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| Reef at Niue |
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| Coast of Niue |
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| Lifting a dinghy, found on Google images |
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| Never heard of Niue? Here it is. |
12 September We are back in Niue, a one island nation composed of a raised atoll. As an atoll, geologic uplift raised it up about 150 feet. Therefore, it has near vertical cliffs composed of jagged ancient coral reef called makatea, just a few tiny beaches and an encircling reef abutting the cliff. This is not a place where you want to anchor, as the water is deep and has poor holding. A boatless organization called the Niue Yacht Club provides moorings in the bay on the west side of the island, toilets and showers for cruisers by the wharf and a host of services, lots of advice and a place for cruisers to hang out. During the cruising season, the cruisers bring a significant amount of business to the island. Without the services provided by the club, very few cruisers would come here. To go ashore, you take your dinghy to the concrete wharf. There is a cutout in the wall of the wharf with steps and a rope to grab. The hook from a crane is about 3 feet above the water. You attach your dinghy lifting bridle to the hook, scramble out of the dinghy and up the steps and use the crane to lift your dinghy out of the water and onto the wharf. The yacht club provides a dolly to haul your dinghy away from the crane to a vacant spot on the edge of the wharf. You then reposition the crane and lower the hook to just above the water for the next dinghy. It is relatively easy when conditions are benign.
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| Wharf at Niue |
After arriving right after daybreak, we took naps. Later in the morning, we arranged to check in with Customs, Agriculture and Immigration. After dining out for lunch, we spent a while at the Visitor's Center trying to arrange for a whale watching trip (Humpbacks) where you try to snorkel with the whales, a dive trip, a bird watching trip, a forest tour, etc.
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| Wharf during a storm, to give you an idea. This is not a picture from this day in the blog. |
13 September The wind has shifted to the northwest and is blowing obliquely toward the shore. This makes the boat uncomfortable and the dinghy landing at the wharf more challenging. We pick up a rental car first thing in the morning. After dropping off our laundry at the home of a lady who does this, we did some sightseeing and errands. The dive operator insists that we do a refresher training before they will take us out SCUBA diving. We do it in the pool of the resort next door. The instructor is very good. When we return to the wharf to go back to Sunrise, we find that the wind has piped up and is coming directly from the west. The surge at the wharf is substantial and launching the dinghy impossible. About 10 of us our stranded, unable to get in our dinghies without them flipping over. Some yachties decide to swim to their boats but most of us are not that young and strong. Some have to spend the night on shore. One couple has close friends next to their boat who have a dinghy in the water. (Everyone else had their dinghy on deck as it was impossible to get it off the deck.) Their friend risks his life and his boat to retrieve his wife and this couple, one by one. We ask the last person to see if the man will make one more trip to take me out. The answer from the bouncing dinghy as it struggles back to their boat is yelled over the noise: NO. Doing what he had just done was dangerous and his small dinghy and motor marginal. We go back to the yacht club, where they arrange for us to stay at a guest house and lead us there. Later, a yacht club member comes to us with his VHF and says that another cruiser, Karen on Sockdollager, noticed that one of our two mooring lines had chafed through where it passed through the chock in the toerail and the other was starting to become damaged. As the wind waves passed under the boat, the mooring lines are tensioned and relaxed repeatedly. When tensioned, they stretch, when less tensioned, they contract. So the lines were repeatedly rubbing and wearing on the chock, the gap in the toerail through which the lines the lines pass. The two men who were close friends and made it out to their boat (John on Orcinius and Bob on Charisma) got on our boat, removed the anchor from the bow roller, tied it on deck, installed their large mooring line through the bow roller assembly, routed our damaged mooring line over the other bow roller. We are very grateful to them for going out again into the heaving chop and dealing with the wildly bucking bow of our boat and thankful for their saving our boat. Our remaining mooring line would not have lasted through the night. We stood on the wharf a long time looking at our boat until it was too dark. A couple on vacation in a rental car raised their high beams for us and we see our "bar-coded" mast pitching back and forth. (Before we went cruising we put reflective tape on our mast in a bar code pattern so that we could find her with a flashlight in the dark.) About ten p.m. we drove down to the wharf to shine the headlights of our car out toward our boat. The reflection from the tape on the mast showed that Sunrise was still there and the mast swinging fore and aft under the influence of the waves. The waves and surge at the dock still made launching our dinghy impossible. After we go to bed, I cannot sleep and make another trip to the wharf. No changes.
14 September At 5 am, we get up and go to the farmers market to buy some tomatoes, kumeras (yams), a papaya, some Niue coconut porridge and a scone. When we get to the wharf, the wind has backed off and changed direction back to the northwest and we are barely able to get our dinghy launched, get in and away from the concrete wharf. We find all is well on Sunrise. I replace Orcinius's mooring line with one of our own and return it to their boat with effusive thanks. They graciously responded with, "That's what the cruising life is all about, helping each other." Charisma had suffered a ding to their outboard when Sunrise's bow came crashing down on it - it could have been their head.
We decide to spend the rest of the day on the boat doing chores. The supply ship (called the freighter" here) is due in and they do not want any dinghys on the wharf. Soon after, the supply ship arrives and anchors about ¼ mile off the wharf, with a hauser taken back to the wharf to hold the ship in position. The locals use a mobile crane to lift an aluminum tugboat into the water followed by a small aluminum barge. The rest of the day, the tugboat/barge hauls one or two 20 foot long containers at a time back to the wharf to by lifted up onto trailers by the big crane. Included in the loads are cylindrical fuel tanks in 20 foot rectangular cages. Before the cyclone/hurricane hit Niue in 2004, there was a small tank farm. Fuel was transferred from tanker ships by hoses and stored in the tanks. Now, the damaged tanks are all that remain of that system. At the end of the day, the ship pulls in their line to the wharf, ups anchor and steams away.
Position : 19 03.20' S, 169 55.44' W
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