Cyclones don’t understand calenders

Cyclone season in the Pacific is opposite to hurricane season in the Caribbean. Over here, it starts November 1 and is supposed to be over by the end of April. This year there was absolutely nothing until late March when Cyclone Debbie slammed into northern Queensland (getting us pretty wet with heavy rains in Brisbane). Everyone assumed the show was over, no more cyclones now as ‘the season’ was over.

At the end of April we did our passage over to New Caledonia arriving after a nice four days of sailing (there’s a nice video too). Clearing into Noumèa was easy (thanks to Andrea) and we’ve rested and have been deciding where to begin our new adventures.

However, we always keep an eye on the weather and both Andrea and I picked up on the development of a low just north of Vanuatu the other day. Watching it carefully, we see it is developing into a late season (totally unexpected by the weather forecasters…) cyclone.

The many weather models that predict where a cyclone will go have been confused for the past few days. Sometimes showing it coming over the top of New Caledonia and lately showing it coming over the entire Vanuatu island chain (who was badly hit just two years ago). Vanuatu Meteorology is closely following the cyclone too on their website.

So, instead of looking for a nice place to go diving, we looked for a hole to hide out in while this cyclone decides what it’s going to do. We are located in Bai Ue in the south of the island nation. It’s got high (500m) mountains around us and we are well protected from all angles of winds except from the north and west. Since the trade winds and the winds from this cyclone will be coming from the southeast, we should be in a good spot.

However, Cyclone Donna doesn't appear to obey her scheduled appearance to only show up between November 1 and April 30. So perhaps the predicted path of this cyclone will not go as planned either. We’ll continue to monitor the projections of Cyclone Donna’s path and in the meantime enjoy being back at anchor.

In the meantime, Tea spent hours last night to put together an amazing ‘Japanese Night’ for us complete with:

• Sashimi: tuna, salmon and kingfish
• Sushi Rolls: tuna, salmon and kingfish
• Seaweed Salad
• Dumplings: pork and shrimp
• Squid stuffed with fish and vegetables on the BBQ
• Miso Soup
• Saki