Our hearts go out to all the people in Chile. We are waiting for word from our cruising friends in Chile and hope all is well with them.
We woke to a knock on the boat from another cruiser waking all of us up early Sunday morning spreading the word of the tsunami warning. Many of us had first hand scary experiences from Tonga so we definitely took it seriously. After the initial urge to untie and leave....in a hurry, we stopped to weigh out our options. We are 17 miles inland up an estuary/river. We are still under the influence of tides and the water is mostly saltwater. With the full moon, we have some big tides and about the time the tsunami was scheduled to hit, the tide would be just starting to ebb. We all pretty much agreed that our best option was to stay put with the thoughts that a muddy bottom and mangrove bank would be a better risk rather than maybe not even making it out to open water in time. Our short pilings were a concern, but we decided to all hang out and if we needed we could use lines to secure the dock back to the bank. It turned out that there were no worries for us after all. The tide and currents were quite disrupted from its usual flow throughout the day. The tsunami brought up to a meter for some of the coastal areas in Northeastern New Zealand but with no damage.