New Zealand - the world's most changeable weather?
Aurora_b
Mike and Liz Downing
Sun 15 Apr 2012 20:03
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A not untypical forecast in New Zealand:
Thursday, 12th April :
Northerly 30 knots gusting 40 knots, tending northwest in the morning. Changing
southwest 30 knots gusting 40 knots in the afternoon. Sea rough. Poor visibility
in showers, fine spells developing in the afternoon.
It's not the strength of wind to note here, but the
direction. Blowing a gale in the morning from the north; blowing a gale in the
afternoon from the southwest -almost the opposite direction. It does that
a quite a bit - huge variability based on hours rather than
days as in most other places we've been to. Another good example was when
back in Whangaroa, a couple of months after arriving in New
Zealand. Whangaroa is an almost landlocked area that fans out
into fiord-like valleys all with great anchorages. The forecast was for a
morning gale from the northeast and an afternoon gale from the southwest -
directly opposite directions. The great debate among us newcomers was
which way would it go round? If the wind was going to back (anticlockwise), then
we should choose the anchorage protected from the west. On the other
hand, if it was going to veer (clockwise), we should choose an
anchorage protected from the east. There was nothing in the forecast to say
and we didn't have any weather maps to help. The morning gale came and blew
30-40kts from the northeast as forecast, but around 14.30 the wind died
completely and all was very quiet for 20 minutes or so. The wind then
blew 30-40kts again, from the southwest! It hadn't backed or veered, it
just stopped, changed direction by 180 degrees and started again.
This type of weather doesn't really make for good
cruising! It's not good for passage making where a consistent wind
direction is helpful - knowing that it's going to blow somewhere from the
same quadrant or hemisphere for a few days helps if trying to make miles. It's
not good for anchoring as it's up anchor every 6 hours or so to re-anchor
to gain protection from the new wind direction. One of the
reasons the Bay of Islands is so good is that there are loads of
anchorages very close together, so it's easy to find protection
- 15 minutes across to the other side of an inlet is often all
that's needed.
We have had a few settled spells and we're told
that in most years they occur quite a lot between February and May, but not this
year when they've been few and far between. However, we do hope that changes
over the next few weeks!
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