Storm Force

Well that was no fun at all.. but we're ok and at least we didn't get hit by the reported six boats that dragged anchor at the same time. After things simmered down one of them re-anchored uncomfortably close to us - close enough that he could tell us without raising his voice that he had just bumped into another boat.

We rely a lot on weather prediction tools such as Wily Weather and Windy. Generally they are excellent services but they can get it wrong - particularly as we move further away from Moreton Bay which seems to have more weather data collection points feeding in.

I thought we had missed the worst of the low pressure passing through but we ended up getting over an hour of very harrowing winds. I saw 55 knots on our wind speed indicator which is over 100 km/hr.

BOM had issued a Storm Force warning for the Capricornia area.

If you follow such things you would know the various warning categories that BOM issues:

Strong Wind Warning: Don't go out.

Gale Warning: Oh boy, we told you not to go out and now look what has happened.

Storm Force: As we later found listening to the VHF, Gladstone Harbour starts issuing proclamations over the radio for anchored cargo ships to have their engines and their second anchor ready to deploy because the twenty tonne first anchor they put out may not cut it.

Hurricane Force: Good Bye.

Anyway, we were thankfully on a national parks mooring buoy rather than our own anchor and came out of it reasonably intact.

The wind forced us to make some changes to our modus operandi.

Firstly some Emperor's New Clothes adjustments to our sun canopy.

Also, we try not to look at the new holes in the deck where the canopy smashed into it as part of its bid for freedom.

And finally we decided we really only need one life buoy because if we both fell overboard there would be no one to throw the second one in anyway.