Headline: It be blowing in Samoa!
3 March 2008
Encanto Website Entry
We are experiencing our fourth day of a low-pressure trough that hangs above us. This means that it's "blowing like stink" in the anchorage. We don't own a wind meter, but other boats report constant winds of 30 knots, with gusts to 45. Predictions have it that we will be in these conditions for another two or three days.
We've cancelled social engagements on shore, in order to stay and watch our boat spin on our mooring. Of the six occupied boats (s/v Hot Ice, Friction, Talia, Drifter, Elsewhere and Encanto) four of us are secured to moorings and two are on their anchors. The two boats on anchors have set two and three anchors out and they are holding. On the first day of this blow, both of these boats dragged, one had lost their steering cable so it was an awful time for them. In addition, there remains a WW2 vintage landing craft, a catamaran and two abandoned sailboats afloat in the anchorage. Knowing where everyone 'sits' is essential so we don't play bumper boats.
Night before, our dinghy was hoisted on the starboard side of the boat, the winds were strong enough to lift it over the lifelines and spilled our fuel tank and oars out on deck. It was O-dark hundred (always happens in the dead of night). The crash and boom, woke us from our sleep. Running up on deck, the Captain hoisted and lashed the dinghy down on deck.
The next day we would find that letting the dinghy ride out the winds from the stern was a viable alternative since we thought we might need to go ashore later on in the day. During the day, we watched as other's dinghy rose out of the water, splashing back down with a thud. People were placing five-gallon jugs in their dinghys to hold them down. This morning we woke to find ours three-quarters filled with rainwater. Time to bail it out before it sank. The seas are rough and Judy has taken a sturgeron as her seasickness returned and she is bedridden. Sleep is her way of dealing with the discomfort.
The wind is so strong that the crests of waves are blown off, creating a spray that casts across the anchorage. The local weather advisory calls for frequent squalls, occasional white outs, road flooding and motorists advisories for careful driving. The palm trees sway to a near permanent lean to the northwest and the line of commuters are blocked up due to road flooding. Not a good day for a casual stroll.
We are experiencing a slow moving trough, actually there are four troughs in the area, the one affecting us is overhead and extends from the Tuvalu to Samoa to the southern Cook Islands. We keep a watchful eye on the entire area bounded by Northern Cook Islands to the Southern Cook Islands and to Australia. All movements in this area can change and affect us. We are in Samoa; latitude is 14°S and longitude 171°W).
The overhead trough is called C-3, with winds of 25 to 30 knots, rough seas, NW to NE movement. The trough overhead of us is in the convergence zone (where the subtropical and tropical weather patterns meet).
Obviously anchorage and wind watching is the Captain's current pastime. One Captain says that the horizontal wind force is gusting at up to 45 knots, but since we are in a ravine, the vertical wind force is greater and could be a force coming down of up to 50 knots. That's enough wind to knock down a mast of some lightly built racing boats. Whoa!
We are getting reports from the Fiji (FMS) and USA (NOAA) weather stations both are watching these troughs and predict no danger, no cyclone warning, just slow moving troughs with strong winds, squalls and cells of low pressure. However, they are not consistent in their predictions of the direction that these troughs are moving. Fiji has them moving from a cyclical form to an elongated pattern, the center of which is north of Samoa and switching wind direction from the northeast to the southeast then shifting to easterly winds in the next few days. NOAA is predicting a shift from the northwest to east.
Fifteen degrees south of us is a cold front moving towards the Cook Islands. We will keep an eye on it.
So, this is paradise. If any of you think it is time to trade in your house to move to an island in the tropics or buy a boat, well, you might want to reconsider. These are the kind of days that make a home in the 'burbs (suburbia) of California mighty attractive.