INTRODUCTION

This Handbook provides guidance for assessing a hurricane threat's circumstances and likely impact on the given port to support decision-makers' reasonable choice between either remaining in port or evading at sea. This choice is based on informed compromise between a harbor's protective qualities, and the possibility that a sortie will prove to have been unnecessary.

The general guidance provided in Section I of this Handbook will be of value not only to vessels located at evaluated ports, but also to decision-makers aboard vessels threatened by hurricanes at non-evaluated ports or in transit in the North Atlantic Ocean and Gulf of Mexico.