Teenagers of today!

Rhiann Marie - Round the World
Stewart Graham
Mon 2 Aug 2010 11:09
Sunday August 1st 2240 Local 0940 UTC
 
19:48.12S 174:21.30W
 
On Saturday morning Craig, Amy and I took the RIB over to the Hunga pass that we had entered the previous day. We snorkelled it with Amy driving the RIB slowly with a heavy plumb/lead line hanging over the side at just the depth we needed to clear the bottom. Trish and Rhiann stood by, dodging with Rhiann Marie just inside the pass waiting for the go ahead and our best estimate of the very top of the tide in the pass.
 
As it turned out we got about another 6 inches to 1 foot of tide more than we had the day before and most helpful of all, the wind, which was blowing hard the day before and was forecast to be very strong on Saturday too, was less than 10 knots so everything was on our side for exiting. Craig and I surveyed a course from under the water and dived down with plastic bottles on lines to mark the very lowest point of the bar and also the highest of the two rocks we threaded our keel between the day before. With Amy standing by in the RIB on one side of the boat and Craig snorkelling ahead of us we picked out our coke and sprite bottle marks and floated the keel just above the bar and the keel just between the rocks.
 
My other posession stuck in a coral hole was not however extracted so easily. Once outside the pass Craig and I dived down again to pick up our dead Octopus and retrieve my spear. However the only thing to be found was the mangled stainless steel swivel connection at the entrance to the hole where the octupus devoured my 1.2 metre and 6mm diameter stainless steel spear. Oh well, some you win and some you lose.....
 
We anchored up in a bay called Port Maurelle and visited the very rustic village in the next bay, where we attended another Tongan feast with among many other dishes, whole cooked piglet and guess what? Octopus! It was a fine feast and the daughters of the family danced for us with embarassing cajoling from the now Kava fuelled father! It was a very entertaining evening but we had an early night, being mindful of our passage down to Ha'apai this morning. 
 
The forecast was for some weather fronts to pass by to the South over the proceeding 24 hours. There was also to be 20 knots of wind increasing to 25 knots though much stronger winds in the fronts further East and South and we hoped to arrive by early afternoon before the fronts came too close to Ha'apai.
 
The day started well and we got up at 0600 to get away by 0630 for an arrival in the lee of the land 60 miles away by 1330 or so. The wind was less than 10 knots and from the East. It built to a steady 15 knots on the beam and we made fast progress. The wind built to a steady 18 then 22 - 25 knots for a period and moved forward of the beam. We were trucking along well, laying our course and looked like we would beat our ETA.
 
The wind continued to build and to veer and for quite a while I thought it might steady at what was now 33 knots. There was thunder and lightning rumbling and flashing around the grey black sky. We were well reefed down, still well heeled over and going at about 8.5 knots though now close hauled. All that would have been fine, but when we were two hours out of what should have been the lee of the land the weather deteriorated further.
 
The wind increased to a steady 40+ knots peaking at just over 45 knots ........... dead on the nose! I am not talking about gusts - I am talking about sustained wind speeds. We were now knocked way of our course and speed fell down to 4, 3 then 2 knots!  The wind was now dead out of our destination and we were moving into ground that had coral reefs around so we did not have free sea room to sail. We had to motor sail finally to try to drive to windward between the reefs and into the now 10 mile-away lee, due to the 90 degree wind swing into the south! It would have been amazing to see how she would have handled running from the weather, but I at least, just wanted to get into our anchorage. 
 
We were now seeing close to 50 knots apparent wind at the peak and here was what my crew were doing. Amy ( having stayed off the rum the previous night ) and Rhiann were in the cockpit reading a "Hello" type magazine discussing who was marrying who and who was hot and who was not. My hardy wife remained in bed for her Sunday morning long lie - probably waiting to be served breakfast. Craig, who had got up with me to get us under way, was reclined in an armchair asleep with his feet up! I am not joking - it's just not right. Honestly, the teenagers of today ................. they're brilliant! Amy even said later when I asked if she was in any way worried, that she thought it was quite cool! Cool - COOL! I was bbloody freezing and it was not cool. OK - secretly I almost enjoyed it and it was good to give the boat a bit of a test. It was solid.
 
I on the other hand was at the helm drenched from head to toe, freezing and with salt stinging eyes trying to make light of everything. I was also trying to find a place where I could get some sailing angle to get drive without sailing over some reef, because we could get almost no drive from the engine due to the fact that the prop was barely in the water. Due to the state of the sea and air below us the sounder frequently and alarmingly gave very shallow readings. At one point I made a complete 360 with the sounder falling rapidly to single figures. There was a reef charted which should have been about a mile away (and probably was ) but you cannot be too cautious in these conditions and of course visibility was appalling. I was also crawling around between helms trying to prevent myself going "over the handle bars" with the pitching over the top of, and through the subsequent waves. The girls, from their shelter under the spray hood, finally were bored at laughing at me taking dunkings and felt it cold enough to hit on the idea to move below and wake up Craig to have an idle chit chat about the latest goss or  - I don't know what. When we finally got some lee, the wind also started to drop and when we finally, finally arrived at our anchorage it had fallen away to 15 knots or so. Whew! What an exilerating ride. Six and a half hours for the first sixty miles and 3 hours for the final 10 miles today. Nothing broke but an awful lot of stuff got wet as we had wave after wave crashing over the boat from stem to stern. 
 
Now at anchor, a close eye still has to be kept on the wind as we have had increases back up to almost 30 knots and now it is working all the way round the compass!
 
Our plans are to spend the next couple of days here in Pangai in the island of Likuka in Ha'apai, Tonga, diving to upgrade our PADI diving certs to the next level. We also hope that we may be able to dive on the Port au Prince anchor, which has just been found in the area. In addition I have a lot of boat work to do - in between studying for my PADI cert.