Yesterday was a very bad day, with a better ending. We came much closer to losing Sequester than probably ever before, and still don't know whether there's significant damage below the water line. but at least no leaks. We misread a channel marker and sailed her onto a reef, going straight downwind, about 2 hours after high tide at about 9:15 in the morning. We haven't been around channel markers for 7 years now, and let the skills deteriorate. I doubt if we're through paying the price for that lack of vigilance.
It was quite calm, so there was no breaking wave showing on the surface, or maybe we'd have been warned in time. The up side of the calm is that she wasn't pounded up and down on the coral as much as I feared she would be. The pounding is what usually breaks the hull. Even the small waves coming over the reef as the tide dropped away, and then rose again, made her roll and bump with a fearsome niose, and just before she floated again I could see the starbord aft hull panel flexing as she crunched against the coral head that had propped us upright all day. As bad as that was, that coral holding us almost straight up was a blessing, as we could work around the boat more easily through the day, getting ready to float her when the water came back in. Having once screwed up so completely, we both worked pretty efficiently to save her, and that along with the benevolence of fate has left us still in possession of the boat and all our belongings in her. When it looked rather doubtful, I kept working on reducing weight on board, while I had Karen put together a more extensive "ditch bag". That's the waterproof bag carrying what you expect to need to survive if you have to abandon the boat. Normally all we have packed is passports and ownership documents, but this brought to the fore the need for medications, all the cash, and such things that don't take much space or weight, but are important. We had wetsuits out to survive exposure if we managed to swamp the dinghy, as we were over 2 miles from shore. I wore mine most of the day to protect from coral cuts, as I was in and out of the water working.
When we first went on, I had gone down to the galley to get Karen some breakfast, and she was in the cockpit with the autopilot steering. That close to a reef, I doubt we'll do that again. But then, we thought we were passing on the correct side of the marker. Everyone says the marking system here in Fiji is a bit "off", so maybe it's not entirely our fault. But mostly. When I heard the centerboard start to drag on the coral, I knew we were in trouble. but it took Karen a few more seconds to identify the sound. (She's just told me that because I had the generator running to charge batteries, she never heard the board touch down on the coral.) By the time I was on deck, we had stopped against a ridge of coral about fifty feet from the edge of the reef. At the edge the depth dropped very quickly, forming a ragged vertical shelf with a difference of about 6 feet.
Within less than 10 minutes I had an anchor out,which I walked and swam over the edge and set in the coral. We tried to use the windlass to back her to the edge, then tried to turn her. But the water had already dropped too much, and she was firmly wedged. We knew right then that we were more in the hands of luck than skill or effort, but had to do everything well even if luck was to let us escape.
This was serious enough that we were willing to pay as much as thousands of dollars for assistance if it would improve our chances. There's a sizable village surrounded by a half dozen big antennas about 6 miles south of the reef, visible from the boat. We did an emergency call with the VHF radio. No response. We were baffled, still containing panic. I got on the SSB radio, and started going through the International Distress frequencies, calling. I got a response from Radio Taupo in NZ, but my signal was just too weak for them to read, after several tries on diffeent frequencies we decided we were on our own.
Due East about 2 miles there was a large wharf, with a small road winding down to it from a building up on a hill. Karen set off an orange smoke flare. No response. we decided one of us had to go for help. so we launched the dinghy, got the outboard on it, and I grabbed a bottle of juice and the handheld VHF radio so I could contact Karen from shore. I had to row out past the reef edge to keep from damaging the motor prop, then took off for the wharf. It seemed a long ride. Just as I was closing in on it, a truck came bouncing down it, with two Fijians in the cab. They saw me as I was tying the dinghy to a ladder, 20 feet below the dock surface, and asked if I was the one who made the orange smoke. They'd seen it, but had no idea what it meant. I explained the problem, and they loaded me into the truck and took me up to the project office on the hill, to see Tony. I tried to call Karen, but the batteries in the handheld radio were flat. Evidently it had turned itself on when a button was hit in my knapsack. She was on her own til I could get back.
Tony is from NZ, and had been in Fiji to oversee the building of the new wharf, where chipped wood was to be shipped from the inland forests to international buyers. It was the last day he was to be there, the last day there would be a phone there. He said radio was useless here in the "back blocks of Fiji". We couldn't raise any authorities nearby, so I had him call Eco DIvers in SavuSavu. The girl there took my message and soon Curly called back. Curly knows his way around in Fiji. He started looking for a boat to assist us, and we set up a radio schedule for the SSB on a frequency we expected would work. With that under way, Tony took me back down to the wharf, and I set out in the dinghy for Sequester, a tiny speck on the horizon. Then a light misting rain set in, and I lost sight of her, but I figured when I got closer either the rain would blow over or I'd see her through it. I set a course using the wharf and hill as references, and headed on out. In a few minutes the little squall passed, and I could see the boat again. When I got there, Karen was calmly putting things in order, clearing the deck for action. She says she never once considered that we might actually not get back off the reef. I had a lot less confidence about that.
We had let the rudder kick up to avoid damage when we went on, and now I tied it up out of harm's way but rigged the retrieving line so it could be back in functional position in seconds after we hit the deep water. We needed to get as much weight off the boat as possible, to let her float in less water. We set aside some jugs amounting to 12 liters of water, then Karen poured the rest over the side. I put the canoe down on the reef behind Sequester and started pulling the heaviest things out of the float hull storage areas, loading them into the canoe. A few things I considered just leaving on the reef, if it would improve our odds, but decided I'd leave that option until the last minute. I didn't really want to leave trash on the reef. Even in the crisis, I felt bad that I was breaking off some of the beautiful, slow growing coral heads. But there is a lot of it there. Several acres on that one reef.
After about an hour, I tuned up the SSB radio to a four megahertz frequency that Curly had told me he'd have monitored. Pretty quickly I had a decent copy on Dave, from the S/V La Vie, anchored just outside of SavuSavu. Steve on Red Sky and Curly on Stella Rosa were still in the creek right in front of the town, and the radio black hole was working as usual. They were unreadable. Dave said he was recovering from a strained back, and couldn't do much anyway, so he'd monitor the radio all day. Steve would also be there, with Dave relaying, and Curly would be back and forth working the phone to get a rescue crew together. They got us tide and weather info. High water at 8:16 (very dark by then) and the tide about 8 inches less than when we went on. Bad news. The good news; wind and swell light and abating. A boat was located in the village 6 miles south, but it was dried out on the beach until about 6:00 PM when the tide got back up to it, about the time we hoped to float. They would come out as soon as possible, and if we hadn't gotten clear, would try to give us a tow off. If we got clear, they would get us to a safe anchorage. This was their yard, and they could navigate it in the dark with complete confidence. Now I was at least pretty confident we wouldn't end up in the water all night. Dave and Steve made suggestions, asked questions, provided some company in the breaks between our projects. The moral support made things easier. I stacked on deck, but out of the way, things that could go in the big dinghy if required, but kept the dinghy empty except for a long tow line, which I would row out to the rescue boat if we needed to. I walked around the boat looking over the hulls. No visible damage , and we knew the bottom was the strongest part of her, so that was almost surely OK at this point. By about 3:00 PM the water started to come back in around the main hull, and by 4:30 she was rocking gently, grinding in the coral rubble with each little wave that passed around her. All day small misty rain showers had passed over, bringing a little wind increase, and wetting the deck, keeping that sorry nonskid surface slick. The wind and the slick deck we didn't need, but at least it kept us tolerably cool. Almost everything had two sides all day, but the balance held in our favor.
By 5:20 she was moving quite a bit, so I told Dave we'd be on deck for a while trying to turn her bow out using the anchor and the windlass. The windlass is a new addition, so I didn't know how well it would work. It wasn't perfect, but without it we might not have gotten off. The line would at times lose friction on the winch head and being nylon, which we had stretched like a huge rubber band, it would snap back a foot or so. At one point, just as we had retrieved the shackled joint between two sections, it did that and the shackle hammered my hand. The fingers hurt pretty badly, but still worked, so we carried on, with me tailing the line, and Karen working the switch and making off the tail between pulls. Slowly the boat started to turn a bit as each wave lifted her. When she jammed. I went below ad gave Dave a short update. As I talked, I watched the bilge panel flexing as we rolled against the coral. I headed back up and we started pulling again. I decided to have a look under the boat, and judge whether we could put the motor prop back down, and while under the wing deck, I gave her a hard push just as a wave surged. She lifted up and swung away from me. In seconds I was back on the windlass, and in a few minutes she was directly head to wind, pointed straight at the anchor. Any progress now would be directly toward the edge. We had to be patient, to be sure we didn't pull the anchor out trying too hard before there was enough water. I gave Dave one more update while we killed 10 minutes, then we loaded up the line, put the motor down, and got the rudder ready to deploy.
The stretch in the line gave her a pull, and on one wave she came clear and the crunching stopped. Karen fired up the motor and started driving, while I retrieved the anchor line as fast as it would come in. One last yank as the chain snagged a bit of coral, and suddenly the anchor was flying up toward the bow roller. I cleated it and ran for the stern, yanked loose the slipped knot holding the rudder up, jumped out on the transom and stepped on the rudder back while Karen pulled the retrieving line, simultaneously steering. We were away! And it was still nearly 10 minutes before complete dark. I looked back at the canoe, being dragged thru the chop at 4 knots with 600 pounds of gear in it. It was taking water over the bow. I had a little trouble convincing Karen to slow enough for me to pull it alongside and lean over to drag each piece of gear out onto the deck. Once it was empty, Karen let the boat drift for a minute while she helped me drag the canoe on deck and dump out the water, then we headed for the shoreline. In a couple more minutes we were just using the lights from Tony's office as a guide, running in the dark. I turned on the navigation lights and kept watch for the rescue boat. In a few more minutes, they were shouting from behind us, and we slowed more to let them come alongside. Typical of Fijians, there was one steering, and five sitting on the cabin top with the boat rolling from rail to rail, running entirely dark, not a light on board. They were apologetic that they hadn't been able to get their boat off the beach earlier, but genuinely pleased that we were off OK. They showed us a good place to anchor, visited for a few minutes, asking questions and looking over the "yacht". I suggested that we pay for their fuel, and $20 each for coming out to help. They said that was too much, but we insisted that we wanted to be sure they were happy to do it again if it was ever needed. They seemed pretty happy when they all trooped back onto their big skiff and motored off into the darkness with best wishes all around. We were pretty happy too, even with all the sore muscles and the now purple finger on my right hand. We got away with it. We're navigating VERY carefully now, moving slowly, both rechecking the plot. We're a bit short of confidence, but, so far, so good.
Later addition: Inspection shows only 2 small places where the fiberglass was scuffed thru to the plywood panel. Damage is almost entirely lost paint.
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