Sept 12-14, A Very Very Good Very Bad Night

Reef at Niue

Coast of Niue

Lifting a dinghy, found on Google images

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.  

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.

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

September 12, 2012

We are 4 miles away from the mooring balls at Niue in the lee of the island so in an hour we will be safely attached. Very very nice passage here.  Barry is a great sailor and I am an excellent navigator.  Ta-dah!!

September 10-11, 2012 The compulsion to speed along

Oh, just forget  what  I said about our arrival time in Niue being "just right".  I forgot to factor in Barry being a man.  While I was peacefully reading about the birds of Niue Barry went on deck to "tweak the sails before I go to sleep for the night".  Seems he had a compulsion to take the reefs out of both sails and now we are going 7.5 knots and our ETA Niue is 1:30 am.  I must admit it feels good to be so smoothly speeding along, but . . . I have this nagging rational thought going on.

Sept 11 The day's chore was to clean out the composting toilet - a job we have been dreading.  It was not bad at all!  The thing does its job just as advertised when only 2 people are using it.  We dumped the contents into the ocean, cleaned it and put in new peat moss.  It didn't smell bad.  You would think that one day humanity will determine that it is insane to be pooping into scarce clean drinking water and then flushing it.

We have safely skirted Antiope Reef without running into it.  Now just a short ways to Niue.  Barry rolled up most of the head sail so new ETA is between 3 and 8 am Wednesday morning.

Position :  16 22.48' S, 167 19.12' W

Speed : 6.4 knots,  Course : 210 degree

September 9 - 10, 2012 Going to Niue

We are having a great ride even though the wind is 20-25 k.  That is because Barry is a really good sailor/physicist.  I wonder if the lady with the husband with a short snubber is having a good sail.

Those of you who know Barry well: If he says he is setting about fixing his whisker pole, do you think it is fixed?  We have not put it to the test but it looks like new to me.  From Barry:  After cleaning up the diesel under the table, I decided that it was not continuing to dribble down there.  So after putting everything back under the floor and on top of the floor, I took everything off the settee cushion, and the cushion, to look at the top of the fuel tank.  No signs of a leak.  Wherever it is, it probably only leaks if the tank is full.  Now that we are back at sea again, with the fuel sloshing around in the tank, we may have some more leak out.  We will see.

Here's the news from Radio Australia: the Prime Minister's father died.  Japan and Korea are having a territorial dispute. Australia has negotiated favorable foreign trade agreements with I think Russia.  There were earthquakes in China and troubles in Iran or Iraq, I forget which. That's it!  That is the only news we know!!  Please send news.

Remember that diesel leak that we sucked up with the vacuum cleaner?  We found the source.  Now it leaks more so we have avoided using that tank but we'll need to use it for enough fuel to motor some on the trip to NZ.  This leak in the aft tank is not to be confused with the leak in the forward tank.

Sept 10 From Barry: I just fixed the 2 non-functioning alternators.  The V-belt on the smaller 70 amp alternator had worn to the point that the belt was riding on the bottom of the sheave instead of the sides.  When it wore to the point of being just a bit loose, it could no longer provide the driving power.  The kluge regulator for the larger 100 amp alternator overheated and the waxy potting compound was melting and dripping off.  It was replaced with another kluge regulator.  The third regulator for this cruising season.  What a relief.  The lack of alternators wouldn't have been so bad but it is a dark and stormy day which means no solar power either.  Now we can go back to keeping the radar on, the frig and freezer cold, using the computer, using Sailmail with the SSB, washing  hair and taking a bath (which uses power making the water) and listening to music, The King's Speech, and trying, mostly in vain, to find news on the radio.  And we can charge the iPad and iPod.

If we kept going 7-8 knots we would arrive at Niue in the middle of the night.  So now that the wind is down to 15 knots we have not shaken out the 2 reefs in the main and we left 1 and a half reefs in the genoa and still we are going 5.5 knots.  We expect less wind Tues-Wed. None of us - Barry, Sunrise nor I like sailing more slowly than we could be, but, hopefully, our strategy will get us there mid morning on Wednesday - just right.

September 8, 2012 Suvarov or Suwarrow

Sept 8 With mixed feelings we left Suvarov exactly at high tide with me steering.  It was gnarly on the windward side of Suvarov but the pass was smooth enough.  I call it Suvarov because a Russian found it in 1814 and named it after his ship.  The Cook Islanders want a Polynesian sounding name so they changed Suvarov to Suwarrow.  Now if Suwarrow was its original name I would call it Suwarrow but really the first name it had is Suvarov, as far as anyone knows, so I'm calling it Suvarov.  The mixed feelings come from sadness at leaving the amazing beauty, birdlife, clear water and thriving coral reefs mixed with relief from leaving a cruising style that many cruisers love but we avoid.  There were too many boats (30 at one time), too close together, too much partying and too many rules for our tastes.  The rules came, as most rules do, from people damaging this Eden.  We had to be accompanied by a ranger when we visited any motu but the main one.  That meant we went in groups.  All the anchoring was confined to one small area so that other areas would remain undisturbed.  We are happy to be free of all that.  We'll miss the wonderful people we met.  By the way, I have a Lonely Planet Guide to the Cook Islands and it lists the population of Suvarov as 2. That is an exaggeration because from Dec through April there is no one there.

This is the first passage we have made in the company of another boat, Aquamante, maybe Italian.  53' long and going 8.5 knots compared to our 38' going 7 knots.  The speed a boat goes rises as the length increases (as long as the boat doesn't get too fat).  10 boats left the last 2 days, half going to Tonga and half to Samoa except for us and Aquamante going to Niue.  Aquamante has a AIS transceiver which means we know its name, type of vessel, SOG (speed over ground), bearing and distance from us.  Pretty cool.

We enjoyed getting to know Ants.  He said he was chosen for the job mainly because of his ability to live off the land and sea in isolation.  In his home town of Whakatane, New Zealand, he spends half his time in the bush hunting.  They wanted someone who could get their own food and water, make a fire, put out fires, live outside and deal with the natural environment.  I thought you would have to be a good people person but he said, no, these other things were what counted.  He and Harry, the head ranger, "have their differences".  Ants likes to keep more meticulous records.  Ants likes to eat at the cruiser potlucks but Harry likes to cook his own food and go to bed early.  Ants likes grass and Harry "cleans it up".  They have resolved that issue by Ants and Harry dividing the property.  Ants has a plot with grass and flowers  and Harry has a clean bare plot.  I'll tell you one thing, Ants is no good at his birds.  He kept calling the Masked Booby a Northern Gannet (which they have in New Zealand).  I think he just couldn't believe there is a bird name booby.

I think our closest neighbors in the anchorage were not so happy as we are.  They had a lot of trouble with their anchor getting wrapped around coral and were often out in the howling wind hanging over the bow of the boat trying to deal with the chain.  I said we weren't having trouble and she said, "That's because you have a really long snubber."  She was right.  Barry had commented about what a short snubber line they had out.  One thing about Barry, he has a long snubber.  That, and 3 bouys which kept the chain suspended over (rather than snarled in) the coral heads.  I can't explain a snubber without drawing a picture, so you will just have to google it.

Snubber line, found on Google images for you

September 4-6, Suwarrow Birthday cake, Lazarus and diesel

Sept 4  We have been staying on the boat most of the time doing maintenance projects and financial office work, as the wind speed is still a bit high for going anywhere.  Every time it drops some, we talk about going somewhere.  Then before we get going, the wind is back up and we sit tight.  There was a cruiser potluck on the beach this evening and the wind moderated enough to get a large turnout.  Since one of the ladies was celebrating her birthday, Lynne baked a birthday cake, complete with candles. It was the 4th cake at the potluck but every crumb of every cake was devoured.  We'll blame it on the children.  It was an international celebration with people from Poland, Germany, Norway, France, Holland, Brazil, Sweden, Spain, Great Britain, Australia, Canada and the USA.  All this diversity is held together by the love of the sea and the cruising life.  There are 26 boats here now - the record.  There are many children in our fleet and cruisers of all ages.

Sept 5  We were scheduled to go on an outing to the Seven Sisters motus this morning.  Since the ranger's skiff was full, we would be tagging along in our dinghy.  Well, the wind speed was higher than we anticipated it would be and we forecast a wet and bumpy ride.  So we cancelled.  After lunch, the wind was down and we went a short distance away in the dinghy to a cleaning station for the manta rays.  A cleaning station is a place where the big rays come to have the parasites and other growth removed by small fish.  It works because the small fish get to eat and don't get eaten.  We tied up the dinghy to a mooring and jumped in to snorkel around and look for the mantas.  The water was about 30 feet deep, so looking at fish, coral and other critters was not so good.  Eventually, we were about to leave and go to snorkel in shallower water.  Just then, some other snorkelers spotted some mantas.  The one that I saw had a wingspan of about 6 feet, was all black on top with a white belly having a few black blotches on it.  The cephalic fins on either side of the mouth were silver and were tightly curled backwards, opposite to the direction they are usually curved when feeding.  I was able to get quite close without spooking the manta.  A magical moment, for sure.  Lynne swam over 2 mantas watching the graceful dance below and Falcon and Mike actually physically danced with them. The day ended with a perfect massage for Lynne from another cruiser who is a massage therapist.  I continued working on the mangled whisker pole, cutting off more of the bent tube, hammering on the end of the tube trying to get an oval tube round again and disassembling more of the pole to allow the re-assembly sequence to proceed.  The stumbling block now is an internal sheave that was demolished.  It was weakly made and nowhere near being able to withstand the loads that we put on it flying the whole sail in higher wind speeds.  We have a lot of extra blocks on the boat but none with a sheave mounted on a pin of the correct size that is suitable for this task.  If this whisker pole becomes usable again, even in a shortened form (about 5 feet have been lost due to the fold), its name will be Lazarus.

Sept 6  The ranger, Ants, took us and 8 other cruisers on another snorkeling excursion today to a reef inside the opposite side of the lagoon called Perfect Reef.  We caught several fish trolling to Perfect Reef.  Falcon was with us.  He was conceived, born, raised on a boat and lived all but three of his  24 years cruising.  When we got to Perfect Reef, he went off with his snorkeling gear trolling a lure on a hand line.  Caught himself another fish.  He calls it extreme fishing and was keen to teach his technique to the rest of us.  For a long time all of us including Ants were out of the boat snorkeling in the incredibly clear Suwarrow water with its incredibly healthy coral.  The finds included box fish, octopus, a newly seen puffy pink starfish and many new kinds of coral.  The boat was tied to a mooring buoy anchored to a coral head.  Lynne and I were the first ones out, later joined by two more cruisers and Ants.  After a while, it became apparent that we were no longer in the same place, but were moving across the reef and out into the lagoon.  The mooring line had chafed through.  Since we were in the skiff, no problem.  There were several other cruisers nearby, having come in their own dinghies.  A nice backup today.  But had the skiff departed with the wind, it would have been a long 4-mile swim back  to the anchorage.  On the way back, we made a number of detours past other reefs and around and in and out Suwarrow's pass  trying to catch more fish.  We caught several more nice fish trolling the hand lines.  Only a barracuda was a throwback, the others destined to be cooked for dinner that evening.  All-in-all, another long and fun day  on the water with lots of time to hear the stories of other cruisers all of whom were younger than we are and some much much younger!

Later in the afternoon, I emptied out all of the stuff stored on the floor under the table to get at a box of metal stored under the floor.  Along with the items stored under the floor was a puddle of diesel.  So, besides cleaning the diesel off the floor and all the items stored there, I have a leak to look for, probably in the fuel tank next to the puddle.  Always something to keep me busy.

There are now 29 boats here.

September 3, 2012 Up all night to ensure safe anchoring

Sept 3 News around the Suwarrow neighborhood:
Ants says this is the worst wind he has seen in the 6 months he has been here.  There are 24 boats in the anchorage now, the most Ants has seen since he's been here.  The other boats are on the VHF radio discussing with each other the weather forecasts, how there is too much wind to chance getting the dinghy off the deck and into the water for fear it will take flight and how no one is going anywhere and how they were up all night worrying about the anchor dragging, getting snagged in coral or someone else's boat dragging into theirs.  We were up all night the first night but now we sleep well because the alarm is working well and our anchor hasn't moved an inch.  Barry feels sorry for the birds trying to fly in this wind.  2 people have been injured and called for a doctor and found there are 6 doctors in our fleet of 24 boats.  Amazing!  We wonder what the social dynamics are that put doctors on boats.  So, bottom line, we are in Eden but stuck on the boat for the time being and if we need a doctor we're in the right neighborhood.