Exuma and the tsunami

You can go online and read about this boat: Yacht Exuma - presently docked in the harbor entrance. Yesterday it had to turn on its engines to keep from being swept from the dock due to the tsunami surges. We are right across the channel in the slips and watched the theater of the tsunami for several hours yesterday. We could see the channel start to flow strongly in and then almost immediately, flow like a river in flood, out. A lot of the boats that had gathered in the harbor for the Banderas Bay regatta had left and were floating around in deep water outside in the Bay missed the show. They heard it, however, on the radio - from disaster rumours to just rumours to just plain ridiculous. We were able to judge the severity of the waves from the internet reports where they had hit earlier and felt relieved when Hawaii had reduced their "alert". We were able to feel some security in our decision to stay docked, but we were still nervous about the possibility of water being drained from the harbor and monster surges coming in to tear the place up. It didn't happen. The harbor would go up a few feet and then drop, with Exuma letting us know when a surge was coming. These were not just surges, but strange currents, (10 - 15 mph...wow) and whirlpools and waves. Lisa and I were thinking it was pretty much a non event, except we were awed by the visible current, and then we walked to the harbor mouth. Wow, I couldn't stop saying that - wow! It was a disaster movie film set - unreal - very eerie. A wave train would start, then we could see gorgeous turquoise water move rapidly across or push the brown harbor water in the channel, waves would build with giant whirlpools, and then crash into the breakwater. A very strange wave train would begin further in the channel and then appear to skate across the surface of the water as it worked its way back out. If you have never seen ocean water behave that way, it was goosebump time. The absolute power of the surges kept all the escapees out of the harbor for hours - in fact most of them went over to La Cruz and anchored out as the entrance stayed strange up until dark. Some boats tried to come in but were waved off, and the parade of tired sailors and boats arrived back in to their slips all morning long. We slept well, but given the ongoing surges and strange behavior of the ocean, those were some tired sailors.