Friday 13^th June – Storm Force Winds and a Power Failure

Thankfully, Arnamentia was not at sea on Tuesday night when near hurricane strength winds hit New Zealand.  One of the worst places to suffer was the Whangaparaoa Peninsular, right where we are staying.  The light house meteorological station on Tiritiri Matangi (see previous post) recorded a gust of 170 kph just over 100 mph!  At some point during the night the power went off.  Everything in the flat runs on electricity, even the gas heater has electric controls.  At about 7 o’clock in the morning we were just bracing ourselves to go out and boil a pan of water on the barbecue for coffee when the power came back on.   A couple of trellis panels came down around the car port – let’s hope Lindsey and Raewyn don’t have as much trouble getting replacements as we did in Lymington a couple of months ago.

Several houses suffered much worse damage with many trees having trees fall on them, causing complete destruction; it is amazing that there was no loss of life.  Fingers crossed that when we do set sail in a few weeks time the weather gods will treat us more kindly. 

Our time in the ‘shid’ is drawing to a close.  Most of the fittings are now bolted back down onto the new decks and we are due to be taken out of said shid on Monday 23^rd June.  Before we begin the job of reassembling Arnamentia’s insides we intend to get a fire hose onto her decks to check for leaks.  These would be a devil to locate if not identified before all the internal panels and head linings are back in place.  We are also due to have the mast fitted early that week and the anti-fouling done.  We’ll also need to polish the topsides and the above-deck coachwork and re-connect all the electronic gadgetry we pulled out.  So, all in all we’ve got a bit to be getting on with one way or another.