Shit Does Happen!!

If you thought, as I did, that losing our dinghy was a big deal consider these other stories of loss all of which occurred around the same time and in the same waters in which we were travelling.

We found this sad yacht with broken rudder, mast, keel and severe hull damage on the north shore of Savaii, Samoa. She struck the reef as she tried to enter the lagoon at night just two weeks before.
Another sloop was wrecked on the reef at Kelefesia in the Ha’apai Group of Tonga entering the lagoon in which we had anchored a few weeks earlier. Some sailors anchored near-by to remove the rig and other gear so as to reduce hazard to other yachts. They commented on how spooky and forlorn she looked on the coral under the aqua sea.
This is the remains of a large and very expensive catamaran that capsized between Niue and Tonga. The story as I have it is that she was caught off-guard by a squall that, in its approach looked no different to many others that had passed over harmlessly. This photo is of the Niue supply ship that had earlier picked up the crew and this time took the vessel on board. A write-off!
Yet another vessel had a close call, landing their keel on a coral shelf during a sudden wind shift at night, only days after we had been anchored in much the same place. With help from other yachts she managed to get herself off the coral with little damage other than to the self esteem and still racing hearts of the crew.

Andrew up the mast conning us through coral reefs

The best way we found to safely negotiate coral.

Then there’s the yacht missing near Fiji in Oct where only debris has been found. I’ve not heard if the debris is from the missing yacht nor if the yacht or crew has since been located.
It is sobering to know of and even see yachts that have come to grief, in all cases with no loss of life apart from the one possible missing yacht –right where we have been sailing. Without doubt it focuses the mind.
On a smaller scale but dramatic nevertheless, a catamaran called Isabella, was struck by lightning in Panama. Hers was the shortest mast around but still the one zapped. Deep fried all the electrics which they are still replacing.
Another catamaran lost her propeller in Vava’u.

Eagle Wings, with two or three children aboard, made the passage to Tonga from New Zealand at much the same time as Navire. She had endless trouble on that trip beginning with a failed gear box, followed by their diesel and all the fresh water getting contaminated by sea water, and then by the headsail furler jamming. On the lucky side, a passing freighter stopped for them to dinghy over in the flat calm and trade a bottle of rum for 100 litres of precious drinking water. We did not see or hear of a ship on either passage. They were stuck for at least six weeks in sweltering Nukualofa downwind from a boat drying sea slugs on deck – the smell at times was rank. Then, as they prepared to cast off and at last begin their South Pacific cruise they discovered that their engine had seized. We left them amongst a dismantled motor, waiting on their ‘rarely seen’ mechanic and contemplating what to do about the suddenly empty cruising kitty. We met Eagle Wings while despondently arranging to replace our dinghy. Their story lifted out spirits no end.
We have rarely told our lost dinghy story without the listener confessing to a similar mishap. These stories too did wonders for our mood. Losing a dinghy, it appears, is a very common occurrence. Many, of course, are recovered, some after the passage of several months. Perhaps there is hope for ours yet. We learned too that there are worse circumstances in which to lose a dinghy such as losing someone else’s of which we heard several. The custom is to insist that visitors to your yacht tie their own dinghy. It will be no surprise that we follow this approach.
David


The Passage Home
David
Setting out on passage puts me in mind of that saying “the longest journey begins with the first step.” It seems such a monumental thing to set out on an 1100 mile ocean crossing, just us and this little boat but actually, it isn’t. You just lift the anchor and go, like we’ve done a thousand times before. You just go. It seems so ordinary. Just another day’s sail, except that on this occasion we keep going. Evening comes, we have dinner, someone goes on watch and the others go to bed and all the while Navire sails on, ticking off the miles. Before you know it you have 3 or 400 hundred miles under the keel.
We prepare of course, but apart from the volume of food and spare parts there’s not much more to do than for crossing Cook Strait. That is, from this end. For the outward journey we had a ‘To Do’ list of 300 items at least. Unlike a day sail we do pay attention to the weather at least a couple of week before casting off. There is endless examination of weather maps and conversations amongst ourselves and with others doing the same passage. And then there is that anxious decision about when to leave. But with the decision taken, we lift anchor and go. There should be a fanfare, horns hooting, streamers thrown, crowds to wave us off. On this occasion, where we left from Big Mamma’s on Pangaimotu, even though it was mid afternoon not a lot was stirring on the other yachts. We just slipped our moorings and headed for the pass in the reef. Not a single horn blast or wave, or streamer. Very ordinary and yet such a big first step.

Janet
Middle of the night, middle of the ocean, October sometime.
(I seem to always write in the dead of night)
Well we are underway, three days south of Tonga and six days north of NZ. This midnight watch I’m on can be glorious, gliding across the ocean under a majestic starry sky, or hard work like now, racing along at 7 knots, reefed down, the wind gusting to 30 knots and the waves slamming the hull. It’s all shades of grey, no stars or moon to guide us tonight, I’ve been through a lot worse now but these conditions still makes me feel vulnerable, out here in 38’ of plastic in this volatile sea.

Leaving land is always a slightly anxious time, mostly worrying about weather - have we picked the right conditions for a good passage? So far so good, not enough wind yet in fact. And I’m not seasick, a little queasy but that’s okay. Said goodbye to Tonga and to the glorious life of cruising (for now maybe). And glorious it was. While I’m out here on night watch I have a slide show going through my head of trip highlights. Whales were a significant feature, watching them breach, slapping the water with their tails, swimming close to them and watching them lying deep under the surface then slowly swimming up to blow. Listening to the whale-song through the hull in Niue in the middle of the night was truly awesome.

Although we went to many beautiful places what really enriched the experience was the people we met, cruisers and locals alike. We made a lot of special friends who we intend to stay in touch with. Locals include Alfred and Rhoda in Samoa who adopted us and showed us their country, and Niko and Sia on Niuatoputapu in northern Tonga who were most excellent hosts.
We saw amazing scenery, stunning white sandy beaches, beautiful coral, brightly coloured sea-life, caverns and chasms, palm trees and coral blue sea. We had great intercultural moments watching NZ international rugby in all the countries we visited. Playing music was an absolute highlight. Playing and singing was a regular part of socialising on land and on other boats.
Writing the blog has been a joy, it has helped cement the experience, but best of all was the responses we’ve had from you readers. Because of lack of internet access I haven’t been able to read it right through yet so I have that pleasure to come back in NZ.
Other pictures in my slide show in my mind are watching the Wizard of Oz on a big screen, under the star on the deck of Migration, a large trimaran, night lobster diving, catching big fish, and visiting a local school. I had great fun with food. Having lots of time to cook was great and always a willing audience to try my food. It was interesting working with local ingredients.
And most gloriously it was warm all the time. I love life at 25 degrees average, wearing little or no clothes and having a warm sea to dive into whenever I pleased. Ahhhhhhh......
Back to the present. There are other boats within a few hundred miles of us but I doubt we’ll see them (actually a catamaran overtook us on the second to last day). We hear them on the radio, they have good wind, no wind, headwinds or too much wind, broken motors or are hove-to, so we are doing rather well.
The queasiness is abating, it hasn’t been so bad this time out, and I’m finally getting my sea legs. Poor Andrew has mal de mer and struggles around the boat with his blue bucket in tow. I do know how he feels. However when he’s on deck he’s good, he keeps the boat racing along. I love to see him and David tweaking the sails, I just don’t seem to have the knack.

Actually I'd rather die, thanks all the same.

I’d love to enjoy the ocean passages but I don’t much. I want to enjoy the wide open spaces and the foreverness of it but in reality, I feel queasy some of the time, I’m often tired from being up for three hours in the dead of night, and from the G-forces of the boat being heeled over. There’s always the spectre of bad weather just over the horizon somewhere. So I just want to get there. However I do like the lack of reference points, not knowing what day it is, and only knowing where we are from the latitude and longitude readings on the GPS.
The best thing about this night watch is getting to bed afterwards, I just literally fall in. Yuck it’s raining now, it’s killed the wind and the sails are slatting....now the wind is back with a vengance.. roll on 3am.

David’s journal entry
Friday. Day 3
Janet feeling queasy but doesn’t miss a beat. Attends to weather and food magnificently. Still a horror on the actual sailing. Andrew, I suspect would abandon ship at Minerva if he could. So far it’s a misery for him – head in a bucket or asleep. Nevertheless he does his watch and fights the seasickness with little success, alas.
I was feeling fine with only the occasional twinges of woosiness. Then, at the end of my 9-12pm watch last night, after looking at weather faxes on the pc I could feel that awful presage of seasickness and decided reading was not a good idea. I went back on deck and before I knew it I was hanging over the rail doing my best to deposit my entire gastrointestinal track in the sea. Ohhhh it is so wretched a feeling. Dozed all the rest of my watch. Off watch I slept well and came on deck feeling fine. Took another Pahia Bomb anyway. Got to keep that awful feeling at bay. With Andrew down and Janet just controlling it we can’t afford a third person in that “who gives a fuck, do as little as possible, oh God get me off of here” state. Fortunately my stomach stayed steady as a rock all the way home. Yipee!!.

Passages, long or short, have been something to be endured, to get to another place. Disappointing. I’ve wanted to ‘live at sea’, do things, read, make music, attend to the ship, gaze in wonder at the vast ocean, write, eat and enjoy the company but that has happened only in patches. Mostly it’s an endurance, watching the miles tick by – and these past 2 days they have gone by so very slowly - focused on getting there. (Directly after this watch the winds filled in and we began making fabulous time and, as Janet writes, we made NZ in record time and in relative comfort. I finally had a long passage that I enjoyed. I was able to read and write, and attend to the ship and to gaze at the vast ocean. Best of all I understood the weather we were in. I knew there was no front about to beat us up. If the winds picked up I was confident they would not keep increasing to the point of serious discomfort. The wind would stay in the east and vary by 10 or 15 knots. And they did, all the way to Opua. Fabulous.)

Midnight next night (Janet)
Only one more day till we get to 30 degrees South, leaving the tropical zone and heading towards the Southern Ocean. We are four days out of Tonga and I’m back into my wet weather gear at night, but the trip is nowhere as cold as the one we had going north.

Andrew looking much better

Hard day yesterday, not a storm, but the wind was 25-30 knots (35 is gale force) but it made the waves big enough to slam into us making getting around the boat difficult. Andrew actually asked for food today. A good sign. I’m not feeling queasy any more either.

We are making good time, doing 170 miles one day, a record for us. Soon we have to decide whether to go in to Opua in the Bay of Islands, or to head west and sail down the west coast of the North Island. I feel too tired to do that. If we get a couple of days of smoother seas I’ll feel better. Opua appeals – hot showers and a bed that doesn’t get slammed by every sixth wave. It’s been too rough to shower and I’m beginning to dislike the smell of myself. I dream my first NZ meal – lamb cutlets, asparagus,... finished off by lemon meringue pie and cream. No more awful Tongan chicken.

Oct 27
Tonight should be our last night at sea on this leg. We are going to Opua – yes! The weather isn’t good enough to go straight on to Wellington. This trip to Opua is 1060 miles and the leg to Wellington is 600 with much more volatile weather conditions. I have two bottles of bubbly ready to celebrate land fall.

Bay of Islands
We have arrived in Opua safely after having a very good trip down from Tonga. We did it in seven days which is an excellent time for us. We arrived on a sunny, warm day, welcomed by a pod of dolphins and a tuna on the line. We stopped in the shelter of a bay to enjoy a lunch of fresh tuna sushi before heading into Opua

and all the officialdom of customs, MAF and of manouvering in tight marinas.

This journey is not over yet though. We still have what is the most challenging leg to go, down the West Coast to Wellington. While we are here we reprovision, water up and refuel, plus catch up with cruising friends who are arriving each day having completed their own passages to New Zealand. To our great joy Meg and Brian, neighbours from our marina in Wellington, were touring up round here and came to visit. David’s mum came up from Whangarei to visit too and it was lovely to catch up with her. She is a yachting cruiser from way back with two passages to the islands under belt so had some understanding of what we were feeling.

Nov 1, Off Cape Rienga
Back on the road again after having a great time in Opua. We partied with other cruisers with much bragging about boat speeds and sharing passage conditions.

North Cape

Its 15 degrees and bloody freezing. The weather is giving a taste of NZ classic conditions. Its blowing 30 knots and the seas are 3-4 metres. I’m in the cockpit in the dark with big waves rolling down behind us, occasionally one breaks and I can hear the crashing sound. Fortunately very little of it comes aboard. Doing this side of the country means we will have completed a circumnavigation of the North Island. Quite an achievement.

We have been joined by a lovely young man, Nick from Kansas USA. We borrowed him from Compass Rose.

Andrew got a call from Wellington to say his dad was in hospital so he flew back home immediately.

If you look closely, yes, it's Mt Taranaki

It's a hard life this passage making

Nov 4, Cook Strait, only hours from home
We are racing through Cook Strait in the dead of night. We want to get to Wellington before a 50 knot Southerly arrives. We have wind and tide with us and clocked 10.5 knots at one stage, it’s a wonder we didn’t get speed wobbles. There was quite a bit of shipping about. Fortunately we timed the tide right and the rip at Karori rock was negligible. It can be a horrendous bit of water if you get the timing wrong.
We arrived at dawn and dear Piet was waiting to take our lines. I swallowed a couple of whiskies, had a hot shower and passed out. I woke to friends visiting then Wellington had the decency to put on a fireworks display to welcome us back. A fitting end to the trip.