Unless you've been living under a rock for the last week you would have seen the news of the earthquake near Samoa and the subsequent tsunami. Thank you all for your concerned phone calls (I think someone rang) and I can assure you all that we survived it and are both still alive and well and spending the kids inheritance as fast as we can.
It was, however, an interesting experience and in spite of the pathetic TV news coverage of it in NZ, we did actually get quite a large wave at Tutukaka.
The radio had been reporting the earthquake and tsunami all morning, forecasting that it would hit East Cape and Gisborne first at about 9.45am, arriving at Auckland about 10.30am. In actual fact, nothing happened at East Cape and they ended up canceling the warning around 10.30am. A few minutes later they reactivated the warning and said it would arrive at Auckland around midday.
At 12.05pm the tide level in Tutukaka dropped about a meter over a five minute period and then a few minutes later a rush of water hit the entrance to the marina and the tide level rose a meter in a few minutes. The best way to describe it was that it was like being on the Mississippi River in a raging flood with the tide coming in at close to 15 knots. This was followed a few minutes later with the tide going out just as quickly as it had come in. This happened at about half hourly intervals throughout the afternoon. There is a video clip of the tide going out on Youtube at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YWIhOcrzFqw.
I had managed to get some quite good film of it all on the camcorder and rang TV One to see if they were interested in it and they sent a cameraman up from Whangarei to get it from me. He arrived about 3pm and was interviewing me on the jetty when all of a sudden there was a wall of white water racing in the entrance and all hell broke loose. A dinghy and 40hp outboard on the boat next to us was completely swamped and disappeared under the water and then one of the mooring piles along from us was broken off at seabed level and a 45 foot yacht on it was rolled over onto its side and was lucky not to have sunk. This was about the seventh surge since it all started and was by far the biggest one being at least a meter high. I hadn't really thought about it much before but I now know that a tsunami isn't just a moving wave on top of the water but the complete volume of water from the seabed up all moving at about 15 knots. Luckily it was low tide when it happened otherwise the damage would have been considerably worse. The surges gradually got smaller and weaker but were still occuring on a small scale the following morning.
Unfortunately I haven't got any still photos of it but I'm not sure they would have really given an idea of what it was like anyway.
So that was the week's excitement. The weather has been cold, wet and windy for the last couple of weeks so there hasn't been any fishing or much of anything happening for that matter.
We're looking forward to getting to Brisbane and some warmth and sun next week.
