2007-09-07 Fools or children

I’ve heard the saying that the Lord looks after fools and children. It’s
your guess, which we are, but surely something bigger than ourselves had a
hand in getting us from Also Island to SavuSavu. We’re here and well,
recuperating from 30 very hard hours, and as fond of the town now as we were
a couple months ago.
I had written that we were getting ready to head out of Also Island and
Thawaro, and needed some time in SavuSavu to receive parts and prepare the
boat for the trip north to the Marshall Islands. A week ago we had things
wrapped up, and said our goodbyes to friends there, telling them that
dependent on weather conditions we could leave any day from Saturday on.
The weather, particularly the wind strength and direction hereabouts is
determined by the position and strength of the high pressure systems that
move east across the temperate latitudes, originating from Australia and
passing across the International Dateline to dissipate near Tahiti. When a
big strong high is just south of Fiji the wind is quite strong and gusty
from the southeast. That would make it pretty challenging to sail to
SavuSavu, east around the Udu Peninsula, and then south through the
Scatterbreak Islands and reefs, to the Rambi Channel. There you turn a bit
west of south to pass through the SomoSomo Straight, and run west along the
south coast of Vanua Levu to reach Savu Savu. That first 40 miles to Rambi
presents three challenges in such winds. First, the east and south legs are
going to be very high on the wind, and require attention to sail trim and
steering to make good time in the right direction. Then, strong, gusty
winds require that you reduce sail area enough to keep the strains on the
rigging under control, but still have enough power to drive through the
choppy sea and climb over the big swell that builds up with a thousand miles
of fetch. And third, those swells are coming in from open ocean, to deflect
and reflect from the many reefs and islets along the way. That turns a big
but regular and smooth sea into a gigantic model of what you see when you
look into a washing machine. There’s little pattern to the size, shape, or
direction of the waves. Just violent, almost random eruptions from the
surface among the pattern of the swell.
Most sailors time their departure from Nukusa Pass early in the morning,
and in 10 hours they are at the north end of Rambi Island where they can
anchor at Albert Cove for the night, then carry on at daylight. They
generally have a 50 horsepower inboard motor to help keep the schedule, and
an electric windlass to pick up the anchor chain after they stop at Albert,
in 60 feet of water. We have a 10 horsepower outboard motor, and no
functional windlass, so that was out for us. We planned to go around
without a stop, so we had to sail at night someplace. Originally we tried
to plan for a night with a big moon, but that didn’t work out. We were
trying to wait for the high to move east, and let the wind ease up to under
15 knots. This high stalled, and after waiting a few days, there was no
sign it was going to move. A low trough settled in over us, and it rained
buckets in squalls carrying winds of 40 knot gusts. On Wednesday our
patience ran out. We needed to get to a place with internet access, to do
some banking. We needed to get the boat ready for the trip north. And
psychologically, we got a trapped feeling. We decided to go, despite
forecasts of rain squalls, and gusts to 30 knots from the SE. It was
foolhardy, and I recognized that at the time. But a sort of fatalism
combined with refusal to be subject to waiting for a break in the weather.
It took over 2 hours to get the anchors out of the bottom of Beqana
Harbor. The violence of the gusts over the last month had dug them in deep,
and the chain and rope were covered with so much slime and mud I had to
scrub them as I hauled them up, so I could hold onto them. It was near
noon, and only a couple hours past low tide when we started motoring slowly
toward the pass. The lagoon there is littered with shoals and reefs, so it
took 2 more hours to work our way out to the open sea. While we were at
Also Island I had finally gotten our GPS position receiver to interact with
the computer, so we had moved into the electronic navigation era, joining
most of the yachting world. We were getting a handle on what it could do
for us to have a little mark on the chart on the screen, representing the
boat position, and listing our direction and speed. It was the C-map
program that pushed me over the line to believe we could go to Rambi in the
dark. It really is soothing to know where you really are. The
intermittent torrential rain squalls that all but blinded us every five
minutes posed a challenge, but we couldn’t be deterred by those when we
planned to spend 9 hours in the dark.
The Udu runs a bit north of east, so it breaks the big trade wind swell,
affording us a pretty smooth sea for the first 15 miles of the trip. With
the wind fluctuating between 15 and 25 knots, we set a double reefed
mainsail, and the staysail, a small and easily managed sail arrangement. It
moved us to windward at about 4 knots, with a drift north of about 10
degrees, so we had to short tack back south a couple of times to stay in the
protected water of the peninsula. That made it just about dark as we neared
the lighthouse at the end, . By then, the swell wrapping around the reef
was making the motion of the boat pretty lively, which means Karen was
starting to get seasick. For her that just goes with the activity of
sailing. I still don’t know why she will do this. But I could see that we
weren’t going to be able to tack in 90 degrees in these sea conditions, so
we had to carry on another 5 miles beyond the reef end to be sure we were
clear, and have a chance of making it to the entrance to the Rambi Channel
without hitting Texas Reef. Karen suggested that we’d do better
motorsailing, letting the outboard help keep us moving with good steerage
way, while not putting up enough sail area that the mast would be
overstressed. It was a good call. We fired up the outboard, and it ran
without pause for the next 8 hours, with me refueling the remote tank using
a siphon hose . You can’t pour liquids with the boat leaping up and down 10
feet every 15 seconds.
Even before we made the turn south I was uneasy with the limited control
we had. It was blowing too hard to allow a normal tack. The boat didn’t
have enough forward momentum to carry its motion through the wind, so we had
to " wear ship" like the old square riggers, turning off downwind to jibe
the sails, then continuing through about 250 degrees of a circle.
Theoretically you can go 270 degrees, so your new course is 90 degrees off
the old one. The real world truth is that not many cruising boats can tack
90 degrees in a 10 foot sea with 25 knots of wind. We couldn’t do it even
with the motor helping. We made 110 degrees, and could hold about 3.5 knots
average. The gusts to 25 or 30 knots wind would push us up over 5 knots
boat speed, and I couldn’t allow Sequester to go any faster in that sea.
The bashing was already shaking things loose from their storage areas, and
seas breaking over the cabin reminded me that we still hadn’t made hatch
storm covers. I had to put the mainsail away completely and augment the
staysail with a little bit of the roller furling jib to control speed. The
inside was becoming a wet shambles, like it was during the storm on the way
from NZ. Moving around was pretty difficult for me. For Karen it wasn’t a
problem. She couldn’t move from the cockpit seat at all. Her seasickness
had triggered a migraine headache. She huddled on the cushion next to the
autopilot mount, soaked by the spray and rain, but rousing herself to handle
the tiller each time we had to change directions. I took stock. If the
motor quit, a bit of water in the fuel, or the water pump impellor deciding
that 6 years was enough for instance, we would have no prayer of going
upwind, and would have to head back toward the big pass near Labasa, 60
miles back. If the poor old rusty autopilot failed, there was no way we’d
be able to hold this course all night with me a poor helmsman anyway, and
Karen debilitated. We had followed the modern sailors tradition of naming
the autopilot for a special friend, as the hard working uncomplaining crew
member. Ours is Min, named for one of our first and best friends in NZ, and
like our Auckland Min, she held on against all odds and got us through it.
If the laptop or the primary GPS failed, navigation was going to become a
lot more of a crapshoot, with little room for error. And hitting a reef out
there was sure to reduce survival chances well below 50%. The other thing
that gave me too much to think about that night was the rig, especially the
staysail. It’s seen 16 years of intermittently strenuous duty, and though
it passed inspection before we left, one still has to wonder when the wind
howls and the boat crashes through the big seas.
So, sitting in the soaking spray and rain, surrounded with the din of
the bellowing motor at my feet, the crash of the boat, the shriek of the
wind, cocooned in a dim pocket of light from the computer screen in the
cabin, I held two thoughts or feelings all night. I cursed myself for a
moron to take such a chance, depending for our lives on all this rather
ordinary and well worn equipment. And I was astounded every few minutes to
find it all still working. I checked position, tried to think of reasonable
"plan B" scenarios if one of those things did fail, I hastily restowed
things that fell out of the cupboards and shelves, and I wrapped Karen in a
fleece blanket, and held her to try to keep her warm. I tried to get her to
put on a fleece jersey under her raincoat, but she was too sick to make the
effort. I just had to keep us moving until we made the pass entrance, and
could crack off the wind direction a bit. From there on I figured we had a
fair chance of making it. On a misery scale of 1 to 10 we were sitting
pretty high in the decimals above 9.
A couple of times Karen could curl up and would drift off to sleep, once
for over an hour. We both knew I had to stay able to think clearly and work
to get us out of this, so twice she sent me to try to sleep while she kept
watch. To be where she could reach me I put a cushion for my head at the
companionway and slept fitfully on the floor for 15 or 20 minutes, but those
snatches of sleep did wonders for my ability to carry on. As 5:00 AM
approached, the sky became a little less dark, and we were only an hour or
so from the channel entrance. Even that 15 degree turn off the wind looked
like the gates of heaven, and I started to believe we were going to make it.
By 7:00, I turned on the SSB radio to check in with the Rag of the Air, to
let them know we had survived the night. The motor was getting a well
earned rest, and with the reefs to windward breaking the worst of the swell
we could let her sail up to 6 knots. It was pretty rowdy sailing, but such
an improvement on the night I could rouse a little humor on the radio,
suggesting that this had not been my all time best idea. Brian warned us
that in Somo Somo Straight the wind would drop out completely, so be ready
with the motor. I thanked him, signed off, and went to check the oil and
fill the fuel tank. Karen had me make her some licorice tea and ate a bit
of candy and a pill. Things were looking up.
As the big island of Taviuni broke the sea completely, but allowed the
wind to sweep in, we added sail and picked the pace up to over 7 knots,
seeing a chance to make Savu Savu before dark. I was pretty impressed with
the C-map, but I’d still rather enter a reef pass in the daylight. True to
Brian’s prediction the wind failed as we entered the 3 mile long pass, but
the motor ran fine, and the current was going our way. The surprise was
that after we cleared the pass, the wind didn’t fill back in for 15 miles.
The mountains of Taviuni left a shadow that long. We couldn’t keep the pace
needed with just the motor, and I started to despair of making it before
dark. Karen took advantage of the flat sea and went below for the first
time in 24 hours to sleep for 2 hours. She woke up as the wind was starting
to fill in, and within a few minutes I had the full mainsail and full jib
set, and we were broad reaching at over 7 knots. I went for a half hours
sleep, and when I came back out Karen was hand steering. By playing the big
swell that had now filled in behind us, she could get the boat surfing on
alternate waves, so about a third of the time we were doing 9 or 10 knots.
I fine tuned the navigation to keep the distance as short as possible, and
we could see we were going to make it in. Before we made the turn for the
pass I tucked one reef back in the main. It was still blowing pretty hard,
and we needed good control. The full main was a bit much for going upwind
around coral heads.
At 5:00 in the evening we had the lighthouse behind us and I raised Curly
on the radio to reserve a mooring. As the sun set, we were climbing into
the dinghy to row ashore for a good feed of fish and salad that someone else
had cooked. But we didn’t linger about after we ate. And the lights didn’t
stay on long when we got back to Sequester. When it started raining hard at
2:00 AM I got up to catch water in every container we own. By then I’d had
6 hours of sleep, and cleaning up the salt was going to require a lot of
fresh water. Our needs were provided for. T