Its not all paradise!
Serai
Jason and Emily Willis
Mon 2 Jul 2007 08:28
I am sure there are many of you now who think that this entire trip has been blessed with easy passages and fun sailing. Indeed we have been lucky in that most of the sailing to date has been like this. However the last 3 days have seen us sailing in some brutal weather and with our fair share of setbacks.
We left Fakarava with 4 other boats, a black pearl, a cool T Shirt, some happy memories, and a nice forecast of 15 knots wind, although the wind seemed to clocking round each day, according to the GRIB files. This was perhaps the first warning sign that we should have seen - the wind was not stable and was clocking round as part of a depression, with a BIG cold front moving through our course to Tahiti.
On the way to the pass to exit Fakarava, we turned on the chart plotter to discover that it would not pick up a GPS signal. Despite much prodding and pocking, it still would not work...Great. Oh yeah, and we did not have any paper charts of Tahiti either! The good news is that I had just downloaded some chart software and charts from some friends - all perfectly illegal of course. We had also sorted out a connection between the other GPS and the computer - bingo, we had a laptop chartplotter to fall back on.
We got to the pass at just the right time, perfect timing in fact and transited through with out problem, although the sea was a bit brutal just outside the pass, with some fairly large waves to keep us occupied. As the day wore on the wind stayed pretty constant at 20 knots and Serai was going like a train under reefed sails, with the wind just forward of the beam. We were sailing a rather indirect course to Tahiti, trying to make use of the shifting winds to give us a faster passage, even though sailing a longer distance. It was working really well into the beginning of day two. We changed watches at 0700 and at this point I stuck 2 reefs in the main, as some dark clouds ahead looked threatening. At 0720 we were hit by a HUGE squall and about 50 knots of wind. Unfortunately the boat got into a gybe situation. The good news is that the preventer we had rigged stopped the boom from crashing to the other side of the boat, The bad news is that we had now broached very badly. The starboard rail was very much under water and the boat would not/could not right itself because it was held down by the preventer which was keeping the mainsail filled. It was a nightmare scenario. I was down below trying to stop the prop turning before this happened, having got out of bed to sort it out. Next thing I knew we were leaned right over with water streaming past the windows. Ems reacted quickly to let the preventer off slowly and therefore allow the boom to come back over and release the wind out of the sails, which in turn allowed the boat to right itself. I clambered up the companionway and grabbed the wheel, keeping the boat into the wind and therefore depowered as much as possible. The rain was hammering down and the seas were bubbling, although the winds had actually knocked the waves quite flat. We sat like this for about an hour letting the wind subside before starting out again. We had a look around to see what damage we had sustained. Unfortunately as Serai went over, the starboard dodger had gone under water. This broke the ropes off the dodger so that it was hanging off the lifelines, and the force of water had ripped one of the stanchions out of the deck, leaving a hole in the deck! Water had poured down onto the books and nav table below, but no serious damage there. We blocked the hole with putty from below and then covered the hole from above as well - good old Duct tape!
This little interruption caused us to lose quite a bit of ground which we were never to make up. The winds kept coming round so that we were hard on the wind the whole time, with seas running at around 8 feet. One squall after another came though, with one other having similar winds of 50 knots but only for a short time. By the following morning we realised we were not going to make it into Papiete, Tahiti that same day. The wind was blowing now a consistent 30 knots on the nose and the seas around Tahiti were larger than previously. We were also fighting a contrary current. It was not looking good. We had options however. We could keep sailing for the rest of the day and night and get to Papiete. We could duck below Tahiti and get in the lee of the island, heave-to and take stock, for the entire night if necessary. We could find another place to anchor around Tahiti and nearer to our current position. The first thing we did was try to get to another anchorage nearby. We emailed some friends who warned us that it would not be a good place to get into given the conditions - they had anchored there 2 nights' previous. We turned away and headed for the lee of Tahiti. We needed to get out of the wind and waves and take stock. Next we looked at other anchorages around this area. There were a few, but the books said they were a nightmare if the if the winds came back to the east. I was in no mood to trust the wind as it just seemed all over the place. I did not want to get stuck in an anchorage on a lee shore with no way out if the winds turned. There was only one thing left, The safest place for us to be was actually out at sea. We headed out and sailed through the night, We were fortunate that the winds abated to around 25 knots but still it took us a long time to get to Papiete. We had to sail right up to Mooea before being able to get the right angle to tack round to Papiete. We arrived at the harbour entrance at 0530 in the morning and requested permission to enter. The harbourmaster would not allow us to go to our chosen anchorage until 0600! I had a few choice words about the French at this point and so we circled for a while awaiting our time. 0600 arrived and in we went. The anchorage was rough as old boots but it was an anchorage and we slept really well for a few hours after dropping anchor. Of course, even the last bit was not all plain sailing, as just as I had chosen my spot to anchor and started to manoeuvre the boat, the engine decided to misbehave. As I put the engine into neutral the revs stayed high on the rev counter and then the needle began to hunt. feeling like we were on borrowed time, we dropped anchor as quickly as possible, and here we sit now!
Of course I now have an even longer to-do list, which includes fixing the stanchion, GPS, and engine. I think the engine just needs a good service and all will be right again. I am hoping the GPS is just a loose connection and the stanchion just needs a good dollop of West System!
It is still blowing hard here in the anchorage. Ems went off with some other girls this morning to a large vegetable market, and I went to another boat for breakfast and coffee with the guys, so we could talk over the theory of fixing the problems, and put off the actual practice of fixing them. Though I always think its best not to rush into these things - 'Deliberate hours (possibly days) and therefore fix only once' I believe is the slightly doctored phrase! But seriously, the time was used efficiently as I now have a very detailed list of jobs for Ems to look at, once done with shopping.
Rest assured though that it takes more than this to wipe the smile off Ems' face. We learnt a valuable lesson in not getting too comfortable and not underestimating the power of the sea - Its been a good learning curve for the NZ leg and enabled us to approach that with some new understanding. In light of everything we need to do we will probably be here for at least a week - despite the jobs list there is also 2 dives we would like to do and we have heard about a great 4x4 trip around Tahiti as well.
Till the next time!
Lots of love
J and Ems xx