Note: Here’s another post that was originally made to our tracking page. Also, the image is not one of ours. It’s from NASA. “Tropical Cyclone Madi Approaching India” by NASA Goddard Photo and Video is licensed under CC BY 2.0. To view a copy of this license, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/?ref=openverse.
We have been keeping a close eye on tropical cyclone Lola. It is currently over Vanuatu and heading south towards New Caledonia.
Last week, one of the weather models showed that it would track southeast and we may have had to move north to avoid it. Thankfully, that weather model was incorrect. We were able to stay in the Ha’apai Islands.
Lola was a category 5 cyclone but it is now weakening. It looks like what’s left of it will track south towards New Zealand. Even though it is nearly 1,000 nautical miles from us, we are feeling its effects. We have had heavy cloud cover for the last day or so and quite strong trade winds. While the cyclone turns in a clockwise motion, beside it, where we are, we have a high pressure system turning in the opposite direction. Lola is making the high quite strong so we have east winds reaching 25 kts at times. The anchorages here are quite open to the wind and the swell can wrap around the islands so we are bouncing a bit.
It looks like the high will get stronger as the week progresses. This makes picking a good time to sail to New Zealand tricky. We could possibly leave in a few days or we may wait until all the effects of Lola have passed.
We’ll keep you posted.
Cormacks On Cambria 