Opua: still storm bound
Opua: still storm bound
The second low is passing over us today with more power than the first. About every twenty minutes a squall hits and the wind jumps from 15-20 knots to more than 30.
An hour ago the dinghy, one of a succession of Avon Redstarts I have owned, became airborne in 45 knots despite being tied with both bow and stern lines. I waited a few minutes for the heaviest rain to pass, then went out and pulled it into the cockpit and deflated it. The ease of doing this is one of the advantages of having a small inflatable dinghy without an outboard. Another is getting rain water out of them by simply flipping them over.
facing northeast where a small moored vessel’s jib has come unfurled and is flogging itself apart. I don’t know anything about the big schooner, which came in and anchored this morning.
The barometer is 995 mb and still falling. The lowest reading two days ago was 1001.
Winds of up to 50 knots are predicted, and we’ve already had gusts near that.
It is all supposed to clear by tomorrow when I hope to get ashore again.
One of my favorite parts of this life is sitting on deck, listening to music on the cockpit speakers, and having a drink near sunset. I particularly enjoy Wednesday evenings when I can do this and watch the start of the Cruising Club races as well. Although I did not expect to be able to yesterday, conditions improved in late afternoon and I did.
The fleet usually consists of 25 to 30 boats, two or three are 40’ to 45’ and the rest smaller. About a half dozen are racers, including one 40’ and several skiffs with hiking rails similar to Sydney Harbor 18’s. Five or six Flying 15’s race as a class.
The starting line is a hundred yards north of my mooring across what is also a legal anchorage occupied by transients, which adds interest to the pre-start maneuvers. Yesterday the winds were at 18 knots, but gusted to 30 briefly just at the start.
I finished reading Mark Helprin’s THE PACIFIC. I liked all but one of the stories. Many were excellent. Most were about the land, not the sea, and the title story is about a young wife working in a armaments factory in California during WWII while her husband is fighting in the Pacific. One was about a solo sailor sailing into a hurricane. Interestingly though Helprin is obviously not a sailor and got many details wrong, he got the essentials right and it is a good story.
Thursday, November 9, 2006