Gulp....

Just sitting here in Bundaberg waiting for the maelstrom to descend. Luckily(?) the boat is on the hardstand for antifoul and a few bits and bobs.

Live radar loop for anyone wanting to see whats happening near me.

430am now - family still asleep but i cant sleep.

shufti said:

Just sitting here in Bundaberg waiting for the maelstrom to descend. Luckily(?) the boat is on the hardstand for antifoul and a few bits and bobs.

Live radar loop for anyone wanting to see whats happening near me.

430am now - family still asleep but i cant sleep.

Click to expand...

WOW! I see what you mean. Is is pushing a big surge ahead?

Best to you, your family, and your boat. Is the boat tied down good?

Let us know if you are OK or not.

Thanks Moonstruck. Nice to have people to 'chat' to whislt I'm sitting here worrying. Boat is clamped into the hard with chains and also tied down with rope. Boat is about 5 mins drive away so ill be checking during the day if I can.

We're well stocked up here - got the Genny and engle freezer off the boat, fiilled a 20l jerry with fuel and filled the 10kg gas cylinder for the BBQ. Food, water, TP, batteries and torches assembled and stocked ready to go.

HAs been eeerily quiet the last few hours (you can still see the trough preceding the cyclone that has moved to the south on that radar loop) with winds only aroun d 15-20kn and no rain - even some stars out. HAs just started picking up here in the last 1/2 hour. Here we go.

I'll keep an upate goig - if only for my need to be talking to someone

Greetings,
Mr. S. Stay safe and under cover. Do NOT put yourself at risk checking on the boat please. Boats can be replaced. YOU can't. Sounds like your almost perfectly provisioned BUT I see no mention of copious amounts of nerve tonic...used in moderation of course...

Yeah....the radar is showing you getting some of it right now. Any surge danger there?

Rest assured, I'm no hero RT. I'll only be goin if safe to do so - got three kids here so wont be leaving them on a whim.

Yeah heaps of Bundy Rum in the cupboard (including 4 bottles of their 'royal liqueor' that's ony available from the distillies cellar door. I actually import/retail malt whisky for a living so fairly sorted for a dram or two here

Fairly surreal here at 5.48am. Half the sky (to the south) fairly clear and lovely sunrise colours - the northern sky is looking pretty bloody grim. The storm surge should be interesting as I'm on beachfront land here.

Gulp.

Yes, hustler - we are expecting a large surge tide.

Stay safe!

Greetings,
Mr. s. By all means, keep the kids safe. "I actually import/retail malt whisky for a living..." Hmmm....for a living eh? Hmmm....Bundaberg, AU eh? Hmmm...Just north of Brisbane eh?...What did you say your street address was again?...

Mate,
Stay safe , my mate in Mackay has moved off his boat and into a hotel.
It looks like it will cross at Yepoon, it sure has built up.
For once I am glad I am down here in Tassie with my boat.
Cheers
Benn

Had to look up Bundaberg!

Holy smokes, that looks like one of our hurricanes here on this side of the world.

Stay safe!

Shufti
Hope you get through this morning's high tide (a big tide) plus storm surge OK. I really feel for you - this is one time that beachfront is a big worry.

Post away if you can, I'm just chilling at home under steady rain until Marcia comes our way with heavy rain in the next day or so.

Greetings,
Mr. s. Ditto to what Mr. I posted. I'm just trying to clean up the boat but if you notice the number of posts I made today, you'll have some idea of how much my heart is REALLY into it. What's the latest news? Oh, going down to -27C here tonight...

Pretty sure we'll be right insequent. We've got abut 8m of rock cliff between us and normal high water mark.

Actually its pretty calm here at present. 5/10 cloud, no rain and 'only' blowing around 25-30kn.

It`s a Category 5 cyclone, predictions of wind approaching 300km/h, and heading for populated areas. There are predictions of up to 300mm of rain, that`s 12" in old measurements! Fortunately the dams are less full and the ground is not already saturated.
Our Queensland friends are in our thoughts, may the predictions be just that, and the reality much less severe.

shufti said:

Pretty sure we'll be right insequent. We've got abut 8m of rock cliff between us and normal high water mark.

Actually its pretty calm here at present. 5/10 cloud, no rain and 'only' blowing around 25-30kn.

Click to expand...

Ah, rock - that's good! And 8m should be more than enough too as Marcia only intensified to Cat 5 very late.

At my marina in the Brisbane River the manager got a call from one of the authorities with 'advice' that all the boats should be positioned with bow facing upstream, as lots of logs were expected from flooding after the heavy rain tomorrow. But Bob has been through a few floods there and says that the logs only enter the slip areas with eddy currents and even then only the empty slips end up with any logs in them. So he isn't insisting that we do anything. I'll go and check from time to time, although I'm hobbling around in a knee brace due to tearing my left ACL on Monday at Heavenly.

RT Firefly said:

Greetings,
Mr. s. By all means, keep the kids safe. "I actually import/retail malt whisky for a living..." Hmmm....for a living eh? Hmmm....Bundaberg, AU eh? Hmmm...Just north of Brisbane eh?...What did you say your street address was again?...

Click to expand...

If you steam here, sit a few hundred metres off the beach about 1/2 mile south of the Burnett River mouth and put up a yellow flare. I'll then pop purple smoke to cofirm. The drinks will already be poured.

Sound like a plan?

Greetings,
Mr. s. I'm a little leery of flares after what happened....

Ahh there's your problem - youi're supposed to aim them at the big blue thing above your head, NOT the flappy blue thing in front of you.

Greetings,
Mr. s. "...the flappy blue thing in front of you..." This is a FAMILY site so I'm not going there!

If that's blue, may I humbly suggest a trip to the ER... STAT!

BruceK said:

It`s a Category 5 cyclone, predictions of wind approaching 300km/h, and heading for populated areas. There are predictions of up to 300mm of rain, that`s 12" in old measurements! Fortunately the dams are less full and the ground is not already saturated.
Our Queensland friends are in our thoughts, may the predictions be just that, and the reality much less severe.

Click to expand...

The news here is saying Cat 5. Get out of Dodge! Good luck.

In this image Marcia has a decidedly evil looking eye!

Does look a bit nasty, doesn;t it.

out of interest insequent - where'd you get that image? The new BOM meteye seems to be down - won't load any imagery here.

Its from NASA, got it out of this news story, slide 8.

Tracking the tropical cyclones Marcia and Lam - 9news.com.au

metEye is still working for me down here.

Thanks. Seems meteye is back up now. No joy all last night/this morning - perhaps it was getting overloaded by requests.

I think it must have been overload somewhere, I never noticed any outage.

I'm just finishing a coffee before going down to the boat. High tide of 2.8m at 11:05 am should indicate surge level in the Brisbane River. IIRC the highest tide at the marina is 2.9m. There will likely be lots of flooded streets if there is any significant surge.

I hope you guys down under don't have any problems getting through this. Hang in there, we're with you in thoughts if not actually there.

Lolrof....that's the best one yet, RT! Good to keep humor in a Cat 5 Cyclone.

Not sure if we have any members in Rockhampton, which at present is getting the brunt of Marcia, now downgraded to Cat 4. But there sure are lots of boats up that way and I hope they come through ok.

Down in Brisbane, the 3" rain in the last day or so is unrelated to Marcia, but it means that when Marcia weakens to a rain bearing depression and arrives tomorrow it will be dumping a lot of rain on already saturated ground. Fortunately the dam levels should not reach a point where they will be releasing any water into the river during the rain event. On the boat at present I could not discern any surge over the high tide, but of course we are a long way south of Marcia.

Just heard that storm surge around Rocky is forecast to be 3m. Further south for Shufti it should not exceed this, so here's hoping his house is not affected at all.