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Let’s face it. At times like this you can’t talk or hear enough about the weather can you? Latest forecast is in. Decision stands to go Friday or Saturday. Crew arriving tomorrow. The sail up to Fiji is likely to be ‘technical’ in that we’ll have quite a few changes in wind direction/strength to deal with. No staying on one tack for a week. Growing sense of anticipation and excitement around the anchorage. Have I been spending too long looking into the tea leaves? I’ll spout my weather musings, as usual, at the end of the blog so you tell me then. And if you get the pop-culture reference in the blog title I can only say “sorry.” Tuesday it was sort of back to normal in a way. I managed a fairly typical 2 hour run to drop off trash and pick up a package from the chandlers. Typical in that it really should have taken 10 minutes but I kept bumping into folks and “hello” leads to “bloody weather” and then time flies. With a reasonable part of the day left we tackled a few important issues. Two were leaks made apparent during the recent deluge. Gone now is the leak via the mount on the forward starboard shower hatch. Gone now is the leak from the handles to the stern locker hatches, the starboard one in particular being, I believe, the root cause of the bilge alarms last weekend. Last job was to mount the man overboard pole securing it to the horse shoe float. That way, if someone goes overboard we can throw it in the water. The swimmer can see the flag/pole and find the float. Those left aboard can see the flag/pole and find the swimmer. In the evening was a pot luck dinner for the fleet of cruisers stuck in Opua. We ended up sat at a table with the Imagines and Callypsos joined later by John from Passages. All good company. We left quite late. So. The bloody weather. The model forecasts available yesterday provided no inspiration at all. The huge high pressure system well to the east of us seemed immovable and creating a traffic jam of systems out our way. The Delos boys are stir crazy and have a notion to leave today and head east before heading north. A bold and brave move in my opinion but I can understand the move. Knowing the models to be in a volatile state demands close attention to how the solutions are evolving. And this morning I see a glimpse. Perhaps a chance to leave on Friday. Low pressure systems are doing the tango south and west of us. One of them is now looking to take and hold a position just off the west coast on NZ bringing northwesterly winds Friday afternoon followed by westerlies. If we left then we would get a day and a half of good sailing before encountering a line of high pressure spots with confused and light winds. This would require careful threading through and maybe a little motoring. Beyond this we would be into south easterly flows which would put us back into decent sailing conditions. The final obstacle would be a low pressure system over Tonga way which could cause a combination of opportunities or problems depending on your destination and how it evolves. My overall synopsis is that its looking good for those heading to New Caledonia, perhaps a good chance for those Fiji bound and a bit chancy for those bound for Tonga. In about 3 hours we get the next model output. I’ll shake the cup and read the tea leaves again then. With winds down into the teens the bay we’re in was beginning to calm down but was still a little choppy when we left to go ashore. Feelings were high as the forecast was still showing a good window for departure on Thursday/Friday. We dinghied over to Passages, tied/locked the boat and transferred our last jerry can of fuel into the dinghies tank. With another cruiser the five of us packed into John and Pam’s car and took the road south to Whangarei. Along the way we could see lowlands flooded by the recent rains but fortunately the road was open. In late January, I learned, the road had been closed for three days after an even heavier storm. The day was very busy but we got everything done we needed to including a trip back to Norsand where we met the Sea Misters and Tahinas. It was late afternoon by the time we returned. And what a transformation from the morning/previous few days. The sun was out and the bay calm. We lugged everything from the car to the dinghy and took it back to Dignity. I passed everything up to Helen and left her to pack. I returned to the dock to help John go and collect his dinghy which was still over by the yard. It was much easier to tow than to row and I was glad to help. Next, John took me to Pahia so he could pick up some beer (I did too) and I could fill my two jerry cans. I was shocked at the price not realizing it would be more expensive to fill two cans than the tank of the car we had all those months. I was able to get the full cans back to the boat, help Helen put the dodger back on and then get back ashore just in time for the 6pm meet up I’d organized with cruisers willing to help run a radio net for the trip up. We shared a few beers in the cool evening air before having our brief discussion. We’ve agreed to run a simple position check in once in the morning and once in the evening 8am/8pm with the intent on providing a communication safety net for anyone getting into trouble. I stayed a while longer with the Delos boys catching up over a few more beers. With almost everything done we need to get done to leave and with a similar sense from everyone else I was feeling pretty good. Back on the boat almost the first thing I did was to pull down a new set of weather data to examine the evolving weather situation. I toggled between the latest forecast and the mornings data a few times just to be sure of what I was really seeing. The winds forecasted for mid passage have changed quite considerably. It’s looking like a fantastic trip for the motor boats as it’s light air now for days. Great for the motor boat guys but pretty lousy for us. This was a bit of a blow to the day’s euphoria but it didn’t quite crush our spirits as we were marveling at the simplicity of the lack of wind and a boat that wasn’t being continuously tossed around. The prospect of a good nights sleep without alarms going off all night had a strong appeal. I have looked at the weather forecast again this morning. I’m not feeling overjoyed. The weather patterns are controlled by what goes on in the upper atmosphere which tends to push things eastwards. Normally the highs and lows, while dancing around, generally make their way from Australia out over/around NZ and off to the east. A huge high is sitting around 158W. It’s been there a while is the forecasts have it stationary out for the next week. The low pressure system that brought all the recent nasty weekend weather is forecast to patrol the Tasman sea. North of the area between this high and low the winds are light and variable. That’s exactly where we want to sail. The weekly McDavitt missive that came out a day late this week offers little comfort. The section providing direct comment our situation reads :
One would think that at this stage it’s best to call off the plans for this week and get the reading book out. Perhaps. Probably. But it’s never that easy. We watch. We wait. We remain ready to go. As Bob likes to say “Weather is a mix of pattern and chaos” which basically means things could change. Who, in fact, has ever seen a forecast that is right? Pwooof. That’s me blowing the dust of the cover. Footnote: More on the weather. The current forecasts are showing all the signs of being in a particularly ill conditioned state. Meaning, that small changes in the input parameters can lead to large changes in the model output. My view is supported by the large change in model outputs that we saw occur yesterday, some of Bob’s comments which related to model inconsistency and comments from a local cruiser who’s been monitoring the weather here for 15 years. It all supports the notion that right now we’re into making day to day decisions on when to leave. It could be this week. It might not. Sitting in a large anchorage with constant 25-35 knot winds peaking higher at times with the boat constantly moving in a short steep chop with occasional hull slaps from bigger waves is a wearisome thing. We’ve been at it for days now and it seems like a life time. Each night we’ve gone to bed with the anchor alarm which wakes up up every now and then when the wind shifts. The anchor has stayed firm. There are better alarms which allow one to set up guard zones around where the boat will naturally swing. We can’t do this so we get woken when the boat has moved a certain distance. This is worse than passage making. Furthermore the starboard bilge has been gathering water slowly and that alarm has gone off every few hours. I know water is coming from the stern locker via the drain tube and the problem became more apparent yesterday, perhaps related to our removal of the dodger which keeps rain water (and there’s been a lot of that) out of the cockpit area. Being in and official storm is not the time to troubleshoot or fix this sort of thing so we just had to put up with it. We know we need to seal the stern rail – one of our last chores before we leave – and it might just be that. We’ll see. This morning we’re seeing winds actually below 20 knots. The boat is still moving around and normally these conditions would be deemed totally unsuitable for an anchorage – we’d find something more sheltered. But now it feels like peace. And it’s surely only going to get better. At first light yesterday we braved the elements and took down the dodger. We found the main sail lazy bag had been blown half open. How the main sail itself had not been caught and dragged out I don’t know but it surely would have been had we not dealt with this and the winds increased as they did yesterday. We spent the day locked inside the boat. We communicated with a few people via email and VHF and there is a growing number of us 2010 puddle jumpers looking to grab this up coming weather window which is now looking to be this Thursday. We played some cards for a while and the rest of the time got on with our own thing. I managed to nail five more Euler problems including two I’d previously been stuck on. After this morning’s weather forecast I’ve put us on a positive decision to leave at the end of this week. That means that our crew Paul now expects to come to the boat which we’d agreed over yesterday would be Wednesday at noon. Today we’re heading back to Whangarei for final provisioning courtesy of John and Pam from Passages. This had been planned for Tuesday but they made the sensible decision to do the provisioning while the weather was still bad and use Tuesday for boat work. My final plan for today is to call out for volunteers to help run a radio net up to Fiji for safety/assistance purposes with an idea to get together at the yacht club this evening. We may end up having an evening out as we’re desperate to get off the boat for a while. Delos is in the anchorage and will be coming. We’ve not seen them for a long time it seems. Before getting out of bed I decided to fix an old problem on this blog. From way back, somehow the pictures on our ‘Round Long Island‘ sequence had been lost. They’re now all recovered. Once I’d bothered to haul myself up it turned out to be a short measure to resolve the remaining issues with John’s WiFi device. In choppy water I dinghied to the dock and handed it back giving it all a quick test. All was fine. I ran a few errands before heading back to the boat where we stayed until early evening. Having had enough of the bouncing around in the 15-25 knot winds pounding us all day we decided to go ashore to eat at the yacht club. We bumped into Steve and Vickie from True Companions and shared a table with them. The place was packed with a cruising rally that was supposed to have left this week but are pinned down by the weather with the rest of us. The place ended up being quite noisy which resulted in us leaving a little early. Helen ended up feeling quite unwell – perhaps reverse sea sickness having been on a bouncing boat for the last few days. Heading back into wind and back to the boat we got a little wet. However we’d made sure we had hot water ready and showered as soon as we had the dinghy up on it’s davits. During the evening and overnight the winds strengthened. The GPS/anchor alarm again went to bed with us and kept us awake for a while us we swung on our very firm anchor. I ran up a fever for a couple of hours so perhaps we’ve eaten something disagreeable. This morning the winds have not let up. They are forecast to reach 40 knots gusting to 50 by midday before easing off this evening. As soon as it’s light enough we’re going to remove our dodger to prevent damage. I will also tie together the end of our sail bag facing the wind. Then we’ll just have to hunker down and spend the day in this washing machine of an anchorage. Looking ahead our weather window for Friday is still there with a possibility of leaving Thursday evening now presenting itself. We are so ready to leave here. |
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