First Southerly Battering

Again I was awoken in the night by pouring rain and howling winds at home and lay awake for a while wondering how the yacht was doing over in the harbour. I didn't think much more of it and went back to sleep then off to work as usual. However about 10:15am I had a call from the marina manager saying "you better get down here quickly, one of your lines is nearly chafed through" so I packed up my current quote I was working on in the office and headed home, jumped into my car and raced over to Lyttelton to see a churning mass of brown sea capped in whitewash, the smaller yachts closer to the yachtclub were leaping around like a bucking bull and they looked like they were ready to leap out of the water and onto the dock. Looking across to mine it looked better (i guess thats the difference between 2 ton displacement and 15 ton). Somehow I managed to get onboard even though the boat was lurching around and big thanks to Tim from Megisti Sailing Charters (http://www.megisti.co.nz/) for all his help to get new bow lines and springer on. The reason the rope chafed through was because the the chafe guards slipping down the docklines and doing nothing so I tied them in place with a smaller rope which seemed to do the trick. The waves seemed to be getting worse now and while working up the front the bow was lifting 2-3m into the air then disappearing into the water when it came back down...so I was getting soaked and feeling a little queezy after all the movement. Time to get off and back to work. But getting off was the hardest part, it took two others to pull the boat across to the dock against the wind and waves so I could make a leap of faith to the dock. Anyway check out the video I took of the neighbours yacht in the waves of out 'wonderful' marina, come on CCC get your shit together and build a breakwater!!!