Couple rode out churning wall of water

Dean Lamb and Hannah LePine, who were in Thailand, helped to clean up after the tsunami struck.

The Herald revisits the Boxing Day Tsunami, 10 years on, through the stories of Kiwis caught up in the tragedy

They had sailed from New Zealand in 2002 and were two years into their adventure when they moored in a bay off Phuket in Thailand for Christmas.

Hannah LePine, aged 36, and Dean Lamb, 43, rode out the first wave of the tsunami on Risque Affaire, the 13.7m yacht which would carry them around the world.

Moored in Nai Han Bay, with other Kiwis, they found their yacht lifted with the swell of the sea. It was a higher and longer swell which had a nature disguised by the deep waters of the bay.

At the point where the sea floor rose up to meet the land, the swell became a wall which was unstoppable.

"You were sitting there having a coffee and then 'where's the beach?'. The yachties were pretty lucky at that bay."

The couple piled into a dinghy to help where they could after the first wave, not realising there would be another.

When they did realise, it had arrived, and Mr Lamb was on the water, horrified as he watched Ms LePine running for her life on the beach.

The days which followed were, in part, spent doing what they could. They did what they could for the families of Andrew and Belinda Welch, who had reached out through people known to both to ask they seek out the couple at Khao Lak to the north.

"You've been to Khao Lak," Ms LePine tells the Herald. "You know what it's like. The loss of life and destruction there?"

There was a restaurant in the bay which had been destroyed. When the Herald visited on New Year's Eve 2004, Ms LePine and Mr Lamb were among those putting it back together in anticipation of the party that night.

"Then it was time to move on."

By the middle of January, they were back at sea. When you sail the globe, the seasons set the timetable for departure. They sailed the Indian Ocean, awash with debris from the tsunami, bound for Europe.

In Turkey, Ms LePine discovered she was pregnant. She returned to New Zealand to wait for the arrival of George, while Mr Lamb crewed another yacht via Sri Lanka then Thailand before his journey home.

Then they were three and it was back to Turkey and the rest of the world.

They returned to New Zealand in 2007, and live in Christchurch. The earthquakes brought back many of the feelings from the tsunami, although different in some way which Ms LePine finds hard to define. Possibly, she wonders, because it is their home and they will stay living there.

George now has two sisters. Risque Affair has new owners and is in Marlborough.

Much has changed in 10 years.

"In some ways, for myself personally, everything we went through - it will never go away," Ms LePine says.

"Every year Boxing Day comes around and you have that remembrance."

They speak of it sometimes.

"When we do, for myself, it brings back a lot of emotions and memories you don't want."

Boxing Day tsunami
• Monday: Police Commissioner Mike Bush
• Yesterday: Victims Belinda and Andrew Welch
• Today: Hannah LePine and Dean Lamb
• Boxing Day: Leone Cosens