November 2012
Weather Watch in Vavau
For the first
two weeks of November in Vavau we are looking at the weather systems roaring
across the Great Australian Bight into the Tasman and onto New Zealand, because this is where the weather that affects
the South West Pacific originates. We
are specifically looking at the volatility and intensity of the spring equinox
gales that should start decreasing over southern latitudes from mid November so
we can commence our passage south to make landfall in Opua.
Sadist
Sailors we are not. If we can use
technology and weather predictive software to our advantage we will, because
getting there in safety, comfort and in one piece without outside assistance is
half the fun for us.
At this
time of the year there are literally hundreds of yachts from round the world either
currently on the water en route to New Zealand or in the starting blocks in
Tonga, Fiji and New Caledonia assessing weather data and sharing their thoughts
on the 1000 mile nowhere to hide open ocean passage south, with a reputation
for ever linked to the Queen’s Birthday. Irrespective these cruisers have selected New Zealand over summer as the
place to avoid the cyclone season in the Pacific as they split time and budget
between working on their boats and sailing or driving the length and breadth of
the country, before they start heading back up to the Pacific islands in April
to continue their mostly westward cruising around the planet.
In Tonga,
Fiji and New Cal pre-departure inter-vessel communication is mostly in group huddles
in the waterfront bars and cafes or literally in the public domain over the VHF
and SSB Radio frequencies and it’s the ultimate in live reality entertainment
going. The same weather broadcast can
be interpreted in dozens of ways by dozens of different cruisers with the
resulting misinterpretation becoming misinformation in short order. Cruisers are prone to act like reef fish
swimming every which way depending on who has the gift of the gab on the
airwaves. Well that’s how it sounds to
us. We feel it’s more ‘Caveat Emptor’ let
the sailor beware; select your weather source, make your own call and stand by
it until further updated information is available for analysis and interpretation.
Compared
with just five years back there are countless weather prediction websites, software
programmes, professional weather routers, government agencies, satellite system
providers, weather fax, pactor modem and good old radio operators out there
vying for business. Some are free and
others only a credit card or PayPal debit away. Either way the cruisers challenge is to find
the most user friendly and lowest bandwidth method for downloading data whilst
at sea.
Notwithstanding
the humour generated listening to the cruisers, the reports of Hurricane Sandy
pushing 14ft tidal surges into New York harbor and downtown Manhattan this week
confirms the importance of heeding weather warnings and getting interpretation
correct.
Underway
Finally we
decide the time is right to up anchor so we visit the authorities to clear out
of Vavau for Opua, top up the fuel tanks with duty free diesel and head to Port
Maurelle our favorite anchorage at the western end of the island where we can
operate the watermaker, scrub the hull and have our last swims in the tropics
in crystal clear waters. There are a
dozen yachts in the anchorage all with the same plan prepping to sail for
either Opua, Whangarei, Auckland,
Tauranga or Nelson.
Pic 1 At anchor Port Maurelle
False Start
Sitting at
Port Maurelle we learn of a possible cyclone, maybe the first of the season developing
north of Vanuatu which looks like it may track southeast over Fiji, Tonga and
then toward NZ over the course we are planning to take to Opua so we defer our
departure and return to Vavau to anchor in the shelter of the landlocked lagoon
and clear back into the country until the system passes. A small number of other cruisers
surprisingly make the decision to press on from Port Maurelle and sail south to
NZ with dire consequences in one case, for a yacht named “Windigo”.
Meanwhile back
in Vavau waiting for the next Weather Window
Sitting
back in Vavau waiting for the cyclone to materialize all we got was a bit of
rain and a few hours of 20+ knot winds with the worst passing to the west on a
southerly course to affect the yachts en route to NZ many of which either weathered
it in Nukualofa or at Minerva Reef or toughed it out at sea.
SSB Radio
listeners soon picked up on the aforementioned “Windigo” rescue unfolding and
were counting themselves lucky they were not out there.
Meantime the local Vavau Radio VHF airwaves were alive with amateur weather forecasters
to entertain us with their take on the weather until news of local intrigue took
precedence. A yacht was reported high
and dry on the reef to the south east of Vavau and all cruisers were asked to
refrain from going out to look or help as it was a police matter, but they asked
if any cruisers knew of any small white stock European yacht overdue from crossing
the Pacific this season. This got
the cruiser net gassing and it was subsequently announced that there was a body
in the cockpit but no other details were being released at this stage. All and sundry cruisers were trying to recall
who it might be because in the course of sailing across the Pacific you tend to
recognize yachts from different ports of call.
Being a single male in a small white yacht we
immediately thought of an elderly Kiwi gent from Tauranga we had met in Panama who
had not responded to an email we sent him from Tahiti. So P trundled up to the Police Station to ask
if it was this particular yacht. Instead
of being helpful the police sort of interrogated him without answering his
request and simply asked that he leave his mobile phone number and he left
rather confused with the police informing they would be in touch. Later the same day on checking out for the
second and final time as the weather was now coming right we asked the Customs
officials about the yacht on the reef and they had no trouble advising us it
was definitely not our friend. Phew what
a relief!!
To add to
the intrigue, we later heard the boat on the reef was loaded with illicit drugs
and the subject of a major trans-national border control collaboration that was
tracking the yacht across the Pacific from South America enroute to Australia,
until it came to grief on the reef.
Off Again
So off we
go again from Vavau out to the Port Maurelle anchorage, where we wait for
another few days until the swell left from the passing weather dies down. When
we finally get out its still rough and blowing 15/20 knots so we tuck in a reef
to power through it sailing for 6 hours at 8knots but then the primary GPS that
drives the main navigation system fails and we have to connect a backup system via
a laptop chart system, which is ok but not really satisfactory. To fix the problem we decide to stop the night in an anchorage at
Nomuka -Iti in the Hapaai’s, where we
had previously stopped back in 2007.
B to
her credit remembered reading something about this problem and hunted out some
notes. Turns out the GPS aerial has a
small miniature battery that speeds up satellite acquisition and if this
battery fails the system simply needs to be turned off and rebooted to acquire
in a slower manner. That’s all it took
so we stayed the night had a good sleep and did not subsequently turn the
system off again until we reached Opua.
Pic 2 Sailing Pic Departing Vavau, Pic 3 At Anchor Nomuka-iti
From the Hapaii’s
we sailed south for 36 hours to spend a night at anchor inside Minerva Reef
North which is a strange experience literally at anchor inside a low near round
reef about a mile in circumference in the middle of the ocean sheltered from
the ocean swells outside.
Pic 4 Minerva Reef
The 5 day
sail from Minerva to landfall at midnight off Cape Brett and subsequent
berthing on the Quarantine Dock at Opua at 3am was the end of an uneventful
often calm but at times a typically gutsy sail particularly as we neared the NZ
coast.
Home at
Last
That’s it
back at the point of departure…deal done, loop the loop, threesixzero, circled
the bubble. Time for some shut eye until
the border control people wake us with the Customs Patrol reality television
show people in tow !!! But
guess what, they are not coming aboard Musketelle with their sniffer dogs
because we have a certain Turkish national feline on board that will disrupt
their precise sniffing role, so we get the low profile no less thorough no
camera treatment by the same official who checked us out back in 2007, and that
suits us and WiFi just fine.
We cannot
go into the marina and are required to anchor off until the border officials
can give us more information about how they are going to handle WiFi. We anchor in clear water and are pleasantly
surprised when our former yacht ‘Lion New Zealand’ aka ‘Phantom of the Straits’
that we owned for 10 years takes her mooring next to us. Talk about 6 degrees of separation with our two
Ron Holland designed babies side by side, that brought back some memories.
Pic 1 Lion NZ Opua
We are
subsequently informed that WiFi is required to be quarantined aboard Musketelle
at anchor either off Opua or anywhere else we nominate for six weeks until 11
January at which time she then goes ashore to a land quarantine facility at
Takanini, South Auckland for 10 days before becoming eligible for liberation to
terra firma NZ. We promised her this
outcome in Marmaris way back in 2009 when she said she wanted to come all the
way to NZ with us. What were we
thinking, many thousands of dollars later this wild Turkish Kedi is about to
become a Kiwi Kat. Turkey to
Takanini to life on the Tamaki…..what a story, we cannot wait for her book.
The Windigo
Rescue Saga
The 38ft
yacht “Windigo” en route from Port Maurelle to NZ is ultimately hit by the
predicted heavy weather south of Minerva Reef and its crew of two knocked
around in the dead of night resulting in them requesting rescue, which involved
another yacht electing to sail back to assist, multiple flights by both RNZAF
and New Caledonian rescue aircraft, a container ship diverting and the RNZN
frigate Otago which steamed at full speed from Auckland for over 30 hours to
reach the scene. The couple were
initially rescued by the container ship and then transferred to the frigate
Otago for return to Auckland. Clinically
efficient and on the surface a credit to all concerned in rescuing a couple in
distress on the high seas.
But maybe
not……
The
decision to proceed with the rescue was no doubt predicated on the initial call
for assistance from Windigo which may have been premature but that is the role
of professional rescue experts to ascertain before setting the full rescue
mission in motion. Subsequently watching
television footage of the rescued couple merrily disembarking RNZN Otago in
Auckland and looking at other media reports had some cruisers obviously
concerned that this very costly rescue effort was maybe due to misjudgment and
misinformation by the crew of Windigo.
Worse the decision by the rescue co-ordinators to allow the yacht to be
left drifting as a hazard to other vessels in the knowledge that tens of
cruisers would be sailing from Tonga and Fiji through the same waters in the
weeks following, never mind its fate beyond.
Apparently the rescued couple naively harbored plans to reunite
themselves with the yacht at a later time, so they requested the yacht not be
scuttled and the rescue authorities obliged!!!
Musketelle
on the last leg of her circumnavigation was one of those following yachts and
we were not impressed with the lack of knowledge and whereabouts of Windigo,
with Taupo Maritime Radio requesting details of any sighting position to be
reported. Not at all comforting.
We departed
Vavau, Tonga with the yacht ‘Follow Me’ and indeed this yacht became entangled
with one of the liferafts dropped by the RNZAF Orion, and after diving over to
cut away the tangle then knifed and sank the liferaft on instructions of NZ
authorities. It could have easily been
Windigo that ‘Follow Me’ or any number of us could have collided with possibly
requiring another rescue, so ‘Follow Me’ decided to guesstimate the drift
factors then went looking for Windigo, successfully sighting her happily
drifting on her waterline with sails neatly furled and after 5 days the diesel
engine still idling away. This was not a
disabled yacht.
The fact is
Windigo was knowingly sailed into the path of a possible cyclone resulting in a
no doubt bad but not life threatening experience for its crew but also a costly
multi craft rescue effort that was probably not necessary. There were numerous yachts in the greater
area of water en route to NZ at the time Windigo called for assistance, most of
which had departed before the cyclones path was accurately predicted and they
all got through the same weather system and seas with known discomfort and
tension associated with open ocean passage making, with individuals on other
yachts also getting physically knocked around.
NZ
registered yachts departing NZ are required to comply with the at times
contentious safety requirements of ‘Section 21’ which involves costly safety
and communications equipment with an emphasis on accessing weather reports. Incredibly during our six years
circumnavigating we regularly listened to some cruisers lacking the most basic
adequate equipment instead relying on other cruisers for relaying weather
forecasts and conditions, which is the equivalent of nautical Russian Roulette
that relies on others covering the cost of mopping up the collateral
damage. The cost of an SSB Radio is
often sighted as the reason for inability to source weather at sea but in
recent years the more reliable alternative, the SatPhone has brought the cost
down markedly. Unfortunately many yachts that have satellite phones hold them
exclusively for that last resort emergency call without researching the options
to source and download compressed weather data in all its various on-screen
formats.
For the
hundreds of ocean cruisers sailing the planet that go out of their way to dig
deep to fund training and maintain the systems and safety equipment required to
survive at sea this sort of high profile rescue might make for good social
media footage but that’s all.
Notwithstanding any sailor wants to be caught out and be hit by heavy
weather there is an absolute necessity to plan for the worst, have storm sails
and contingency plans to ride weather out.
There are today countless weather prediction programmes freely available
at little or no cost to avoid and minimize weather impact so it is not unusual
to meet cruisers who circumnavigate without ever unfurling their storm sails.
Windigo was
a retired charter yacht from the Caribbean being repositioned to NZ by its
owner to be imported on arrival and such vessels are renowned for being built
for purpose and minimally equipped for off shore sailing. Adding solar panels, a wind generator and a
satphone as a last resort backup for emergency calls do not make a bluewater
cruising yacht. Ironically if Windigo
was to have reached NZ safely and then been used to depart offshore again as an
NZ vessel she and her crew would be required to meet the onerous Section 21
safety and training requirements alluded to.
Making that
emergency call was an easy get out of jail for the Windigo crew, but the ramifications are far reaching, not to mention in this case a major financial
loss to her owners with the yacht at last reports still drifting out there as a
major hazard to other mariners.
Little
wonder this rescue is being thoroughly analysed because to the genuine cruising
sailor the Windigo saga grates as it impacts negatively on cruisers, and the
reality is this weather system was not much more than a gale.
