Aquasport Tornado Survivor

[BTF112989]

Hey guys,
Just thought I would show you some pictures of my 1974 Aquasport 22-2 in our dock while it is disconnected from the shore.  These pictures are from the day after that bad storm front rolled through Nashville on 1/30/2013 at about 3:30am.  When the tornado was going across land it was classified as an EF1, then they said it lost strength and was an EF0 when it crossed the lake.  I got a call at 7am from a neighbor saying that a bunch of trees were down in the backyard and the dock with my aquasport inside was completely missing!  Needless to say I started to expect the worst.  My mom drove around to try and find the dock & we eventually located it(with some calls to neighbors) later in the day.  The gangway, all three spud poles, and the 1/2" steel cable anchored into concrete on the shore broke loose.  The dock the floated out midway into the cove and leapfrogged several docks before parallel parking it self between this dock and another dock.  The other dock wasn't damaged, and the boat was pulled far enough into the dock, so the engine wasn't damaged at all.  My neighbors 8 month old dock was picked up and completely flipped upside down in the water.  Over half of the docks are either flipped upside down or are now piles of twisted metal in people's backyards.  The dock at the marina around the corner is a total loss with all of those 100' houseboats in it blowing around with the wind & will be about $2,000,000 to replace.  There are trees uprooted everywhere.  It is only a two mile section of this cove that has damage.  The rest of the lake has no damage.  The guys I feel for most are the ones with docks flipped upside down in the water with one or two boats still in the docks.  Storms like these make you glad to have a wooden dock that is probably 5 times the weight of these aluminum docks that get tossed around.  My aquasport could be a casualty right now if we had an aluminum dock, or if we didn't find our dock in time.  There are still a lot of missing docks and boats.  If people didn't find their dock fast enough, the surge of water likely washed it further down the river in a hurry.  

I was going to try and do most of the clean up with my dad, but many of the trees are in dangerous positions, so we're leaving it to the professionals with the help of the insurance company.  The dock needs six 4x4's replaced, a few main supports on the bottom, new spud poles, and the electrical hooked back up.  

Now, I'm thinking I need to come up with a boat name that has to do with surviving the tornado unscathed.  After we located the boat dock, I had to plug my ipod into the boat's stereo & play "Riding the Storm Out" by REO Speedwagon.

Here are the pictures:

6 cedar trees down.  Its pretty hard to access the water with all of the trees in the way.




If you look closely, you can see the uprooted trees and twisted piles of aluminum docks in the backyards across the cove.


Photo from the Aquasport looking at my neighbor's dock that our dock collided with.

Our neighbor's 8 month old dock upside down.  Luckily he took his brand new boat out of there about 2 weeks before.

We had other miscellaneous damage such as screen doors blown out, gutters damaged, boat covers shredded, etc.  I'm just glad no one got hurt and the 22-2 made it through in one piece.

[slvrlng]

Using the rock and roll theme.  

Twister Sister!  

Glad yall are OK and the boat also!

[Circle Hooked]

That is just crazy, happy to hear all is well, thanks for sharing that story.

[jahoward1]

OMG!  Next storm, go lie down in that boat

[RickK]

I agree that is crazy - glad you're safe.  Glad the boat is unscathed.

[seabob4]

That is wild!  Looked at the pics before reading your story, thought that your dock looked fine...at your house!!!  Didn't think it was re-located!!  

[200CCPMerc200]

Glad everyone and your boat is ok! Now with the glass 1/2 full attitude, i see alot of good firewood waiting to be cut and stacked!