Capsize: Update from The Dominion Post

We are in a small town called Greytown, and seeing the follow-up story about the capsize in the Dominion Post, we felt we had to post it. And luckily the local public library has free internet access.

A Newlands woman battled to hold her seven-week-old granddaughter above the waves for 15 minutes after being tipped into Wellington Harbour when their boat capsized in a sudden southerly.
Three adults and the baby were rescued from the water by another yacht about 8pm on Monday after the southerly whistled into the harbour.
Marine engineer Barry Pettengell said he could not believe his eyes when he saw the heads bobbing in Balaena Bay and then found they had a baby with them.
"It was a tiny wee thing. It was just a little bag of fluff. I had forgotten how tiny babies are."
Maritime police senior launch master Barry Hart said the baby's grandmother had put herself at considerable risk by trying to hold the baby, who had a lifejacket on, above water to stop her getting too cold.
"She was suffering herself ... Any water in the lungs is very dangerous, particularly salt water. She was putting herself at risk doing that."
The southerly came in quickly from what had been a calm and sunny afternoon, he said.
The family, who were all wearing lifejackets, were left clinging to each other in the harbour after their seven-metre boat was tipped over three times in sudden gusts. On the third time, it remained capsized.
Mr Pettengell said that, by the time he found the family, only the hull was sticking out of the water.
He and wife Hilary, who were sailing back from the Marlborough Sounds, had dropped their sails when the southerly came in and were motoring towards Evans Bay marina. "We were about half way across Evans Bay and I thought, `Far out, there's somebody in the water."'
They put a ladder over the side and Mr Pettengell took the baby first, carrying her inside the cabin to warm up. They then quickly pulled the baby's mother and grandparents on board and gave them jackets and blankets to keep warm. "They seemed OK, but I was worried about the baby. It was a funny little squeak coming out of it. It had swallowed some water."
Police received 18 emergency calls from witnesses who saw the boat capsize and maritime police came alongside soon after and took the baby and mother to meet a waiting ambulance.
Mr Pettengell took the grandparents to shore, and they were also taken to hospital suffering from cold. The family were discharged from hospital on Monday night and were recovering at home yesterday.
Although the southerly came in suddenly, it had been forecast and the Pettengells had seen its approach. It was a reminder to boaties to watch the weather, Mr Pettengell said. "Everybody lived happily ever after, but it is a wake-up call to these people to just be careful."

Posted by David with technical assistance from Joan. Jan. 6--4.45 pm

Service Interruption

As we know that our readership-all five or six of them--are waiting daily with bated breath for the next illuminating exposition of some aspect of NZ life, we need to inform you that you will have to be patient for the next couple of days as we are setting off from Wellington into the Wairarapa region to the east. We will be away two nights and return latish on Friday. We hope to be able to do some walking along the coast on that side. It is also a big wine region around Martinborough. As we look across the harbour now at 8-15 am it seems to be raining in the direction we will be driving. We hope that once we are over the mountain range to the east of Wellington we will see better weather.
Posted by David--Wednesday January 6 2010

Kiwis at Play

I'm not in a position to say whether Kiwis work hard (although my impression is that, between the Xmas/New Year's holiday and the arrival of summer, everyone is pretty relaxed at the moment), but they certainly play hard. This starts at a young age, with some of the most inviting playgrounds I've ever seen (and I got to go down the slide when there were no kids around).

The above is in the Botanic Gardens; below is right off Oriental Parade, on our route home:

The passion for physical activity manifests itself in many ways, including cricket (if you can call that physical activity). Wellington has both professional men's and women's teams (the Firebirds and the Blaze, respectively), and we attended part of a Blaze's match, against the Northern Spirit. It was, needless to say, incomprehensible to me as an American (for the best description of the perception of cricket to an American, check out Bill Bryson's hilarious description in "Down Under": "It is the only sport that incorporates meal breaks. It is the only sport that shares its name with an insect. It is the only sport in which spectators burn as many calories as the players (more if they are moderately restless). It is the only competitive activity of any type, other than perhaps baking, in which you can dress in white from head to toe and be as clean at the end of the day as you were at the beginning. Imagine a form of baseball in which the pitcher, after each delivery, collects the ball from the catcher and walks slowly with it out to center field; and that there, after a minute's pause to collect himself, he turns and runs full tilt towards the pitcher's mound before hurling the ball at the ankles of a man who stands before him wearing a riding hat, heavy gloves of the sort used to handle radioactive isotypes, and a mattress strapped to each leg."

That is not to take anything away from the Blaze, playing above in yellow. This morning's newspaper reported that their leading player "scored her maiden one-day ton to set up a six-wicket win. Her half century came at a run at the ball and her century came off 101 balls and included seven fours." (Huh? Sorry, I'm unable to translate, but I think it's a compliment).

But the real excitement here in Wellington has been the 2010 Unicycle World Championships, featuring 650 participants from all over (although Japan, Germany, Switzerland and Denmark seem to dominate the competition). All events have been free and open to the public. The first we attended was the artistic duets, where pubescent Japanese girls dressed in matching princess outfits seemed to have a lock on the competition (see below):

There are couples duets events as well, somewhat like ice skating pairs without a triple lutz:

Lest you think this is some effete activity, I can assure you that competitors come in all shapes and sizes, like Korea Man (left), who has become a fixture on the Parade, with many teenage boys vying to win in the more macho "street" competitions, jumping on and off steps and rails and performing various difficult manoevers, including doing a 360-degree flip and landing back on the unicycle--without smashing your skull.

The events also included a unicycle basketball tournament (the team from Berkeley, CA was appropriately named "Revolution" and wore long socks with blue and white horizontal stripes-- very intimidating). But the championship culminated in a 10km criterium around the waterfront, with separate races for those with larger and smaller wheels.

Of course, given Wellington's reputation as a beach town, it was the obvious choice for the national beach volleyball competition, held conveniently close to us off Oriental Parade, and attracting many gawkers.

But for sheer guts, my vote goes to this group of high school-age girls (below), who had a surfing outing to Castlepoint Beach, happily plunging into the pounding swells with their boogie boards.

Bungy jumping, anyone?

(Posted by Joan on Jan. 9)

Capsize--from the newspaper

The Dominion Post had this small item about our dinner-time drama last night:

"Three adults and a 10-week-old baby were rescued by coastguard and maritime police when their yacht overturned in Balaena Bay off Evans Bay Pde in Wellington last night.
Police received 18 reports from the public soon after 8pm about the overturned boat.
Rescuers found its passengers floating in the sea, cold and wet, but unharmed.
The baby was treated and taken to hospital. "

We certainly saw the three adults, but we never made out a baby in the binoculars. Maybe they had him or her in what we thought was a flotation device.

Incidentally, the NZ focus on outdoor sport means that the newspapers are always full of drownings, kayakers being rescued, hikers lost, climbers falling off cliffs. A week ago there was a woman riding a horse through a river who was drowned. I think the horse survived.

Nasty accident also recently reported; the ex-Ombudsman (lady) of The Washington Post stepped out of her car to take a photo, looked the wrong way, and was hit and killed by a car...
we need to be extra careful crossing the road...
Posted by David Tuesday Jan. 5. 9.30 am

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.

Kiwi Creativity

I am constantly struck by the beauty and imagination in visual art here, in forms varying from the formal to the spontaneous, bordering on graffiti. One of our most unexpectedly interesting excursions was to Pataka Museum of Arts and Cultures in Porirua, a suburb of Wellington which otherwise appears to be a never-ending shopping mall anchored by a gigantic K-Mart (I must add, however, that David got an excellent hair cut in the mall). The gallery, which is devoted to showcasing "Maori, Pacific Island, New Zealand and international art and culture", featured a number of artists whose style was clearly inspired by traditional Maori design and craftsmanship, what has been referred to as "antipodean modernism." Here are some examples of works that meld European practice and Maori art:

According to the museum's website, "The exhibition illuminates the strength of contemporary Māori art. The six artists are conscious of participating in – and contributing to - the continuum of Māori art. Central to Māori culture is the idea of lineage or whakapapa – the passing of knowledge, expertise and values from one generation to another. Mentorship and manakitanga is seen as a fundamental responsibility. Te Putahi-a-Toi, through these artists, has indigenised the practice of teaching contemporary art, imbuing it with a commitment to Māori culture and Te Reo - enabling a modern and evolving expression of indigenous concepts."

(Right: Shane Cotton, Eden to Ohaeawai, 2000)

There is, of course, more traditional commercial imagery produced in New Zealand, also featured in Pataka (along with a re-creation of a blacksmith shop and old-fashioned general store). This light-filled and well-designed gallery also has a Japanese garden, a coffee shop, and access to the public library.

Kiwi visual creativity even manifests itself in skateboard parks (see above). The origins of this style can be traced in the Te Papa Museum in Wellington (the national museum), which documents the heart and soul of New Zealand, known as Aotearoa in Maori (which remains a second official language here).

This is a canoe carving from Papua New Guinea.

Of course, Kiwi creativity is not confined to the static. Unbeknowst to most outside NZ, the secondary name of our city is "Wellywood", because of its incredible contribution to digital cinematography in such films as "Heavenly Creatures", "King Kong" and, of course, "Lord of the Rings", which has done more for the NZ tourist trade than bungy jumping.

Weta (pronounced "wet tah") Studios, which has enjoyed a long and productive partnership with Peter Jackson, is in a rather non-descript location in Miramar, a nearby suburb of Wellington, with little on the exterior to suggest the incredible creativity that takes place within. They are very protective of their intellectual property rights and, thus, the place is as secure as the CIA, but they do allow the public to visit the Weta Cave, which has a short documentary about their filming techniques (without giving away any trade secrets), and sells reproductions of the various creatures and characters that populate their films. The one of the left is from "District 9". (You, too, can own an authentic reproduction of Frodo's ring for a mere $NZ550, about $US400).

However, for the melding of the aesthetic and the practical, the public conveniences (subject of previous blogposts of admiration) remain unsurpassed. Here are several shots of one located right in the heart of Wellington's entertainment and nightlife area:

Art, however, must occasionally yield to commerce when the need dictates. Thus this rather striking combination of a Red Bull advertisement outside a dairy on an otherwise fancy facade of an apartment building:

(Bus stop en route to Pencarrow Head, Eastbourne).

(Posted by Joan on Jan. 4)

The Private "Cable Cars"

After I finished my earlier post, the wind dropped to near zero and went from north to south, the sun came out intermittently, and so after our evening meal (the slow-cooker stew) we went for a walk to see if we could photograph a few private cable cars.
But first I thought I should show you a picture that Joan took yesterday of the Wellington Cable Car. It was at the top of its run that we saw, in the Cable Car Museum, the video about private cable cars.


Obviously not a cable car, but a good example of how the Wellington hill dwellers make arrangements to park their cars. What was interesting about this was that the owner has a big pile of pebbles to stop him driving too far forward.

That white line starting at the street and going up towards the house in the top right hand corner is the cable car track. This is the only access to that huge house.

This is a more modest private cable car.

This is the passenger compartment of the above cable car.

A different type of car that runs on two lines.

A closer view of the big house and its cable rail. The Powers principle of landscape photography is that whenever you take a picture of a view, there is always a better one around the corner.

The ground level of a serious cable car.

This is an impressive one.

This one shows you the little car in which passengers travel.

And that concludes the illustrations of the private cable cars--all within a ten-minute walk of our apartment building. We went on to the walk along Oriental Bay, and over the sea wall we could see four sting rays lazily swimming in the shallow water. Joan is having second thoughts about swimming at the beach that they were frequenting.

Blogger's block.

It seems time to do another blog, but I am suffering from blogger's block: not at all sure what I should write about. It's like writer's block--a failure of inspiration. How on earth do these columnists do it every week? Discipline, I suppose, and an uncanny knack of writing an exact number of words, acquired after loads of practice, made easier these days by 'word count.'

I thought I might say something about zebra crossings here in New Zealand. If you are crossing a street, you can put one toe onto the crossing and even if an oncoming car is only ten yards away and moving at 50 mph--it WILL stop. New Zealand drivers also seem to be able to anticipate that you are going to cross--even if you are only toying with the idea. They can sense it. And if you stand back a little and wave the car on as a courtesy, your gesture will be ignored and the car will stop.

Yesterday we did an urban hike here in Wellington, mainly through parks, but occasionally on roads, partly to get a better understanding of the geography of the city. Hills surround those parts of Wellington overlooking the harbour, but major areas of the city are over those hills; and getting to them generally means climbing up those steep and winding roads and then driving down equally steep and winding roads on the other side. We got lost a couple of times on our hike, but Joan's map-reading skills got us back on track, and the views we had over the city from the numerous outlooks helped us to get a much better idea of how to get around.

At the Cable Car Museum, which we hiked to at the top of the Cable Car track, we saw a video about Wellington's private cable cars. Private in the sense that home owners have had them installed to get them up to their houses perched on the steep hills. There are apparently over 300 private "cable cars" in Wellington. The rubric covers a lot of elevator devices that may or may not be using cables. Some are installed by older people who can no longer face all the steps up to their houses: a few others have been installed by home-owners who have no other access to their houses. We can see a couple of these cable cars from our apartment, and one of them was featured in the video. The people have three quaters of an acre on a very steep hill, and their house can only be reached from a sea level road by the cable car. They have garage at sea level, where a main road follows the sea around the bay (Evans Bay for anyone who knows Wellington.)
And a propos winding roads, the other night I had to make a tight turn on a very steep road, and it took me three 'bites' to do it--forward, back, forward, back etc. while holding up a stream of traffic behind me.
New Zealanders seem to have the British penchant for understatement, and this extends to the Met Office in their description of the winds. First thing this morning, with Joan refusing to run because the wind was howling, the Met Office told us--last ten minutes 25 km/h gusting to 55 km/h. This was described with what I thought was irony as "moderate." Later in the morning, after we had started beef stew in the slow cooker, and just before we set out on a perambulation into the town, the speed was up to 35 km/h, gusting to 78 km/h--described as "fresh." When we came back from the town, after some fighting with the wind, the speed was 50km/h, gusting to 94 km/h--and now the Met Office did concede "strong." A day or two ago we went into an art gallery when the weather was "fresh." I remarked on the wind to the proprietor, and he responded--"Bit draughty today." (Aside to my brother, John--sorry I did not fall into the 'drafty' trap--I know you would have loved to correct me).
I think that does it for today. I was going to do something on the electronic travellers (us) with the I-pods and I-phones, Garmins, and computer, cell phone and charger, MP3 player (my music for walking alone), Blackberry, whatever. Heavens, what gear we have. And I have not mentioned two digital cameras, and their connections to the computer. And yet--all has been used to good effect (though the GPS could have let us down by getting us hopelessly lost on our drive here). The computer has been invaluable, though it's use has been almost exclusively on the Internet--the exception the OED, which I have installed. Next time, I would buy a net-book: much cheaper than a serious laptop like the one we have, which is heavy and a bit of a load to cart around. A net-book would get you into the Internet and cover almost all our main uses.
I mentioned the beef stew in the slow cooker. The oven here does not work, and our landlady brought us over a slow cooker. Where did we get the recipe? From the Internet, of course.
And Google maps have been very helpful in plotting routes. And the New Zealand Department of Conservation (not "Environment" as I said in an earlier post) has a site with all the information one needs on walks and national parks.
And then, of course, blogging helps fill the time when we are cooped up in our glass box and beginning to get a bit of cabin fever.
Posted by David at 5.00 pm NZ time Jan, 2, 2010 (twenty ten, I suppose it is being called)

Laundry, Battle Hill, and Pencarrow lighthouse.

When we came back from or hike to Battle Hill on Wednesday morning (Dec.30th), we started our own battle trying to hang out our laundered sheets in a southerly gale. There was no way we could do a neat job of pegging the sheets on the lines, particularly the fitted sheet, and we just had to do the best we could with oodles of clothes pegs and then keep an eye on what was happening. We got them in from the line just before we got some rain, and now they are draped around the apartment just to make sure they are really dry.

A view from the summit of Battle Hill, the scene of the first 'battle' with one tribe of the Maoris in 1846. This was the beginning of the "Maori Wars," although I believe it is more PC these days to say "The New Zealand Wars." On one of the explanatory displays it says that Governor Grey's methods used against the Maoris were "questionable but effective." At the entrance to the park there is a big sign that says "The Last Battle," beside which a Maori organisation has posted a sign saying "You think..."

At the top, after an exhausting climb.

We woke this morning (Wednesday 30 Dec.) and wandered into the living room just in time to see a huge cruise ship enter the harbour.

We made this walk on Monday, in rather overcast weather, on the east side of the harbour starting on the outskirts of a town called Eastbourne. The road led along the sea for several kilometers before we started the climb to the lighthouse. This view was on our way down from the lighthouse back to the road.

From an explanatory sign.

More from another sign.

You'll need to click on this to read the text. The light house sits high on a promontory called Pencarrow Head, which was the name of the Cornish home of Sir Somebody Molesworth (or was it Lord M.), who was one of the members of the New Zealand Company, which organised the beginning of systemic emigration from Britain to New Zealand. The first couple of ships arrived not far from Eastbourne.

Gusts of 70km/h Today

We've had another really blowy day today--Tuesday December 29. The following sums it all up.

Wellington wind summary:
• Wellington is located in a River of Wind - a wind corridor between the South Island and the North Island.
• Wellington is the windiest main centre in New Zealand with a mean annual wind speed of 22 km/h.
• Wellington also has an average of 22 days per year with mean wind speeds over 63 km/h (40 knots).
• Wellington averages 173 days a year with wind gusts greater than about 60 km/h or 32 knots.
• October is generally the windiest month of the year with a mean of 27 days with wind speeds over 15 knots, 19 of those days are over 20 knots.
• North is by far the most common wind direction, blowing from this direction (0 degrees) a massive 37.6% of the time.
• Wellington is one of the windiest cities in the world (possibly the windiest) and is windier than other southern windy cities including Cape Town, Perth, and Geraldton.
• The strongest wind speeds where recorded at Hawkins Hill of 248km/h (134 knots) on the 6 November 1959 and 4 July 1962.
Wellington is located next to Cook Strait, which forms a narrow gap between the mountain ranges of the North and South Islands. This gap between the islands and mountain ranges accelerates the wind through the Cook Strait making Wellington a very windy city.

Dominion Post Crossword

The weekend Dominion Post had a crossword that is something of a curiosity for Brits and Americans. It covered a whole page. Pretty simple definitions, but I couldn't come near to finishing it because it had Maori words, Australian birds, a native spider, a New Zealand motor race circuit, a famous New Zealander who died last September, and several references to NZ television programmes.
And the only headline in the Post that prompted a guffaw for Joan and me was:
"Immigrant Couple Sentenced for Blowing up Restaurant." An interesting story, not least because the couple were KURDISH. They had started a restaurant that lost money and blew it up to get the insurance money. You scratch your head a bit to read of Kurdish immigrants in New Zealand.
Posted by David on December 27

A Tractor for Brother John

This is posted for my brother John, who is something of a tractor enthusiast. There was quite a selection of tractors on one beach that we visited. They are used to tow boats out into the sea down a very gently sloping beach.