17:08.09S 153:51.45W One day out from Bora Bora
While waiting for our clearance document to come by email from Papeete in Tahiti we contemplated the next stage of our journey as Zoonie sat at anchor under the towering Mt Pahia and an invisible caged bird made a sound somewhere between the rusty hinge on a swinging gate and a puppy that had trapped its paw. The only consistent thing about it was its irregular squawk.
Our next planned landfall is Niue, a large, round lump of coral fringed limestone with no anchorages and little shelter but 18 substantial mooring buoys off a friendly club on an island which was the first in the world to have WIFI internet.
You can see the attraction. If we turn up and there are no mooring buoys free we will have to continue to Vavau in the northern Tongan Archipeligo two days further on.
We appear to have caught up with a number of sailing vessels heading west and eventually to New Zealand, so there is a nice feeling of comradery and we have spent an evening in the bar with 8 other couples sharing our plans and experiences. We will invariably meet some of them again.
Yesterday morning we started to raise the 75 metres of anchor chain and the windlass gave up the effort in a cloud of smoke. We have never had so much chain out before and raising the weight of 25 metres of chain off the bottom proved too much for the old Sea Wolf windlass. So we rigged the preventer line from the chain along to the port hand big winch in the cockpit and while I winched up the chain from there Rob tidied it away into its locker on the fore-deck.
I was just glad that thanks to the winch I was able to help in what would have been a hernia making job for Rob to lift it manually.
My unsettled tummy attests to the confused sea state but the wind is good, though less than yesterday, and Zoonie is doing her best on a near run with the genoa pulling well.
Ahead of us we are approaching a vast area of live volcanic activity. Beyond the Tonga Trench (deepest area I could find on the chart 10,632 metres below sea level) the Tonga Archipeligo is a range of volcanoes that have almost sunk below sea level making them amongst the oldest in existence but the new volcanic activity is creating new volcanoes in this geologically hyper-active area. In September 2009 the eruption of a submarine volcano abruptly ended the peace in a favourite anchorage causing a tsunami that devastated the area.
However, it is activity of a different kind we have experienced over the last 36 hours, which started with a phone call home to wish Sue a Happy Birthday.
The Satphone suddenly lost its connection and when Rob went into the cockpit we found one possible reason why, “Hey up we’ve got lightning!” One of the modern mariners’ worst fears is being struck down the metal mast and having all the electricity powered instruments destroyed.
The satphone and handheld VHF radio went into the oven, which hopefully would protect them as it is gimballed within wood. A box of bank notes that were near the wiring in a cupboard were relocated on the bed in case of fire and the computers and portable GPS were moved well away from the control panel with all the wiring behind. We heeded the warning!
Brilliant white flashes illuminated threatening dark clouds rising sheer from sea level into the atmosphere above, down Zoonie’s starboard side. Like a pair of defensive meerkats our heads moved from side to side catching each flash and assessing whether the whole threatening area was moving towards us. It seemed to be on a parallel course moving ahead at a greater speed than Zoonie, so we began to feel we were out of risk until a flash lit the sky on Zoonie’s other side. My immediate reaction was to look ahead, ‘were we running into the storm?’
Strangely, the diva cruising chute was up at the time pulling us nicely forward at 6 knots or so.
During the night the wind dropped and when I woke it was to the sound of the engine. Something big had sucked the wind away and very soon we found out what.
It started with rain, which quickly became heavy and was joined by a rapidly increasing wind from Zoonie’s port stern quarter. The waves stayed subdued because of the heavy rain pressing them smooth but then they started to build, unable to resist the power in the air.
We sat on the windward berth, wedged in place, watching the white wave crests being set in flight and long areas of beautiful turquoise water amidst the grim slate grey, reflecting the sky above.
Suddenly on the chart plotter little black Zoonie was flipped 180’ to face the way she had come. If we hadn’t seen it on the screen we would only know it had happened because the auto pilot electric steering system alarm went off, there being no sails out to tell us.
We watched the screen to see if the Auto pilot could get us back onto the course we had just reset. Unfortunately it tried to do so by pushing the bow through the wind, which was just too strong. So Rob brought her round manually.
This happened twice more, then we decided to give the AP a rest and go and steer ourselves.
Not since Biscay two years ago have we taken it in turns to hand steer her in a gale. Still under engine with 40 knots of wind up our bum we were neither shaken nor stirred and in fact were thoroughly enjoying the cocktail mix of wind and sea. We could have done without the rain but it did a great job of polishing the stainless steel.
By late afternoon we let out a kerchief of genoa and let Henry the Hydrovane take over the steering.
It was by good fortune that I had made a Thai Purple (Red cabbage) curry with coconut milk the day before to last for two suppers as cooking in the galley was neither practical nor physically possible. Heating up a couple of pans on the gimballed stove was nice and easy.
As I write this Zoonie is trying to decide which side of Palmerston Island she should go, as the wind keeps changing her heading. She has 100 miles to make up her mind and then the last waypoint we set will be for north of Niue, around 390 miles away.