We didn’t make it before dark. And we had never attempted a nighttime arrival to somewhere we hadn’t already been. In anticipation, during the day we made contact with our friends on Iguana who had been to Apia before, and they reported that the harbor is easy to transit and they had made a nighttime departure there easily. We had satellite imagery so we knew precisely where the edges of the reef were, and we had made contact with harbor control who had told us exactly where we could safely anchor in the harbor upon arrival. It was still a bit unnerving going in, mostly because when you are at the helm navigating at night you typically use navigation lights to guide you, but the harbor navigation lights weren’t in the same location as indicated by chart, plus Apia is a large town so the background lights were distracting and made it hard to read the navigation lights. Anyway, we made it in safely, and here’s what I wrote about it at the time:
“We arrived at Apia, Samoa last night, and we kinda pulled a Lady Carolina in that we arrived just after dark, but instead of following LC’s cautious (smart?) ways we went ahead and entered the harbor and dropped anchor at night. I was livid because it was beyond my risk tolerance considering that we’ve never been here and we didn’t even know where we should go once inside the harbor. It helped that Port Control answered the radio and advised where we could anchor for the night. Later, once safely at anchor, I thanked Tim for being bold and confident enough to come in at night because sitting there drinking the last of my Zaya was a whole lot nicer than standing another night watch. His response was, “well, luck favors the bold…” Didn’t exactly bolster my confidence in our decision making, but the rum still tasted good. So, instead of pulling a Lady Carolina I guess we pulled a Skabenga (“We’re not staying the night out here, we’re comin in….”) although in fairness to us, Apia is a much safer place to enter at night than Raroia.
P.S. I don’t know if I’ve ever written about Skabenga, but they are our friends who entered Raroia, an atoll in The Tuamotus, after dark, and they are pretty much the poster child for “luck favors the bold.”
P.P.S. In case you missed the hint above, I am out of Zaya. So, someone needs to come visit.”
If you followed our trip at all, you know who Lady Carolina is. They just always seemed to have this knack of arriving just after dark… They *never* would have done what we did!
Apia Harbor (no we didn’t actually get that close to the Jetty…iReach only updates once/15 min and then drraws a straight line.)
Gresham Family Exodus 