S/V L'ORIENT

Hey - Where did everyone go? Happy Cyclone Season! Neptune actually jumped the gun and sent Lola (Category-5) across Vanuatu (an island group just west of Fiji), where a friend of ours on another Amel had a narrow escape. Over eight years in the Caribbean made us confident regarding hurricanes.....they start off Africa, are easily tracked as they intensify, and could be dodged/avoided because they follow reasonably predictable paths. Out here, rainbows mean here it comes, not there it goes...... We have been disappointed to learn that other than spinning in the opposite direction, cyclone season in the South Pacific may prove more challenging than its Caribbean analog. For starters, despite our wealth of weather data, we're getting a lot of "noise in the system". A dangerous storm pops up on one weather model as a threat ten days out, then disappears in the update...only to pop up on another weather model. The six models we use differ significantly, so we actually check t