Lets look at cyclones
I began to take a serious interest in cyclones in April 1989.
We had come up to Hamilton Island from Adelaide to compete in Hamilton Island Race Week with the crew from our boat down south. We would be sailing the charter yacht Stylopora in the cruising division.
The crew would stay on the boat in the marina and, to make room, Robyn and I had moved over to the resort.
We had known about cyclone Aivu lurking in the Coral Sea for a couple of days. We were just there for the fun, but HI race week was starting to become a major ocean racer regatta and the marina was absolutely packed with serious racing machinery.
In the Whitsundays, at 21 degrees south, we knew theoretically that Aivu might come our way, but we were, as yet, uninitiated in dealing with a tropical cyclone on a boat.
This was to be our baptism of fire.
When we moved into our bure on the resort side, we were impressed to see a cyclone safety kit as part of the room's equipment. Less convincing was to find it contained four safety pins, to make the curtains a barrier against flying glass, and a suggestion to shelter in the loo when things got bad.
t was about 0330 when the whole bure started to flex alarmingly, so
