August 28, 2012 – September 07, 2012
We left Bora Bora on a windy, sunny afternoon, and at first it was a fairly pleasant sail. We had about 18 knots of wind, but it was on a broad reach (coming from behind and off to the side). The seas were boisterous, but we had not yet hit the big swells we knew were coming. We were comfortable enough to sit in our cockpit and raise a toast to Bora Bora and French Polynesia and reminisce about the highlights of our time there. It wasn’t long after this, though, that the seas started to build and we headed below. We knew we’d be in for a rough ride, and we could tell it was starting. By the next morning, seas had built to 10 feet, and it was rough. It was very difficult to get round the boat to do anything. We rolled around and bashed through the ocean for the predicted three or so days. Then we found a way to make it even worse.
We had neared a sea mount and didn’t think it would affect our conditions, but to be safe we went just south of it. I guess that wasn’t quite far enough south. I was on my watch and reading when a wave crashed violently into us, turning a whole shelf of Martha Stewart Food magazines (about the size of a paperback book) into projectile missiles that seem to target the lower-middle of Rich’s naked, uncovered sleeping body. Rich has never liked Martha Stewart, has said many nasty things about her, and now she was getting her revenge.
I ran over to try to collect the magazines that were pelting Rich’s privates (and maybe save them from being hurled overboard by a less-than-amused Rich). As I was doing this, a second wave hit and more things flew around, including tomatoes from our hanging baskets. I was grabbing projectiles as best I could as the boat shifted and rolled. Then the third wave hit, and that was the really nasty one. It crashed on top of the boat and salt water poured down through our open companionway hatch. At this point, we had magazines and various assorted items scattered about, a soaked chart table chair, and tomatoes rolling to and fro in the salt water now sloshing around our galley floor.
For the next hour or two I worked on cleaning up that mess. Everything had to be done with one hand as the the other hand desperately clung to the boat. Letting go would risk that I myself might become an involuntary projectile missile.
( Rich: It seems that even though the top of the sea mount was at least 2000 feet below the surface, it must disturb the ocean currents enough to effect the surface water and push up to waves to almost double their normal size. Thanks to the seamount, I experienced a sailing injury I’d never anticipated… paper cuts on my… you know!)
The rest of the day didn’t go much better. It wasn’t long after I got that mess under control that I had to clean a bowl of Beefaroni off the walls and floor after it launched itself off the counter. By the late afternoon, as I cleaned up a bowl of Raisin Bran that had also launched itself about the boat, I was pretty tired.
That night while I was on my watch and glad this day was ending, the boat abruptly turned north, then east. The direction change caused a jibe (the wind fills the other side of the main sail and slams the boom to the other side of the boat with a terrible bang). Rich was up instantly and ran outside to try to figure out what was going on. After fiddling with the Monitor windvane, the mechanical system that steers our boat, he saw the windvane rudder had broken off and was trailing behind the boat, tied to it by a safety line.
There is a part that connects this rudder to the rest of the unit and if we hit something, it will give way in order save the windvane from further damage. Well, apparently we had hit something, but I never heard it. The good news was that we had a spare part for this and could fix the windvane. The bad news was we’d need calm conditions to do this as the fix would require one of us to hang out over the back of the boat, suspended by our shins on the stern rail. The good news was we have another autopilot. The bad news was it uses electricity and we’d need to run our engine more often to keep the batteries charged. Actually this news was not bad considering the alternative (hand steering). By 1AM, we were back on track with our electronic autopilot hoping nothing more would go wrong.
The seas and wind did moderate, but not before we’d reached the decision point for turning into the atoll called Suwarrow. We passed for the following reasons:
- We felt the winds and seas were still too high to get through the pass and into the atoll. There were also about 30 boats there already in an anchorage that could comfortably handle 12 boats.
- Once inside, and at anchor, we felt that it would be a couple very uncomfortable days, rolling around at anchor and stuck on our boat due to the high winds.
- Dental surgery. Huh? You know the feeling. You’re sitting in the dentist’s chair and after an hour or two of drilling, he says “you know, there’s one more cavity. We can fix it now, or you can come back next week. What’ll it be?” This was how this passage felt. We still had about 5 days ahead of us to get to Samoa and we opted to finish the drilling now.
The rest of the passage was more of the same – less than comfortable but uneventful – a few days of strong winds and big seas, then no wind and motoring for a day, then more strong winds. The no-wind time gave us an opportunity to hang over the back of the boat and fix the windvane.
(Rich: I’m glad Cyndi is small enough to squeeze through the stern rail as it must have looked like a Holstein squeezing through a cheese grater when I tried. It just wasn’t going to happen. I climbed out over the back of the boat, held the windvane rudder in place while Cyndi adeptly slipped the pin and cotter pin through their respective holes to secure the rebuilt assembly in place. Teamwork!)
We were very happy to arrive at Apia, Western Samoa. We had a nice time there. More on that soon. We were also very happy to leave 11 days later once we got to know the heat, mosquitoes and high pressure sales tactics of the locals. More on that later too. -Cyndi
