Aboard Dignity (Lagoon 420) Blog

The weather forecast is grim. Here’s what we’re currently looking at with our area highlighted :

Southeast 30 knots gusting 40 knots, but 35 knots gusting 45 knots north of Whangaparaoa Peninsula, rising to 40 knots gusting 50 knots but 45 knots gusting 55 knots in the north this morning. Becoming southeast 40 knots gusting 50 knots everywhere this evening. Sea rough but very rough in the north. Sea becoming very rough but high in the north this morning, then very rough everywhere this evening. Fair visibility in showers developing this morning, becoming poor in rain from afternoon, heavy at times.

Fortunately we’re somewhat protected where we’re anchored. The wind is often under 10 knots but every now and then we hear the express train coming in as a lump of air makes it through the hills and smashes into us.

The weather kept us on the boat all of yesterday. Helen read and I played on the X-Box. Nothing really productive but that’s not a bad thing. We have to try and enjoy ourselves.

By the evening the winds had picked up and the express trains started to run in. The water in the bay developed a bit of a chop. We went to bed for a very restless night. I had the anchor alarm on beside me which went off several times always due to the boat swinging on the anchor rather than the anchor slipping. The wind couldn’t seem to make up it’s mind which way through the hills to come so we would swing this way and that.

I had to go on deck a few times to check things out. The kayak got flipped onto it’s side during one intense gust so I had to tie that down more effectively. The fishing rod was nearly blown off so I rescued that. Neither of us got a lot of sleep and feel pretty tired this morning. It feels like first night out on passage.

The medium term forecast is also giving us some grief. Whereas we’d been expecting this mess to be followed by north easterlies we are now forecast to have southerlies by the end of the week. Today low tide is at 9:43am and advances nearly an hour a day. If we left here to go south we’d want to leave around low tide so that we cross the Colville Channel on an incoming tide (because the swell is incoming too). That puts some pressure on us to leave sooner rather than later this week. But that would mean sailing in rougher overall conditions. It’s a toss up as to which is better. The earliest possible departure is now Thursday so a decision will only be made then. We’ll know a bit more tomorrow as the forecasting environment right now is highly variable.

With the southerlies being forecast soon one other thing we may need to consider is moving the boat as we have less protection from a southerly swell than we might like. That may mean sacrificing our current patchy internet connection. Safety obviously comes first but it’s a lot to weigh up. On this last point we look ok for today.

Even though we didn’t have internet, a morning check of the weather via the email facilities on the side band radio were looking bad for the following week. Some really heavy weather was coming down on Tuesday. Another reason for moving on sooner rather than later. On the radio we heard that the poor folks up in Fiji were bracing themselves for another bout of heavy wet weather. From the sounds of things the nasty low pressure system we’d had our eyes on was currently passing Fiji and on it’s way down here. Joy.

For Saturday, the weather was promising to be good so we headed ashore and tied up at the dock. Our guide said that it was a 40 minute walk to some local hot springs. From the map I had I was somewhat sceptical about this. We popped into the Great Barrier Lodge to see if their shop had fresh milk (they didn’t) and to ask the way to the hot springs. They also said it was 40 minutes walk along the road and gave us directions.

We duly followed their directions and about an hour later reached the trail head to the springs. Here we were told (by the DOC sign) that it was another 2 hours round trip to the hot springs. We know we almost halve the DOC timings so we pressed on and completed the trip another half hour later.

At the hot springs were two couples, all au naturale, enjoying the springs. We joined them and ended up chatting. They were all from Waiheke Island so we received a few interesting tips about visiting. We also received the usual (and very welcome) invitation to visit the couple we were closest to. We’ll see how things work out. We quite like the idea of the cinema there which has casual seating and allows next door take away curries in to be eaten while watching movies.

As we wanted to move the boat we soon bade our farewells and headed back to the start. We popped back into the Great Barrier Lodge to see if they would do lunch but their restaurant was closed for lunch. So we headed back to Dignity for a snack arriving about 4 hours after we left. Some 40 minute trip to the springs????

After lunch we headed off to Typhena Bay. It was another upwind motor, something we can easily contemplate with the diesel engines. We arrive and dropped the hook in Mulberry Bay only to find their was no internet service. We then raised the anchor and moved around the corner so we were in line of sight to the cell phone tower. There we had a signal but not brilliant. We managed a quick Skype call to Ben, Sam and Amy who were with our friends Anne and John. It was nice to see them but the video was almost impossible.

Once we gave up on the Skype call we lowered the dinghy and headed ashore to find the shop. We chose the wrong beach and ended up having to climb up the road that passed over (what I believe to be) Mullberry Hill to reach the next beach. There we picked up some fresh bread (turned out to be sour bread) milk and a few other things. We trudged our way back up over the hill, now feeling a little weary, to the dinghy and headed back to the boat.

This morning the forecasts still point to some very nasty weather coming through on Tuesday so we’ll sit here until that’s past us. We have good holding here and protection from the east and north which is where we’re going to be pummelled from on Tuesday. The winds are currently forecast to be 40 knots gusting up into the high 50s.

It has rained a lot overnight and the wind has picked up a bit. It would be nice to get ashore again before it becomes impossible.