The Pacific is littered with metaphorical 'potholes' some we hit and some we swerved.
Swerved:
Breakers and Discolored Water
Imagine
the scene; 1000 miles from land with two of you on a small boat,
you're sailing in waters more than three miles deep and right on the
direct course to your destination, the chart simply says;
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Breakers
and Discolored Water
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It's hard to convey just how small this makes you feel as the chart gives you no further explanation. When was this recorded? What does it mean? Can we hit it? What will it look like? By how far should we avoid it?
It
wasn't until I got to Google it about three weeks later that all
became clear. And the reality further compounded our sense of vulnerability; because it is from discolored water that islands pop
out of the sea!
Later
on in the crossing, off the west coast of Tonga we encountered a hazard, simply referred to on our chart as 'Reported Volcanic Activity'. This turned out
to be an island that rose out of the sea in 2006 which in the space of
2 years was eroded to a subsurface boat wrecker*. Bonkers.
Hit:
Just for beer
The
Tuamotos are a mid Pacific archipelago of atolls. Atolls are islands
millions of years past the afore mentioned stage of formation. In
fact they are so old that they've actually completely eroded to below
water level and all that remains visible is epochs of dead coral.
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Once was an island in the middle
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It
wasn't until the arrival of GPS about 20 years ago that recreational
yachties started visiting the Tuamotos, never mind sailing within
their inner lagoons.
After
a mind-blowing few weeks and just before the departure of our final
atoll we stopped to stock up on beer. On this occasion there appeared
no other option than to drop the anchor directly onto coral. The
judgement on where to drop is a best guess as you squint through the
clear water for a flat patch.
Clearly
not flat enough, we returned with beer only to find our anchor chain
totally tangled in the snaggy coral. At 10 meters down both Matthew
and I were at the at the limit of our free diving ability and could
only just get down there to have a look at it. Spagetti on a fork - we
were completely tangled.
Day1;
we spend about four hours trying to free it before nearly ripping the
anchor holder of the front of the boat. On day 2 the wind got up from
the wrong direction overnight (we were now on a lee shore) and for
three hours we unsuccessfully gymkhana'd in the meter high waves.
After nearly ripping part of the bow out again some local pearl divers
arrived and free-dived to the rescue. I lost count of how many minutes
he was down there untangling the chain. Ironically the legends
wouldn't even accept some of the beer that we'd stopped for.
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Better
bend this than the bow
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Hit: The Mast
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Yes...anchor
chain
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Oh...and
the mast nearly fell down....a two day sail away from Rarotonga in
the Cook islands. At dusk the main supporting wire at one side
decided to start unraveling strand by strand. The resulting task to
install jury rig 1 ended with me up the mast, in the dark doing the equivalent of threading a needle on a bucking bronco.
Of
similar hilarity (retrospectively) was jury rig 2.
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