Tired

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.