Jumping to Plan D…
12 May 2017 | Town Basin Marina, Whangarei, New Zealand
Photo: Image from NASA-NOAA satellite on May 9th showing Cyclone Donna (left) and Cyclone Ella (right) on either side of Fiji (green area just visible in central gap in cloud-cover)
We were supposed to be leaving New Zealand tomorrow (Saturday May 13th) according to our Plan B but thanks to the development of two late-season cyclones, Donna and Ella, and a depression (low-pressure system) that has moved across New Zealand from the Tasman Sea, we have postponed our departure date again. While a few bolder sailors have headed north already or are planning to go this weekend, we are among the majority who are waiting in New Zealand (30 to 50 boats around Whangarei and maybe 100 in the Bay of Islands) for better conditions. Boats heading east to French Polynesia will be able to make good headway over this weekend on the heels of the combined low from the Tasman Sea and the remnants of Cyclone Donna, which has just dumped yet more rain on New Zealand. However, it would be a rough and increasingly difficult sail into the wind to go north.
At the moment, departure on Thursday (May 18th) is looking possible but it is still rather early to be sure, especially as there are more low-pressure disturbances in the tropics following behind Cyclone Ella. We certainly hope that Ella will be the last of the late-season cyclones but we do not really want to be in the islands to find out if she is not.
The temperature of the surface ocean water is exceptionally high for this time of year, partly because this has been a relatively quiet cyclone season. Thus, conditions are still conducive to the development of these late storms even though cyclone season officially ended on April 30th. Cyclone Donna, with 1-minute sustained winds of up to 140 mph (122 knots or 220 kph), was the strongest South Pacific tropical cyclone on record in the month of May and has caused great disruption particularly in Vanuatu.
In addition to Cyclone Donna being the most intense May cyclone on record, we have continued our "Voyage of Superlatives" with March being the wettest March on record in Auckland (and it third wettest month ever). And just inland of Kawau Island, Warkworth had its wettest April on record thanks in large part to remnants from Cyclones Debbie and Cook. While Cyclone Ella is not as strong as Donna, with 1-minute sustained winds of 85 mph (74 knots or 140 kph) those are conditions that we would certainly like to avoid. Quite frankly, although I like snorkeling in warm waters, I shall be quite happy for the South Pacific Ocean water to cool down a bit more if that will reduce the risk of further late-season cyclones.
Tropical storm categorization around the world is a little complicated. Tropical storms in the North Atlantic and Northeast Pacific are classified using the Saffir-Simpson Hurricane Scale. Tropical storms in the Northwestern Pacific are categorized as typhoons using the Japanese Meteorological Agency's scale. Elsewhere (Indian Ocean and South Pacific), tropical storms are referred to as cyclones although there are three different scales of terminology for the severity of the cyclone.
Within all basins, tropical cyclones are named when the 1-minute sustained winds hit 38 knots (44 mph or 70 kph) but there is some inconsistency between regions as to what constitutes sustained winds. All scales refer to wind speed 33 feet or 10 m above the ground but, confusingly, the average may be calculated over 1 minute, 3 minutes, or 10 minutes. In the South Pacific, tropical systems become termed as cyclones at considerably lower wind speeds than do hurricanes (38 knots and 64 knots respectively). More details in a table at: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tropical_cyclone_scales
We have not been idle during our lengthening stay in Whangarei. Randall has been plugging-away at his list of boat projects while I am cleaning out my email inbox and trying to get the blog fully caught-up (including the end of our 2016 US trip). When our slip owners had to return unexpectedly early, we moved Tregoning across the Town Basin marina to raft-up next to Astarté. We debated about trying to save money by going out to anchor but we really wanted to keep our access to WiFi and the opportunity to shop for perishable food items at the last-minute.
With the increasingly cloudy and shortening days, we were having trouble keeping the batteries fully charged without having to run the engine, so we have finally bought a New Zealand-compatible power-cable and battery-charger so that we can use the shore-power. This is a bit of an investment but given our intended return at the end of the year, we decided that it would be worthwhile. Of course, once we could resume playing music and charging our computers in the boat rather than up at the cruisers' lounge, we wondered why we had not done this weeks ago but when it was sunnier and departure seemed imminent it did not seem worth it. Still, we will continue to use the diesel-heater on the coldest mornings and evenings because running an electric one would probably not be very economical.
So why have we jumped straight from departure Plan B (May 13th) to Plan D (May 18th)? Our friends Jennie and Richard on the cutely named boat Plan Sea, had headed north from the Bay of Islands around the date of our Plan A window (May 6th). However, once they realized that they could not get to Tonga or Fiji fast enough to beat Cyclone Donna, they turned around and beat a hasty retreat back to New Zealand. While we gather that they are OK, we decided that under these circumstances, maybe adopting a Plan C would not be so lucky...