The morning of the 15th the
wind was up to thirty knots and the sea was building. We kept the
wind steering vane set on a course of 180 magnetic all day. This
was the first day out and it always seemed to me that, although
neither Merlyn nor I ever got seasick, a type of lethargy sets in
for the first few days. I just didn't feel right and the effort
of putting up the main seemed too much. What the heck, it was blowing
thirty knots and raining. We are making good speed on the jib, so
I left it alone, relaxed and got used to the motion of the ocean
… All good excuses for being lazy.
On the 16th we were finally
far enough out of Hawaii to have clear radio contact with our friend
who runs a SSB net out of Hawaii. This is also the day that I finally
put up the main and set the steering to a course of 210 degrees
magnetic (196 degrees true). We figured it was about time to get
on a course for Palmyra. I was beginning to wonder if it would ever
stop raining.
On the 17th all hell broke loose.
By 15:00 the wind was at gale force and the
sea 12-14 feet.
I had the main triple reefed, the jib put away, and the storm stays'l
set. By 22:00 the wind was a steady 35 knots gusting to well over
45 knots. It was pitch black and still pouring rain in buckets.
When Merlyn came on watch at 23:00, I told her in no uncertain terms
that she was not to open the main hatch. As the waves were crashing
completely over the boat, she had no argument.
Thirty-five knots of wind does
not usually create 25-foot seas, yet the morning of the 18th the
seas looked like the cover of "Heavy Weather Sailing"
(although a bit scary, a great book by K. Adlard Coles). The wind
slackened to 25 knots, but the sea was still huge with waves curling
right over us. These massive waves dropped incredibly fast during
the day, but by 17:30 the wind was a pleasant 15 knots out of the
northeast, the sea was 4-6 feet, and the sky had cleared for the
first time since we left Hilo. I have never seen the sea go from
one end of the scale to the other in such a short time, neither
before nor since. Not long after being tumbled around in a storm
we were enjoying cocktails in the cockpit and taking in the first
of many beautiful
sunsets to come.
The next couple of days brought
sunny skies and trade winds as low as ten
knots at times, but
mostly twelve to eighteen knots. Now this is what cruising is supposed
to be. On the 21st we were becalmed. Merlyn was content to drift
around on a flat sea, but not me. I started the motor and we continued
on at five knots. After 36 hours of motoring, on the evening of
the 22nd the trade winds came back suddenly to
15 knots. Yay!
We were able to sail until the early morning of the 23rd, then the
wind
stopped as suddenly as it came. On went the motor again
… Later in the day we were
surrounded by hundreds of birds.
We obviously were in their fishing grounds as they seemed irritated
at our presence. Things looked poised to turn into an ugly situation,
but the attack never came. We saw a freighter which passed our bow
without a word of radio contact.
At 02:30 on the 24th we sighted
Palmyra 6 miles off the starboard bow in the moonlight. Right where
it was supposed to be! We talked to Roger on VHF channel 16 at 05:30
and he mentioned that we should try to bring in some fish as there
had been a school of yellow fin tuna off the south side of the island.
Upon putting out the lure, we immediately caught a large fish head.
I was wondering how this happened when we spotted a large shark,
obviously content with the meal we had provided him and swimming
alongside the boat. "Go catch your own fish, you bastard!"
I yelled. After the shark left, we were then able to catch two nice
tuna to share with Roger and the other yachts at Palmyra.
We entered the narrow channel
into the sparkling clear waters of West Lagoon at 07:30 and at eight
o'clock we found Roger in his dingy waiting to show us exactly where
to put our anchor. Palmyra is a beautiful cruising destination and
a great place to break up the long passage from Hawaii to Samoa.
Although heavily occupied by the U.S.
military during World
War II, Palmyra is now uninhabited with the exception
of a
caretaker (Roger), two dogs, a cat, some chickens, and literally
millions of sea birds that have taken to nesting there. Once we
were anchored down and had delivered the various boat parts and
supplies that we had brought from Hilo, we began a truly golden
three weeks of adventure and fun in this tiny group of islands.
THE SAIL TO AMERICAN SAMOA
The 21-day sail
to Samoa was a long slow passage until we finally made it into the
southern hemispheres' south east tradewinds. this did not happen
until about twelve degrees south and came on explosevly with 40
knots of south-southeast wind and lots of rain. We were struck by
lightning, blown off course and generally mussed up. Merlyn had
a nasty burn and was blind for hours. This was NOT fun.
Entering
Pago Pago harbor, we were greeted by the smell of the fish fertilizer
plant on a gloomy, stormy day that never got truly light. We had
no illusions of finding paradise there. It took us nearly five weeks
to get all the paperwork straightened out on the Nael. Our official
document was waiting for us at Pago Pago as I did not want to wait
in Hilo for its arrival. When we recieved it, it described the Nael
as a 28-foot wooden boat on lake Tahoe! I did not think the officials
in Fiji would go for this, so we had to wait out the changes. These
came from Vermont or Virginia or some such place far from Samoa.
Fortunately, we met a Coast Guard petty officer who thought it would
be fun to impersonate a commander. Whoever was on the other end
of the phone line responded with "Yes SIR!" and things
moved pretty quickly from then on.
We
never got used to the smell and were esctatic to finally leave and
move on to Apia, Western Samoa. We found Apia to be clean and pleasent.
The people are proud and work hard to maintain a subsistence lifestyle.
Quite a difference from the U.S. welfare state of American Samoa.
All the smiling waving people helped to get us back into cruising
mode and made me hope that I would never see Pago Pago again.
OFF TO FIJI
The sail to Fiji fit the bill
for our South Pacific experience. Rain and 30 knots of wind the
whole way. Despite these conditions, it was one of the better
sails that we had so far. The wind strength and direction stayed
steady and I never had to touch a thing for four days. With double
reefed main and stays'l, wind on the quarter, and wind steering
set, we were simply along for the ride.
We made entry through Fiji's
barrier reef at Nanuku Pass and spent the night standing off in
the Koro Sea. We checked in with the officials in Savusavu on September
2, 1997. Savusavu was a great little town and we were fortunate
to arrive during some kind of celebration involving all kinds of
cultural food, singing and dancing.
Fiji is a huge cruising
ground with 360 some odd islands. It is a favorite
on the Australian/New
Zealand cruising circuit. As it turned out, we liked it
too.
We moved pretty fast in order to see
as much as possible. We never stayed any place more than three weeks,
and most places no more than a day or two. Working our way around
Vanua Lavu on to Ovalau and Viti Lavu we could always find a nice
anchorage for the night. In fact, the only overnighter that we did
our entire time in Fiji was from Suva to Lautoka.
While in Suva, a tropical cyclone
named Lisa passed near. We dragged our keel through the mud and
managed to get up the river at high tide. It was actually a great
experience. There were several other cruising yachts that had also
made it up the river and with everbody safely snug in the mangroves,
it became a big party. We made new friends and still run into some
of that crowd now and then.
I hear it is shut down now,
but at the time there was a boatyard at Lautoka where you could
store your yacht in a hole in the ground. This is for protection
from cyclones and it works. We did a delivery from Suva to Honolulu
on a terrible little sinking boat and while we were gone, the Nael
weathered a cyclone with no damage other than the disappearance
of the windex. Still, the Nael was ready for some work and so we
spent the next two months doing major maintenance.
During our equatorial crossing
from Palmyra to Samoa, it became obvious that the Nael was short
in the fuel department and we fit a new fuel tank in one of the
bilge spaces. We now had a motoring range of nearly 1,500 miles.
Lots of
small jobs and a new paint job and Nael was fit for
another couple of years of cruising.
We kind of hated to leave Neissau
Marina as we had become close to the village people there. The chief
made a big deal of adopting us and treated us like his own children.
But it was well into 1998 and our extended visas were running out,
the weather was good, and it was time to go. The people of the village
put on a big lavu lavu (similar to the Hawaiian luau) in our honor
and we bid them farewell.
We did
a bit of cruising in the Yasawa group, then set off for Vanuatu.
BOUND FOR VANUATU
On the 30th of June, 1998, we
departed Fiji waters through Navulu pass and set a course for the
island of Efate in the Vanuatu group.
The entire trip produced no
more than 15 knots of wind and it shifted through every point on
the compass. The seas did the same and although never more than
6 feet were confused and at times quite uncomfortable. We motored
whenever the winds dropped below 6 knots. On the third day the wind
was gone completely. Our new muffler cracked and we rolled around
and drifted for 8 hours in confused seas while I made a temporary
repair with epoxy and fiberglass cloth.
On the fifth day we finally
had some wind to sail on, 15 knots on the quarter and we are as
happy as clams at high tide. This held right on to Port Villa and
on the morning of the 6th, we sailed into Mele Bay escorted by a
large pack of dolphins.
Check in at Port Villa was easy
with friendly officials. They had no boat at the time, so we had
to launch the dingy and pick them up at the warf. Right away we
noticed boats that we had met throughout our travels and that
night on the waterfront was a grand reunion.
One fellow we had met in Fiji
was waiting for us. He had heard through the radio network that
we were coming and as he had not had the same calm conditions two
weeks earlier he had blown apart his headsail. It seems that Merlyn's
reputation as a sailmaker had once again preceded her. This is starting
to be a regular event. It seemed that wherever we went, someone
needing canvas or sail work had heard we were comimg and was waiting
for us.
As we were nearly out of funds
again, we decided to stay and work for awhile. Merlyn got a job
right away working for the government as a school teacher. This
required no special permit and automatically gets you a two-year
visa. For me it was a bit harder. I was hired as a manager
of an engineering firm, but the permit was slow in coming. I actually
had to employ a soliciter since my visa was to expire and immigration
refused to extend it. In the final hour the bureaucratic wheel turned
a cog and the paperwork came through. I was granted a year. I learned
the language (Bishlama) quickly which became very handy, not only
at work but in cruising the islands as well.
We managed to get some cruising
in and explored most of the island chain a
bit at a time. The
people in Vanuatu are shy, but once you get to know them
are
really very amicable. In the outer islands the people live as they
have
for thousands of years. Although they don't like to talk
about it, there are still cannibals in the northern islands. They
explained to me that they only eat their enemies, so we were glad
to be on thier good side.
Time passed in a strange sort of way
in those islands. If you are familiar
with the term "Hawaiian
time" or "manana," you know what island time is.
Only in Vanuatu it was even less urgent.
As it was nearing time to leave,
I was offered a captain's position on a large motor yacht
in Hong Kong. |