Chilian Tsunami

Yesterday morning, Sunday 28^th February we were awoken at 0700 by the phone beeping a 'TXT' message from Andy and Irene on 'Slice of Heaven' anchored near us. It was short and to the point. “Are you heading out to sea?” Turning on channel 16, there was a national tsunami warning for the whole of New Zealand, from the 8.8 magnitude earthquake in Chile. We quickly left the mooring in the harbour and motored out to sea....beautiful day and returned to the harbour in the mid afternoon after keeping up to date with the radio bulletins issued by the New Zealand Civil Defense. Many sporting events near and on the water were canceled though out the country. We did not go back to the mooring as it is up the harbour and around a point of land in a narrow channel. Andy & Irene came over for a lamb BBQ last night, the tide was coming in most of the evening, they went home to their boat and Bill went to bed and about 2230 I was still sitting up with a cup of tea and knitting when I became aware of water rushing past the hull and the swim ladder was rattling, I looked outside and we had swung around, the water was rushing out and was all frothy. Another sail boat anchored near us was going out of the harbour past us, backwards. I yelled and then blew the horn five times. But they were up and had the situation in hand and safely re-anchored. So by 2300, the tide that was coming in at 2230, went out in a surge for about 15 minutes and then surged back in, went out again and within half an hour it was coming in nominally again. This morning around 0700 Bill noticed another surge as he was making coffee, later about 0830 we jumped on Slice of Heaven to go into the dock for Andy& Irene to fill up with water and while on the dock another surge came through. We will stay anchored out here just inside the entrance of the harbour for the rest of the day and go back to the mooring this evening. Maybe!

At noon today Monday, we went by dingy into the fishing dock to meet some friends for lunch. After tying up the dingy we noticed a river of water running out of the harbour, much like rapids in a river. The mooring buoy that we had been on yesterday morning had disappeared under water, we won't go and pick up the mooring until tomorrow now.

On Monday evening the tsunami warning was lifted for the entire country with only minor reports of damage coming in. The surge here in Mangonui Harbour was about half a meter, in the South Island they experienced surges of up to two meters. We heard from friends at the Kerikeri Cruising Club that went out to sea in the Bay of Islands that there were about fifty boats out past the northern entrance to the Bay of Islands.