South Florida boats really suffered in some areas during Hurricane Wilma, this despite up to six days of preparation time before the storm hit. “Some of them are saying it's on a par with Hurricane Andrew,” FWC spokesman Jorge Pino was quoted in the Miami Herald. “It's been devastating.”

The most dramatic destruction happened when a 6-story boat storage building called Marina One in Deerfield Beach collapsed (recorded on video) with 350 boats inside. The resulting pile of wreckage is too dangerous to approach, with many tons of gasoline, batteries and oil trapped in the giant pile-up. Clearing the wreckage will be dangerous and time-consuming.

Among the hardest-hit areas compiled by the Herald:

> Grand View Palace Condominium in North Bay Village, where “there's probably 80 boats in there and, like three are floating,” according to Brian Hawthorne, operator of SeaTow in Miami Beach.

>  Sunny Isles Marina and Winston Yacht Club Marina, both in Sunny Isles Beach. Steve Corbett, owner of the Winston marina, said his neighbor's boat storage facility is now rubble. “It was four stories high, and now it's about one story.”

>   Monty's Marina in Coconut Grove, where 85 percent of the boats and several docks sustained heavy damage, according to Erica Korpela, who operates Atlantis Marine Towing & Salvage with husband Burt. “A boat broke loose from the surrounding islands and it hit the big boats at the end of the T-[dock],” Korpela said. “It created a domino effect where six boats that came off the docks landed on other people's boats. A lot of million-dollar boats got screwed up.”

> Dinner Key Marina, also in the Grove, was so battered and strewn with damaged boats that one FWC officer said he didn't recognize it, according to Pino.

>A 46-foot boat not fastened securely enough in its slip crashed into at least three big charter fishing boats at Crandon Marina on Key Biscayne.

>Captain Eden White reports there are 42 boats “in Davy Jones’ locker” in the Intracoastal Waterway between Jupiter and Boca Raton.

As for boat losses on the southwest coast around Collier County, those figures haven’t been compiled yet.

FS