Time to batten down the hatches! Ooops I don’t have any!

Well it’s official now (Monday morning here) that Tropical Depression TD07F has developed over Vanuatu islands which are directly west of us and the chance of this turning into a named cyclone in the next 24-48 hours is rated as moderate to high as it moves E and SE right towards the west coast of Fiji where I’m at.  You can see a 3 day forecast map here if you’d like to get a better visual of all this.

According to the latest forecast we may take a direct hit if this cyclone forms and moves more west than south.  Hopefully it will miss us and all we will see is high winds, possibly +100mph but more likely +50 and lots of rain.  So we are all busy doing our best to prep for the worst and be ready for whatever comes our way Tuesday through Thursday.  Right now it has just been raining since last night and not too heavily but the wind and rain will pick up as the week goes on.  Unfortunately all the severe rain and floods we had last weekend has everything quite saturated and the two towns north and south of me, Lautoka and Nadi are still recovering from that so it is not a good forecast for land or sea dwellers.

 

This morning we took down all the large canvas tarps that we had draped around the boat to keep all the dust from sandblasting and painting contained and were being supported by lots of bamboo poles.  These two pictures will show you the before (on a much nicer day) and after shots.

 

 

 

My big challenge is that I have all the hatches and the six side salon windows out while we are painting and so I have the tented up the top of the boat to keep most of the rain out of all these openings.  The openings are covered up with black plastic but won’t withstand these kinds of winds of course.  So for now I’m going to leave the heavy duty plastic tarps up and have spent the last few hours tying them all down so that the wind can’t get under them quite as easily.  If we do get hit with sustained high winds I’ll do my best to monitor the situation and either take them down if they are being lifted too much or the wind will do that for me and then I’ll just have try to keep the openings all covered up and the water out as best I can.

Obviously we aren’t going to get any of the exterior paint or metal work done this week with all the rain and wind so I’ll be focusing on inside jobs and keeping the boat as dry as possible.

Wish me luck!  I’ll post updates along the way as things develop and change.

Wayne