Has normality returned?

 

La Orana!

Met Bob has just issued his weekly weather watch update.  “ The South Pacific Convergence zone remains strong, active, squally and has a few tropical depressions, but there is too much wind shear aloft to allow cyclones to form”.  It is music to our ears.  The sun is shining, the wind is from the north, and we are out of here! 

Beautiful sunsets after the storms

and sunrises

The question remains where to?  The convergence zone may have shifted slightly to the south, but the depressions remain with cyclone season officially persisting well into March.  Our decision becomes a judgement call based on all the weather information available. Last week this would have been problematic as the two main weather models were consistently showing differing forecasts as little as 36h ahead.  Sunday was a case in point with one model suggesting higher wind and rainfall than the other right up until we went to bed on Saturday night.  We woke to a relatively gentle 20 knot wind but within a few hours everything had changed, and we found ourselves in the most ferocious conditions yet: torrential rain and high winds gusting over 50 knots for the next 12 hours.  It all blew up so quickly.  Our neighbours embraced the gentler conditions with a run into town but were then unable to safely return to their boat until Monday.  With them ashore it left us the sole occupants out at the moorings.  We could only watch helplessly as dinghies broke free from davits, monohulls pitched and tossed in the sizeable waves and unoccupied charter catamarans strained on their lines.  

Storm blowing through

It was all pretty scary.  Well, I was scared.  Skipper went off for his daily nap apparently quite unperturbed - a complement, I suppose, to the splicing and knotting abilities of his crew!!  Sadly, I couldn’t share his confidence and remained on watch in the cockpit for several hours, eyes glued to the mooring lines and our position relative to other boats and the islands beyond!  I became a crew obsessed, mesmerised by the strength of the wind and the conditions on the water –awe and fear in equal measure.  Finally, around nightfall the winds began to ease. Heavy rain, thunder and lightning persisted for many more hours, but my vigil at least was over and a bottle of wine cracked open to celebrate! 

Clouds after the storms

and more

Conditions ashore were not so quickly restored, with severe flooding and landslides closing the schools for the next 2 days.  Many of the rivers burst their banks overflowing into lower lying land along with huge volumes of debris and mud. It was a mess.  Even the army were recruited in to help with the clean up.  On Monday we walked past a flatbed truck carrying at least 100 muddy and deformed tyres presumably collected from the adjacent burn. With rubbish disposal and particularly what is and is not suitable for collection an ongoing issue, I would imagine a ditch is as good a place as any to dump an old tyre…until it rains, and the river can’t flow as it should. It took several days for things to return to normal but by Thursday the school busses were back on the roads, the fishing boats re launched, the cargo ships and passenger ferries from Tahiti reappeared at the dock and even the kite surfers were whizzing about on their boards again. It was as if nothing had ever happened. 

Army recruits

The sun returns

Out at the moorings our neighbours emerged from their preferred “hurricane holes” to reclaim buoys in the bay. Gabriel had fared OK with his two anchors in Taha’a.  Gaelle had headed to Baie Faaroa on Raiatea sensibly avoiding the river outflow which caused severe problems for the few boats anchored there and Mohammed was just relieved that his little monohull had remained attached to his two mooring lines.  Aboard Papillon we tidied up.  So little had been done over the past two weeks that we seemed to have an endless list of chores.  Skipper(successfully) tackled some ongoing electrical issues with the windlass and the inverter while I cleaned… and slowly but surely, we got back on track as well.  The plan was to leave on Friday but that slipped back to Sunday with jobs taking longer than expected and  continuing strong winds but today we made it. The weather models are finally aligning, MetBob is happy, and we are away.

Slipping away

Courtesy flags hoisted

Slipping our last lines and motoring gently north towards Taha’a was like a weight lifting.  Raising the sails after almost 3 weeks of  confinement felt like a new chapter and with spirits high we sailed down the west side of Raiatea. Currently we are sitting just short of Passe Rautoanui at a new anchorage we wanted to explore for our next visitors, Duncan and Jenni who arrive in three weeks.  Modest aspirations but  a delight to have a change of scenery…and a change of colour.  After days of grey skies and murky green water the lagoon is shimmering again.  Azure blue over the sand, indigo blue over the deep.  It is a thing of beauty.  We still have to decide where to go next but we will leave that for tomorrow. Tonight, we are basking in a glorious sunset, the sharp lines of Bora Bora dominating the north and the gentler slopes of Raiatea stretching out to the south.  It is an idyllic spot.  Sadly, the restaurant we wanted to try is closed but we will leave that for future visitor entertainment.  The important thing is that we are on the move again and at least for now normality has returned.