Sailing Magazine
pic. courtesy of Royal New Zealand Navy
By Richard Crockett
Today I continue with part 2 of the Queen’s birthday storm which deals with specifics like what they learnt, a drogue, a hand-held VHF, gear and the shortcomings of short-handed sailing.
In terms of the toll the storm took, these are the gory details as quoted: “Seven boats were abandoned. One was lost with all hands (‘Quartermaster’, a 40ft sloop from New Zealand with three persons on board). How fierce was the storm? We all like to put figures on wind force and wave height when recounting our adventures over and over again, comfortably seated in the Suva Yacht Club, sipping a cold Fiji Bitter. Several skippers reported 80-knot gusts and 15-metre waves (such as ‘Hearlight’s’, shortly before the catamaran broke up and foundered). I can’t really tell. At one point I simply stopped looking at the windmeter. As to the wave height, I personally find it hard to make an accurate estimate from the deck of a small vessel. Enough to say that we felt really tiny when they were towering above us.”
The author closes with this: “Beware – in extreme conditions, it could not be less true! There is not much you can do for others, or others do for you, when all are fighting for their own survival. I am absolutely convinced that if someone had raised a “Mayday” even one mile away from us while we were in the heart of the storm, we would have been totally unable to do anything to help. Furthermore, it becomes quite dangerous to have so many boats in immediate vicinity of each other when conditions worsen: Nobody is on the look-out anymore, and a collision in very high seas would certainly be fatal.”
If you are planning a passage, these two features are a must read.
READ IT HERE: Pages from 2004 07 – SAILING Magazine – OCR
