Dive operators and restaurant owners along Cayman’s western coastline were faced with smashed docks, flooded premises and damaged equipment following this week’s devastating nor’wester that left many local businesses reeling.
Of the many images and videos that circulated on early on Tuesday, one of the first that drove home the seriousness of the storm was of a car stuck on the stairs of Lighthouse Point in West Bay, after the waves lifted it from its parking spot and washed it around the car park before it landed on the steps.
Franck Bottero, the co-owner of Vivo restaurant at Lighthouse Point, on North West Point Road in West Bay, said he woke up to dozens of messages on his phone, not just from Cayman but from his home country of France and other European countries, from people who had seen the image of the car on the stairs, as well as other scenes from the storm.
“I came straight here, and it was devastating,” he said. “I have no words for that. We lost everything, everything.”
He said not just the tables and chairs of the restaurant were wrecked, but even the fridges were smashed to bits. “The power of nature is just ridiculous. It literally blew the entire restaurant into a thousand pieces inside. The fridges, one screw here, one door there,” he said.
‘Just enough time to get out’
On Tuesday, Bottero had tried to salvage as much as he could from the restaurant and see if the water could be soaked up with mops and sponges.
“Yesterday was probably too early to try to clean out everything,” he told the Compass on Wednesday morning as he and his staff were cleaning up. “We were inside and we barricaded the door, the big massive door, and the waves, several times during the day, just popped up and blew everything out. We had just enough time to get out.”
He said nobody was expecting the nor’wester to be as strong as it was. “Everybody was talking about the 35 knots. We thought, yes, it’s a bad day, with big wind and big waves, but … none of the Caymanian fishermen or dive operators I talked to were expecting this.”
In preparation for the weather, before he’d left on Monday, he had placed table cloths around the windows “to avoid the little bit of water coming in”, but then, “the whole ocean was coming inside the restaurant”.
He says he does not know when he can reopen, but is determined to do so, even if it means offering a limited menu and putting out some folding tables and chairs initially.
One of the first things to sort out will be the electrics at the restaurant, and then comes the hard work of replacing everything – from the fridges to the tablecloths and cutlery.
“I have two tables left out of 14,” he said. “Everything flew away, we might have a couple of knives and forks left.”
Dive operators badly hit
At Don Foster’s Dive on South Church Street, Sergio Coni and staff arrived on Tuesday morning to find their shop “took a severe pounding”, he told the Compass.
They found remnants of the seaside decks, the pool fence, dive benches and cement walls piled up against the main building and in the parking area.
“Besides our own debris, there were other things, I am not sure where they came from,” he said.
“A huge clean-up awaits and very expensive repairs. It will take a while, honestly.”
He added, “I am happy everyone is safe, the boats are safe and, once the seas subside, if we manage to secure a ladder for shore diving entry/exit and the docks remains operational, we will start over again.”
Mark Williams of Cayman Diving in George Town said there has been some damage to the dock in front of his downtown Cayman shop, but he hopes his business will be in operation again once the seas calm down.
“A bit of the wood has been knocked off. We’d have had the carpenter in today, but it’s still too rough here,” he said on Wednesday afternoon.
Despite being on the waterfront, where huge waves smashed into the shoreline, Williams says his shop was not inundated with water, as it’s 6-8 feet above the beach level.
One of his vessels slipped its moorings in South Sound, he said, but had been retrieved, and he expected that it would be operational.
West Bay devastation
Dive operators in West Bay were also assessing the damage caused by the devastating nor’wester, which many in the community are describing as the worst they’ve seen.
Nat Robb, owner of Indepth Watersports, which took over the dive shop from Sun Divers at Macabuca just three months ago, was at his shop Wednesday, cleaning it out and trying to determine when it could be back up and running again.
Dramatic images of waves crashing the building on North West Point Road, which houses the dive shop, the Macabuca Tiki Bar and Cracked Conch restaurant were circulated widely on Tuesday.
“Never in 25 years have we seen swells this big,” Robb said. “We boarded up, but never did we consider the waves would be up so high. The water just filled up the compressor room through the exhaust fan, and just blew the door out from the inside. And then the waves smashed everything around for about 12 hours.”
“Everything was pretty washing-machined in there,” he added. “We’re hoping to maybe salvage some of the equipment and then rebuild.”
He hopes that shore diving at the site may be re-opened within a week or so.
“I’ve known and visited this place for close to 30 years and no one has ever seen waves this big,” he said.
Macabuca and the Cracked Conch were also badly damaged in the storm. All that is left of Macabuca is the concrete bar itself, while the deck on the second-floor Cracked Conch was wrecked.
Checking reef ‘carnage’
Sunset House Divers on South Church Street in George Town was also impacted, but expects to have its boats back in the water and ready for customers on Thursday. Sunset’s Mel Hart said the staff divers would check the house reef for storm debris and damage before inviting shore divers to come back.
“We’ll see how much carnage there is on the reef,” she said. “We’ll clean it up before we let anyone go diving there.”
She is also concerned that, with the corals already under extreme stress and left vulnerable from stony coral tissue loss disease and bleaching from warmer-than-usual seas in the past several months, this storm is “another negative impact on an already fragile eco-system”.
Sunset House bar and restaurant also suffered damage, with the cabana at the back of the bar where dominos players usually congregate, being destroyed. A clean-up crew was removing debris from the site when the Compass visited on Wednesday.
Cat 5 hurricane door and windows blown off
Joanna Mikutowicz, owner of Divetech, next door to Vivo, on Tuesday managed to access the Lighthouse Point shop, which was badly flooded after the strong waves broke down the shop’s heavy wooden and metal door and smashed its windows. The door and windows are Category 5 hurricane rated, she said.
“I couldn’t believe it,” she said. “I’ve never seen anything like it. We fully prepared. I never expected the front door and front windows to blow off.”
“I’m extremely fortunate that I have another location at Cobalt Coast, and most of our stuff was there, but we’ve lost everything here,” she said, indicating the Lighthouse Point shop. “It’s either gone into the ocean or it’s just trashed inside the dive shop.”
She said the company’s boats, vehicles and compressor are all working so they can operate with almost business as usual from the Cobalt Coast location, which did not sustain any damage in the storm.
“But to get Lighthouse Point back up and running, I don’t know,” she said. “It’s not actually on my radar right now to do.”
Mikutowicz’s first indication of how disastrous the storm was when she arrived on Tuesday morning to find some Divetech air tanks and T-shirts on North West Point Road.
“When we prepared we put everything from the outside inside the dive shop because we have Cat 5 hurricane windows and doors… When I came up yesterday morning, things that had been inside, like our tanks and some of our T-shirts, were up on the road, so I knew something had gone horribly wrong.”
Divetech’s shop faces the ocean, while the road, at the back of the Lighthouse Point condos, is at an uphill incline about 120 feet away.
Additional reporting by Reshma Ragoonath
Related Videos
The category 5 rating for windows I would think relates to wind strength not massive waves.