Hatches Open

2005

I seldom tow the dinghy, and on those rare occasions when I do, I usually regret it. 

    My present dinghy is the fourth or fifth Avon Redstart I have owned.  Weighing only 40 pounds and unencumbered by an outboard motor, it can be pulled from the water with one hand and lashed on deck in a minute, so I really have no excuse not to do what I know is the right thing.  Yet sometimes I don’t.

    The most recent incident was one fine day when I was motoring from Neiafu in the Vavau Group of Tonga, to an anchorage seven miles away at Vakaeitu Island.

    The Vavau Group consists of fifty or so small islands clustered together like pieces of a not quite assembled jig saw puzzle.  The narrow channels of water separating them are mostly sheltered and smooth, but when I turned the corner of Kapa Island, a line of clouds moved overhead and the wind abruptly gusted 20 to 25 knots, and for the next two miles the dinghy tied alongside the port beam of THE HAWKE OF TUONELA practiced aerobatics.  It spun, dove, climbed.  Attempted barrel rolls and even an Immelmann Turn.  And I regretted towing it.

    I had reason to think about this when a few days later I set out from Neiafu again, this time for Savusavu, Fiji, because I was going to sea, but I hadn’t fully prepared THE HAWKE OF TUONELA for sea as I usually do.

    The dinghy was deflated, but stowed in the aft part of the cockpit instead of beside the starboard quarter berth below deck.

    Although I had tightened various straps and put up shock cords to secure books, I hadn’t raised the leecloths on the upper berths which serve as shelves in the main cabin.

    I hadn’t removed the two cowl vents from near the stern.

    I hadn’t completely filled the water tanks.

    The dodger was down.

    I hadn’t put my makeshift covers over the cockpit speakers.

    And, most incongruously, one of the two deck hatches was open.

    I was embarking on my first trade wind passage in tens of thousands of miles and more than a decade. 

The sky was blue with only a few scattered white clouds.  The wind 15 knots from slightly north of east rather than south, but that did not matter for my destination was four hundred miles west.  The barometer was steady.  The waves only 2’ high as THE HAWKE OF TUONELA under jib alone pulled away from the shelter of the islands.

But a small voice inside me said, “Webb, old man, if you don’t do what you know is the right thing, you deserve whatever happens to you.”

Which, if true, proves what a good person I have become in my old age because I did not expect anything bad to happen, and it didn’t.

Several years ago I read an article in THE ATLANTIC MONTHLY which was a revelation about the notorious Murphy and his law, which of course states that if anything can go wrong, it will.

The article discussed the investigation of airplane crashes, and the author concluded that one of the causes is often complacency which leads to negligence in maintenance and operation because not only is Murphy’s Law wrong, it is completely and dangerously wrong.  The reality is that what can go wrong, almost always goes right.   Just as there are thousands of things that can go wrong with an airplane, there are other thousands that can go wrong with a sailboat at sea.  The mast could fall down; the rudder fall off; the hull crack.  But most of the time, they don’t.   Problems can arise when we assume they never will.

This is so obviously true that I wonder what ever motivated Murphy to declare the opposite.  He must have had a very bad day.

I did have one problem on the passage.  Well, actually two, if you count running out of DVD’s to watch in the evenings, which is the rough equivalent of a friend of mine who owns an Amel 53’ ketch declaring that the only problem he had on one passage was that the washer/dryer wouldn’t work on starboard tack 

My problem was that the first afternoon I misplaced an island.  Specifically Late Island, an isolated volcanic cone about twenty miles west of the main Vavua cluster.   I had seen it off to the west at sunset a few weeks earlier on the passage up from New Zealand.  I had seen it from both CHIDIOCK TICHBORNE and RESURGAM on earlier voyages.  But I could not see it now, and as hour by hour THE HAWKE OF TUONELA romped west in what seemed to be unlimited visibility, I still could not see it.

The chart plotter reassured me that Late was south of our track, but it was not until sunset that I actually saw the cone silhouetted against its own small private cloud.  

Two hundred miles ahead of me lay dozens of islands and reefs, but there was no land in the way that night, so I watched the last episode of Season Two of THE WIRE and went to sleep.

The wind lightened during the night, and THE HAWKE OF TUONELA began to roll excessively, so the next morning I set the cruising spinnaker, which increased our boat speed by only a half a knot, but smoothed out the ride.  Heeled a few degrees to port, the green sloop shussed almost silently across glassy, gently undulating water all day.

I spent the morning below deck reading and the afternoon on deck listening to music.  The Monitor steered.  I didn’t touch a line.  It did not seem as though we were moving.  I was reminded of a story I wrote a long time ago called ‘Sailing to Africa’ in which a solo sailor making a trade wind passage to Durban sails unknowingly one night through a fog bank into another dimension in which his water and provisions never run out and he just keeps sailing west, finally forgetting that he ever had a destination.

That evening after dark I had a fine star show.  Looking north I saw the Big Dipper for the first time in a long time.  The Southern Cross was visible to the south.  Scorpio behind me to the east.  And Orion low in the sky ahead.

I debated about leaving the cruising spinnaker up.   There was no question it was the right sail for the conditions, but I prefer not to have to mess with it in the middle of the night.  Because the moon was just past full and would provide light, I decided not to make a change.

    An increase in wind to 14 knots woke me at midnight.

    I got up and went to the companionway.  The sky was still clear and star filled.   No clouds that could herald a sudden squall.  The seas still slight.  The Monitor still easily in control.   We were heeled only a few degrees further than we had been earlier.   Our boat speed was up to seven knots.  It was fine sailing.

    I lay down again, but listening for any change in sound that might mean a further increase in wind, I couldn’t get back to sleep.  Had it been daylight, I would have left the spinnaker up, but it wasn’t, so I finally got up and went on deck, lowered the sail and unfurled the jib.  It has been a while since I’ve been on a boat that broached and I would like it to be quite a while longer.

    Dawn of another warm trade wind day—blue sky, slight seas, moderate wind—found me edging the boat a bit south to line up with Oneata Passage, one of many passages through the Lau Group of Fijian Islands.  The chartplotter put us at 18°24’ S and 18°30’S would keep us clear of all dodgy bits of coral.

    Although this passage is three miles wide and I was not exactly threading the needle, in the past navigating by sextant I had chosen the safer alternative of dog-legging further south around the end of the group, particularly because CHIDIOCK TICHBORNE had no engine and on my last time through, RESURGAM’s engine had been dead since Panama and I did not want to chance being becalmed at night among reefs.  CHIDIOCK I could row, but I never could get RESURGAM moving very well with the 5’ long Avon oars.

    The wind had decreased again and it was a spinnaker day, but I did not set it, wanting to remain more maneuverable under jib.

    The main sail cover had yet to come off, and the deck hatch had yet to be closed. 

    Around noon land appeared off the port bow in the form of a hill on Mothe Island.  Two hours later I saw desultory surf on the outlying reef of Oneata Island to starboard.  And around sunset I was off a village, whose lights came on as the sky darkened.  There is always something poignant about sailing past a place you will never visit, imagining the lives of people you will never meet.   I was content to do so, but really I had no choice.  I respect Fiji’s decision to keep visitors out of the Lau Group, where I am told traditional life continues.  We may bring in dollars and jobs, but we change everything.

    That night was one of those awake-every-hour nights.  People ashore who hear that you have a boat in the South Pacific almost invariably comment how lucky you are, but they don’t consider the price you may have paid in many ways, including lost sleep.

    I didn’t plan to awaken every hour that night, as I sometimes do when near land or shipping, it just happened.  A collapsing sail or a change in the boat’s motion, small things, regularly awoke me, but I always got quickly back to sleep, even after going on deck at 0400 to trim the jib and the Monitor to get us back on course.

    Dawn found two islands a safe distance to the northeast and THE HAWKE OF TUONELA 110 miles from Savusavu.

    Although we were in no rush, by noon the wind was so light that I reset the spinnaker and let the tiller pilot steer to keep us on an exact compass course.  This was not hard work, but beneath the high tropical sun I found myself covered with sweat.

    A few hours later the wind veered, collapsing the sail, which I lowered and again unfurled the jib.  Our boat speed was only three knots and I began to think we might have to power to reach port the following day.

    After sunset THE HAWKE OF TUONELA glided between galaxies, pinpoints of luminescence in the water duplicating pinpoints of light in the starry sky.  I was sitting on deck, admiring the cosmos, when a dark line of cloud formed to the east.  As it reached us, eight drops of rain fell and I almost closed the deck hatch.  The wind freshened enough to send us reeling through the sea at an astounding—comparatively-- five knots all night long, and dawn found the marker on the corner of the reef at Savusavu obligingly where it was supposed to be seven miles directly ahead.

    Four hundred miles.  Four days.  Hatches never closed.  A wave never on deck.  Some lovely, gentle sailing under spinnaker.   Warm star filled nights.  I get tired of the trades after a while, as one can eating too much candy.  But this was not long enough.  I wanted to go on, sailing eternally toward Africa, toward nowhere, just sailing.

   

Sidebar:  Savusavu   

People are always telling you that you are too late for one place or another.  I have done so myself.  So here is one place that as of June 2005 you are not too late for.

    Savusavu on Vanua Levu Island is the easternmost and northernmost of Fiji’s four ports of entry.   Clearing in is painless.  The Copra Shed Marina, reachable on VHF 16, will direct you to a mooring and generally ferry the officials to you.

    The harbor,called Nakama Creek, is a two hundred yard wide inlet between the mainland of Vanua Levu and a small islet and reef.  It is well protected from all but a narrow arc of west wind.  While I was there I never saw more than a ripple on the water.

The Copra Shed was once an actual copra shed, but the marina is not an actual marina.  There are no slips, but a dinghy dock and moorings.  The renovated building also houses a restaurant, internet connection, travel agent, bottle shop, showers, and the Savusavu Yacht Club where you can get a cold draft beer for $1.20 U.S.

    There are moorings available from other sources, including a New Zealand ex-pat former cruiser, Curly Carswell, who has been in Savusavu for 34 years, and who runs an 0830 radio net every morning and provides a range of yacht services.  Another sailor told me a few weeks earlier in Tonga that “Curley Carswell is Savusavu”.  He certainly is the man from whom to seek local knowledge.

    The town runs for several blocks along the shore road and is the expected mix of Fijian and Indian.   There is an open market for fresh produce; some restaurants; many small shops and one place big enough to call itself a supermarket.

    Tourism is not extensive.  The people seem genuinely friendly.  The setting is pretty.  The general quiet is broken only by a few dogs, mad roosters who with a cavalier disregard for dawn crow at all hours, and twice a day Evangelical church services on Sundays. I like the place and, as of June 2005 you are not too late for it.  I have no idea of its shelf life.  You had better leave now.