"Hell
Nino" by Joseph E. Brown
(Article from Cruising World Magazine - Feb 1998) |
THE LIGHT RAIN that began the previous day had now become a
downpour. Riding on two anchors in Bora-Bora, French Polynesia,
Polaris, an Islander 53, tugged gently at her tethers at first,
then began to heel as the wind strengthened to a furious 60
knots. Skipper John Connolly studied the latest
French weather forecast and pushed it aside. He wasn't worried.
He knew from 25 years of blue-water-sailing experience that
storm fronts don't normally reverse course and return once they've
passed by. This one was already heading away from the anchorage.
Why would it behave otherwise?
The wind finally dropped to an acceptable 20 knots. Relieved,
Connolly decided to treat his crew to dinner at the
Bora-Bora Yacht Club as soon as he finished a simple repair
on the alternator. Suddenly, he heard a bellow from the topside.
"John! Get up here quick!"
Up on deck, the skipper's eyes swept the scene in astonishment.
The wind had suddenly intensified again to gale force. Polaris'
inflatable dinghy, tied fore-and-aft alongside, danced vertically
out of the water. With tremendous effort, the crew dragged
the dinghy aboard and lashed it on deck. In 20 minutes, the
capricious wind built to hurricane strength. Even with all
sails lashed, the 51,000-pound cutter heeled 30 degrees and
buried her toerail. Belowdecks, chaos reigned. As the cutter
reeled from the pounding, tools, books, charts, plates, and
glasses spewed from their lockers, littering the sole. A bottle
of olive oil lost its lid and coated the floors with a slippery
slime. A long night loomed ahead for Polaris's crew. "My
God!" yelled crewmember Don McGreevy. "Where did
this storm come from?" Where indeedy.
Since Polaris's departure from Sausalito, California, in
February 1998, unpredictable weather defied the rule and mystified
her skipper and her crew of student sailors. Inexplicable
happenings and abnormal phenomena upset the traditional Polynesian
sailing pattern by a wide margin. The logical suspect was
El Nino, the same meteorological phenomenon that by early
1998 had already caused record flooding of the U.S. West Coast,
tornadoes in the Midwest, and severe droughts in some parts
of the world. Scientists still don't know the exact causes
of El Nino, but its effect on global weather was already apparent
when Polaris left home. "We prepared for El Nino even
before we hoisted sail," recalls Connolly, who
skippers the cutter for Adventure Expeditions Ltd. and the
Modern Sailing Academy, a member of the American Sailing Association.
"We got ready for it, but we really didn't know what
to expect."
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