Tales of Sharks, Sleepless Nights and Soggy Socks!
Bamboozle
Jamie and Lucy Telfer
Fri 8 Sep 2006 22:51
When I last wrote we had just arrived on
the isolated and idyllic atoll of Suvarov in the northern Cook Islands. The only
inhabitants of the island are a family who spend six months a year welcoming
passing yachts and acting customs, immigration and as guides/wardens for the
island and reefs (the whole atoll is a National Park). The only way to visit the
island is by yacht and John, Veronica and the four kids get a total of
about 80 to 100 boats passing through each year mostly making their way
west from Tahiti towards Tonga and Samoa. We spent a wonderful ten days
there exploring the reefs and motus. There is lots of great snorkelling
and diving made all the more interesting my the many inquisitive sharks (mainly
blacktip, whitetip and some grey) that joined us almost every time we got in to
the water. I'm sure Lucy will not mind me revealing that her normal
morning swim dropped off the agenda for the duration of our
stay!! John took us fishing (we caught a huge grouper which we
BBQ'd on the beach) and out to visit one of the outer motus
(imaginatively called Bird Island) which is a nesting site for thousands of
terns, frigate and tropic birds. We also walked for miles along the reef tops at
low tide watching the huge breakers smashing their huge energy against the
seemingly fragile reef. On the reef tops the stunningly coloured parrot
fish scoot along the surface and even here, in only knee deep water the
sharks circle in to join the fun. Apparently they mistake the splashing
noise of humans wading as the thrashing of a fish in distress so it pays to
keep a couple of rocks at the ready to lob at them when they get too
close!!
The only hiccup in our delightful stay
was a sudden and unexpectedly violent windshift in the middle
of one night which turned our peaceful sheltered anchorage into a
nasty, dangerous and exposed lee shore. The bottom of the lagoon is covered
with big old coral heads which snagged and trapped many of the anchor chains as
we all swung around. As the winds increased to more that 30
knots the waves started to break through anchorage and on to the
reef, scarcely 25m astern of us. We spent the whole night up in the cockpit with
the engine running most of the time checking that not only were we still in
the same place but also that no-one else was dragging down on top of us.
We did not get any sleep but two other yachts had a much worse time.
Tartuffo, a Dutch yacht with a delightful couple on board had the
horrendous experience of their anchor chain snapping (10mm steel!) and they were
driven on to the edge of the reef while they struggled to get the engine
started. Miraculously they managed to power themselves back off
without sustaining any serious structural damage. Secondly,
Sandpiper broke their snubber and then their anchor windlass failed
resulting in them losing their whole chain over the bow. They had
some pretty hair raising moments before they finally managed to
re-anchor as they tried to manoeuvre their way safely around the other
yachts. Not a very restful 24 hours but amazingly in the end no-one
suffered any serious damage (although 4 or 5 boats totally mashed their bow
rollers) Benjamin (from Uterus) and I spent the next couple of days in our
diving gear recovering the chains of the two yachts that lost them and then
un-wrapping the chains of several of the other boats in the anchorage that
had become deeply entangled with the bottom.
Despite this unpleasant episode we were
very sorry to move on from Suvarov, a truly un-disturbed South Pacific
paradise. Sadly, our next leg, the 700 miles on to Tonga was also
dogged by this unseasonable and unpleasant weather. We had our
first (and hopefully only) "oh shit...we're sinking" moment about halfway
through the leg. Predictably it was dark and rough when I discovered sea
water up to (and over) the cabin floor......usually not a good
sign.....especially when you are at least 250 miles from the nearest dry
land. After 10 minutes of frenzied pumping (two electric pumps and two
manual pumps!) we reckoned we should at least be able to keep the boat
afloat for long enough to figure out where the water was coming
from. I was soon able to determine that our anchor locker had
suffered some damage (we are possibly carrying too much chain) and that with
green water breaking solidly over the decks all the water that usually
drains back out of the locker straight into the sea was in fact now coming back
into the hull. Not good, but not terminal! We calmed the boat
down a bit more by putting the third reef in and changed course
slightly to decrease the amount of water breaking over the bow and found that
with the bilge pump running full time we could comfortably deal with
the situation. Once again we didn't exactly get a great nights sleep
but after the initial panic it wasn't really too serious a problem and the rest
of the passage proved to thankfully be a little less exciting! The
most tricky thing we had to deal with is the confusion resulting from
getting to the International Date Line. Although Tonga is actually east of
the line they use the same time and date as their near neighbours Fiji and NZ so
when we arrived in Vava'u we lost a whole day and went from being 11 hours
behind the UK to being 13 hours ahead.......weird!!
Anyway having made sure we knew what day
it was when we arrived in Tonga we were just in time for the
arrival of Stuart and Tish Inglis who have coming all the way from
South Africa to join us for a couple of weeks. We had planned to spend at least
a week in Tonga before their arrival but with the weather being so
un-helpful we actually only beat them here by about 18 hours which meant a very
quick clean up and restocking so we were ready to welcome them off the
plane. Since then we have been having a wonderful few weeks with them
exploring the many anchorages of this stunning chain of islands. Their stay will
no doubt produce a raft of stories and entertainment and when we get back to
town (and an internet connection) I will pass them on along with some photos of
our recent adventures.