Cyclone survival
We've spent the last 2 years on the hard stand in Fiji, refitting our ex Vendée Globe race boat, and hoped to be out of here before cyclone season started, but we weren't ready in time and instead found our selves engineless with a broken gearbox, as two nasty low pressure systems headed our way.
To stay in a cyclone zone in a cyclone season, you ideally want to have a backup plan incase a cyclone alert occurs. The most common solution for boats that are still here in cyclone season, is either to go in a cyclone pit in Vuda Marina, which is a hole in the ground for your keel to go in, so that your hull is on tyres at ground level. Or they go up the river and tie to mangroves.
Unfortunately due to our nearly 5metre draft, neither of these options are available to us, as it's not possible to dig a cyclone pit deep enough for us as for our hull to be at ground level, the pit would be below the water level and so it would just fill with water and the edges would start to collapse, and we're too deep to go up the river.
For the 2 years that we were on the hard stand here during cyclone season, our cyclone solution combined custom built cradles to sit the bow and stern of the boat in. Check out the videos about how we made these cradles here
Stern cradle: • Boat cradle build | Ep 6
Bow cradle: • Building a bow BOAT CR...
Plus we dug a mini cyclone pit for our keel. This was in no way deep enough for our hull to be at ground level, but it lowered us enough for us to be able to sit our aft cradle on a shipping container which we then strapped the boat to for stability. Finally we buried concrete blocks under the ground all around us to strap everything down to with cyclone straps.
You can watch the full details of our cyclone prep here:
• Just in time! We sit o...
Now we're back in the water, our backup plan, if there's a cyclone alert, is to go to Suva, which is 100nm to the east, where there's a protected bay with cyclone moorings in deep water. However since our gearbox broke, this solution isn't so straight forward.
We'd been monitoring these two systems constantly across many different models, and despite them both becoming named cyclones, the first Judy and the second Kevin, they were headed far enough away to not be an issue for us, so we decided to stay put.... until one night when the cyclone track for cyclone Kevin changed...
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Thanks SO MUCH TO
Olivia @wildernessofwaves for the clips of NV on the mooring and the lovely video of Don rowing in the sunshine and Kurt Roll @bulaKurt for the awesome drone shots of the boats up the river before a previous cyclone here in Fiji.
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Caio! We are Timo and Jo, an Italian and English couple with countless ocean miles under our belts. We're refitting an ex Vendée Globe Open 60 race boat originally designed & built & raced by famous Hungarian sailor Nándor Fa. He competed in her in the 1992 Vendée Globe (round the world single handed race known as “the Everest of the seas”), finishing 5th, becoming the first non-frenchman to finish.
We are currently in Fiji giving this old gladiator a new lease on life, transforming her from an ex race boat to a performance family cruiser, which we'll need to make both dog and baby proof! We’re planning to set sail again in Oct 2022, so with limited time&money we have plenty of challenges ahead to turn our dreams into reality&get back on the water!
Subscribe to our channel&track our progress as we release videos about our journey as well as "how to" videos about anything boat related.
Never stop to dream, never stop to sail!
You can find out more about the boat, us and our refit plans on our website www.sailingnv.com or follow us on
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#sailingnv #cyclone #sailing #boatlife #Open60 #raceboat #cruising #sailingvlog #boatwork #lifeinfiji #sailingfamily #cycloneseason #boatrepair
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