Cruise Lines' Private Islands Damage reports

[budwmn]

Earlier today, I e-mailed Cruise Critic and suggested they post an article describing the damage at the cruise lines' private islands. I wish everyone was as responsive -- Cruise Critic e-mailed me immediately and had a news story out this afternoon!

While they couldn't report on all the islands, Royal Caribbean said that their island weathered the storm better than they had feared. Is Coco Cay anywhere near Castaway Cay? I hope it's a good sign!

 

[Laura]

Yes, they are fairly close by. Coco Cay (aka Little Stirrup Cay) is in the northern part of the Berry Islands. Castaway Cay (aka Gorda Cay) is west of the southern part of the Abaco Islands. Of course, this doesn't mean they're right next to each other. But in relation to the distances among other Bahamian islands, these two are relatively close.

 

[momto2dkids]

I also found this site:
http://www.our-site.net/whalecay/Bahamas-map.htm

As the previous poster stated, Coco Cay is located on the far north side of the Berry Islands. Castaway Cay is the little blue speck of an island just northwest of the southwestern tip of Abaco Island(it is just within the light blue band around the island.

Not very far apart so hopefully the report on Castaway Cay will be as optimistic as that of Coco Cay. If there is a difference it could be because the eye of Hurricane Francis went over and then seemed to sit right on top of Castaway Cay for several hours.
I

 

[HooKooDooKu]

I wouldn't rely on any reports about the other islands. From what I can tell, the Berry Islands are about 50 miles from Castaway Cay and that can make a lot of difference.

Look at it this way, relative to the path of the storm, the Berry Islands are about equal to Nassua (also about 50 miles away, but in a parallel position relative to the hurrican's path). Reports for Nassau seem to indicate things were not as bad as expected.

However, reports from Abaco Island seem to sound pretty bad, and CC was closer to the direct path of the storm than Abaco Island.

So while a hurrican is a large storm, a difference of 10, 20, or 50 miles can make a HUGE difference in the forces encountered and the damage that occured.

I think the other thing is that the typical hurrican is worse on the eastern side of the eye than the western. Nassau and the Berry Islands are on the western side of the storm track, Castaway Cay is just slightly east (i.e. the eye of the storm did go over Castaway Cay, but it was on the eastern side of the eye and not quite dead center.

So bottom line is that we just have to wait and see what they say about Castaway Cay.

My personal opinion is that everything (building wise and large plant wise) pretty much would have to have been destroyed because Castaway Cay was hit for hours with constant 75 to 115 mph winds (not to mention wind gusts). I hear the doc that was built after Francis in '99 was built to withstand a Cat 4-5 hurrican, so it should be in good shape. The remaining question is what has happened under the water. Surely the storm dumped sand and such into the chanel that allows the ships to reach the doc and the beaches probably lost a bunch of sand back into the sea. The question was how bad was this type of damage and how long does it take to repair that. Everything else was just relativeily small buildings that, with Disney's resources, could be rebuild in a month. But even with the proper machinery, I don't know how long it will take to dreage the chanel and repair the beaches. Anyone else have any clues in that regard?

 

[budwmn]

Thanks for the geography lesson! It appears that there is a wide range of damage done depending on location.

Cruise Critic is reporting that Princess Cay was badly hit and will take 6 weeks or more to repair. Now if only we new about CC!