Yacht La Novia

Before we left England, everyone wanted to talk to us about Pirates. This was our chance to meet them. The websites and bars were full of Piracy  Talk. Two years ago a Japanese yacht SY Yume Maru was boarded on this trip and robbed, while taking a route south of Malpelo Island which is rather too close to the Columbian coast for my taste.

Since then, a significant number of other boats have reported outrunning marauders at speeds of 8-9 knots at diverse points spread around the possible routes to the Galapagos, but nobody else has been boarded. Less than 5% of the yachts leaving Panama can do 8-9 knots. I can’t help feeling that these are statistically rather unlucky pirates.

I’m also quite sure that the odds of my carrying weapons and then fighting a successful gunbattle with pirates are far lower than the odds of my children finding any weapons on board, however well hidden, and killing each other with them in a tragic accident. No guns on La Novia then.

Two American yachts do not share my opinion and are prepared for the worst with proper guns and several years back issues of Soldier of Fortune magazine. Presumably they intend to read these on the lavatory while repeating a mantra of “There are no Friendly Civilians.” The fact that the only yachties ever killed by pirates or boarders have always been armed does not seem to cut any ice with them.

The trip to the Galapagos was pretty much a motor boat experience. No wind to speak of but we fared better than some. One of our friends managed to hit an uncharted and unlit weather buoy with no radar signature one night. How unlucky is that in an ocean this size? No damage except to paintwork and pride. And what of the Pirate Situation?

Well, 3 of our group of 6 boats had encounters that read very like the paranoia parables on the websites. Ohana found a fishing boat manouevring round behind them, but called them up in Spanish and found out that they had just laid a long line and were trying to judge if Ohana were likely to foul it. Sea Fever were tracked down by a fishing boat who turned out to want to scrounge a couple of tins of Coca Cola once communication was established. As for us, 400 miles short of the Galapagos, the wind fell away around midnight just in time for us to be harassed by a couple of large bored Russian fishing boats.

After 48 hours of total solitude, we encountered 2 contacts in 1 hour both on a collision vector. Both of them had the same radio technique too. When we called up to ask why they changed course to maintain the collision bearing each time we changed course to avoid them, they replied with a mixture of Russian and mongoloid noises. It must be something they teach them in maritime academy in Russia.

We didn’t want to turn behind them in case they were laying a longline, so eventually we had to point down onto a beam reach to generate enough boat speed to cross safely ahead of them. Pirates? or just Russian fishermen having fun?

We were obviously the lucky ones as 2 more ‘pirate escapes’ are reported at the same time as our passage. If the media don’t stop stoking this fire, it can only be a matter of time before some cretin shoots a fisherman who is trying to score a can of coke.

It is time to leave Isabella for the Marquesas Islands, a trip that takes most yachts 15 to 20 days at sea. Only 2920 miles to go……..not much further than from the Canaries to the Caribbean, but it feels further as you set off. On the Atlantic crossing, you can always change your mind after 800 miles in an emergency and drop down to the Cape Verde Islands . Even after that, it’s a busy ocean. There are so many vessels making the voyage through the peak season. We almost ran down a single handed oarsman on the Atlantic crossing!

As you leave Isabella, there is but empty ocean ahead of you until the Marquesas, far away from commercial shipping routes, with only a handful of yachts in it. We were to see just 3 other boats in 3000 miles.

The weather for our departure could hardly have been more auspicious. 18 knot SE trades on our quarter, which our boat speed brought forward onto the beam. La Novia settled down at 10 knots over the ground with no sense of being pressed, wonderfully steady in the 6 - 8 foot seas on our quarter that lay over a 12 foot swell from the south. In the first 24 hours we had covered 238 nautical miles. Perfect we thought - only 11 days to go!

48 hours later we felt quite euphoric with 705 NM under the keel in the first 3 days. Then the wind began to back behind us and ease off, not in a great rush but a few degrees and half a knot lighter each day. Our first week was still amazing. Despite one very slow day, we averaged 9.1 knots or 218 nm a day for 1458 miles from anchor up to the mid way mark. Easily our best ever sustained performance. From then on, the winds became harder and harder to find, We changed course to the south in response to our weather forecast and kept running under sail for another 4 days until the wind died completely, still 603 NM out of Hiva Oa. So on went the engine and we motored in, sometimes in no wind sometimes with enough to fill a sail as well.

We arrived safely at Atuona on Hiva Oa at 1730 local time just as the sun was setting, having completed the 2920 miles in 14 days 6 hours anchor up to anchor down with no gear or equipment failures except for our electronic barometer which expired on the trip and didn’t respond to the usual 2 repairs ( change batteries and bang barometer on the table several times, for those of you interested in the technical details!)

Hiva Oa is a spectacular place to arrive at the end of such a journey, a truly operatic landscape. The island from the sea resembles a huge sleeping dragon with a ridged back. The boys had a happy hour picking out the different bits of the beast as we moved down the coast. We took an early night and slept undisturbed for 10 hours. Bliss.

It is time for us to leave for the Tuamotos, the “Dangerous Archipelago” of such fearsome reputation that, before GPS, many yachts would take the long detour North to avoid them entirely. I can think of few places that better illustrate the extent to which modern technology has reduced the degree of seamanship required to undertake a voyage of this kind. ( Right up to the moment that the technology stops working that is! )

30 years ago, arriving from a position derived from sextant and dead reckoning, running, without radar, towards huge reefs awash and nothing taller than a palm tree ahead, night watch searching the horizon for the telltale white flash of a breaking reef in the moonlight, straining their ears to catch a warning roar of surf, this was not an experience for the fainthearted.

Even for a yacht as blessed with electronics as La Novia, this is still not a trip to be undertaken casually and I am more nervous about this passage than any we have undertaken since leaving England. The bottom line is that you need a navigation plan that allows you a chance to confirm your position independently of the GPS as you approach the danger zone, in a position where you can still turn around in safety if things are going wrong. This is a very long way from help if you park your boat on one of the myriad reefs waiting for you. We decide to use an approach waypoint on the ocean side of the Island of Tairo, which is one of the few spots in the Tuamotos high enough to be visible on radar.

550 miles from Nuku Hiva, an hour before dawn our radar picked up the Island 15 miles ahead of us at exactly the range and bearing that both our satellite navigation and our dead reckoning expected. As dawn broke we could see it on the horizon 8 miles ahead. I confess to experiencing some degree of relief at this unstressed landfall, electronics or not.

Once we have found the pass into Kauehi’s lagoon, the technology ceases to be of much use. Even though we are close to slack water, a 4 knot current is running out of the pass and the sea in its entrance is a maelstrom as the current meets the onshore breeze. Fortunately, there is only one obstacle to miss inside the pass and plenty of room around it, so we can attack the pass at full speed and clear the zone of breaking waves and sucking whirlpools to enter calm of the lagoon. Once inside, constant vigilance is required while navigating in the 8 mile diameter lagoon. It is largely deep and safe but uncharted ‘Bombs’ are scattered around - coral pillars that rise to just under the surface from up to 100 ‘ of water.

If I was to be completely honest, I might admit that we may have very slightly underestimated the extent to which these Bombs are uncharted. On the other hand, we did not underestimate this for very long! It would be no exageration to say that all complacency evaporated in a flash as the first coral pillar, perfectly cylindrical and about 30 feet across, materialised 20 feet to starboard of us at 6 knots and we experienced a “where the hell did that come from?” moment!.

Catherine takes up residence on the bow for all movements in the lagoon.

What a trip to Tahiti!! The conditions somehow came together to leave La Novia completely steady in the water as she sailed. We had always known about the huge accommodation in our friends’ catamarans, but what were they like at sea?

We finally knew the answer. That evening we were gliding at 8 - 9 knots on a rock steady fine reach. Seas were only about 18 inches, no swell to speak of, sailing almost upright. Gosh we said, so this must be what it’s like to have a Catamarangue (as Thomas calls them)!!! Yes please, who do we send a cheque to?

Well, to celebrate our initiation, Catherine decided to treat us to a full blown roast dinner - unheard of on passage. A new dish would enter the lexicon….Roast Lamb a La Pacific. Stick all the trimmings in the pan with part of one of New Zealands more obedient subjects and One Dish Cuisine would scale new heights. It certainly smelt that way when Catherine took it out to turn everything over.

So who exactly is Willie the Wave? Willie was a little wave who got separated from his mummy and daddy, Mr & Mrs Large Wave down in the Southern Ocean, while they were out on trip to see the Penguins. Somehow or other he wandered all the way up here looking for his mum. He felt very conspicuous up here, being about 8 feet tall amongst all these little ripples. Then he saw La Novia and felt better straight away. He knew just what to do with a sailing boat. He popped us right on the beam and heeled us violently over.

‘Just like Mum & Dad used to do to that nice Ellen McArthur back at home’

he thought happily as he rolled on.

Down below, it was a war zone. Catherine was wearing the vegetables, the lamb was gamboling around the galley floor in the gravy and the pan had dug a crater in the floorboard that you could twist your ankle in.

Then George had a Kamikaze Moment and came down to say “something helpful” to Mummy.

As George’s life hung by a thread, I didn’t hesitate and leapt heroically into the danger zone, scooping him up and carrying him off to safety with a hand over his mouth.

So, our insight to catamaran sailing was more of a tantalising illusion than a revelation after all. It was Roast Lamb a la Galley Floor not a la Pacific. Very good it was too, a certain Je ne sais quoi about it. Just as well not to know really.

That tantalising savory undertone that I couldn’t quite place was probably Thomas’ feet!

Nothing can take away the perfection of the Society Islands. Their towering central mountains touch the spirit and more prosaically, ensure rainfall, while their surrounding reefs provide still anchorages and a safe waterborne transit around the islands. They are like the best of the Tuamotus and the Marquesas rolled into one.

The scars of Papeete’s light industrial waterfront and Bora Bora’s plethora of resort developments for honeymooners from Chicago are without doubt blots on this landscape, but neither can disguise the raw beauty of their surroundings. It is like seeing an amazingly beautiful woman treading a catwalk clad in some monstrous outfit in the name of high fashion. She would look much better if she took it off, or, less interestingly, just swapped it for jeans and a t-shirt, but she is still beautiful.

After a night at anchor on the reef, introduced by an awesome sunset around Moorea’s skyline, we decide on a rest and take an inside berth in the Marina Taina on the East side of the island. Getting in is a bit of a wing and a prayer number as the Inner Harbour is really intended for much smaller boats. As we make our entry the breeze puffs up to 15 - 20 knots and we catch our keel on a submerged mooring line in a very confined space at the sharp turn into the inside basin. A med-moored Swan 60 has laid out a second bow anchor with the warp across the entry channel to the inner harbour.

This is a pretty emotional stunt, as the wind, our boat speed and our snagged keel conspire to propel us beam on towards the bow of the large Swan on the other end of this mooring line, which is graced with a big sharp plough anchor. As with any boat handling disaster, an audience has materialised, Tardis-like, out of nowhere to lend the skipper moral support and conflicting advice.

Mercifully, there are no loose lines in the water and through a righteous combination of inspired boat handling and the power of prayer we manage to extricate ourselves from this bear trap without fouling the prop, ripping off the retractable bowthruster on the mooring line under the boat or crashing into anything! The expert committee dockside shake their heads at each other and finally manage to agree on something - namely that I’d got myself properly in the cart and was well lucky to have escaped that lightly. Well, they got certainly that part right!

We sit outside for ten minutes to let pulse rates re-enter from orbit and generally recover our nerve. The skipper of the Swan, who has a Doctorate in anti social behaviour, isn’t interested in removing his obstruction from the channel temporarily for a few minutes to let us pass. Why is it that the people from the racing world can’t seem to assimilate cruisers’ all for one and one for all ethos when they go cruising?

If we have learnt anything in the last couple of years, it’s that it’s ALWAYS A PRIVILEGE to help ANYONE who needs it. What goes around comes around and God knows, other cruisers have helped us out often enough. The real friends that we have made on this journey are all those with totally uncompromising attitudes towards mutual support.

We manage the trick at the second attempt, lifting the keel to clear the obstruction and then dropping it again to get the grip to make the turn. For once, the bowthruster, quite out of character, operates flawlessly when it is really needed. We may be here for some time. Now that we’re in, there is no discernible enthusiasm aboard for repeating the experience going astern!

Staying put at anchor on the reef shelf at Palmerston as the weather changes is not an option. Not unless you plan on staying put indefinitely. But, however imperative the need to move, it is just as well to be clear about what you are moving off into. The weather patterns in this part of the ocean are notoriously changeable at the whim of the South Pacific Convergence Zone and if we misjudge things, the second half of the trip to Niue could be a brutal windward affair.

Our 3 day forecast grib data ( graphical forecast showing wind speed, direction and sea conditions in 6 hour steps ) shows 2 weak fronts between us and Niue, but I think that we can keep the wind on the beam for the whole trip by sailing in an arc to the North instead of taking a direct route.

It works like a dream right up to the last 20 miles, when the final front arrives 6 hours earlier than forecast, so we have put up with a 3 hour beat to Niue. Could be worse. What a miracle of technology to receive this astonishingly precise forecast by satellite email in mid ocean.

That’s the good news. The bad news is that we have arrived at Nuie on Sunday evening just as a Westerly system is getting up steam. We don’t even bother to come round to the West to look at Alofi, the island’s capital and only port. You don’t need Einstein on board to get the picture. The anchorage looks like a disaster waiting to happen on the chart. It is totally exposed to the West and in these conditions must be a deadly lee shore.

On a traditional long - keeled boat, the answer would be to heave - to in the shelter of the island and go to sleep. Unfortunately, you cannot heave to with an Aerorig. The rig has been a joy all the way from England, but nothing is perfect and this is part of the price for the years of effortless sailing that we have enjoyed. So we take 2 reefs in the main and put away the jib and beam reach up and down in the lee of the East side of the island for 36 hours at a sedate 2 - 4 knots. The boys are kept happy with a little treasure hunt for Lego. All things considered, it is quite a restful experience.

Thank God for good decisions. We finally come around to Alofi on Tuesday morning to find a local longliner torn off its mooring and impaled on the reef and a couple of rather shaken American cruisers who (can you believe it?) decided not to leave with everyone else because they had not cleared out before the office shut for the weekend.

As we watch, the island’s main workboat, essential for unloading the supply ships, is launched as a rescue vessel, fouls its prop on a loose tow line and is instantly pitched onto the rocks to keep the longliner company. The locals float off the rescue boat on the next tide, but the longliner has taken up permanent residence.

Once we are safely moored, we have to clear Customs. The paperwork is easy here, but the Customs Officer takes one look at the SW swell pouring onto the dinghy dock and asks me to bring the papers to his office ashore instead of visiting the boat as usual.

I watch a couple of locals going ashore to demonstrate the technique. Five foot waves are breaking against the concrete dock and the idea is that you motor up with your hoisting lines at the ready, slip them onto the derrick hook and jump for the dock at the top of the wave as matey starts to lift your tender out of the water and onto the dock. Terrific.

In fact it works surprisingly well for such a hare brained scheme. The only problem is you can’t guarantee that there will be anyone around to help you put the boat back in the water. By the time that formalities were complete, everyone had left for the day and I was stranded on the dock with no means of getting back afloat.

Mercifully, Catherine was on the case and seeing my predicament through the binoculars, put out a radio call for help in her super sexy VHF voice. I could have called on the handheld radio, but I’d probably have spent the night sleeping on the dock. With Catherine purring into the handset, ( remember those Cadbury’s Caramel advertisements in a West Country burr? ), the Niue police turned out in force within minutes to help me relaunch the dinghy and made a heroic effort to conceal their disappointment at finding me on the dock instead of her. 

You will not be surprised that the cruising fleet voted her the Sexiest Voice on the Radio 2005!

As the Tongan idyll nears its end, we have our first serious fright since leaving England. We are anchored in a bay well protected from the moderate Northerly wind, with 5 other boats and a forecast of a settled night with thunderstorms no closer than 60 miles to the South of us.

We pass the early evening watching an awesome electrical storm over Hapai, 65 miles South, a mesmerizing experience beyond anything we have seen before. Huge bursts of sheet lightning bring daylight back to our surroundings, multiple lightning forks fill the sky with intricate patterns and like some ancient vision of Jupiter’s wrath, several huge fiery balls rocket across the sky before exploding in a flash of divine pyrotechnics.

We congratulate ourselves for being safely clear of this lot and take an early night. At about 11 pm Catherine wakes me feeling uneasy.

Within minutes we are on the ropes. A huge storm sweeps in and we find ourselves anchored on a lee shore in 55 knots of wind, four to five foot seas and torrential rain that reduces visibility to 20 feet. The proximity of other boats and the reef make it imperative to move and so we motor forward to lift and reset the anchor.

I find the boat impossible to control in the conditions, unable to bring the bow up even with full power. Catherine goes forward to investigate and finds that the winch has failed and we still have an anchor in the bottom and 60 metres of heavy chain out.

I do not feel that we are in danger personally as if the boat ends up on the reef, we can safely walk onto the beach, just a few yards behind it, but there is no doubt that losing La Novia is on the cards if we fail to move her away from the shore before the arrival of a large catamaran dragging towards us.

In desperation I drop back towards the shore and then run directly at the anchor at full power to try to pull it out. It breaks out with a bang and I motor out into the bay at speed to reduce the chance of it resetting in the wrong place.

We succeed in resetting the anchor about 200 metres from shore and maintain an anchor watch with the engine running for the rest of the storm which lasts another 2 hours. As it clears, we radio the other yachts in the bay and find a sense of mutual amazement that nobody has ended up on the reef. All of us had made preparations to abandon ship.

How strange that after so many thousands of miles of ocean passage, we should almost lose La Novia in a quiet Tongan anchorage.

The big adventure is drawing closer for all of us in the cruising fleet. As the time draws nigh anxiety has started to spread through much of the fleet like a virus. The trip from Tonga to NZ has a nasty reputation and is a big change for all these tradewind-softened sailors. We have had our share of bad weather in the South Pacific Convergence Zone, but it has mostly been from behind, which doesn’t really count. We are not likely to be that lucky in the Southern latitudes as we approach NZ.

A couple of the wives remember that the aeroplane has been invented.

When someone actually buys a ticket to Auckland and presents her husband with a phone card and instructions to ring his chums and bring them over for the trip, there is a moment when a wholesale female desertion of the fleet looks on the cards. The crisis passes as the skippers, realising their peril, start projecting more confidence than they feel and talk lots of reassuring tosh about weather windows in front of their wives.

The NZ Met Service has a “Weather Ambassador” called Bob McDavitt, a highly skilled self publicist whose role seems to be to persuade the public that the Met Service is wonderful, that it shouldn’t be blamed for duff forecasts and that he personally is the brightest star in the organisation’s firmament, all which may even be true!

Bob sends out a weekly “Weathergram” by email, which, once you get past the lengthy disclaimers and explanations of why you cannot sue him if you get you boat sunk following his advice, tells you what Bob thinks the weather will do in the next week and why it’s not his fault that last week’s Weathergram was such complete cobblers.

In this climate of anxiety, the Weathergram assumes Biblical stature and a growing number of boats decide to pay Bob’s fee for a weather routing service. These services have become increasingly popular, less for their ability to keep you away from foul weather which is suspect, than for the fact that they provide someone else to blame if you get hammered, which helps the domestic situation enormously.

Throughout this great ebb and flow of group psychology, we are really outsiders. La Novia is a big blue water monohull that has not only been through a really serious, sustained storm south of Bermuda last year ( without Catherine and the boys ), but is also so much faster than most of the other boats that we have a realistic expectation of running through a window between the lows without getting caught. Catherine, of course, cannot resist pulling my leg about plane tickets, but I know that she’s joking as she lets slip that one of her girlfriends asked her if she could make the passage to NZ with us instead of on her own boat!

I have been watching the weather charts for weeks now and have a strong sense of a change in their pattern. We move down to Hapai and complete the final preparations for the passage. The final stowage is awesome. Catherine has bought a lifetime supply of loo roll which is packed into every airspace in every cupboard of the boat. We could get rolled without breaking the whiskey bottle. Good thing too. You’d need a large one if you’d been upside down!

I have finally finished splicing a huge bridle for the rather grown up series drogue that we made with Fiona’s help in the Caribbean last winter and have yet to take out of the bag.

This morning’s chart shows a large high forming on the North Island of NZ, which must have the effect of blocking the lows that run across from the Tasman sea. We’re not here today and gone tomorrow. We’re here today and gone today. While I dinghy into town to complete the exit paperwork, Bob’s latest Weathergram hits the Web. “For boats returning to New Zealand, NOW IS THE TIME.” it trumpets.

Oh crumbs, it’s going to be like Cowes week out there. Oh well, all part of the fun. If the weather isn’t going to get us, at least we can all run into each other in the dark.

We get away at lunchtime in calm conditions and head towards southern Tonga under power. We pass Nukolofa in the early hours and keep East along the line of fire to the south of Tonga, holding our weather gauge in anticipation for the Easterly wind to come. We pick up a 20 lb Mahi Mahi in the morning and finally make sail at noon as the breeze fills in.

A sail appears ahead on the horizon as we near Ata, a spectacularly rugged volcanic rock that stands alone in the ocean 100 miles south of Tonga. We overhaul it rapidly as Ata nears, and, engine on again in the wind shadow of the island, we come upon a singlehander in a 28 ft yacht, sailing on the spot in a 7 kt breeze and a 3 kt foul current that is curling up around Ata’s SW corner. His boat speed is precisely equal to the current, a perfect dynamic harmony of wind and sea that calls for an impromptu physics lesson for the boys. That over, we call him on the VHF to check that he is OK.

“Well, you’ll be using the engine, I suppose” comes the reply in that particular Yorkshire accent that so perfectly combines accusation with self pity. The voice out there in the far ocean is so familiar that we laugh aloud. It is Bernard Cribbens’ voice for Eyore in his definitive reading of Winnie The Pooh. Who can forget his rendition of Eyore’s soulful line:

” It wasn’t a very good tail, but it was mine and now it’s gone.”

I confess that we are guilty of motorsailing as charged.

“I can’t afford to do that” he confides mournfully.

It is hard to know how to respond. Do I point out that he only has to motor 4 miles to escape the wind shadow and the foul current? Do I offer him diesel or a tow? Or would this deny him the stoic satisfaction of bearing his cross for the next day or so until the wind picks up enough for him to clear the island? I can’t help feeling that someone who has made it this far from England alone in a 28 ft boat knows full well that he would only have to motor 4 miles and that the diesel would cost less than the wear and tear of a day’s sailing on the spot. So I settle for a rather feeble “Anything we can do to help?”

“I don’t think so. I’ll just have to stick it out until things improve. I should see you in New Zealand next month”.

And then he is behind us. A few miles later the breeze is back, the current is with us and the engine is silent again. La Novia settles onto a sublime fine reach at 9kts and as Ata slips away towards the horizon, we look back with the binoculars one last time. A white speck remains, bobbing beside her vertiginous shore, which is forever Yorkshire.