When one studies the chart for this area of the Pacific, particularly the small print, (and yes, the small print on a chart, like in a contract, is to be ignored at one’s peril), one is left wondering. It says things like “Discoloured water (1958)”, “shoals visible from the air - unknown location, unknown year” in fact it says this for pretty much the whole area between Tonga and the Lau Basin.

Underwater volcanoes! But what does that mean for us in small yachts? Well our friends Shannon and Tom in their S/V Finely Finished experienced one aspect of what it is like sailing right over an erupting volcano. Here are the photos.

The first signs

They had been motor-sailing and luckily had the sense to turn off their engine, it would have been destroyed by the small pumice pebbles getting sucked up into the cooling system. It took Finely Finished four hours to get through it, and luckily they didn’t encounter any large floating boulders.

Sailing across a scree ocean

Finely Finished’s narrow track