only to return to furious weather after it passed. We couldn't see much, there was some lightning which confused me, I thought people were using flashlights inside (since we lost power), as I drifted in and out of sleep. The next day was clean up, which involved dealing with the flood inside our bedroom and picking up a lot of branches. The center didn't really sustain any significant damage, and everyone was alright.
That was the first hurricane I had been in, it was an experience for sure. The water is starting to clear up, I'm curious to see what the effects on the reefs were. I just took a final exam, and I have two more tomorrow, then classes are done, and I will literally just be in the water all day. The rest of the quarter will be directed research, and I got into my first choice project. It involves extra dives, which is awesome, I'll be diving and snorkeling and doing transects and quadrats measuring substrate topographical complexity and its correlation to fish populations. Data analysis will be interesting as well, there are some cool statistics to be done, and we'll cap it off with a legit 30 page scientific paper. I'm excited, this is what I've been looking forward to. I'll get to keep doing recreational dives too, so between that and research dives I'll be logging a lot in the near future.