06/09/2026
September 2017.
Two weeks before, we were the most optimistic we’d ever been. Just engaged, just put our down payment on Flyaway. So many people here were like that — everyone had the beginnings of something.
Then Irma.
We walked down to the dock the next morning. We only passed a couple of people. One had tossed down a message in a bottle, asking whoever found it to call their family and say they were alive. Another was pale as a sheet, but alive. We were just so relieved to see our friends.
The devastation was unnatural. Nothing prepares you for it. It felt like nuclear war. I called my dad on the sat phone that day, taking my hat off and smoothing my hair over and over, saying “you have no idea what we just went through.” He said, “you have no idea what you just went through.”
Most of our community hadn’t made it down to the dock that first day. By day two, they had. Colin had a massive infection in his knee from diving on our boats, and I was treating it with antibiotics left over from dental surgery. We just kept going.
Day two, a boat came over from St. Croix with supplies. They were looking for their son, who was on the island. We helped them find him, and they gave us what they had. Then more boats started showing up, and we formed chains on the dock, hand to hand.
We lost Buxom completely. She was our boat, our heart, our home. The quilt my mom made me was on board. We still use it every day.
We left three days before Maria on a friend’s boat. St. Croix, then San Juan, and somewhere in there we decided to just get married in my mom’s backyard. I found my dress at a second hand shop while Colin was out buying tools and generators. We still use one of them.
Indigo Grill became the place. They cooked whatever they had, we all ate one meal a day there, and we stayed to talk and drink and be together. Ali’s at Calabash too — music and rest at a time when there wasn’t much of either.
The community carried us through something that lasted years and honestly still isn’t finished. It’s the reason we’re still here. 💙
