September 30, 2009

Every now and then nature gives us a knock on the head, as if to say, ”Hey, wake up – don’t get too complacent!” (which we don’t).  Here is what happened on this day:

At 0815h, while we were having breakfast, the VHF Marine radio announced a Pan Pan.  Pan Pan is the second highest emergency level call, second only to a Mayday.  When we hear Pan Pan on the radio it captures our attention.

The Pan Pan announcement went something like this:

"New Zealand Maritime Radio has issued a tsunami warning for all coastal areas of New Zealand, STOP.  An earthquake measuring 7.9 on the Richter Scale has been recorded in the Samoan Islands at approximate position 15.3 South and 171.0 West at 1748 UTC (approximately an hour and a half ago) STOP.  All vessels moored or at anchor on the coast are advised to go to sea, STOP.  All vessels at sea are advised to stay well off of the coast, STOP."

This radio announcement was repeated about every 20 minutes.

At 0910h the Pan Pan was repeated with the additional information, "The earthquake has measured 8.3 on the Richter Scale…. and a one metre wave is expected to reach East Cape at 0922h New Zealand Daylight Time, STOP"

FYI:  Samoa is about 1500 miles northeast of our location and East Cape, New Zealand, is about 270 miles southeast of our location.  East Cape, as it is so aptly named, is the most eastern point of New Zealand.

Later that day, after hearing about the tsunami in the news, our son Jeremy asked us, "This makes me wonder what would be the most prudent thing for you to do when a significant tsunami is expected?  Head out to sea as fast as possible?  Get on to shore and head for higher ground, leaving Bella Via to the elements?  Hopefully you have some sort of plan!"

The honest answer is NO we didn't have a plan nor did we head out to sea, nor did we leave the boat for higher ground – although we did deliberate on both options at the time.  At that time, our knowledge of tsunamis was minimal and mainly based on the TV news reporting of the horrible experience in Thailand in 2004.

With only 12 minutes before the wave was expected (as reported on the VFH radio), we immediately ruled out the "go to sea" option because there simply would not be enough time to get far enough from shore in 12 minutes to make it worthwhile, even if we simply abandoned our anchor which we are prepared to do in an emergency.

Although we discussed the option of abandoning ship and climbing one of the many nearby hills, Paul decided, right or wrong, that a one metre wave would not have a significant impact on our location in the lee of the Cavalli Islands.  Mary did, however, get our wallets with ID, cash and credit cards ready to abandon ship.

We also errantly believed that the wave had already passed us without our noticing. 

0922 hours went by with no observable difference in the water.  NZ Maritime Radio continued broadcasting the warning approximately every 20 minutes that the wave would reach East Cape at 0922h, even though it was well past that time.  At about 1130h NZ Maritime Radio announced a cancellation of the warning. 

At about noon, much to our surprise, we heard a local conversation on the VHF radio about how Tutukaka Marina, where we were at anchor just a couple few weeks ago, was being affected by the wave.  This caught our attention once again.  At around 1300h Bella Via swung lightly at anchor, counter to the wind direction.  This can only happen when there is a current that is stronger than the effect of the wind on the hull.  Since we were anchored in a location that normally has no current, we were positive that this was the moment that the wave passed by our location even though there was no observable wave or swell.

Later that evening we got a telephone call from Hilton, our friend from Spindrift, who is the manager at Tutukaka Marina.  He told us about how the water came rushing in and out of Tutukaka for much of the afternoon, rising and falling 70 cm in a matter of a few minutes.  This created some exceptionally strong currents.  Strong enough that the boats on pile berths were heeled over to their gunwales with their masts hanging out and over the marina channel.  One of the piles on which a boat was berthed broke creating some drama when that boat laid along side another until salvage operations got it tied off elsewhere.

Thursday morning we heard that there had been some problems with boats being pushed around by strong currents in Whangarei Harbour where we were a month ago.

We were expecting to see one noticeably small wave.  After hearing Hilton's description of events in Tutukaka and the brief report of events in Whangarei we now realize that even a small tsunami, can create dramatic currents in streams and enclosed harbours that can last for some time.  We obviously don't understand tsunamis enough and have decided to do a little personal research for the future.

Our son’s fiancé, Jenn Sabean (a geologist who has studied tsunamis), sent us this message the next day:

From Jenn Sabean:  “FIRST off, I have to say I am extremely envious of your (safe and) close
encounter with a true tsunami. And of course relieved to know you are both all right...and excited that you want to learn more about tsunamis!!  I don't know if you'll remember this, but my Master's thesis was studying 'major' (>8.0magnitude) earthquakes and their associated tsunamis along the west coast of North America.  Though my project was focused on one small area, it was part of an ongoing struggle to understand the real threat that the
entire coast from northern California to northern BC faces...and it led me to learn so much from a very select few of inspiring researchers all around the world.  When I first travelled to NZ I tracked down one of them - James Goff, who lived in Christchurch then (he is now in OZ).  He is such an incredible researcher and has done a lot of work around New Zealand, the Chatham Islands, and southeast Asia (especially after the horrible 2004 event).  Anyway, he is definitely someone to include in your research, and also my supervisor, Dr. John Clague (Simon Fraser University), and many others.  I also suggest you look up the US Geological Survey website that has a special link to earthquake monitoring around the world.  Oh...I could go on and on...but look forward to chatting with you in much more detail about all this.  What you, and your nearby marina, experienced is something so many folks are not aware of...so many people believe a 'tsunami' to be a big rolling one-time wave, and this
is largely based on how rare they are and how few people have witnessed them...so of course they grow to legendary beasts.  In fact, they are often a series of waves or even 'pulses' of water as you learned, and these can be much more devastating in a way due to the water they suck out from land before returning in a surge of unstoppable force that picks up and carries many damaging things on to land.  They are often mistaken for 'tidal waves' (and CBC even said this today when reporting on another that hit today in Indonesia off the coast of Sumatra!! - something is going on with the world's plate tectonics this week!), but they have nothing to do with tides, as I'm sure you savvy sailors would know.”  End of Jenn’s message

Our tsunami story doesn’t end here!

We mentioned our Auckland friends Liz and Craig in last month’s Journal entry.  They were recently vacationing, with their son Mitchell, in Tonga on their friend’s catamaran and sent us this email:

Liz’s email message:  “OK have we got a good cruising story to tell you!

Just got back yesterday from a lovely week in Tonga on our friends catamaran up in the Vavaus.  Lots of sunshine, warm water, cocktails at sunset, snorkelling, unsuccessful fishing, and fires on the beach, occasional whale watching..... (aaaah why did we ever stop cruising!!!????) ... and one Tsunami.

We were anchored in Port Maurelle - a popular anchorage in the Vavaus - with about 6 or 7 other yachts.  We were all starting to get up in the morning and make cups of tea and have breakfast... I was still lying in bed reading and heard this rushing sound like a waterfall.  I looked out the porthole and thought the tide looked a bit low.  Then someone on deck started
yelling... so we all raced up to see what was happening..... the tide had suddenly dropped by about two metres or more in the bay and the coral bommies were all exposed and they are never above water even at low tide.  It looked like very disturbed water in the shallows.  We, and every other boat in the bay... were desperately trying to get our anchors up and worrying at the same time that by pulling up our anchors we were pulling ourselves further into the shallow turmoil ... then we turned and all of the boats motored full throttle out of the bay to deeper water wondering what was coming next!  If it didn't feel so scary, it would have really been quite funny.  One chartered catamaran had a person on the beach with their tender
.... and they just pulled anchor and left him there and basically headed for Fiji at top speed! We did chuckle a bit later as they went a long way out further than any of the other boats - probably two or three miles, and then they had to sheepishly ask over the radio whether their poor elderly father on the beach was OK.  He was.  The inflatable got swept back and forth quite a bit as the tide surged in and out.

Anyway we sat out in deeper water (about 60 metres felt safe enough) for about 3 hours and watched the beach and the coral disappear as the tide surged back in and then a whole lot of disturbed white water and then the tide would suck right out and expose all the coral again. We measured the coral heads later and they are generally under about 3 metres of water.  The tide went in and out about a dozen times like this over the next three hours.  We were quite nervous about whether anything worse was going to happen - so we spent the day at a more distant coral atoll where we felt a bit safer.  I think the effects of the tsunami in the bay where we were anchored was worse than in other places in the Vavaus because of the shape
of the bay.  Other yachts that were anchored in more open situations only noticed a strong current and the tide rising and falling but not the surge that we experienced.

We did feel very fortunate that it happened in daylight, but in hindsight we wonder if we had stayed on anchor whether we would have still been ok.  Possibly.  Maybe a lot of confusion and dragging around on the anchor as the tide surged in and out.

All the cruisers in the Vavaus have put together quite a bit of relief effort for the village in the northernmost islands of Tonga, (Niutaputapu) which was badly hit... 9 killed and 64 houses destroyed.  Two cruising boats were there at the time and had no problems but are now heavily involved in helping.

Anyway. That is our little cruising story for the year!”  End of Liz’s email message.

And life aboard Bella Via continued on…

October 3, 2009

We left the area, without staying at the Cavalli Islands (it will have to wait for the next time we are near), and travelled to the Bay of Islands.  We had some town business to take care of and headed for Opua, but first an overnight stop at Te Puna Inlet.  We anchored in a very pretty bay but left the next day and sailed into Opua, a busy Customs port. 

The wind was strong out of the northwest and predicted to be so for a few days.  The boats on moorings near the marina were rocking quite a bit from the wind and opposing current and we chose to travel a little over a mile east of the marina and anchored in Waikare Inlet.  We were very sheltered there and the water was calm.  We were close enough to the town that Paul made the trip by dinghy every day to complete our business.  It did get quite choppy in the inlet when the wind came out of the southwest after a couple of days but we were still quite comfortable.