Rain fails to dampen spirits

Leaden skies, light showers and whipping winds could not dampen the moment tonight as the sun set on the second millennium.

In northern resorts people buttoned up windbreakers and prepared to greet the dawn. The weather ruined one event in the Bay of Islands when a Maori canoe attempting to sail to Waitangi was overturned by 40 knot winds and 2 metre waves. The 50 men and children on board the waka clambered to safety when it ran aground.

Some places were more fortunate. On the Chathams Islands, first to see the year 2000 sun rise, a fine evening gave a skydiving party the prospect of a jump into the dawn at the international dateline.

Gisborne too enjoyed a fine sunset as the city prepared for Dame Kiri te Kanawa's dawn concert. But further up the East Coast 500 people swathed in several layers of clothing waited on the cold slopes of Mt Hikurangi, hoping to see the first sun rays strike mainland New Zealand.

At a more usual New Years Eve, Whangamata, police patrols were out in force maintaining an alcohol ban, Crowds were reported to be smaller and better behaved than usual.

At Mt Maunganui a lone lifeguard, Kent Jarman, surveyed a beach "eerily quiet" after an overcast day. But by 10pm the beach was beginning to fill up with revellers. Police made 10 arrests enforcing a foreshore alcohol ban. People were more intent on shopping in the final daylight hours of 1999, mainly for emergency supplies. All over the country Y2K warnings were taken to heart at the last minute.

Auckland supermarket manager, Bryce Gill, estimated numbers through his store were three times that of a normal Friday.

It's like Christmas," he said. "I didn't think people were taking Y2K this seriously."

Shelves were cleared of tinned foods and batteries but mainly of bottled water.

Said one Mt Eden shopper, Craig Rodgers: "I've been meaning to get around to it for weeks. I don't expect anything to happen but it pays to be sure."

At the Y2K Readiness Commission in Wellington the information net site was braced for an expected million hits in the two hours after midnight.

At Auckland's Viaduct Basin, the America's Cup base, early millennium celebrants were clad like southern ocean racers. The waterfront bars and cafes were more popular places to be. And there were parties aplenty on the luxury yachts moored nearby. Meanwhile pup tents were sprouting in the Auckland Domain as millennium concert-goers came well prepared. Others sheltered under umbrellas and sheets of plastic they had hoped to sit on.

But the drizzle did not prevent thousands turning up and could not contain the enthusiasm of Mayor Christine Fletcher as she launched the concert with a few sentiments on the meaning of life.

"For me life is catching the wave just as it curls and riding it before it crashes on the black sand of a West Coast beach," she told the damp throng.

She hoped the midnight celebration would mark, "a passage of time that will represent better human intentions from us all, a renewed sense of hope and opportunity for people and new care and stewardship of the planet."

Meanwhile, the Governor General, Sir Michael Hardie Boys, in a speech prepared for a dawn ceremony at the national museum, te Papa, this morning, said many were looking to the millennium, "as the beginning of something new, something better, a watershed for our nation and the world."

He called for "a reassessment of some values and priorities and greater determination to see our nation succeed and prosper so that we have enough to both reward success and eliminate underprivilege."

"It is well over 100 years since we were at war among ourselves," Sir Michael said. "Yet we are not even now a people fully at peace with ourselves. Past injustices and present inequities still rankle. Financial insecurity, unemployment, underachievement, inequality of opportunity, such things gnaw at our social fabric."