Sumatra Earthquakes
Harmonie
Don and Anne Myers
Wed 11 Apr 2012 17:29
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April 11, 2012
If you heard about the Sumatra earthquakes in the news
today, don't worry, we're fine.
We received an alert on our satellite phone when the first
earthquake happened, so knew immediately that something big was going on 1,100
miles across the Indian Ocean to our east. Then we received several emails
from our Australian friends (Sue from Storyteller and Irene from Southern
Princess) with some detail about the tsunami warnings that followed.
We decided to move out of the Chagos Salomon Islands lagoon and into deep water
just in case the tsunami turned out to be ugly. Most of the other boats in
the lagoon (now eight boats in total) did the same. We waited outside the
reef pass in very calm, deep water for several hours until we heard from Sue
that there was a tsunami wave generated by the first big earthquake (8.6
magnitude), but it was less than a meter and did little damage.
We then waited a bit longer to hear if a tsunami wave was generated by the
second big earthquake (8.1 magnitude), but reports on the BBC (which
we listened to on our HF radio) indicated there wasn't, so we scooted back into
the lagoon with the last of the daylight and re-anchored.
All is well that ends well. Never a dull moment on the
good ship Harmonie - even in the middle of the Indian Ocean.
Big thanks to Sue and Irene for the emails from
Australia - we're pretty sure Harmonie is the only boat here with
a land-based support team.
Anne
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