Originally posted on October 3, 2014, by cruisingrunner
Our friends are in Suwarrow now, and they just emailed about the daunting sight of the boat that was lost on the reef there during the big blow back in August. I wrote about it when it happened, not the actual event because I didn’t have any of the details about it then, but I wrote about my reaction to the event, and how a little bit of luck can sometimes be the difference between a close call and losing your boat. I now feel compelled to write an addendum. Back when it happened, it was obviously a hot topic of discussion amongst us cruisers, and I noticed how there was a trend of differing reactions between the captains (i.e., husbands) and the first mates (i.e., wives) in our group. The captains all immediately wanted to know what they did or didn’t do, why their ground tackle “failed,” and to put it bluntly, what mistakes did they make. Looking back I think I was almost irritated at the time, because there seemed to be a subtle air of arrogance going around, like, “I would have done things better,” or “I would have taken better care of my equipment.” They didn’t seem to like my assertion that sometimes it’s all about luck. Perhaps when you are the one in charge of keeping your home and your family safe, leaving room for luck to be a major player isn’t easy to accept. You want and need to be in control.
Well, while we were in Neiafu, I ran into a guy from one of the boats who was in Suwarrow while we were there and who was also there when that boat ran aground. Unsolicited, he enthusiastically told me the whole story, from his perspective anyway. Turns out the captains were right, and luck had almost nothing to do with it, except for having the bad luck to be in Suwarrow during that weather system in the first place, I suppose. To make a very long story short, yes, their ground tackle failed (I still don’t know the details of that one, though), but the did actually have plenty of reaction time. They first decided to just try to hold their position in the anchorage, almost hitting the boat of this guy telling me the story a couple times. Then they decided to leave the anchorage, but stay inside the atoll. Then, they decided to come back into the anchorage, and in the process drove right over the reef. That’s it. There you have it. They drove into the reef. My image of them getting blown onto the reef with very little reaction time was a complete myth. OK, at this point I’m actually feeling uncomfortable that he’s telling me all this, I mean I didn’t even ask, and it starts to feel like we’re gossiping, like we’re bad mouthing people who aren’t even there to tell their side of the story. So, we go our separate ways, and I keep pondering what actually happened. Since I felt bad about hearing the story myself, you might wonder why I’m perpetuating the “gossip” and passing it along . I can explain. I ran into the guy later that day, and he told me he didn’t finish the story. He wanted to tell me WHY he had told me. He said that there’s a lot of misinformation out there, and he thinks people should know what really happened so we can all LEARN from it. His takeaway is that you don’t stay in an anchorage when it’s not safe. Sometimes you have to make the difficult decision to just leave, as the winds were howling but not enough to make being at sea actually dangerous, just uncomfortable. My takeaway is that I was probably being unfair to the cruising community and especially all the captains by writing about it in a way that made it seem like they were simply unlucky. Their decision making did, in fact, have a lot to do with it. Some people might make better decisions, and some may have even made worse, but they had a fair amount of control over their own destiny, and that is the point.
We are now in the Ha’apai group of Tonga, which is only about 60 nmi south of Vava’u. We are anchored off the island of Ha’ana, and there is a dirt road along the lenght of the island which made for a nice, easy, flat, 3 mile run yesterday. Today is Sunday, the day of rest in Tonga, and since there is a village here on the island I will not be venturing ashore for a run.
-D.
Gresham Family Exodus 