What Now?

Posted by John

It’s like we never left. But we did. We just didn’t get very far.

We were rushed at the end, planning to leave on April 30th. There were many projects to finish. Sewing new sail covers and our new dodger, with a new, not-yet-sun-degraded, clear vinyl windshield that we could actually see through and open a section of for those really hot days, took several all-nighters with rolls of “Sunbrella” spread across the floor of the visitor lounge. Organizing and stowing a month’s worth of food always takes time. We sold the car. We prepaid bank fees because we’d be in the middle of the ocean when they came due (“But you don’t currently owe a balance, why are you trying to pay now?”). We lined up “Tahiti Crew” to handle the paperwork to get us smoothly into French Polynesia, and former New Zealand weather service employee “Met Bob” to provide weather guidance along the way.

Finally, after discussing the symptoms with several people over a period of months, I was convinced that a worsening problem with our starter motor was a “dead spot in the stator,” and if we could just take it to Gary (or was it Glen?) just down the road on the way to Kerikeri, he’d have it fixed right in about twenty minutes. But it was too late. It was time to leave.

The marina wanted us out of the slip or they’d have to charge us for another day. We had to stop at the marina fuel dock, fill up, and take the receipt, Customs departure paperwork, and Robyn’s debit card back to the marina office to get the GST refunded before the office closed for the day, and we wanted to be out of the bay and sailing before dark. Clay and Jill from Me Too came over to help us get out of the slip and into the fuel dock. Then we were off. Even then, there was a rush to finish up some tax forms before we were out of the bay and cell phone data range. They were associated with Robyn’s bank account and must be submitted within a few weeks. They had just arrived.

On the Friday before we left, there was a party in the Opua Community Hall, organized by Jill, for all the departing cruisers. There was likely a hundred people there. Music was provided by a band made up of musicians from various boats. Even the sound system was set up by Dan, a professional movie sound engineer from Toronto, who is making a documentary about his cruise around the world. The band even included ten year old Martin playing a Peruvian pan pipe.

We first met Martin last year on Nuku Hiva. He and his family had sailed from Ecuador. Martin’s dad is from California, his mother is from Peru, but Martin and his little brother can best be described as global citizens. We’ve seen Martin swimming with his Tongan friends in Tonga, riding bikes around the marina with his Scandinavian friends, speaking French with his buddies on Bora Bora and playing computer games in the visitor lounge with American kids. We have met so many people whose day-to-day experiences would normally qualify as extraordinary, and we feel privileged to be an accepted member of this unique, and even somewhat elite community.

But, with our two years just about up, it was time to head home. We sailed out of New Zealand and into the sunset (literally), and off to new adventures. Unfortunately, the adventure we got was not the one we expected.

The first night we sailed through a squall with heavy rain and lightning. Never pleasant in a boat, but thunder, if there was any, could not be heard above the wind. It didn’t feel like getting hit by a lightning bolt was imminent. The lightning was merely flashes in an otherwise dark sky. The storm passed.

We had sailed all night on the staysail alone, but the wind seemed to be dying, and we wanted to go a little faster. We furled up the staysail and let out the larger jib. As hoped, our speed increased a little.

Since Tahiti is east of New Zealand, and the tropical trade winds blow from the east, the plan was to stay south of the tropics, catching whatever westerly wind there was for maybe a thousand miles before angling back to the northwest, across the trade winds, to arrive at Tahiti. The ideal situation would be to leave just as a low pressure system crossed northern New Zealand, and get a boost from the rotating winds—clockwise in the southern hemisphere—above the storm center. These were exactly the predicted conditions for April 30th, which just happened to be the last day we could be in New Zealand without another visa extension.

So we were relaxing into our second day, looking forward to returning to warm and sunny Tahiti, then warm and sunny Hawaii, and then a warm and sunny late July arrival home, when the horizon ahead of us did not look quite right. As a matter of fact, this whole departure from New Zealand had not felt quite right. We were all cranky, tired, stressed and seemed to have other places we wanted to be.

A weather update from Met Bob gave us a new heading along with a “GALE WARNING.” The GRIB file we retrieved from SailDocs showed us heading into high winds. We made the course correction, but the seas were already quite large and the winds high. The new heading was not entirely achievable with the jib alone, but we didn’t want any more sail up with the worsening weather. We were already taking a few waves into the cockpit. The good news was the wind should be abating in the morning. We stuck it out for the night.

At one point during the night, I looked out at a hazy moon-lit scene of what appeared to be a broad valley. The normal jumble of mountain-peak waves and holes had been replaced by this smooth valley floor. We were entering the valley—a 46,000 pound boat surfing, at up to fifteen knots, down the face of a giant wave. The boat shuddered on the way down. Then we climbed out of the valley, not on a mountain slope, but on the back of another giant wave. It was scary and awesome at the same time. Exhilarating.

As the night wore on, so did the noise. The wind, the banging and clanging, moaning and squeaking and rattling. It never ends. Sometimes we’d have to yell just to hear each other a few feet away. Waves slammed into the cockpit. Waves slammed down on the forward hatch, which was not sealed tightly enough, and rained water down into the head until we could get the sun cover off the corners of the hatch, and dog it down all the way. The same thing happened in the aft cabin, soaking most of our clean clothes and blankets before we knew it. Waves slammed into the cabin window seals, the air vents and the heater chimney. The cabin floor was slick with salt water, and combined with wet feet, wet hands and sudden movements of the boat, it was almost impossible to move around without being bashed against something. We all have the bruises to prove it.

A problem we’ve had before with the jib roller furler had happened again. Normally, when we pull in the furler line it rotates the drum, rolling up the sail. But the screws connecting the drum to the foil sometimes fall out. We had just had a professional rigger replace the screws, yet the problem occurred again. We could not furl in the jib. It would have to stay deployed until we could get out onto the bowsprit and replace the screws somehow, or pull down the jib by hand and secure it to the deck. Neither would be happening before the conditions calmed. Just like in the movies, waves were sweeping across the deck.

In the morning the storm did not abate as promised. We hit wind gusts of nearly fifty knots, with sustained winds over forty for long periods. At one point, the entire port side of the boat was underwater with the ocean pouring into the cockpit. It was an unsettling, unforgettable sight. We broke all of our records for boat speed, wind speed, heel angle, amount of water in the boat, as well as personal miserability index. But we were heading toward Tahiti where everything could be made right. In a few weeks I’d be eating a $30 cheeseburger and sucking down Tahitian beer at a sidewalk cafe in downtown Papeete. Mentally, I was already there. Perhaps I’d jumped the gun.

At some point all of this becomes the new normal. Exhaustion eventually leads to sleep, even if only in short bursts. But something was wrong with the jib. It was too loose—luffing badly. We tried to winch it in, but it wouldn’t tighten up. That’s when one of us noticed that the top of the furler was broken, hanging loose, dangling. In fact, the jib was hanging by its halyard. We tried to lower the sail, if for no other reason than to relieve some pressure on it. But as soon as we started to loosen the halyard, the furler foil, which runs the length of the forestay, buckled. As soon as it buckled, the jib tore in half, then shredded. Pieces came off and fell into the ocean.

The forestay became a wildly loose, half-inch diameter, fifty-foot steel cable with a bit of sail attached like a kite to the end, whipping around the boat just above our heads, dipping and flying, trying to wrap around and take out everything in its path. It was a disaster unfolding before our eyes.

We had already started the engine, somewhat miraculously considering our questionable starter. There was so much wind noise, I only knew the engine had started by the RPMs on the tach. Robyn steered. Julie, tethered to jack lines, made her way out, all the way to the end of the bowsprit with tools in hand to disconnect the stay. I tried to corral the wild end of the beast before it took out the wind generator (which worked awesomely in 40 knot wind, by the way), or damaged more of the rigging, or us. It seemed to take forever.

We were entering a lonely area of the ocean that was recently deemed as safe a place as any for a falling space station to crash to Earth because there’s nothing and no one there for it to hit. Julie was riding the bowsprit and disappearing into waves as if holding onto the back of some kind of fantastical dolphin, while I (of course) was trying to slay the dragon, or at least release its halyard leash. It was tough and fought back. How else can I describe it?

Eventually, we cut the raging beast free. Robyn steered so as to not entangle the prop in its shredded remains as the last of it sank below the surface. Julie attached a spare halyard to the bowsprit so that we could apply pressure with the winch to keep the mast upright. We could not continue on to Tahiti. We could not risk sailing with such damaged rigging. We could only go sadly back to New Zealand under engine power.

We got a message off to NZ Customs that we were coming back for emergency repairs, and to please notify us of the procedure. Then we started to realize the damage done. There were things we had carried on deck that we no longer had on board, apparently having been washed overboard. We were missing a vital component of our self-steering system. Our electronic autopilot has not been fully functional for most of this trip, so we would have to continuously hand steer for two days back to the marina. Although, Julie did rig up some bungee cords on the wheel that worked pretty well for a while.

We know we need thousands of dollars in repairs. We need professional expertise assessing the damage. We may submit an insurance claim if it’s appropriate. We need to clean up and dry out the boat. We just don’t know where or when these repairs will take place. None of this changes the fact we need to be home in August. Robyn is more than ready to go off to school, and we need to earn some money, somehow.

We entered the Bay of Islands at dawn with a beautiful sunrise behind us. We were greeted by dolphins. Some were so close that they seemed to rub along the side of the boat. The thought crossed my mind that maybe they were trying to turn us around, send us back out to sea. But I kind of want to lie beneath a tree somewhere and stare at the sky instead.

Jill contacted us on the radio, confirmed the availability with the marina for the same slip we had before, then met us there to help us tie up.

We spent most of the day talking to people who had heard we were back. Many seemed genuinely impressed that we had saved ourselves from being dis-masted; that we had survived at all. “Come on, it wasn’t that bad. Really.”

Even Dan, from My Dream, from Kirkland, Washington, who we first met on the island of Ua Pou and last saw in Tonga, came by the boat to say he was here, but leaving to go home. He was planning on going the same route we had planned: Tahiti, Hawaii, Puget Sound. If only. A buddy boat opportunity lost.

We met with the Customs official. We were unsure if we had crossed the 200 mile territorial limit or not. We were close, but didn’t get an exact location when everything took place. I wasn’t even aware that we had actually turned around while we were dealing with the jib. She decided we had not left territorial waters and therefore had not actually left New Zealand, and therefore could not issue us new entry visas. Instead, she canceled our departure clearance. It’s as if we never left. However, our visas had expired at the end of April. We have now overstayed. She made a note in our file to prevent us from being arrested and deported. But, come Monday, we have to apply for another extension.

And, come Monday, our full time job becomes figuring out what went wrong, how much the total damage is, what, exactly, we lost overboard, and most importantly, where we go from here.

This is not how the story ends. We hope.