May 6, 2022
A bunch of boats left today from Opua, New Zealand, bound for Fiji. Most or maybe all were part of an ill-conceived rally where herd mentality is often strongest.
Here’s a screenshot from Marine Traffic showing the line of lemmings, ah, boats…
We counted 26 boats looking like they’re heading offshore in that image.
We’re not just reveling in schadenfreude here. We’ve been watching and waiting for a weather window that will get us up to New Caledonia and still don’t see one we’d consider even marginally acceptable. That’s why we were shocked and surprised by this mass exodus.
Here’s why we say “Oh hell no!” In the graph below (from PredictWind), the wind speed isn’t all that bad. It gets up to 25 knots, but that’s mostly from behind. What is of concern is that when the wind is up to 25, there is also a higher CAPE (Convective Available Potential Energy), which means a greater potential for squalls and gusts with wind speeds much higher than forecast. There is also a front that moves through this area, again indicating the probability of stronger gusts.
Below is the wind forecast table from PredictWind from a weather routing where gust in excess of 30 knots are shown.
While those gusts are a deal-breaker for us, a bigger problem that we see are very large seas with a short period as shown below.
Forecast wave height on some models is in excess of 3 meters with a period under 8 seconds. YUK!
Here are the numbers…
We think a lot of cruisers look mostly at wind and don’t pay enough attention to sea state. For us, it might be the most important factor when planning a passage. Don’t forget that on top of these swells are wind waves that in this case, will likely combine into vertical sided monster waves. They may not be boat-killers but for us, they could likely be dream-killers.
This could be a “last-straw” passage for us. That’s the kind of passage that finally makes us give up this crazy cruising stuff. One really bad passage can outweigh all that is beautiful and wonderful about cruising. We’re not ready to give up the good stuff yet.
We’ve written quite a few times about the herd mentality that seems to outweigh logic when it comes to choosing a weather window. A boat or two decide the time is right for them to make the jump (or more likely, they have people with booked plane tickets flying up to meet them and they have to be there in time).
Others that were patiently waiting for the right weather window start saying “well, if it’s good enough for John and Karen, it must be okay” and that mushrooms into 12 more boats making the same questionable decision.
This seems to be compounded when there’s a rally involved. We don’t know if the rally organizers suggested this was a good weather window or not. I do know that this rally provides weather routing and not all weather routers are created equally. In this case, herd mentality and perhaps bad advice resulted in 26 boats heading offshore at the same time, into “Oh Hell No” weather.
We wish these 26 boats luck and hope we’re wrong about the conditions they’ll face. We send these wishes while sitting comfortably in a warm, steady boat (tied up in a berth), while drinking a nice glass of Pinot Noir. -Rich
Epilogue: From what we’ve been told, it seems this passage was every bit as bad as we feared it would be. The good news is no boats were lost, but I have to wonder how many cruising dreams were sunk. –Cyndi
