Passage to Niue - Heavy Weather and Diesel Mechanics

Heavy weather is something that all cruisers fret about prior to leaving their home ports. With some common sense and careful monitoring of weather information, the risk of experiencing such conditions can be significantly reduced. That being said, you have to be able to handle it when bad weather hits. Since Palmerston was not a good anchorage to weather a storm, we chose to head to sea and face it where we couldn't hit land (one hazard eliminated). We were in radio contact with Speedbird and Gavia Arctica (another BC boat that happened to be making the passage at the same time – although they did not stop at Palmerston) to discuss weather forcasts, routing strategies, and exchange position information.

The three boats decided to alter our courses from SW to NW to avoid the 50 kt winds predicted for the low’s southern quadrant. In anticipation of even higher winds, we had cleared the decks and stowed everything below, including the dinghy, and done a practice run with the storm trysail to ensure all the lines, etc were in place. The gale hit on the second day at sunset with winds up to 30 kts, rising to 40 kts at 2 am with the seas building to 3-4 m or so (the photos below were taken as things started brewing in the afternoon and sunrise the next day). Lots of lightning made for an exciting time. Wind intensity dropped to 20 to 25 kts the next day before dying completely the day after.

With the seas still rough, we decided to motor-sail to power through the waves, but the engine kept dying. We struggled to fix it for two days while bobbing around in the residual swell from the gale, moving forwards slowly with the gennaker. We were still at it when the gennaker ripped, the stove konked out and the wind vane controls lines popped loose. Ahhh! One by one, we fixed them all, but not after tiresome hours of hot, sweaty, grimey, diesely work, and still beating our heads against the wall to identify the engine problem. Our determination to fix the engine kept us from our daytime naps, so we were both running on only our night time 4 hr sleep. All in all, this was our most difficult passage yet.

When we finally triumphed with the engine, we shut it down, dropped the sails, stopped the boat, put down the ladder and went for an open ocean swim! Waaaa! It was soooo deep and blue! Wow. Incredible! It felt so exhilarating to wash off the diesel grime we’d been living and sleeping in for 2 days. We motored through the night and arrived in Alofi, Niue in the morning to a warm welcome of cruising friends awaiting our arrival.

Palmerston Atoll - Is There Any Other Place Like It?

In the mid 1800s, Englishman William Marsters picked up three wives from Penrhyn Atoll (Northern Cook Islands) and settled on Palmerston Atoll (Southern Cook Islands). He built a home and a church out of some huge timbers that he salvaged from a wrecked freighter; while the church was recently demolished and rebuilt for safety reasons, the main house still stands, despite being battered by countless cyclones. William divided each of the atoll's islets into three...equal land for each of his wives. Apparently they didn't have cable TV (they still don't)...old Billy fathered some 26 children. Recognizing the potential for genetic disaster, William made strict rules about marriage...anything goes as long as they aren't your Mom, Dad, Brother, Sister, Son, or Daughter! Today, the atoll is inhabited by 67 people...all with the surname Marsters! A dream come true if they ever want to put together a family tree.

Yachties are treated like royalty on Palmerston, since the only other visitors are the small cargo ships that bring supplies a couple times per year. Their tradition is to personally greet each arriving vessel and to host them during their stay. We were met by Bob Marsters, William's great great great grandson, who is the head of one of the three families (they still track everything by the original wives), awaiting us in his boat outside the reef at sunrise. After showing us exactly (literally) where to drop our anchor, Bob organized the customs, health and immigration inspectors for our clearance and even brought them to our boat. He and his wife, Tupou, also provided us with transportation ashore (we just needed to call on the VHF radio) and a fish feast for lunch both days we were there...always with a huge smile. They ask for nothing in return, but most cruisers repay the hospitality by giving surplus clothes, food and/or fuel.

The reef at the anchorage was impressive, going from surface-breaking crest to plunging wall in less than 100 m horizontal. Our depth sounder read 12 m, but the bottom disappeared over a vertical wall to 90 m right behind us. After the relative scarcity of marine life in Bora Bora, we were happy to see the thriving undersea world of Palmerston.

We had the anchorage, and the atoll for that matter, to ourselves for the first day, which is always great. After having so much fun the first day, we managed to convince our friends Morgan and Mel (on passing Speedbird) to stop for the day. They were not disappointed...we had an awesome dive and the Marsters brought lunch out to the boat. Morgan and Gary went on a spearfishing mission and brought back a nice red snapper for the road. We would have loved to stay longer, but we received notice that a storm was on its way...with virtually no protection at the anchorage, it was time to get out to sea and get ready.

BORA BORA

This island is touted as the "most beautiful in the world." While there were definitely some postcard worthy photo-ops of a dazzling array of light turquoise to deep blue water colour in front of the impressive mountains, we found that this "tropical paradise" lacked substance. Scratching around under the surface we found reefs in ill health and surprizingly low fish population within the lagoon. With the tourist crowd typically paying over US$1000/night for accomodation, most of the locals just seen $$$$ when you walk by...we heard of one woman who charged $25 just to let you look around her motu property.

We had the rare experiece, however, of actually meeting a local Bora Boran family (no other cruisers we talked to had this sort of contact) who were fantastic and showed us that not all the locals were into bilking the tourists. Celestine and her "kids" (full grown with children) have a beautiful property adjacent to one of the more isolated anchorages. We had caught a 30-40 lb Mahi Mahi on our way from Moorea and had way too much to eat ourselves (and no fridge), so Gary took it over to their house when we arrived. The fish broke the ice, so to speak, and Gary (this won't surprize many of you) charmed a dinner date for the following evening and use of their freezer while we were there. Mami (Celestine) always made sure that Gary's wine glass (and hers for that matter) were full; we got on so well that they invited us back for two more fantastic meals before we left. In fact, Mami was quite a crafty grandma...once when Gary was greeting her with the customary two-cheek kiss, she slyly turned her head at the last minute to get both lips full on. You go, Granny!

MOOREA

This tropical South Pacific island didn't disappoint us as we anchored at the mouth of Opunohu Bay, the location of the classic film South Pacific, directly beside the reef. The rugged peaks of Moorea make this one of the most picturesque anchorages in the Pacific. Although our stay here was brief, we managed to squeak in a day hike (up the Trois Cocotiers - 3 Palm Trees - trail to the Belevedere lookout and back down to Cooks Bay), snorkeling with stingrays and a dive at The Roses on the outer reef. Gary dived with Morgan and Mel from Speedbird; Lo was sent back to the surface by buddy Gary after getting her sinuses "squeezed" from her lagging illness.

We high-tailed it out of Moorea after the long hike to get to Bora Bora in a quest for our bond money. We had heard a rumour that later proved to be just that, a rumour, that the banks only reimburse bond money on Tuesday and Thursdays. After paying a US $2300 bond for our visas in the Marquesas, we wanted our money back and our visas expired the following Monday. After trying for confirmation via the radio (local banks already closed) and failing, and having already experienced the perils of French beauocracy, we decided that we should skip the planned visits to Huahine and Tahaa and go directly to Bora Bora. There is a good chance that we'll be by this way again next year on our return trip.

Papeete, Tahiti

Everyone says "Get in, get out", there's nothing special about Papeete, the capital of Tahiti and hub of French Polynesia. At first, Lo disagreed as she was pretty excited to visit cafes for tea with real milk, find ice cream, fresh baguettes and pain au chocolat. But after two weeks tied to the dock so we could do some key repairs, with the traffic so close by, the novelty quickly wore off. Every night, we'd watch the picturesque sunset behind Moorea 20 miles away and think of the clean, clear water, swimming and snorkeling we were missing. But alas, the computers, windlass and bollard needed repairs.

As we wrote before, BOTH computers were down with hard drive issues. Gary bought new ones for the rebuilds and tried to salvage our data from the old ones. GARY vs. BILL...CAGE MATCH...last one standing takes all. With Gary getting tossed around and whimpering like a 90-lbs weakling for a couple of days, it looked like Bill Gates would easily take the victory. Bill moved effortlessly from supplex to sleeper, nearly knocking Gary out on numerous occasions. Just when everyone thought he could take no more abuse, Gary accessed the old Dell's hard drive and saved all the emails, allowing him to finish rebuilding the old Dell with the new hard drive. The new Dell, while backed up COMPLETELY on an external drive, was not cooperating and in the end they called the match a draw. We also found that we had backed up all but a weeks worth of photos on the external drive, so we were quite happy in the end. The windlass and bollard repairs went relatively smoothly, which is surprizing for Papeete.

The real kicker for getting out of Papeete came when one of our cruising friends tied to the dock just opposite us was robbed while she was sleeping onboard, losing everything electronic from laptops to her cell phone. The thief also took Lo's camel pack from our boat, but luckily mustn't have been impressed to find the weight to be due to a full bladder of WATER and ditched it on the pier. We were really happy to head to the nice anchorage south of Papeete, where we met up with friends for a couple of nights before heading over to Moorea.

Technical Difficulties

Anyone following the website with a degree of regularity will have just about given up that it would ever be updated again. Despite having nearly full redundancy in our communication systems, Murphy's Law struck and took out both our computers...leaving us without email or electronic navigation since the end of July. Fortunately, we carry paper charts for old-fashioned navigation and we kept a weekly schedule with Vancouver via the ham radio, so we could let our families know we were still floating.

How did this misfortune come about? How could TWO computers give up on us? Well, the first incident was avoidable. We had left our removable companionway hatch unsecured in the cockpit on the crossing from Fatu Hiva to Ua Huka in the Marquesas. The weather was rough and a spiteful wave knocked the door into the air and it tumbled into the cabin, landing end first on the laptop, directly above the hard disk. That wasn't the only casualty of the crossing...both of us ended up coincidentally tossing our dinners on the exact same part of the deck (despite our attempts to miss the boat) on our respective watches (luckily, seasickness is a rare event for us, but these seas got us both!). The computer was hit hard enough to leave a mark in the plastic casing, so we were't that surprised when it gave up the ghost with the blue screen of death after three valiant reboots (yes, like some sappy hollywood death scene, it actually took a few last over-acted breaths before completely croaking).

The much newer and shinier "backup" laptop pulled a "Titanic"...lasting only a few days of her maiden voyage before hitting some unseen iceberg, flooding, then sinking rapidly into the black abyss (or in this case the blue screen of abyss), taking some not-yet-backed-up photos unwillingly to their graves. The most difficult aspect of this electronic void was missing tidal information for our neck of the woods. We had a hard copy Pacific tide guide, but it offered tides for only two locations in the Tuamotus, whose narrow entrances require diligent timing to avoid the normal swift tidal streams. Fortunately, we had figured out rough correlations between some of the locations in our tidal software and those in our book. Combined with lots of eyeballing at each of the passes, our tidal guestimates were enough to get us safely in and out of passes at four atolls: Raroia, Kauehi, Raraka, and Fakarava (we'll update you about those adventures in subsequent blogs).

Nearly all of our computer files (except about a week's worth of emails and photos) were backed up on our external hard disk, so rebuilding the computers should have been theoretically simple...load the emergency CD and let the software do the rest. AAAAAAAAAAARRRRRRRRRRRRGGGGGGHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!! Day after painful day, Gary worked on recovering data from our dead hard drives and rebuilding two new ones in stinky Papeete, Tahiti. We began to wonder if going computerless was a better option...We found that being out of touch completely in the Tuamotus made for a more exotic experience. But alas, over the long run its way nicer to communicate with family and friends.

FLYING TO TAHITI

For those of you who are as literal as Lo, we didn't hop a plane from Fakarava to Tahiti, but boy, did we FLY! 20-30 knot winds and 3-4 m seas (on average; actually got some big 5 m waves!), we were CRUISING, pushing l'il Demelza to an average of 6 knots (and much of the time with nothing but a hankerchief-sized staysail up). The crossing only took a couple of days, but was rougher than expected in the Tradewinds.

Strong winds (30 kts) in the Fakarava lagoon made things interesting for us and our friends, Helene and Thomas on their boat Cephee (a young couple from France), as we pulled up anchor together for the passage. We hadn't done a passage with another boat, and were surprised that over 250 nm of ocean, we had Cephee in sight the entire way and in fact, on one occassion, got even a little TOO close. Lo noticed on her evening watch that Cephee's red light seemed to be getting closer....and closer. When she raised Thomas on the VHF and asked their course, sure enough, there we were just our two boats in hundreds..... THOUSANDS of miles of open ocean, set on a collision course. We did some fancy maneuvering with Cephee going behind us and then us crossing back again later that night on Gary's watch. All was well when we pulled into Papeete Harbour at the crack of dawn within 30 minutes of each other, unaware of the culture shock we were about to experience with our boats tied to the quai only 10 m from rush hour traffic in a busy South Pacific-European city after the peaceful isolation of the Tuamotus.