Photo: The track of Cyclone Cook remnants approaching New Zealand at noon on April 13th. Aotea is the island just left of “13 Apr” for the 12:00 13 Apr position.
Wednesday April 12th
4:30 am - After waking several times during the night due to strong gusts causing Wendy (wind turbine) to wail, I get up and move to the salon to read.
8 am - The MetService is giving a strong wind warning for winds today NE 25 knots gusting to 35 then down to 20 in the afternoon. Thursday will start NE 25 then start clocking (go in a clockwise direction) to S 25 in the afternoon and SW 25 late. A passing mention is made of Cyclone Cook being to the north of us but there does not appear to be any cause for concern in the predicted conditions. Thus, we assume that the cyclone is expected to pass far to the east of New Zealand or to peter-out as it moves south over the progressively colder sea. The only suggestion is that the Bay of Plenty (well to the southeast of us) might see 50 knot winds late on Thursday...Thank goodness we are not there.
9 am - The strongest gust that we happen to observe on the wind gauge is 34 knots.
9:15 am - After we returned from a lovely dinner with Steph and Robbie on Red Witch II on Tuesday night, we lifted the dinghy above the water. In a strong gust, it tips inward so that the outboard is against the red paint of Tregoning's cove-stripe. We drop the dinghy into the water and secure it forward and aft, with fenders to protect Tregoning's hull-paint.
11 am - The chop-waves bounce the dinghy enough to snap the old aft line so I jump in the dancing dinghy and replace it.
3 pm - It has rained most of the night and day but during a dry lull in the wind, we take the outboard off the dinghy and then raise and strap the latter upside-down onto the foredeck. Having the dinghy out of the water makes one less thing to worry about.
5 pm - The GRIBs (Gridded Regional Binary forecasts that we receive via the single-sideband radio) predict winds NE 20 tonight and Thursday morning, then clocking and increasing Thursday afternoon until W at 37 knots then steadily decreasing and becoming NW on Friday morning.
8 pm - Most of the day, we have used the anchor alarm on Randall's computer (with a GPS puck and charting software) allowing us to plot Tregoning's exact position, which we can check in the salon rather than on the chart-plotter in the cockpit. While Tregoning swings on a bit of an arc, the anchor has held her very steady with no signs of dragging. If she were to drag and cross a perimeter circle that Randall has established on the electronic chart (centered on the anchor), an alarm would sound. Given our solid position and no change in wind direction predicted overnight, Randall turns off his computer and the anchor alarm. He will restart it if conditions change.
9 pm - Tired by the previous night's disturbed conditions and not wanting to hear Wendy as loudly, I go to sleep in the salon. With 37 knot gusts predicted, Thursday afternoon could be a little tense.
Thursday April 13th
2:30 am to 2:31 am - The anchor alarm sounds.
I awaken instantly to find Randall looking at the chart gasping "Oh, S***!" He leaps up to open and look out of the companionway. I jump out of bed and see on the computer's chart that Tregoning has dragged to the shoreline and will hit bottom or rocks at any moment. Oh, ****, indeed!
Randall shouts that all is well up top and, judging by the relative position of the anchor lights of the other boats, we have not moved at all.
The lesson learned is that when we turn on the computer's navigation system to check our position, we should not look at the chart or arm the anchor alarm until the GPS had made connections with all of the satellites that it sees. Otherwise, as happened here, the GPS position may, initially, be quite inaccurate and, if outside the safe-anchoring perimeter, may set off the alarm.
Within a couple of minutes, as all of the satellites are acquired the GPS repositions the boat on the chart to the correct place (which was inside the safe-perimeter). Confident that the anchor is holding very well, Randall leaves the computer on but we both return to sleep.
7 am - With all of the rain potentially washing material out of the river at the head of the bay, with the wind blowing from that direction, and with an approaching high tide, I have been looking upwind of Tregoning watching for debris. I see a log, the size of a small telephone pole with a few bits of root, slowly drifting down the bay. It looks as though it will pass on our starboard side but I arm myself with the extendable boat-hook to try to fend it off, should Tregoning swing over to meet it. I am relieved to watch it bob past and wonder if it will get caught-up in the shellfish farm downwind of us. Debris washing out of the river and snagging on the anchor rode is a potential worry but once the tide starts dropping that should be less of a concern.
A log floats by Tregoning's solar panel
8 am - The MetService has issued a STORM WARNING for today (storm conditions are greater than 48 knots). How come nothing was said about this yesterday?
For the Hauraki Gulf: NE 25 knots with gusts to 35 rising in the late morning to SE 35 gusting to 45. In the afternoon, winds will be SW 50 knots with gusts to 70 knots unless Cyclone Cook comes further west than currently predicted, in which case, winds could be 60 knots with gusts to 80 near the center. By the end of the day winds will have diminished to NW 20. There will be plenty of rain and thunderstorms. If the cyclone strays west, one possible route is across Great Barrier Island and down the Coromandel Peninsula. Oh, S***! We came to New Zealand to avoid the cyclone season in the tropics...what is going on?
If we have to go through this, please, please let the bad winds arrive during the daytime as currently predicted. Bad weather is so much more frightening in the dark.
Randall checks the GRIBs and MetBob on the SSB. The GRIBS are little changed from Wednesday's forecast although more rain seems likely and MetBob gives an interesting, but not immediately helpful, explanation of how such fast-moving cyclones do periodically survive long enough after leaving the tropics to make landfall in New Zealand. Knowing that we might be subject to an unusual extra-tropical cyclone is not particularly comforting.
There are no marinas on Aotea (Great Barrier Island) so moving to one is not an option. We are committed to staying anchored in Fitzroy Harbour.
We are in a large bay, sheltered from any sea swell but exposed to winds mostly from the east (funneling down the valley from Hirakimata) or west.
Are we better in a smaller, maybe more sheltered, bay such as Kiwiriki just to our south, where Astarté moved yesterday? How many other boats might be there and if it was crowded, would we end up in deeper, more exposed water? Would we have enough time to find out how well the anchor is going to hold there?
No, our philosophy is "Better the devil you know" and in the large Kaiaraara Bay there is plenty of room for swinging as the winds change, for letting out more anchor rode if necessary, and, at worst, for dragging across. There are four other anchored sailboats and a couple of powerboats but we are all spread-out so there is not much need to worry about hitting, or being hit by, anyone else. Tregoning is heavy enough that wind-generated waves should not be too terrible with less than 1 nm fetch in any direction.
We are glad that there are not more boats in the bay but a little relieved that a few others think that this may be an acceptable place to be. If we had been left alone here, we would definitely start to doubt our judgment about this location.
Keep busy.
Empty everything out of the cockpit in case we have to open (or take down) the Bimini windows to relieve wind pressure or reduce damage.
9 am - The winds is no more than 20 knots and there is no rain so we provide extra tie-downs for the dinghy...but should we have quickly deflated it and stowed it below?
Randall lashes a line all along the sail-cover over the mainsail and puts extra ties on the jib to prevent it from unfurling. All loose items are removed or secured.
Extra ties on the sail-cover and furled jib - OK for we hope for 40 to 60 winds but probably woefully inadequate much above that
Keep busy. Conditions are currently pretty benign but waiting for the deterioration around midday is nerve-wracking.
I do the washing-up (usually Randall's job) and bake some oatmeal bars, the perfect comfort food for my increasing anxiety.
If things go badly, I will end-up hating (by association) Jimmy Buffett's song "Cheeseburger in Paradise" because I am now humming it almost continuously (another sign of my anxiety) after hearing Randall learning the guitar chords for it a few days ago.
11 am - I stupidly think that a quick look at the internet on the phone will provide some useful, reassuring information. After seeing two headlines along-the-lines-of "Will this be the worst storm to hit New Zealand in 49 years?" I quickly turn it off and tell Randall that if he wants to find a cyclone tracking map online to be my guest but I cannot cope with the speculation.
We discuss what we might do if the stronger winds develop, such as running the engine and motoring into the wind to relieve pressure on the anchor.
We decide that there is no point in bringing the life-raft to the cockpit because once inflated it would only blow away. If the worst happens and Tregoning gets washed ashore, we would be better-off getting straight into the water in lifejackets. At least, we are sheltered from the 6 m (20 feet) waves that are being predicted in the open sea near the center of the storm.
Keep busy. Make lunch.
I keep thinking that I wish that I could be just a bit like the character in the Tom Hank's movie, "Bridge of Spies" who when asked, as he faces a trial and possible execution, "Aren't you worried?" replied, "Would worrying help?"
These must be the times that non-sailors are thinking about when, on first finding out that we are fulltime-cruisers, they so often immediately ask us about the worst weather conditions that we have had to deal with. I have always wondered why that question comes up so quickly but as we wait to see how bad conditions are going to get, I start to be more understanding of the instinct to be curious about what seems most fearsome.
12:40 pm - The wind has not picked-up or changed direction yet and there are actually blue patches in the sky to the west. Please don't let this mean that the cyclone has stalled and will not arrive until after nightfall.
1 pm - MetService update: Cyclone Cook is moving quickly and is expected to make landfall in the Bay of Plenty around 6 pm. In the Hauraki Gulf winds will change from E 30 knots with gusts to 40 in the afternoon to SW 45 with gusts to 65 then to NW 20 in the evening. There will be rain.
Do crosswords and play card-games to keep occupied.
Why does the book I happen to be reading (Ordinary Wolves by Seth Kantner) have to be full of angst and frightening weather conditions? Set north of the Arctic Circle, it is very good but it is not a warm-and-fuzzy, helpful distraction right now...but how many books do I read, that are not full of suspense or anxiety...hmmm?
2:30 pm - The wind has been gradually moving from NE through E to SE but it is still only around 15 knots with a few higher gusts.
4 pm - The wind has clocked around to SW with no increase in speed. This is a very promising sign that the cyclone has not been delayed, but might the winds still pick-up?
6 pm - Westerly winds still only gusting from 15 to 20 knots.
7 pm - We finally summon up the courage to look at the internet again. The cyclone is making landfall well to the south and east of us. Gusts of 170 kph (92 knots) have been reported from White Island (New Zealand's most frequently active volcano - hopefully uninhabited) 50 km or 27 nm, offshore in the Bay of Plenty.
Phew...for us!
What a mess for the people along the coast where landfall has occurred and in places where all of the associated rain will have caused flooding on top of ground that is saturated from last week's deluge.
But how lucky are we?
The cyclone stayed east.
It moved fast.
It had a small diameter.
In the end, the original forecasts for our area (before Thursday morning's storm warnings) were pretty accurate. The winds clocked on time but were not as strong as the 35 to 37 knots predicted and there was much less rain. Wednesday had actually been the stormier day for us.
Friday April 14th
A steady NW wind of 12 knots with gusts to 18 all morning.
With blue skies early, Randall and I drop the dinghy in the water and row to Bush's Beach for an hour's walk. The river level is higher than it was on Monday but it is probably quite a bit lower than it was during the prolonged rain on Tuesday night and Wednesday morning.
It is good to be off the boat and getting some exercise. As we walk, I cheerfully fling small branches and tree-fern fronds off the path.
But now is the time for reflection...and it is not all comforting.
What if those 92 knot winds had come over us? We could have probably handled 50 knot winds and, maybe, even a few 60 knot gusts without too much damage or risk of dragging, but higher than that?
For what predictions should we have taken down the Bimini, removed both sails, deflated and stowed the dinghy below? If we had heard Thursday's forecast on Wednesday, would we have done all of that before Thursday afternoon?
Should we have been aboard if there was a chance that winds could gust to 92 knots? There was the perfectly good Kaiaraara Hut that we could have stayed in, but without anyone aboard to motor into the wind and relieve the anchor-rode, Tregoning probably would not have stood a chance of staying in place.
Until I heard about the White Island wind-speeds, I had not been worried for our lives, just concerned about our property but now I kept thinking about the sailors who drowned in La Paz, Mexico, because they stayed on their anchored boats instead of using the marinas or going ashore.
What have we learned?
We will find out more about Cyclone Cook after it leaves New Zealand or finally fizzles-out and, when we spend more time online, we will make a more thorough search of the records of cyclones landing in New Zealand. We allowed ourselves to be more complacent than we should have been because we thought that we were south of most cyclone danger, after all, that is why many cruisers in the South Pacific come here for the summer. We made-do with daily MetService weather forecasts and looking at the GRIB wind predictions (based on computer models using reported wind data and known for underestimating the self-feeding effects of organized hurricane/cyclone systems). In the Caribbean or Mexico, we would have been tracking any possibly relevant hurricanes online or with SSB-received maps from the NOAA Hurricane Tracking system. So we need to find out if Australia, for example, has a similar system for this part of the Pacific and, if so, use it to make earlier decisions about heading for a marina.
Locals are already suggesting (on the VHF radio and people we spoke to on the trail) that Thursday's forecast for this area was "another example of 'Health and Safety' (i.e., government agencies) being overly cautious". But if living in Florida has taught us anything, it is to appreciate that hurricanes do not always follow the predicted track, and that with just a few degrees difference in its path, Cyclone Cook could have given us everything that was predicted in the storm warning and maybe more. People may moan about overly cautious forecasts and they may threaten not to react to them next time but just wait to hear the uproar should the forecasts for a storm be deliberately underplayed. Even while people grumble about the general inaccuracy of weather forecasts, we have been lulled by the fancy models and tracking maps into expecting far more detail and accuracy in hurricane/cyclone predictions than is perhaps realistic.
If the reports from White Island are correct, even allowing that there might have been some wind dissipation over the bigger land mass of Great Barrier Island in the case of a direct hit, we were really, really lucky that Cyclone Cook stayed east of us. As they would say in the US, we have truly dodged a bullet.
And for that, we are truly thankful.