CHAPTER 28
Our time in Rangiroa dragged, compliments of an intensive southerly depression. Waves inside the shallow lagoon were short and choppy, pulling hard on Endymion, even though we had an extra ‘snubber’ (device to prevent chafing) on the anchor chain, to reduce the jerking motion.
“What’s with these nasty harbor waves?” Kyle asked no one in particular. “I can’t read my damn magazine we’re being bumped around so much!”
“Let out some more chain,” advised the lawyer who had never been to sea.
Tony set them all straight: “Listen jerkos—we’ve got two hundred feet of chain out in fifteen feet of water. That’s lucky thirteen times scope (length vs. depth)! More won’t stop the bouncing. These waves, in case ya didn’t know it, they get steep because it’s shallow and the underside of the wave has no room to gradually drag across the bottom to make the wave fall over itself and break like on Huntington Beach sand. You’re not surfers, so you don’t get it!”
“Screw you, weasel face!” Kyle had spoken.
Personally, I thought Tony gave a good explanation, and while it’s true friendships develop between those who sail boats, we were getting on each other’s nerves a bit.
I’d been lamenting some crew goofs. One night Greg had relieved me on watch. I was nearly asleep on my sweat-drenched sheets, when Greg called down, “Captain, we have lightning to the northeast.”
“How distant?” I groggily asked.
“Quite distant. No danger, I’m sure,” he replied.
At least he had given me a rough bearing. Going off watch, I had found conditions clear through 360 degrees. Oh well, I thought, not to worry, and I drifted into dreamless slumber.
An hour later it was Greg again. “Skip,” he shouted through the port into my cabin, “I suspect a short circuit electrical problem.”
Now he had my immediate attention. “Where?”
“The trailing generator. It’s sparking, and I don’t want to touch it.” It was 0400. I was dead tired and couldn’t understand how a 12-volt generator that tows a line with a propeller just below the surface, could send flashes of light up the rigging and into the air—mostly because it lay in a heap on deck.
Reluctantly, I crawled from my rest to discover a ‘man overboard’ light had landed on deck after falling from its perch on a life ring and was emitting a strobe flash every two seconds. False alarm, but at least the strobe worked.
Another considerably more dangerous problem also involved Greg. We were coming through the single pass on Ahe Island mid-morning in twenty-knot winds. Tony had improved his system of reporting bommies, by using clearly understandable hand signals from his position in the rigging. We miscalculated slack tide in Ahe Pass and it was flowing at wickedly strong eight to nine knot ebb, pushing tons of water from the lagoon. Tides after strong onshore winds can ebb for days, in spite of moon, planets, our personal schedule, or witches. Navigating in these conditions takes absolute concentration and crew teamwork. It’s a nerve-racking, stomach come to visit mouth occurrence.
We conquered the pass without incident and decided to anchor in the picturesque lagoon close to where we believed we would find the gendarmerie. It was a lee shore on a blustery day. I wasn’t thrilled with the lee shore situation but saw no alternative.
Kyle went forward and got the anchor ready. “Any time, Skipper,” he shouted.
From the rigging, Tony added, “Looks good to me Pops, any time you want to drop.”
Greg was aft. His simple job was to bring in the cursed trailing generator as we slowed approaching the anchor drop point.
Tony said, “Drop!”
I hit the remote switch and the anchor noisily started down. I put Endymion into reverse to set the anchor. At that very instant, the windless clutch again slipped, sending all three hundred feet of chain racing to the bottom. Greg had not pulled in the trailing generator, choosing instead to gawk at the scenery, and, hearing the calamity, abandoned his position and ran forward, wanting, innocently enough, to help. Endymion, still in reverse, ran over the neglected trailing generator line, solidly wrapping it around our propeller, immediately stopping our engine, and the anchor was not set.
“What the hell’s happening here?” came from me. “Aw shit, I bet we caught the taffrail.”
“You didn’t get it up?” I asked Greg in disbelief.
“No, I let go when I heard the chain running.”
“Jesus . . . Doesn’t anyone think around here?” I asked the world within earshot.
We were in a bad situation rapidly getting worse, and we were only two hundred meters from a lee shore, dragging our anchor toward it—with no engine. But, we didn’t panic, at least not completely.
“I’ll grab the tools,” shouted Greg, dropping below deck. Greg wasn’t long in the teeth for experience at sea, but he was eager and had strong mechanical ability.
“Gimme a hand stripping the windlass.” Greg was looking to Tony for help.
“See ya on the bottom,” shouted Kyle, diving over the side into the clear water. I watched Kyle pull chain from the bottom of the lagoon and wrap it around a nearby giant coral head. That action stopped our steady march toward shore. I heaved an audible sigh of relief and scurried aft to free the taffrail generator at deck level, so we could later unwind it from the propeller below the surface.
“Good stuff, Kyle!” Tony shouted over the bow to Kyle when he surfaced. “You and the bommie saved us!”
In reality, luck was present as well. The net loss was the trailing generator line Kyle later cut from our prop. It took six hours of splicing and whipping to put it together, but we could not make it work.
The last judgment error put gentle Greg on the beach. It involved the same generator, only set up in the rigging this time with an airplane type propeller we carefully fashioned from extra Avon paddles. Once in place, a lanyard was pulled to put the propeller in motion. Lawyer Greg of Beverly Hills pulled the wrong line, releasing the whole contraption to fly wildly, yanking the electrical cord out of the generator and splitting the propeller.
“Not bad, Greg. You coulda killed one of us!” said Tony sourly.
Truly, he or it could have. Things happen unexpectedly, and that’s why we call them accidents. These, however, were too many mistakes, both expensive and serious enough to require I mitigate potential tragedy. Greg had paid a moderate sum to sail with us. The money, while welcome, was not as important as safety. Greg didn’t know yet, but he would leave Endymion in Tahiti. It wasn’t working that well, and I suspected he felt the same and there would be no hard feelings. I would return his money.
There were positives though. As we got closer to Tahiti, the price of beer inched lower, $2.00 a bottle, though we didn’t carry any. Another plus was our acquired skill provisioning from the land, such as fruits and native breads. The ocean was also a heavy and consistent purveyor to our meal plan as there were no restaurants. We consumed no junk food, save for some popcorn. We used all leftovers for some purpose, if we could get to them before Kyle targeted them for bait. He never caught much, and I doubt the fish had any attraction to the bait. Net result, we each shed weight and appeared healthier.
For a full six days, while we tugged and yawed at anchor, the winds had been edging gale force, but dry. These storms originated somewhere deep in Antarctica and were amply warmed before fetching Polynesia. Aside from wind, I was concerned with the relentless march of big seas that missioned themselves toward us almost 5,000 miles ago, and had developed strength and personality that took few prisoners. We had wisely stayed in reasonable shelter at this bumpy anchorage.
Finally, on Saturday, June 13th the wind stalled to a mere whisper. We felt safe making the pass and heading for Tahiti 200 miles beyond the horizon.
Even at slack tide the Atuona Pass ran a powerful six knots. I spent an hour walking the pass to study its safest route. Big dolphins jumping waves kept pace with me. Against the current, they would punch out of the water and land in the apparent same spot, proving the current’s strength.
We timed our exit perfectly, bidding goodbye to Rangiroa at 1230 on a brilliant afternoon. We powered around the southern tip of the island and set sail for Tahiti’s capital city, Papeete. By 1800 a dark brooding sky had clouded over completely. Big rolling seas, fifteen to eighteen feet trough to tip, were steadily marching beneath us.
“Can’t be another storm,” commented Kyle as if reading my thoughts.
“Hope not,” I said, wondering if the swell would remain through dinnertime.
“Yeah,” chirped Tony. “Well, maybe it is. Some o’ them native kids say don’t be fooled by a couple days of good weather—these blows come one right after another this time of year.”
An hour later the wind Gods lived up to their evil reputation, throwing us into headwinds at twenty-five knots with a wicked jarring fifteen-foot cross sea. The motion was uncomfortable, damn near punishing. I gave serious thought to turning back, and said so to the crew.
“We’re gonna be catching some fury pretty quick, I suspect.
Might be smart to reverse course and give it another day or two to flatten out.”
“Chicken!” was my unanimous reply.
Tony added, “Sail er over or sail er under . . . that’s what I say!”
Greg was silent. He didn’t look well.
I seldom went against my intuition. I knew the crew was restless and wanted to get to Tahiti, and we’d been in howlers before. I relented. “OK. We’ll be bone tired, but Tahiti it is.” But I wasn’t comfortable.
All my life I had avoided intentionally going to sea in rough weather. It’s one thing to get stuck out there, but going willingly into bad weather while entrusted with others’ lives didn’t sit right. Greg, Kyle, and Tony had put their faith in me and I now put mine in Endymion. By 2000 the wind was thirty knots—force 7 and we were committed. When the wind builds above thirty knots it begins to scream in the rigging. By midnight it was howling.
Tony’s log entry was brief: “Bitch. High wind—high waves.”
Seas were hitting from two directions, possibly indicating separate storm cells. Being a small yacht taking a battering in stormy seas on a pitch-black night caused me to question my sanity. To reduce punishment we bore off to a course that would take us well east of Tahiti. At least the seething high seas with crests breaking into windblown spindrift with spray akin to shotgun blasts were hitting us at sixty degrees instead of head on. Wave swells approached twenty feet high. With a cubic foot of seawater weighing 60 pounds these waves could hurl 20,000 pounds of water at us at any given moment. We had to claw and crawl our way around the cockpit. At least our course was more accommodating for our rest-seeking bodies.
Greg, poor guy, was soon seasick, miserable, and wondering what the hell he was doing so far from suits and Ferraris in Beverly Hills. Huddled in the cockpit’s corner, taking shelter under the dodger, he also took valuable space for one of us still able to work the yacht, if needed. Conditions were deteriorating and I wasn’t happy, but I sympathized with his misery.
If ever a boat was capable of magic, Endymion could deliver. Silently though, I asked God for some help: “Just enough to get us through this,” I asked and though it hurt my pride, I admitted to God that forty-three feet of yacht felt pretty darned small compared to His storm.
Kyle answered my question, “How ya doin?” with one word, “Shitty.” There wasn’t much conversation.
Tony covered for Greg’s watch on the helm. Kyle stood his, as I did mine. Tony was best at the helm, I suspect because his surfing talents aided his understanding of wave dynamics. He made me proud in those wicked conditions, standing at the wheel, harness plastered against him by the wind, his hair drenched, and a big smile as he coaxed us through heavy seas, a soggy microwave burrito stuffed in his mouth. It was our nastiest night since leaving coastal America. Kyle wrote shakily in the log: “Decks awash . . . storm control.”
But control wasn’t easy. We had reduced sail to a tiny jib (forward sail) and a rag of a mainsail. Endymion would plunge her bow three feet beneath the surface of huge oncoming waves. When the bow broke free, three feet of solid water would sweep across the decks, flood the cockpit, and bury us in wash to our necks before disappearing astern. I was on the verge of abandoning our course to turn and run downwind, with the seas, and away from the battering we were experiencing. We were forereaching, which is remaining under very shortened sail while still maintaining control to make forward headway in full storm conditions. What I like is being under control. If I were to put the wind at our back, we would increase the danger of broaching as we surfed down a giant wave—and these were twenty-plus feet. This was raw nature showing fury and it had both my attention and respect. I wasn’t frightened—and I surely wasn’t a hero. I didn’t have time for fear—the shaking would come when the storm passed. Besides, I had confidence. Endymion was a well-balanced, high freeboard vessel that had never faltered. We stayed the course.
The problem, even when forereaching, was to keep from falling off monster wave backsides as we drove through and over the tops. When we actually became airborne, 45,000 pounds of yacht pummeled to the trough in free fall with a thundering, bone-jarring crash that could pump fear into anyone and damage a boat.
“She’s a strong yacht,” I yelled, trying to keep the crew engaged and build confidence with the wind shrieking and screaming in pitches I thought came only from movie theatres.
It was a tough sell with everything thrown into shambles below deck. Pots, pans, books, personal gear, small equipment was scattered everywhere. Salt spray and mist had even wet the below deck bulkhead speakers.
At 0200 I entered into the log: “Storm—log suspended.”
We slugged it out all night with only a storm jib and main reefed to postage stamp size, yet we still made six knots forereaching, but well away from our destination.
Spirits tanked.
Retreating to my cabin, I checked Adlard Cole’s classic book on survival tactics, Heavy Weather Sailing. Holding it unsteadily in the bucking aft cabin and fighting nausea from stale air, I confirmed we were doing what’s best in a raging storm, but it wasn’t a big confidence builder.
With daylight, Kyle managed some pancakes before tossing his cookies over the side. I fired up the engine to charge batteries. That proved a mistake.
Endymion, with her boom slapping the waves, was heeled (tipped) and rolling so much, the raw water intake cooling the Perkins was occasionally above the wandering waterline a few seconds too many. The impeller froze—overheating the engine we so needed to charge batteries. I had to shut it down.
Tony, still stuffing soggy food into his human intake opening, volunteered. “I’ll go below and replace the damn impeller—anything for you sorry asses.”
“No, Tony. It’s a big job in a tight space. We can’t risk you getting hurt. You’re needed on deck.”
My words were punctuated by an enormous breaking wave barreling across the length of Endymion, burying us in several feet of swirling, turbulent, rushing water. “Hang on,” yelled Tony.
We came up sputtering—realizing our situations severity. This was a doozy of a storm. We had no engine, and a non-functioning generator. The howling gale would likely get worse and we had zero way to make power.
By mid-day our batteries were toast. We barely had power for me to radio a report to a NOAA weather ship stationed in Papeete. “We haven’t enough juice for navigation lights, or compass. We’ll stay clear of shipping lanes through the night, and come in tomorrow.”
Before dusk I used our last ounce of precious power reporting our dead reckoning position to NOAA, who pledged to look out for us.
There’s a fine line between giving up and being weary. As darkness again covered us we were exhausted, cold, soaked, with two of us wretchedly sick. Plus, we had no instruments to guide us to Papeete except the sextant, impossible to use due to clouds and sea conditions. Privately, I had creeping doubts about our precarious situation.
We had been sailing way off course without making log entries—and I had only a vague idea where we were. Without navigation aids, we had to rely 100% on my ability to ‘dead recon’ navigate, working compass bearings, wind, boat speed, drift, and current. Although physically whipped, my brain was in turbo. I checked, rechecked, and triple checked my calculations. My crew counted on me—and I had promised God to deliver them safely.
Kyle, done in, excused himself and stumbled below. Tony and I sailed Endymion through total darkness of the savagely stormy night, seeing only turbulent white water without a horizon, a night without stars or any onboard lighting. Total darkness.
“Whadda ya think, Pops?” Tony asked as another wave engulfed the cockpit, trying to rip him from his harness.
“I think we’re gonna make it!”
Throwing the wheel over to avoid another dousing, Tony summed up his feelings, “I’m acutely uncomfortable, and I’ll heartily welcome a hot breakfast.”
I couldn’t picture any of us whipping up omelets, but my gut felt our heading was more on the money, though I couldn’t be sure. Four lives counted on me, and I accepted that weighty responsibility. I felt pressure and apprehension I couldn’t share, so in the depths of the dark night, though drenched, cold, and shivering, I resolved to stay in my two foot zone, collected, calm and showing confidence—and again I prayed.
Around 0300 the shrieking wind began to die and the seas to settle. When the bells struck 0400, Tony and I remained the only two on deck, switching positions frequently to stay alert. I sensed something was different. It’s a sense sailors have. I thought I could smell land.
Looking directly into his salt-encrusted eyes, I asked Tony, “Smell land?”
“You’re joking of course, great Father of mine.” “No, I’m not Tony—I really think I smell it.”
“Well I can’t!” said Tony, and there followed an awkward silence, as if I was ordering him to smell what I hoped I was sensing.
“I still can’t smell it, Pops—but I think I see it. Look there!” he said, pointing over the port bow.
A faint glow was in the sky. The glow that comes from distant city lights refracted from overhead clouds.
“Yes, Yes, Tony, that’s it!”
We were instantly invigorated, discarding a giant burden, replacing it with glee. It was a feeling so intensely relieving, seeing the glow on the horizon—knowing we would now make it. I could feel the relief flooding my body. I felt warm. My confidence returned. Maybe Tony would get his hot breakfast!
Gradually we began to identify the lights of Papeete, though figuring distance was difficult. We also saw lights from passing ships. We were secure now. We had passed the test.
I went below for a clean fresh water washcloth. It felt so good I could have married it. Instead I brought it to Tony. “Here, take a break, son, wash the salt from your eyes and face. You look like a ghost.”
Life slowly improved. We took fewer waves aboard, and Greg even reached the lee rail to hurl. I don’t think anyone, except maybe Tony, ever knew I feared we could have become statistics that night. As dark gave favor to light, we became energized. A group of weary guys on a small sailing yacht, feeling good because we had decided to ‘go for it,’ and it had worked.
“Your honors, Dad.” Tony stepped aside and offered me the wheel. Under sail alone, in a wind almost gone, and seas still rolling, we short tacked our way between the fringing reefs of Papeete. As morning commuters were edging their way to work, and still under full sail, we dropped anchor and heaved a collective sigh of relief. The wind was gone. The sails flapped idly. The four of us stood on the foredeck of Endymion, from Newport Beach, California, now fifty feet from city traffic in Papeete, Tahiti—doing a football fist bump.
Was I proud, pleased, and satisfied? You bet! The storm was over.
It would not be our last.