Weather: Sports: Drama

Joan is a hard act to follow. This will be more mundane.

Let's start with yesterday--Sunday January 3--which the Dominion Post headlined as "Capital weathers another dismal day." And it went on to describe it: "Yesterday was fairly typical--strong wind warnings, 130 kmh gales recorded at Mt. Kaukau, heavy rain and rare sightings of the sun." But we managed a reasonably decent day, after we had summoned up the courage to get the car out, with both of us squeezing into the car in the garage rather than attempting to open a door in the wind. Two weeks ago a person in this building had her car door blown open so violently it was wrecked. We went, as Joan described, to the WETA Studios Cave; then on to the big museum (jammed as always on a windy and rainy day); and we ended by watching a unicycle competition, in which the cyclists jumped steps, rode off walls, and one did somersaults on his unicycle from a five foot high parapet. The World Unicycle Championships continue for a few more days.

Last night the wind was awful. Joan managed to go to sleep but I could not as the wind howled around the building, and every so often the gusts went wham, wham, WHAM against the building and it shook. Slowly the wind died, or I went to sleep, and this morning we woke to a glorious day--the best and sunniest day we have had. A walk through the Botanical Gardens; a stop at a women's cricket match--the Wellington Blaze against some other team; an hour at the unicycle basketball semi-finals; and finally the unicycle 10 km race.

As a one time cricket player, I thought the women were very good: a couple of good fast bowlers, and some excellent batswomen. And the fielding and throwing was easily up to good mens' standard.

I would not recommend that anyone as much as cross the street to see unicycle basketball game.

Now the drama--kept you waiting, haven't I, through that boring stuff? And what was that rainbow doing there?

The wind had died, and we ate our meal overlooking the sea. The waves were small, still coming across the harbour from the north. We noticed that a plane was landing towards the south. Ha, the wind must be turning southerly. In the space of a few minutes, it was obvious that small squalls were coming in from the south and starting to reverse the wave pattern. The small squalls grew bigger, white horses appeared on the waves from the south, and the sea became very rough. We could see a small sailboat heeling over, the sailors obviously in difficulties, and we watched through the binoculars as it capsized in what were now very turbulent seas. I called 999, to be immediately told that the emergency number was 111. I called it, and I was transferred to the police, who took an age to answer, with Joan watching the crew in the water and giving me an up-to-date report. When I got through to the police, I stayed on the phone for about ten minutes, giving the location of the boat in Evans Bay, with Joan feeding me all the information she could about what was happening to the boat and the crew. All this I was passing on to the operator. Eventually operator said that help was on the way, and that I could sign off. We could make out the crew--there were three of them, two clinging to some sort of flotation device, and one seperated from them by a couple of hundred yards. They did have life-jackets on. The boat had disappeared although there was still a patch of sail showing on the water. The sea was very rough. Round the point of the peninsula across from us came a small sailing boat using its motor, going very slowly towards the people in the water. It seemed to take an age before it got to them, but as it neared them the squalls died as quickly as they had come up, the sea turned much calmer, and the most wonderfully clear rainbow I have ever seen came out behind the peninsula opposite us and arced halfway over the harbour, so complete you could see exactly where it ended in the sea. And then very faintly, a second rainbow appeared above it. The crew of the capsized boat were picked up.

Time to go to bed.

Posted by David Monday January 4.