This is an edited version of an email I sent out right after this happened. A report from Tim’s perspective would be so much better… but we could be waiting a long time for that.
I’ve already written about the pass here at Nanumea, how it’s very narrow and very shallow, and with swell at the entrance you end up surfing in. One morning we had two boats outside the pass staged to come in and then one more maybe a couple hours away. There was a lot of radio traffic where Tim explained the geography of the pass and the condition of the swells which push you to port. He told them he’s go out in the dinghy as soon as he finished his coffee, and in the meantime the first boat came on in without issue. The second boat requested that Tim come out and guide them in, and he had no trouble going out and doing it. Conditions in the pass were ideal at high slack tide. By the time the third boat got to the entrance the conditions had changed a bit and there was a fair amount of current flowing out. They didn’t radio for any assistance, so we didn’t know they were coming in until a call for help came over the radio. I had taken the dinghy to quickly go ashore and then go say hi to the two new boats who were already anchored in the lagoon. One of them is a 50 ft catamaran with a huge dinghy with a 60 Hp engine (Tim has serious dinghy envy). That’s where I was when Tim raced over with another guy in the other guy’s dinghy saying, “We need the dinghy! A boat’s gone aground outside!” So, I jump in the other guy’s dinghy and he and Tim race off toward the pass in ours.
Meanwhile, the guys on the big cat start dropping their dinghy so they are not too far behind. I head over to our friends on Navire to find out what’s going on, since I had missed the initial radio traffic, and then we hear Tim on the radio yelling, “go to shore and get help!” So, I take Navire’s handheld radio and rush to shore, and on the way I can hear the woman on the grounded vessel yelling, “Mayday! Mayday!”
As I’m approaching the wharf I see that men are already running about, yelling at each other, jumping into one of the fishing boats. Clearly, someone had been monitoring VHF in the village. I saw the police officer, so just to be sure I asked him if they were going to help, and he said, yes. Soon, two fishing boats from the village were rushing out towards the pass also. So, I just went back to Exodus to wait.
The scene that Tim described when he got back was gut wrenching. The boat was pinned against the reef on the left side, and it was heeled way over so that the keel was on the reef and the mast was tilted over at 45 deg, out over the pass. They were getting pushed further and further up onto the reef with every wave, and they were really working their engine, revving the crap out of it in reverse as the prop was lifting out of the water. Tim says black smoke was just billowing out. Some people, admittedly myself included, are not particularly good at crisis management. Tim, on the other hand, shines in these conditions. He was calling for them to toss him lines, but he wasn’t really sure what he’d be able to do with the 20hp dinghy. Even with the big 60 hp dinghy and boats coming from shore, he wasn’t sure what they’d be able to do. It was a big, heavy, full keel sailboat, and he was doubtful that they’d be able to pull it off.
But then luck intervened. A really big wave came in and instead of hammering them against the reef it lifted them up, turned them around, and dropped them down into a little channel in the reef. Then as that big wave receded they were sucked out, and just like that they were clear of the reef on the outside of the pass. It’s hard for me to visualize this, that there was a wave big enough to do that and that there was a channel in the reef big enough for a sailboat, and that they were dropped down precisely into that channel. They really couldn’t be any luckier.
So, at this point they were back outside the lagoon and still need to get in. They were thankfully not taking on water, so the main concern at this point was the engine, since they ran it pretty hot. Tim suggested they let it cool down for a few minutes, and then rev it up so that they are going 5 knots and drive around like that for five minutes and if it doesn’t overheat, then they can be reasonably sure they can get into the pass without issue. In the end the vessel came through under their own power, and there was much elation throughout the anchorage as their bow came around the corner and they came into full view to all of us.
Gresham Family Exodus 