Update 14 -- Wallis Island

Orca Update 14

Hello from Wallis Island! We've covered nearly 1,500 nm since the last update, so we've got a few stories.

We left Raiatea with 5 days left on the visas, and scampered through the pass at Bora Bora just before nightfall. Ghosting into a pretty anchorage just behind a shadowy motu at dusk we found the water to be of reasonable anchoring depth and dropped the hook to enjoy the last of the sky's colors. Morning broke the spell, showing 100's of hotels, resorts, condos and bungalows littering the shorelines. Hourly flights from Tahiti roared overhead, and high-speed transports zipped through the lagoon delivering people to and from the airport. Rental jet-ski's buzzed like hornets, and tour boats rumbled by with running commentary oozing from their PA systems.

In protest we hung our damp salty underwear out to dry in the view-shed of a few dozen Ritz-Carlton executive suites.

Paperwork and shopping took the remainder of our time, and soon enough we were back at sea. The wind was light, which is fine with us. We scrub Orca's hull religiously so she moves well in light air.

About this time we began to enter the South Pacific Convergence Zone (SPCZ), a little known but feared stretch of the South Pacific where the consistent balmy trade wind weather becomes a bit sinister. The warm, moist air from the east, which has been blowing over the equatorial waters in the form of the trades for the last 5,000 miles, meets waves of colder air forced north by storms around NZ and Australia. For reasons not entirely clear to us, this interface doesn't usually produce large scale storms, but instead manifests itself as one or more stationary fronts which are characterized by narrow bands of intense squalls which can last for weeks. Stories abound of moonless nights in which an unsuspecting sailboat stumbles into one of these fronts and finds the wind going from 5 to 80 knots in a heartbeat. Few fly spinnakers at night in this stretch of the ocean. Two weeks ago a 67' catamaran was overturned in one of these squalls and had to be abandoned.

Three nights out of Bora Bora we began to see signs that we were approaching one of these squall lines. Just after sunset, we began to see flashes of lightening below the horizon reflecting off nearby clouds. By midnight, a line of thunderheads blocked the horizon, stretching out of sight from SE to NW. At 5 am, it was nearly upon us. The wind jumped from 10 to 25 knots and switched direction from E to N. Continuous lightening made headlamps on deck unnecessary. We reefed down to storm canvas, re-lashed the dingy, unplugged radios, and wrapped crucial electronic gear in tin-foil to protect it from the huge electromagnetic forces that would result if we took a direct strike. Just before sunrise, a line of rain moved toward us– big cold drops that could be heard moving across the water toward us in a hiss. The wind increased to 35 knots and began to whistle in the rigging. Webs of cloud-to-cloud lightening crackled across the sky overhead and a few big ground strikes hit the ocean near us. The thunder was felt, rather than heard, over the sound of the wind and waves.

And just like that, we were through: 10 hours of anticipation—10 minutes of terror. Blue sky stretched ahead to the horizon and the wind dropped to 10 knots. Kara danced the robot in the flashes of lightening as we scudded safely into the clear predawn sky.

Before we knew it, Aitutaki was in sight. This Cook Island has a lagoon that rival's Bora Bora's for magnificence, but is much less visited; there is no natural pass through the reef. An artificial pass was blasted in the 1940's during World War II, but has since filled with sediment and is now only 4.5' deep at peak high tide, which is too shallow for most large powerboats and nearly all sailboats. Being rather dainty, as far as bluewater cruisers go, Orca draws just over 4'. We went aground in the lagoon 3 times and had to kedge off twice (kedging involves taking an anchor back into deep water with the dingy and using it to pull the big boat off the shoal). Safely into the harbor, which was about the size of a basketball court and 6' deep, we explored the island.

Aitutaki has a small airport with connections to Auckland, and nurses a small tourism industry. We jumped right in and decided to rent a motor scooter. At the rental office, the native islander with a big afro and acres of tattoos showed us to a shiny red scooter with a big logo on the front, “Rino's Rentals”. He asked if we'd ever driven a motorcycle or a scooter before and we said no. Rather than give us a few pointers, he said “well you better take this one instead then” and rolled out a scooter that had obviously been in an unhealthy number of high speed crashes. It was missing a rear view mirror, the turn signals were held on with duct tape, it leaked copious amounts of oil, the brakes (we later found out while descending a steep dirt road) worked at about half capacity, the plastic bodywork was hanging on by faith alone, the muffler didn't muffle, the shock absorbers didn't absorb, and, naturally, there was no trace of the rental logo on it anywhere. But, for $14 US, we had her for the next 24 hours with tacit permission to crash as many times as it took to figure out how to drive a moped and how to negotiate traffic on the wrong side of the road. The other challenge was that neither of us had driven for almost a year. With all this we figured we'd better stay away from people so we took to the dirt roads and trails on the interior of the island and spent the rest of the day bouncing, wobbling, and sliding along deserted ridge tops. The next day, we drove on the beaches (our only crash was when we hit some deep fluffy sand, lost control, and ended up in a heap).

After a week at Aitutaki, we scraped our way out of the lagoon and set a course for Wallis Island. We spent 11 days at sea, and the wind averaged a lovely-sounding 15-20 knots. The average is a bit misleading, though, because for the first 6 days we were becalmed and the last 5 we spent hove-to or running under triple reefed main with winds between 30 and 45 knots and 15-20' seas. Kara enjoyed celebrated her birthday by being tossed around the cabin. It was a challenging passage physically and mentally, not to mention the wear and tear on our gear. Luckly, nothing broke, we built confidence, and now we're safely ensconced in Wallis Island's lagoon taking a breather before pressing on to Savusavu, Fiji.

Thanks!

J&K

Update 13 -- Port du Phaeton...

Orca Update 13:

Hi everyone,

Thanks again for all the love from home.

Picking up where we left off last time, we went to check out the mysto reef-pass at Port du Phaeton and found it to be sunny, light offshore, a very pretty few feet overhead, and extremely life threatening. 3 waves were more than enough; we felt lucky to get out of there alive. The wave wraps in, sucks off the reef, hollows out and reels off onto 6” of water rapidly draining to dry reef. There was also the nearly inescapable dry reef close out section, which seems to be fairly ubiquitous around here. A few locals came out on body boards wearing full suits and helmets—always a bad sign.

Escaping to Pape'ete, we found a nautical traffic jam – 100's of cruising boats packed into a relatively small area, all anchored in a 100' of water. The attraction? McDonalds, among other things. The price of a cheeseburger? $4.00. The taste of home? Priceless.

Never fond of the big cities, we were out of there pretty quick. A light air sail over to the N side of Moorea took all day, but found us in Robinson's Cove, one of the more famous sailing stops. The water was deep right up to the trees, so we dropped the anchor just off the sandy beach and took a short line ashore to a palm tree to keep Orca from swinging around under the overhaning trees and fouling her rigging. The surrounding mountains looked prehistoric: massive, craggy, and superlatively tropical with massive old growth hardwood wreathed in vines. It didn't take much imagination to see dinosaurs roaming the island. We ambled up a dirt path that took us to the base of one of the huge spires disappearing into the clouds. 5 hours later we stumbled back to the boat covered in mud lugging 15 pounds of fruit we gathered during the hike.

An overnight sail brings us to Raitea and Taha'a, a pair of islands which share a fringing reef. We've been here for a while; we're not sure how long. Time...seems unimportant. We spent a bit of time reconnoitering the various reef passes with good exposure to SW swell before latching onto the gem; a gorgeous left with an idyllic anchorage just behind it. The wave is fairly long, and has three distinct sections. The deep takeoff, at size, is a top-to-bottom classic reef pass drainer which has spit out many an intrepid explorer. The end of this section leads into a few hundred yards of bowly, jucy shoulder. Then you reach the good part of the wave, where the inside section can double in size as the swell that wrapped into the deep reef pass hits the shallows and thickens into a long reeling hollow section. Don't forget to kick out before the dry reef closeout section, though. The paddle back out is quick, since the offshores and the outgoing current help. There area few gnarly locals around who surf in the afternoons– big guys, lots of tattoos. They can be very intimidating, especially as they paddle straight up to you at top speed, an unfamiliar look in their eye. When they reach us, we wait, cringing, for.......a handshake and a polite introduction. They are very happy to see us, welcome to the lineup, would you like to tie up your dingy to my panga, as it has a big anchor? We hope you enjoy our waves, stay as long as you want. Please, no pictures though.

We've met another sailing/surfing couple from New Zealand, who have been surfing the left with us. They have gotten us really excited about NZ; they keep talking about all kinds of good Kiwi stuff. As an example: they thought it strange that we would consider buying local beer at $3/can. They asked why we didn't just stock up on the 'brew kits' from our supermarkets in the US...? Apparently, in any local supermarket in NZ you can buy a beer brewing kit 'cheap as chips.' Our friends, Ron & Mim, brew it 25 liters at a time, once a week. In the tropics, it takes less than two weeks and tastes like nectar.

Needless to say, we're going to burn through every last day of our visas right here, before heading the 12 miles west to Bora-Bora to finish our clearance paperwork. We're not sure of our next stop, but we've got a couple of possibilities bouncing around. Wallis island has a number of nice looking reef passes with good surfing exposure. After that, we've heard that the Fijian government has opened Tavarua to the public, which means that we could be some of the very first cruising sailors to surf Cloudbreak. We'll see.

Thanks!

J&K