Hurricane Dean Update #2 - Photos

As promised, more updates.. this time some pictures speak more eloquently than words....

Will start with a few from during the storm (we had a very able crew on property, as well as a number of staff taking shelter), then a couple showing where our beach clean up is today.

We are officially closed until Saturday, but a few guests due to check in from today onwards are still coming in...pools cleaned but being refilled as we speak, and beach bar not quite ready to re-open, but hey, they'll still have beachfront suites and a gorgeous view !


This first photo shows how huge the waves are outside The Reef.. we estimate around 20-25 feet waves.... but as you see, our namesake reef largely dissipate them... though not entirely...

As you can see from this next shot, our dock took a pounding, but it is designed to lose planks in order to save the structure, so it'll be fixed in no time.

I should note that the winds really didn't get too high, our staff would not have been out in really high winds, it would have been unsafe.

Mind you, in Ivan our crazy security guard, "Sir" Clive Lamont, did take a video of the storm, and many of our owners and guests have a copy of that in their DVD library !

Clive tells us that he has a video of the Dean "action" to share, and hopefully we can video-blog that for you all soon too.

This last storm shot again shows how huge the waves were, note that the reef is about 1/3rd of a mile offshore, so those waves are HUGE !

By the way, the pools took a lot of sand and debris, but as of this morning, Shawn, Mikey and the crew had them completely emptied and today we are already filling them up ready to go again.

This shot was taken this morning... day two of clean up. We saved our shade palapas by "topping them", cutting them off midway up the posts. So much sand was shifted that we had to remount their foundations and then cover over with sand, then use new posts to join the tops back on... but as you can see, they are good as new already.

Valentino Salvi and his team will have the Beach Bar open on Friday, and Andrew Bacon will be reading this blog and ready to rock and roll with his beach bar party on Monday night !


Special mention now to Lyall Watt, who took charge of the shelter operations of The Reef on Sunday night, then took charge of the logistics of the clean up effort.

Many know Lyall from his years with the Thompson Group, both in Timeshare sales at The Reef, and in his role as Century 21 realtor responsible for the Castaways' Cove condos, a core part of The Reef.

What you might not know is that Lyall was, in a former life, a heavy equipment specialist and he put his knowledge and skills to the fore in the last day or two.

Anyway, this last shot from this morning shows the finishing touches being put to the beach already. Difficult to believe that yesterday and today we had backhoes and bobcats shifting many tons of sand around, not to mention replacing and straightening palm trees etc.

Hey paradise doesn't happen without work !

That should cover it for the Dean updates...hope to see you all here soon !