Dreamers and Doers by Arlene Galisky

Author:Arlene Galisky [Galisky, Arlene]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781532051869
Publisher: iUniverse
Published: 2018-07-09T04:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 14

Planning Angst

Most cruising boats leave the tropics before the start of the South Pacific cyclone season, which runs from November through April. So, as October rolled on, yachtees planning to make the trip to New Zealand met and compared notes. That was when many of us first heard of the Queen’s Birthday Storm. The memory was recent enough to have left a deep impression on those who knew about it, but for others, like us, the story was a bombshell.

Just two years earlier, at the end of May 1994, some thirty-five boats left New Zealand, heading for Tonga. Reports indicate that on June 2, sailing conditions were almost perfect, with trade winds well established. On that same day, however, a small area of low pressure between Fiji and Vanuatu began to deepen and move southward. It moved rapidly, expanding quickly, and by June 4, many of the boats in an area south of Minerva Reefs were directly in its path.

The system brought gale and storm force winds over a 900-nm radius, so was impossible to avoid. Winds of 50–60 kt and high seas battered many of the boats. When it was over, one yacht had been lost, along with three crewmembers, and seven boats were abandoned. Rescue efforts, coordinated by New Zealand, involved ships of four different nations.

The impact of the story was palpable, and cruisers turned to their friends to talk it through. Unfortunately, the more they talked, the greater grew their anxiety. It became a vicious circle, where everyone fed off everyone else, and a couple of doomsayers in the group kept the pot boiling. The rhetoric became so bad that some yachtees talked about spending cyclone season in Fiji, or hiring someone to sail their boat to New Zealand, or maybe even selling their boat.

As if that wasn’t enough to deal with, other stories circulated that played on our fears and further eroded confidence. One such story concerned a cruising couple like ourselves, who ran into trouble a few days out of New Zealand. The man apparently fell overboard during the night. When his wife went looking for him in the morning, she found his tether, still attached to the harness he’d been wearing, dragging the body behind the boat. She couldn’t get him back onboard, but managed to carry on until close enough to call for help.

I told myself that these stories didn’t change anything. We would prepare as best we could and then go to sea and deal with whatever happened, when it happened. But when the old specter of a storm at sea returned to haunt me, I knew my confidence was being undermined. Dave was impervious at first, saying only that the dithering was painful to listen to, but finally it got under his skin too. In exasperation, he groaned, “You’d think no one had ever made the crossing to New Zealand before!”

Other than making a rule not to travel in cyclone season, we hadn’t worried much about weather up to that point.

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