November 27 – December 5, 2012
Weeks before leaving Tonga, we’d been hearing about the massive pumice field that we might have to traverse to get to New Zealand. There’s an underwater volcano that’s spitting the stuff up in massive amounts and these lighter-than-water rocks float in what looks like endless, flat islands on the water’s surface. Crossing them can be a problem. They can plug engine water strainers and even damage the hull as they constantly sand away paint and fiberglass as you motor or sail through them.
It turns out that the rough weather preceding us did wonders in breaking up these pumice islands. Now, we were left with only streaks of pumice to sail through. We kept a close eye on the engine water strainer and engine temperature but there was no problem there. They only problem the pumice caused for us, besides making us nervous about encountering more, was stopping the little paddle wheel that gives us our speed-through-the-water reading.
I’m glad that it turned out to be inconsequential but I really did look forward to seeing one of these endless pumice islands. Oh well. -Rich (There are some great pictures of these islands on the internet. If you want to see them, search for “pumice island” on Google images.)
