Sailing through a young cyclone

[Hasbeen]

With the recent cyclone in the Whitsunday Islands, I did this post about one I experienced there in about 1982 for a motoring site. Someone suggested this site may be interested. I have only just found you, so here it is.
I had returned to Oz from 8 years cruising my Morgan Giles 40 Footer, Alyth through the Pacific Islands. I was living on her & running a little fleet of boats out of Shute Harbour, in the Whitsunday Islands, close to a mangrove creek where I holed up with those island boats previously. The skippers looked after the smaller boats, leaving me with the larger one. It was a WW11 Fairmile, a UK navy gun/torpedo type boat, 112Ft by 19'10" converted for daytrip passenger use.

The props on these things were lower than the boat, & very exposed. You could never take them into shallow water as just touching a mud bank would bend a prop or prop shaft. No going up creaks here. I loved this boat. With twin 8 92 GM diesels of about 550 BHP each she did a bit over 20 knots, & had such sweet handling that you had stuffed up your approach if you could feel when you came alongside a jetty.

Cyclones generate south easterly winds as they approach the Oz east coast, so I layed out our 2 large anchors on their 3/4" stud link chain, one to the south of our mooring, & one to the east, with the V joining over the mooring. The boat thus lay to all three. This was it for her, I then went to look after my yacht.

It was too late to get into that creek, as the tide was falling, so I headed for Gulnare inlet on Whitsunday Island, near Hamilton Island, yet to become a major resort.

I was a bit late for this too, as I was crossing Whitsunday passage the wind got up & gusting over 40 knots, with squalls reducing the visibility from a mile or so, to a hundred yards at times. There were too many outlying reefs to get in there with that visibility.

The sea was getting nasty too. Only a bit over 4 or 5 Ft, the waves were very steep, almost square, & were braking over the foredeck continually. I got very wet putting an extra lashing over the dingy, lashed down upside down on the foredeck. Even in the big nasty open ocean, I don't think I'd had as much water over the foredeck.

My yacht, Alyth was great in these conditions. With just the triple reefed main up, she balanced beautifully, & was scooting across the passage at about 8 knots. Still I was running out of options. I could reverse course & get back into Shute harbour easily enough, it had a safe entry but it was open to the south east, & with a 150 boats moored in there, I expected some chaos. In the event quite a few boats were damaged by others that broke free.

Then out of a break in the squalls Cid Island appeared to the north, our left. The area between Cid Island & Whitsunday is a moderately sheltered area known as Cid Harbour. It was the anchorage where the US & Oz fleets combined before going out to meet the Jap fleet in the battle of the Coral Sea, the first ever major aircraft carrier battle, before Midway.

It is a better aircraft carrier anchorage than yacht anchorage, but I was running out of choices, & the approach was steep too, with no reefs to have to avoid. It was our best option.

We sailed into the most sheltered part of the bay, Dropped our big 45Lb CQR anchor, in about 60Ft of water & about 50 fathoms, [300 Ft] of chain, dropped sail, & lashed everything down. Damn we were dragging anchor out of the bay. This was strange as this part of the bay was known good holding ground.

I Started the little 6 HP Petter diesel which struggled to push us back in. The wind even in here was now a steady 25/30 gusting in the bullets to about 55 knots. My wife steered us in as I hauled the anchor up. As it cleared water I saw the point of the anchor had gone through the centre of a large, 8" diameter shell. No wonder we'd dragged.

The rain was really pouring down now, & the wind was now above 40 knots, with gusts to about 60. These came in anywhere from south west to south east, catching the boat, with its tall mast at anything up to beam on, as she sailed around the end of the long chain. She was getting healed to about 20 degrees in the stronger ones.

I was worried about windage, as the wind increased, so decided to get the dingy off the foredeck, & launched it on a long doubled painter. It sheared around wildly in the wind gusts, but in 15 minutes the rain had filled it, with only the buoyancy keeping it semi afloat.

After night fall the wind really got up, but I can only guess what it was blowing. The yachts rigging was shrieking, much louder than it did in 70 knots in the Solomons. There was a constant roar of wind through the trees & constant sound of rain water cascading through the deck scuppers into the sea. South Mole Island, the nearest resort about 8 miles away, received 26 inches of rain between 4.00 PM, & midnight, & it rained until about 4.30 AM.

It was hard to hear the radio, to get any weather information so we went to bed.

Next morning at first light, about 5.00 AM or so, we could still hear the roaring, but realised the sun was coming in through the skylight, the boat was not rolling to 20 degrees in the gusts, as it had all night, & then we realised it was not raining.

On deck we found a beautiful clear sunny day, with not a breath of wind, it had all gone. The roaring was still there, but now it was water, about 3Ft deep, cascading down the side of the island, & this continued for another hour or so.

We had no interest in doing anything. I emptied the dingy & we just sat in the cockpit with a coffee, watching the water rush off the island, & marvelling at how clean everything was after such a washing. We noted that the trees still had leaves, so the wind had not got to 90 knots, where most trees are stripped.

The area is totally wild, no human habitation, but we had seen flashes of a light during the night. Now we saw another yacht about a mile along the bay. The couple came rowing down to compare notes on our experience. Their anchorage had been a bit rougher than ours.

Suddenly we saw their boat dragging out into the bay. They were anchored off a creek, & the huge run coming down it had washed the sand away from their anchor. The thing had sat through a huge gale, but was drifting away in total calm, with the flow of water.

I threw the outboard on our dingy, & went & fetched their boat. We were somehow totally washed out. The 4 of us did nothing all day, not even turning on a radio.

Next day it was back to port, to help in the clean up. Within a few days the tourists were appearing again, & it was back to carrying them around gods own country.

I've been through a few cyclones. This was not the strongest, biggest or most dangerous, but somehow it was the most exhausting I've experienced.

Hasbeen

[GordMay]

Greetings and welcome aboard the CF, Hasbeen.

Thanks for the great story, well told.

[Snowpetrel]

Enjoyed that hasbeen, those old cqr's can hold well in the right bottom types. Any pictures of Alyth?

Sent from my SM-G930F using Cruisers Sailing Forum mobile app

[Hasbeen]

Yes a few, but I might have to wait until one of the kids are here to add it.

[CaptsWife]

Wowza! What a story! Thanks for posting.

[Kiwi.]

Originally Posted by GordMay

Greetings and welcome aboard the CF, Hasbeen.

Thanks for the great story, well told.

Ditto; great story well told. Very interested to hear about the shell on the anchor point, I thought it was only in the last twenty years that we had all been suffering from this problem, but with tin cans.

"Debbie Does Downunder" is an ongoing story. New Zealand's Hamilton Jet boats have been doing some interesting rescues in the Bay of Plenty: Watch: Jet boat zooms down flooded streets in Edgecumbe - National - NZ Herald News

My father served on New Zealand built Fairmiles during the second world war. Noel Macklin (the English designer)would be turning in his grave to hear you describe them as American. The ones built in New Zealand and Australia during the war had mainly 12 cylinder petrol motors. The Detroits in your one would have been installed in the 70s. "Fairmile ships of the Royal Australian Navy" is a wonderful read if you can find a copy.

[Sos]

Originally Posted by Hasbeen

.......... so we went to bed.

Hasbeen

Great story but no way I could have gone to bed

Save

[Hasbeen]

Hi Kiwi.

I accidentally fooled you, look again mate, I said UK navy, not US. As an Ex RAN [Oz navy] pilot I am pretty familiar with our WW11 story. I'll bet your father had a ball on them. Challenger was built in Sydney of a kind of "KIT" sent out from the UK. They must have been a great boat, before the superstructure all ours had to make them tourist boats.

None of the Fairmiles here were sold with the old Packard version of the Merlin used during the war, so all were re engined. Ours had only 2 fitted, rather than the 3 used in the UK during the war, but would have been great fun. Yes the GMs were fitted when the super structure was built.

All up there were 6 of them in the MacKay Whitsundays area, & Challenger was the pick of them.

Sos, yes we went to bed, but not to sleep. We each probably dosed a little, it had been a hard day, but were fully awake at each jerk of the chain coming up tight, & the noise of it dragging over the bottom would have us wide awake, & on deck checking we weren't dragging. That was when we noticed the flashes of light from the other yacht, probably doing the same.

My biggest worry was the eye going over us, with a shift to north west wind. We may have had to move very quickly to a different spot to shelter from that. I had a spot in mind, but nosing into a bay with coral flats in the dark is very difficult. We were ready to jump into moving at the first sign of a lull, or wind shift.

[Sav]

I worked on renovating an old Fairmile in the late '70's in the South of France.
This old girl has 3 props, none connected to engines, however the old engines were still down in the engine room... and a massive engine room it was.
This old Fairmile was being turned into a gin palace of sorts I think, however I left her and found a crew position on a 130' yawl instead.
I spent 3 months banging calking into the hull on her, and I doubt it would of helped her stay afloat really.
The owner was an old American who drove a sunburnt white '63 Mustang convertible that was flat worn out.

[Hasbeen]

I reckon that trying to run a Fairmile as a private pleasure boat has sent more people broke than just about any other boat. They are big boats, with big bills.

I costed that one at A$900 a day, [in 1982], before you put a crew on her, & started an engine. We needed about 80 full fare passengers a day, 6 days a week to break even on her.

[topmast]

Those old Fairmiles were remarkably flexible in a big sea. Crewed on one years ago. Two 671's Had been a tuna fisher. Remember not wanting to touch the superstructure in heavy weather ,could get a shock. After a bunch of adventures ended back in BC doing dive tours. While refuelling .blew up and sank at the dock in Vancouver drowning several passengers from Alberta in their bunks. Such a haywire operation I'd bailed in San Diego instead of continuing on to Columbia

[Hasbeen]

Interesting video Kiwi. You have to feel for people with all that water through their houses. Not quite as bad as those up north here, who lost roofs & more, but pretty life destroying. I've helped in clean up before, & it is a huge job.


Debbie dropped a foot of rain here in 30 hours, on it's way over to you, & many here were flooded. I am on a river here, which flooded 12Ft higher than previously in living memory, but my house is way above that. All I've lost is a kilometre of fence. Some neighbours have lost up to 5 kilometres. I currently have over 20 cattle wandering around, that aren't mine. We know who owns 7 of them, but it might be a while before someone claims the rest.


For a couple of days I didn't need a jet boat, I could have sailed the yacht. or even the Fairmile around my bottom paddock.

[Hasbeen]

Alyth anchored at Nugeria Atoll, 130 nautical miles north of Bouganville Island in the Solomon Islands.

Perhaps not the ideal boat for sailing through a cyclone but with low windage probably a good boat to ride one out at anchor.

[Snowpetrel]

What a lovely slippery looking vessel, I bet she was an absolute pleasure to sail.

I guess like all those older low freeboard boats she would have been very wet at times in the brisk trades. But being so close to the water sliding past quickly qould have added to the thrill, especially on a moonlight night with phosperescence around..

What fun she would be to beat through a narrow coral pass under sail. I can see how you managed with just a 8 hp engine.

Thanks for the photo.