At first light I figured we were in the eye of the storm as the sea was calm and very little wind. Very surprised to see that the Phones and the Internet was working (this doesn't happen often on a normal day!!!)  It was nice to see that Omar had torn passed us and obviously further to the East than expected.

Police were on the property at 0630 checking for damage, they said that the only reports they have had was that the Road to Foxy's Taboo has been washed out. We were expecting to get up this morning to find all the trees and bushes leafless, but apart from a few Dead Limbs down and a few leaves our clean up is going to be minimal, the only downer really is that our normally gorgeous Blue Sea in the Bay is now a dirty brown as it looks like the Salt Pond at the end of the beach overflowed.

Waiting to hear any news from Anegada or Virgin Gorda.

The whole island was working feverishly this morning, shuttering up, more boats being moved this morning than cars. Most of the local boats from Great Harbour have been put on the moorings in Little Harbour. Ours I pulled and it's sitting lashed to it's trailer in Little Harbour.

The first of the heavy rain has just arrived, we in turn spent the morning lashing everything that could move and prepping for it. I still think that this is going to be a Cat 3 by the time it reaches here tomorrow morning.

I expect the island to be without Power and Phones for many days after this as BVI Electricity doesn't believe in planned maintenance of Poles etc., I know of at least 6 Poles that are leaning 10 to 20 degrees before the storm so I don't give much hope for normal services to be resumed for a long time.

Run off is our main concern and rock falls, as the land is already soaked from the major rains received this week. This tends to remind me of November 2003 when we received 28 inches of rain in 5 days at Marina Cay.

Best of luck to everybody.

Roger

I think this is my first post as we don't seem to get many Hurricanes here.

We are evacuating our Hotel Guests first thing in the morning to Tortola where I think they will be safer. In the meantime we will be putting up the shutters etc, Last Hurricane I went through was "Ivan" when we lived on Canouan Island, and that was pretty rough.

I've had bad vibes about this one all along and my predictions have been true so far,

Last nights torrential rains left us with major mud over all the roads and many rocks, I had to go all the way carefully in 4 wheel drive to Little Harbour because of the mess on the roads. With the storm approaching I hate to think of the slides that are going to happen as everything is soaked here at the moment, run off will be unbelievable.

Good luck to everybody in it's path and I will update when possible.

Roger

Jost Van Dyke  BVI