Originally posted on March 23, 2015, by cruisingrunner
For what are hopefully obvious reasons, we haven’t stayed in the tropics for cyclone/hurricane seasons. Our first summer cruising in the northern hemisphere, we spent hurricane season in Mexico up in the far north of the Sea of Cortez in the vicinity of Bahia de los Angeles, which is at about 30 deg north latitude. This year, our first summer in the southern hemisphere, we travelled down to the north island of New Zealand to the port of Opua in The Bay of Islands. This is even further out of the tropics, at about 36 deg south latitude. However, as I write this we are sitting through the remnants of Tropical Cyclone Pam, which passed us offshore during the night. Yeah, that’s right, a tropical cyclone made its way down to New Zealand. It’s rare, but apparently it does happen. So, I guess we can say we have experienced a cyclone, but it feels rather hollow to say that. We only saw wind gusts up in the low 30s, which is nothing. We are lucky. This cyclone experience for us wasn’t much different than many other nights we’ve spent in anchorages with bad weather. I mean, it wouldn’t even rank in our list of top worst cruising experiences.
And that got me thinking. What ARE our worst cruising experiences? After mulling it over a bit and reviewing some of my past writing, here is what I could come up with:
S/V Exodus – Top 5 Worst Cruising Moments: Caveat: These are from MY perspective. I’m sure The Captain would have an altogether different take on this.
#5 – Anchor dragging in Puerto Balandra
By far the biggest issue we had in our first couple months of cruising was anchor dragging. We were still using the 40 lb delta anchor that came with Exodus, and the first time we dragged it caught us totally off guard and could have been a real disaster.
We have an iDevice app called Drag Queen (yeah, seriously) that uses GPS to alert you if you might be dragging. You set the position where you drop the anchor, and depending on how much anchor chain you put out and how deep the water is you set an appropriate distance for the alarm to go off. We had used it a few times at Catalina Island, but for some reason we hadn’t been using it on this trip so far.
Well, our first night at Puerto Balandra (a beautiful anchorage near La Paz, Mexico) we were anchored in shallow water, approximately 10 ft, near one side of the bay. About 10pm that night, after I had gone to bed, I hear the engines turn on and the kids yelling to me that our anchor is dragging. Tim was still up and he said all of a sudden he noticed we were close to the opposite side of the bay. This was our first experience with the common La Paz area weather phenomenon known as “The Coruomuel.” Basically, when there are heavy winds out of the north on the Pacific side of the Baja peninsula coupled with a pressure gradient between the two sides, winds kick up hard out of the South on the Sea of Cortez side. That night we went from leisurely winds out of the N-NW to 20-25 kts out of the South, so we swiveled hard on our anchor and it likely ended up on its back so it didn’t reset.
Luckily it was a large bay, and luckily it happened while everyone else was still awake or we might have woken up to the sound of Exodus crashing against the rocks. I shudder to think.
We were novices then, and we were lucky, but we quickly rectified that situation:
1. We bought a new anchor (73lb Rocna)
2. We fine tuned our scope calculation (to take into account the distance between the surface of the water and the anchor bridal points and water depth difference between when we drop anchor and high tide.)
3. We refined our anchoring process to always drop a way point so we have a better GPS location to use for our anchor location in the Drag Queen App so there are fewer false alarms.
4. We use the Drag Queen app pretty much every night. It will be making an appearance below in the write-up for our third worst cruising experience when we were anchored in the harbor at Pago Pago, American Samoa.
#4 – The Marquesas Welcoming Squall
We had been 22 days at sea on passage between Puerto Vallarta, Mexico and Hiva Oa, The Marquesas, and we had land in sight. We were so excited we could practically already taste our safe arrival cocktails.
We had a hell of an arrival, though.
All of the squalls on radar at that point were behind us moving across our path, so we thought we were clear and in the home stretch. I even turned the radar all the way off. Not on standby, all the way off. Bad idea. When we reached the tip of the island the wind shifted suddenly and hard to the NE, which meant the squalls were now being blown right towards us. We got hit suddenly, and a little bit flat footed, with a doozy. We saw wind in the low 30 knots with full canvas before we put one reef in the main sail and 2 reefs in the genoa (head sail). Then we got seriously nailed. We saw sustained 40 kts with gusts up to 47. (Coincidentally, you will see these exact numbers again in our #1 worst cruising moment.) Unfortunately, the main sail second reef wasn’t an option due to a fully chafed line from earlier in the passage, so we needed about a half a second to decide to just engine up and drop all sails. We were so close, and we did NOT need this drama.
Turning into the wind and dropping the main was a bit of a hobby horse ride, but we are a pretty well oiled machine at that maneuver by now, so it wasn’t too bad. However, we really weren’t prepared for that maneuver in terms of the mess all around the boat, and the boys were awesome at tending to the fishing pole that almost blew out, and the BBQ cover, and the dinghy painter that was trailing in the water behind us (which would have been a disaster had it fouled an engine).
After that, of course, the wind subsided. A bit later, I took a seat at the salon table, glanced at the electrical panel (which we all pretty much do by habit) and noticed a bilge pump is running (meaning there is water in the boat in a place where there should most definitely NOT be water).
What!!!
A quick inspection reveals that the head (bathroom) on the starboard side is full of water and it was splashing out and into the bilge. Luckily, the bilge pump did its job and emptied the bilge, and we were able to pump most of the water out of the bathroom through the shower drain pump.
It didn’t take long to realize that the small portal in our shower was left open. Stupid, stupid, stupid. So, when we turned into the wind to reef, and then again to drop the main, sea water had just poured into the boat.
This was a classic example of Neptune reminding us that the passage isn’t over until you’re in the harbor, your anchor is set, and your safe arrival cocktail is actually in your hand.
#3 – Pago Pago
It’s true that some of our worst cruising moments, including the two previous stories above, are totally self-induced. Either poor preparation or a lapse in judgment is a sure way take a minor incident and ratchet it up a few levels. But sometimes, weather just happens. In this case, we weathered a pretty serious storm at anchor in Pago Pago, American Samoa, and there were no issues with our preparedness or our decision making (except possibly the decision to go to Pago Pago in the first place).
Pago Pago isn’t a super popular cruising destination. Usually, people go there for one of two reasons: provisioning or ordering parts. Since American Samoa is, well, a U.S. territory, it’s a convenient place to take care of things like this. Us? We mostly went there to meet back up with our best buddy boat, Lady Carolina, before heading on to Tonga. One of the main reasons cruisers tend to skip Pago Pago these days is the notoriously fouled harbor bottom, which is mostly a result of a 2009 tsunami that caused a lot of destruction in and around the harbor. We love to exchange stories of what sort of items people have pulled up off the bottom with their anchor. While we were there, we saw someone pull up a Christmas tree after their anchor didn’t set the first time. Even before we got there, Lady Carolina had dragged anchor across the harbor in moderate wind, and they NEVER drag anchor. Never. They have an even bigger Rocna than we do.
Upon arrival, we found what we thought was a pretty good spot to anchor in a shallow patch near the “marina” with a good view of McDonald’s. The anchor set the first time and held steady as we backed down on it with both engines, and we were soon enjoying our safe arrival cocktails, reunited with Lady Carolina. Our first few days there we didn’t have any issues, so we thought Lady Carolina was being a little too precautionary by not ever leaving their boat unattended. We soon learned that they were not.
I think it was our third night that we dragged anchor in the middle of the night in moderate winds. This was the first time we had dragged since getting the new Rocna (and the only time since, I might add). And while it was a pain, because OF COURSE these sorts of things always happen at night, it really wasn’t too much of an issue, because we learned our lessons about dragging a long time ago. We had the anchor alarm set, it woke us up, we reset the anchor (OF COURSE it didn’t set the first time since it was the middle of the night and it was raining). Close to daybreak the anchor alarm went off again, and we went through re-anchoring process again. I stayed up at that point, because while I’m talking this down like it was no big deal at this point, anchor dragging is ALWAYS a big deal, and my nerves were a bit shot. The anchor alarm kept going off as Exodus continued to slowly drag back again, but I let Tim sleep and figured we could reset again in the morning, which we did. But at the time when the sun came up we were about 100-150 ft back of where we had been the night before, and don’t think the boat behind us didn’t notice. I got a VHF call from them in the morning, and they very politely let me know that we seemed a bit closer to them this morning than we had been before.
After that we went another couple days without incident. Except for the rain. Have I mentioned the rain yet? It rained pretty much the whole time we were in Pago Pago. Sometimes just light showers, sometimes torrential downpours, but I think the only day it didn’t rain was our very last full day there, which just happened to be my son’s 13th birthday. Anyway, after a couple days with a firmly set anchor I was spending the day at the laundromat doing about 10 loads of laundry. Our friends from Lady Carolina joined me, and after having had their own anchor firmly set for over a week, this was the first time they had left the kids alone on the boat. So, of course, all hell broke loose.
They got the radio call from their son that their anchor was dragging, so Steve, Father and Captain, rushed back out to the boat. From my own little handheld VHF radio I was monitoring traffic after that, and I gathered that they were tying up to a huge industrial mooring, since they couldn’t seem to get the anchor reset. Just when it all sounds like it’s going fine, and I’m settling in to wait for my clothes to be done in the dryer by watching the most excellent movie they are showing that is called “Sharknado,” I pick up half of a VHF conversation between Steve (Lady Carolina) and Brenden, my youngest son who was left alone on Exodus while my husband and older son went to help Lady Carolina.
All I can hear is:
Steve: “Not now Brenden”
-Pause-
Steve: “Oh! Well, can you start the engines?”
-Pause-
Steve: “OK, Alex will be right back to help.”
That’s right. Exodus picked this exact moment to ALSO start dragging anchor. Being stuck at the Laundromat watching low budget sci-fi movies during a crisis like this has its advantages. Admittedly, there was NOTHING I could do, so all I did was listen and wait. Eventually, I heard that my husband was back on Exodus and together with help from the boys got the anchor reset. The story I heard later was that Brenden had gotten the engines started, but was at a loss of what to do after that, so he grabbed a fender from one of the lockers and was running around the boat prepared to fend off anything we might hit. Comical. Alex was able to rev forward enough on the engines to hold Exodus in place, so Brenden didn’t actually have to use his fender and together they kept Exodus safe until their dad was able to come take over. Later, we noticed the boat behind us had put out all of their fenders as well. Probably a good precaution.
It’s a funny story now, but if only that were the end of it. We knew the weather forecast for that night was pretty grim, with the gribs predicting 25+ knots, which usually means much higher. There was lots of radio chatter about the forecast, and one of the boats even decided to just leave and face the weather out in the open ocean rather than in the confined harbor with boats dragging all over the place. Tim always says, “It’s not the ocean that’s dangerous, it’s all the hard stuff around the edges.”
Anyway, of course the winds started to pick up as the sun went down. And shortly after that the calls for help on the VHF started. First, a vessel near the back of the harbor called Pago Pago Port Control to let them know there were two boats dragging, both unattended. One of the dragging boats had actually fouled the anchor of another boat, but luckily that boat had its crew on board and they were able to free themselves. The other dragging boat was at the very, very back of the anchorage on a mooring ball. Port Control never responded. A bit later, a call came from a fellow Lagoon catamaran that was anchored in front of Lady Carolina’s industrial mooring. Apparently, they were dragging and then their windlass cut out so they couldn’t raise the anchor. Tim jumped in the dinghy to go help, and together with a skipper from another vessel they were able to get the situation under control. They radioed Port Control to see if there was somewhere along a dock they could tie up to for the rest of the night. Again, no answer. So, they just tied up to a tug boat that was tied to the quarantine dock. They figured they would ask forgiveness in the morning, if necessary.
Later, Exodus got into the dragging fun. We basically just got into a routine of monitoring the anchor alarm as we slowly dragged back and then at some threshold we would raise anchor and reset and repeat. The wind topped out in the 45 kts sustained range, and to top it off, it rained cats and dogs, so every time we had to reanchor, Tim had to go get wet. It was a long night, and the when the sun came out the next morning, it was a very welcome sight.
This was a pretty big storm, felt across a large area of The Pacific Ocean. In fact, this same night when we were dragging anchor, resetting, and repeating, another vessel in the atoll of Suwarrow in The Cook Islands went aground. Although the two people on board were safe, the vessel was lost. So, aside from the foul bottom, Pago Pago is actually a pretty decent place to weather out a storm like this. The shape of the harbor eliminated any substantial fetch and probably protected us from even higher wind speeds.
#2 – Coromuel at Bahia San Gabriel
In an objective sense, the night we anchored at Bahia San Gabriel wasn’t anywhere near as bad as our experience in Pago Pago. The winds we saw were lighter. The duration of the blow was shorter. However, because it happened very early in our cruising repertoire and my experience level was far, far lower, in my subjective memory, this night at anchor always comes up as one of our “Worst. Experiences. Ever.” Hence, I’m listing it at #2.
Bahia San Gabriel is a large bay on the Island of Espiritu Santo near La Paz, Mexico, and this was perhaps our second experience with a coromuel, before we had them really figured out. We had returned to a spot we had previously anchored without issues and settled in for the evening. After sundown when the winds picked up, we were in for quite a ride. The anchorage is a southwest facing anchorage, so when the south-ish coromuel started to blow we had zero protection from wind and swell. And since we hadn’t gotten the new anchor yet, we also started to drag. I have vivid memories of us reanchoring several times that night as Exodus hobby horsed so much that, standing at the bow of the boat, I’m pretty sure Tim caught air more than once. It was my most challenging experience at the helm to date, and even though it was cold, one saving grace, I guess, is that coromuels don’t bring rain. The boat motion was worse than anything we had experienced so far, even underway. I cannot overstate how miserable this entire night was for me.
In the morning when it was calmer, we raised anchor and moved to the next bay where we were able to get some sleep. When the anchor came up we couldn’t believe our eyes that attached to it was a small engine block. Seriously. So, this time, unlike the first time we dragged at Puerto Balandra, we couldn’t blame the anchor dragging solely on our tiny little delta anchor.
#1 – Passage from Puerto Refugio to San Felipe
The passage from Puerto Refugio to San Felipe was about 111 miles, and we had been meticulously tracking a weather window for departure. We left with a wind forecast that would start out low but then peak during the night at 18-20 kts, so we figured we might see 20-25 kts. The wind was forecast to come out of the SSW and since we were heading NW this would give us a strong beam reach. We knew it may not be the most comfortable, but it would be fast, and we could definitely tolerate that for a 1 night passage.
Below is the text of an email I sent out to friends and family upon our arrival in San Felipe. It captures some of my raw reactions, so I’m going to include it here in tact and then make a few additional comments afterwards.
“We made it to San Felipe, and holy crap, what a night. We left Puerto Refugio about 11am yesterday and for the first 6 hours or so we had light winds from the ESE and confused seas such that the sails had trouble staying full, and we limped along at an uncomfortable 2-3 kts. Then the wind picked up to 12 kts or so and within the next hour they had picked up to a steady 20. (Steve, this is about when we talked on the Southbound net).
We were expecting about 20-25 kts during the night, and we put 2 reefs in the main and 1 in the Genoa just to be on the safe side. I went to bed with plans to get up at 2am for my watch and did very little sleeping because the seas were still very confused just bigger so they tossed around quite a bit. At midnight I heard the engines come on so I came up to see 37 kts on the instruments and Tim is preparing to drop the main sail. I took the engine controls to try to steer us to the wind to bring down the main and since Tim was already wearing my foul weather jacket I got totally drenched. We brought the main down and then just had the smallest possible Genoa still out. The washing machine was on turbo cycle, we were getting tossed like crazy! I went below to change into dry clothes and find another jacket, and that’s when the sea sickness started, the worst I’ve ever had. I was pretty much out of commission. Poor Tim had to have watch duty all night! I got up around 3am and tried to “suck it up”, but I just couldn’t manage. At that point he had seen sustained winds over 40 kts with gusts up to 47. We were running downwind with no sails and dragging warps to slow us down. When I got up again at sunrise the winds had died to below 15 kts but the seas were still a mess and we had minimal Genoa out and were dragging warps still to only go about 1-2 kts.
At this point we were way off course, about 40 miles due East of San Felipe. We were hoping the seas would settle down a bit so we just sort of hung out there for an hour or so. The seas never really did settle down, but I thought we needed to make a move so I pulled in the warps and started the engines and just powered through the remaining swells. I was worried the winds would pick up again and even contemplated heading to Puerto Penasco at that point since at least then the main swells would be on our stern. It turned out OK since the wind did pick up again to 20kts, but this time from the North, so while it confused the seas even more, it at least didn’t cause them to build. Alex even took a watch since I was still in pretty bad shape and Tim desperately needed some sleep. He had instructions to wake Tim if the wind shifted or got to 25kts, which thankfully it never did. We had a very uncomfortable ride but we pulled into the marina here in San Felipe about 1:30. I have never been so happy to be in a marina. Exodus did awesome, and at no time were we in any real danger since Tim handled every situation extremely well. It was inevitable that we would see this kind of weather at some point, and we’ve come through it stronger, and at least for me, with an immense amount of confidence in Exodus and Tim.”
One additional bit about that night that I’d like to share was when I came up to the helm after Tim and turned the engines on in order to drop the main sail, I looked around at the seas battering us, and cried, “Tim, oh my god, this is horrible!” His response was priceless. He said, in a very calm voice, “No, it’s not horrible. It’s fine. Everything is fine. Just point us into the wind.” To which I thought, “Ok, sure, I can do that.” Pointing us into the wind is something I’ve done hundreds times while anchoring and raising/lowering the main. I was only a little bit offended when he called back, “Don’t put it in reverse!” We were going about 6-7 kts, did he really think I would put it in reverse? Well, better safe than sorry.
This passage, while incredibly miserable, was a huge milestone for me. It is the point where I decided, “We can really do this. We can cross an ocean.” And cross an ocean we did.
Surprises – What Didn’t Make the List?
While these stories highlight our learning process and how we are always at the mercy of Mother Nature, it’s possible you are wondering something like, “Is that it?” Well, yeah, that’s it. And sometimes I wonder that too. As I reflect on this top five list and notice it is mostly about anchor dragging and a couple of bad weather moments while underway, I notice there are some things that are surprisingly absent. You see, there were things that I stressed over and thoroughly researched and planned for and then stressed some more over but now, when I look back, they don’t even crack my top 5. So, in no particular order, here are some items that you might expect to make the list, but didn’t.
Chubascos – These are summertime weather phenomena in the Sea of Cortez. Basically, when the land cools in the evenings the convection creates isolated squally type events that then migrate across the sea, sometimes making it all the way over to the Baja Peninsula side of the sea. When we made the decision to stay in the Sea of Cortez for the summer we were mostly concerned about historical hurricane tracks, but as we settled in for the summer, we became more and more concerned about Chubascos. Some friends had spent the previous summer in The Sea and had experienced a Chubasco that brought 60 knot winds and torrential rain and lightening. 60 knots!!! At that point the most we had experienced at anchor was probably 25 knots, and we had absolutely no idea what 60 knots might look like.
The thing about Chubascos is that there is very little warning. Basically, any night there could be a Chubasco, and we had to go to bed each night prepared for the worst. The small, rotating, cruising community that stays in The Sea each summer is obsessed by the threat. There was even a nightly SSB radio net where one of the pillars of the Mexico cruising community gave us the nightly Chubasco threat by looking at the convection cells on the mainland and letting us know which vicinities on the Baja side might be at risk. The funny thing was, the net was run out of Puerto Escondido and we were up at Bahia de los Angeles (BLA), and the radio propagation was terrible, so most nights as we listened to the net with baited breath all we heard was “… and now for the BLA area, crackle, crackle, crackle, any questions?”
Needless to say, we lucked out. We never did experience a full blown Chubasco, but we did experience three separate what I call “mini-Chubascos” that brought rain, wind (35 kts or less) and lightening. The lightening was, by far, the scariest part.
The ITCZ – The InterTropical Convergence Zone, aka The Doldrums, is the most daunting part of a Pacific Ocean crossing from the west coast of The Americas to the South Pacific. As you make your way from the northern hemisphere NE trade winds to the southern hemisphere SE trade winds you cross the convergence zone where these two wind patterns meet and cause light winds with convection galore. We had heard horror stories of people stuck in it for days as progress was slow due to light winds. However, a man who led a seminar I went to in Puerto Vallarta was very clear that as long as you are diligent, there’s little actual danger. But it’s absolutely exhausting sailing. Once you reach the ITCZ it’s no longer lay around while you sail for hours on the same tack. It’s a constant back and forth between no wind and so much wind you need to reduce sail. Squalls bring big winds but they don’t bring corresponding big seas because they are over so quickly. So, as long as you are on top of things and aren’t caught with too much sail up, it’s all good. The biggest trick was picking your spot for where to cross, since the ITCZ oscillates north and south and widens and narrows, so it’s possible to pick a spot with minimal effects or even to miss it altogether.
Our experience in the ITCZ was similar to, but not identical to, these stories. I spent a lot of energy tracking the location of the ITCZ and based on forecasts we even adjusted our course to cross it further East than originally planned, but in the end this effort seemed to be in vain. We never really were sure when we entered it and when we exited it, because the behavior of the weather didn’t really follow the pattern we were expecting. And while it was a HUGE learning experience, when I think back on it, I don’t recall any terror or any fear, or any feeling like, “wow, we dodged a big one there.” The possible exception was the lightening strike that hit very near our boat, which obviously could have been a huge disaster had it actually HIT us, but that came and went so quickly it didn’t have time to build in my mind to an event worthy of making this top 5 list.
If you are interested, here are excerpts from my daily emails during the crossing that discuss the ITCZ:
Crossing Day 4
“Our path will be more SW from now on as we head for our tentative waypoint to cross the ITCZ of 7 N, 126 W. The ITCZ has been really low and really narrow recently, so I hope that holds up.”
Crossing Day 10
“We are definitely in the trade winds. Looking back through the log, I think it’s possible we hit the trades as early as Sunday morning, because that’s when the wind shifted NE and has been that way every since. However, yesterday and today have been the most consistent higher wind days, and we’ve been moving along at a good clip. We’ve changed our target ITCZ crossing point to further east because it looks like there may be a gap we can get through if we hustle. At this point we are going to try to cross between 122 and 124 W, which is why our course has taken a decidedly southern turn. Of course, we are checking weather twice a day and will adjust our plan accordingly.”
Crossing Day 11
“It seems we inadvertently entered the ITCZ. Or at least the fringes. Or something that seems a lot like what they say the ITCZ is like but surely can’t be the ITCZ since the NWS says it’s 3 deg of latitude south of us.
Anyway, last night we were moving along at 8 kts with the spinnaker flying. We left it up much later than usual, and Tim and I had agreed we would switch sails to the genniker at the first watch change, when I got up at 11. He woke me around 10:30 to change sails since he had seen lightening in the distance, and we REALLY didn’t want to get caught in a squall with the spinnaker up.
The rest of my 11:00 watch went just fine, well except for that crazy Lady Carolina who buzzed our stern about 1.5 miles away at 8 kts and kept lighting up our AIS proximity alarm.
When I got up for my 2nd watch at 5am, Tim told me there were “mini-squalls” all around us and you could see them on radar, and he went to bed. I talked to Steve (Lady Carolina) who said they passed within a couple miles of one and saw about 28 kts. So, I got Tim back up and we furled the genniker and put out just the genoa. A little while later one of the pink blobs on radar passed right over us and we saw heavy, heavy rain, and a max of about 28 kts. No big deal.
Later in the morning after Tim was up and we had put the genniker back out, we got hit again, this time a bit bigger, with a max of about 40 kts. With the genniker up. The halyard actually slipped in the spinlock, but luckily we had it cleated as well, or that could have been a big issue. Once the wind died back down to the low 20s, we furled that big sail back up and put out the genoa, with 2 reefs.
After that the wind stayed constant at about 14 kts, and we moved along nicely at 5 kts with the main (at reef 3) and the genoa. We have the main at reef 3 instead of reef 2 because we chafed the second reefing line down to the core the last time we used it, and we didn’t want to see 40 kts again with just one reef.
Of course, after that the wind just kept dwindling and dwindling until we were slogging along at about 2 kts. And right now as I type this we have heavy rain and about 16 kts of wind and building, so it seems we may be getting hit again. 20 kts now.
We are just going to press on south. If we are stuck in these up/down conditions for couple days it will be quite tiring, but we’re committed at this point. In hindsight maybe we should have hung a right and headed due west at the first sign of lightening and waited for a better time to cross. But I’m not sure now how we would even know when a good time to cross would be. And it is what it is now. “
Crossing Day 12
“There’s been sunshine and NE trade winds again all day today. Go figure. So, either the ITCZ moved south out from under us, which is what I initially assumed. Or it moved north across us, which is what now seems more likely given the weather report this morning and the fact that True Blue V, who is a couple degrees N of us, encountered squalls and light wind after we passed through it. The lightening from the last squall we were in last night was amazing. Amazing in that way that you realize how utterly powerless you are against the immense forces of nature. One strike was instantaneous lightning and thunder and Tim said he saw it hit the water a mere 300 yards away from the boat. “
Crossing Day 13
“We played some more squall slalom last night and today. And the latest weather report I have says the ITCZ is down around the equator, so I really have no idea what’s going on. We are truly winging this and learning as we go. We’ve gotten pretty good at spotting and avoiding the squalls now, so we’ve kept full sails up today. The good thing is that the prevailing winds are still 15-20 kts from the NE rather than dead calm in between squalls that we experienced the other night, so we are still able to make good progress.”
Crossing Day 14
“… we think we are mostly through the ITCZ. Prevailing winds are from the SE now, and there’s only an occasional squall that pops up and if we get hit it’s just a lot of rain and not much wind. “
Passes in The Tuamotus – The Islands of The Tuamotu Archipelago (in French Polynesia) are coral atolls, which are basically just a ring of coral, the fringing reef for a volcanic island long ago collapsed back into the sea. There are typically motus (or islets) along the reef on the northern and western sides, and if there are any towns or villages this is where they would be. The motus are totally flat with little vegetation except for palm trees and short grass. The southern sides of the atolls are often just bare, awash coral reefs, so, as you can imagine, these they can be difficult to see visually until you are right on top of them.
In order to get into the lagoon within the coral ring of an atoll, there must be a pass that is safe enough to transit. Before I say a little about the passes, I want to point out that some of the atolls are HUGE, like 10-20 miles long and 5-8 miles across. So, if you are like me, when you think of the word “lagoon” you are thinking of a small pool, but no, these “lagoons” are massive. The passes are basically just gaps in the coral and they come in all lengths and widths. Some atolls have more than one pass, but many have only one. As the tide rises and falls it affects the current through the passes as the lagoon fills with the incoming tide and then empties with the outgoing tide. The ideal time to transit a pass is at slack tide with little to no wind. Worst conditions would be with a strong current in one direction and a strong wind in the opposite direction, because this creates the condition of standing waves, and sometimes they can be huge and therefore quite dangerous. It seems like the write up in the cruising guides for all of the atolls say something like, “pass can be dangerous with max current of 9 knots” or something like that. So, we took the passes seriously.
Among our buddy boats (and I’m sure among most other cruisers) a lot of effort and energy went into trying to predict when slack tide would be for a particular pass. We would take the tide tables for Rangiroa (The capital of The Tuamotus) and then estimate based on difference of degrees latitude and also what the prevailing weather has been like. For example, if the wind has been blowing hard from the south, the lagoon may be more full due to water coming in over the reef, so the outgoing tide may be more predominant and slack tide in the pass would be offset from what is predicted based solely on the tide tables.
So, first we would all try to predict, then we would consternate, because of course we would all come up with different answers, then after more stewing and calculating we would reach some sort of agreement on when we thought the best time to transit the pass would be on the day we thought we might arrive. Then, we had to actually arrive at that time. That’s a trick. We learned we could predict fairly close, but nothing beats getting out the binoculars and observing the pass conditions with your own eyes to determine if you think it’s safe or not. I don’t think we ever transited a pass at exactly slack tide, and we did usually encounter small standing waves, but we never had anything close to a scary moment.
These are the passes we transited: 1) Raroia Passe Garue (in and out), 2) Makemo Passe Arikitamiro (in), 3) Makemo Passe Tapuhiria (out), 3) Tahanea Passe Teavatapu (in and out), 4) Maupiti Passe Onoiau (in and out), 5) Maupihaa, aka Mopelia Passe Taihaaru Vahine (in and out) Note: The last two, Maupiti and Mauihaa are actually in the Society Islands, not The Tuamotus, but they are actually a couple of the most notorious passes out there.
Passage to New Zealand – While we had had plenty of fast, uncomfortable passages in the South Pacific, this one was supposed to be the Big Daddy. This passage takes you out of the coconut milk run and into the temperate latitudes, where storms in the Southern Ocean can be fierce as you approach New Zealand. Timing your departure is paramount, because you need to get the hell out of the tropics before cyclone season, but you don’t want to leave too early before the winter storm season in the Southern Ocean has calmed down. And once you’ve picked your own general sweet spot between these two weather phenomena your precise departure day is also important. Usually, picking a good weather window means you’ll spend a fair amount of time on passage transiting through a high, which means light winds. This is no time to be miserly with your diesel, because the longer you are out there the higher chance of getting hit by a storm.
Needless to say I spent a fair amount of time studying the weather patterns for this passage, and we even spent extra time in Tongatapu waiting for a good weather window.
And…
The passage was anti-climatic. We had good sailing wind in the beginning, motored a lot in the middle, and had a glorious night time arrival to The Bay Islands.
Of course, we still have to get BACK to the tropics in the fall (southern hemisphere fall, that is), so I’m reluctant to make too big a deal about this, so I’m just going to leave it at that.
Cyclone Pam – And we come full circle. I started writing this post because Cyclone Pam got me thinking about our worst cruising moments, since the cyclone itself didn’t come anywhere close to the list.
Not for us anyway. As you may or may not know, Cyclone Pam brought death and destruction to several island nations up in the tropical latitudes, most notably Vanuatu.
If you are so inclined, please check out this site to learn more about the devastation of Pam and how you might be able to help.
http://www.noonsite.com/Countries/Vanuatu/vanuatu-relief-efforts-2013-how-you-can-help
We have at least one more year of cruising in us before heading back to life on land, and hopefully, this top 5 list will remain unchanged in that time. I’ll let you know.
Gresham Family Exodus 