Beach Baby Johnson: What Tornado?

A First That We Hope is also a Last!

The last post explained the reason why my "race day" never happened. As you can see from the photos below, it was for very good reason. Our awesome yacht club was heavily damaged by an EF1 tornado that seemed to have it's eye on the club and a few other spots in Hampton. The regatta party was interrupted (luckily) by someone who was able to shuffle everyone inside to safety. We were fortunate to have returned to our friends' (Dave and Leigh Chapman) home minutes before the tornado hit. Their house is only two blocks away and we saw the signs although looking back we all think we would have been too late had it been right over us. Regardless, I grabbed Wesley out of his pak n' plan, Dave grabbed their son, Will and we all headed for the basement. It was one of the scariest evenings that I can remember in a long time. We lost power at their house which was really the worst thing we experienced. As you can see from the pictures, there were a lot of people that didn't have as much luck. We did sustain a good bit of damage to both the boat and the trailer (brand new-less than 2 months old all the way from Georgia, trailer) but all of that can be repaired.

The folks at the club were all very fortunate as well and there weren't even really any reports of injuries. The cars in the parking lot were all battered; most had one if not several windows blown out. One of the buildings lost a roof, the windows of the main dining area were blown out, the iron fence was picked up like a toothpick and boats were thrown about like rag dolls. It was certainly an experience that we would gladly never like to experience again...I don't think I could live in Tornado Alley or out west. At least Hurricanes are predictable and give a bit of warning!!