The passage was a beautiful dead downwind sail with enough wind that we sailed with only the genoa. We didn’t need to break any speed records since it was a short overnight sail so we had a comfortable pace with just the small headsail. We landed two skipjack tuna on the passage, and even though skipjack isn’t as good as yellow fin, we were happy to have some tuna after not having any for awhile. We crossed back into the eastern hemisphere and made our approach to the pass entrance after sunrise but before the sun was high enough to provide very good visibility.
The pass at Matuku isn’t your typical pass, because Matuku isn’t actually an atoll, it’s a volcanic island with a fringing reef and not much of a lagoon at all. So, the pass we went through was a pass through the fringing reef and once through the pass you hang a right into a protected bay in the island. We were the first of the kid boat fleet to approach the pass. It was wide, and as you’d expect given the description above, there wasn’t any current to be concerned about, and after poking our nose in to have a look, we decided to go for it. Getting through the pass was the easy part. The tricky part was navigating the coral filled bay in order to get to the anchorage. Since we went in so early our visibility was poor and the navionics chart was basically useless. We could see that there was reef between us and the head of the bay, but it was very difficult to spot the edges, and at one point we had to stop the boat pretty abruptly. Then, a local fishing boat came out to us and cheerfully guided us in. Nirvana came in next and was also guided by the fishing boat, and by the time Fluenta came in the sun was higher and the visibility much better.
Between the time we had dropped anchor and Fluenta had arrived, I was in radio contact with Nautilus, and I communicated that the anchorage would be very tight for the four boats but we will do what we can to squeeze them in. Katrien said something like, well, if they have to they will just keep going, if there isn’t room for them, but I tried to reiterate that we would do everything we could to fit. In hindsight, what a silly conversation to have. In my notes in the logbook, I had written “not enough room for Nautilus?” and it makes me laugh as if there was any way we would not fit them in, even if it meant rafting up. And now that I think about it, if there really hadn’t been enough room, we probably would have just bailed on Matuku and gone with them.
Anyway, once the sun came out and you could actually see the edges of the bombies I was surprised to discover that the anchorage was much larger than it earlier seemed. So, there was plenty of room for all of us, and we all enjoyed a fun sushi night on Exodus with the skipjacks we caught on passage.
Gresham Family Exodus 