Arriving at the pass to Majuro in the Marshall Islands at one in the afternoon seemed perfect. We would have plenty of time to sail to the anchorage only 14 miles to windward and the weather was beautiful. It was windy, blowing 15-16 kts. but it was almost from a direction we could use and we were feeling confident. A few large fishing boats were visible on AIS headed our way from inside the lagoon, so I put a call out on the radio to warn them that a crazy lady driving a disabled boat was navigating the pass under sail and would they please give her lots of room. They scattered like sand crabs at low tide. The pass was deep, wide and well-marked. I bet you could drag an aircraft carrier through sideways and not have a problem, but the wind direction slowed us down to a meager three knots. Tacking (a left hand turn) into an 18 knot headwind from the pass was going to be difficult (maybe impossible) without more speed so Dois decided to teach me the “worry-around”. He had me turn the boat the opposite the direction from where we wanted to go, gaining speed from the wind that was now behind us and quickly completing the turn (sort of a ¾ circle) ending up on the tack we wanted. We were only 11 miles to the moorings now and things were looking up. We tacked back and forth, close to the wind, begging for speed. We were really enjoying this sailing, especially because we thought we were almost home. Little did we know we would not find safe haven for another 17 hours. It was time consuming to tack back and forth across the lagoon and took us 4 hours to make 9 miles to the good. This was working against us as the weather had taken a turn for the worse. The winds were threatening 20kts on the nose and there were some seriously dark clouds headed our way. Just two miles from the anchorage we accepted the idea of a rescue, perhaps our biggest mistake. Looking back on it (wishing for more foresight again), we probably could have sailed right into the anchorage, weaving our way around the anchored commercial boats and dropped the anchor. But the storm threat seemed like a good reason to accept "a rescue" and the locals Were adamant about NOT anchoring due to the bottom being strewn with wrecks (bad sign?). The offers of help to get us safely to a mooring were just too enticing to pass on. We made the decision to accept a tow and the seduction of the “rescue” was complete. It was Tuesday night. Why is this important? Because Tuesday nights are yachtie Happy Hours here in Majuro and you do not want to get between a sailor and his happy hour. At 6:00 only 2 small dinghies showed up and the weather now warranted a tug boat. We were very grateful for the two dinghies and decided to furl the staysail and drop the main. Unfortunately the main was intent on staying up the mast, being pinned there by the wind. Dois jumped out of the cockpit to pull in down and it came down alright... in one fell swoop; busted right out of the main mast track. Now we had no engine and no main sail. We tied up one of the dinghies to port and the other small boat was attended by a Frenchman who was convinced he could tow us from the bow. Under Dois’s doubtful watch, the Frenchman insisted on tying to the pulpit stanchion. Then he goosed his outboard to try and get a pull on us, but our girl tugged back causing him to turn slightly to our starboard (right) and with Port dinghy was pushing as hard as he could, Frenchman made the mistake of stopping. It took all of 60 seconds for him to be swept backwards by wind and current, screaming all the way. RELEASE MY LINE RELEASE MY LINE! We were dragging him now. The wind was up a notch and it was starting to rain. Being dragged like that was sinking the frenchmans little boat and he was mad as a hatter yelling over and over RELEASE MY LINE RELEASE MY LINE. His line had jammed into the spot Dois told him not to use and it took a few highly stressful moments to work it free. In the meantime, portside dinghy was doing everything he could to try and steer us back in the direction of the anchorage, but instead overheated his outboard and succeeded in pushing us closer to the reef. The Frenchman was free and he unbelievably, hollered over the noise of the squall that he would return with his big power cat. At about that time another dinghy came along side and boarded Ashika. Phil is a jolly Brit with a desire to help but we needed at least two more boats by this point. Dois was helping our helpers onboard and tying down their boats and as soon as everyone was safe I pulled out the staysail and we whipped a u-turn sailing away from the reef and any immediate danger. The only problem was I could only go in a direction that was away from any anchorage, but it was also away from the reef, at least for awhile. Port dinghy and Dois started work on a towing bridle. And when he could, Dois came back to raise the mizzen hoping it might gain us sail control. We spotted the Frenchman coming at us with his power cat and Dois abandoned the mizzen. Arriving on the scene, he threw us a line, Dois attached it to the bridle and just like that we were being towed to the mooring field. This was likely our second missed opportunity to sail ourselves out of this mess and we missed it again. We were what you might call "apprehensive", but we were headed toward the mooring and it seemed like things were looking up, what could go wrong? Let me tell you. First, we were towed into another moored boat. Frenchman mysteriously stopped the cat (I think he was looking for the mooring) and as we all tried to figure out what was going on ahead of us, in the dark, Ashika drifted starboard onto a sailboat. The Frenchman responded to all our yelling by powering to starboard pulling us even harder onto the sailboat. The startled boat owner on deck was trying to fend us off and somehow, with five or six of us trying to throw fenders between the two boats, the only damage from that meeting of fiberglass was the loss of our stern light as we hooked it on his bow. We were relieved to get off so easy. Now Ashika was headed in the right direction again and closing in on the mooring. The storm had kicked it up a notch and making a real mess so we were relieved to be so close. Finally, safe at last. But it was not going to be. A man was sitting in a dinghy at the mooring ball, waiting to hand us up the mooring loop so we could thread it with our line, easy peasy. But the power cat drove around the man in the dinghy and stopped. The wind blew him down toward our port side, effectively lassoing mooring and the man in the dinghy - nearly killing him. He scrambled to get loose from the tow line and as he neared Ashika’s bow Dois could see his eyes were huge with fear as Dois help him slack the line and skinny under it to freedom. The Frenchman was screaming again… RELEASE MY LINE RELEASE MY LINE! What could we do? We released his line. And Frenchman powered off leaving us adrift again. Dois jumped into anchoring mode, but as luck (or lack thereof) would have it, the anchor had jammed up into the roller. We were headed for the middle of the fishing fleet, moving about 1.5 - 2 kts directly at a 200’ Fishing seiner. The weather is now deplorable, howling wind into the mid 20's and buckets of pouring rain. Dois was on the bow with a sledge hammer, lying prone on the platform under the pulpit, riding wind waves up and down, banging on the anchor to dislodge our hook and it's not lost on him that we are headed for a large metal boat. He got it loose and let her rip... sending 250’ of chain and anchor to the bottom and surprisingly, the Mantus anchor grabbed, at least temporarily, keeping us from a really bad date with the Chinese rust bucket. Unfortunately we were in 150' of water and 250' of chain wouldn’t hold. We needed to put out additional rode to keep us put. That’s when another tow boat showed up. Four or five guys in a small fishing boat fresh from happy hour had arrived and were ready to tow us to safety. Where had we heard that before? Orders started flying out of that boat like a MacDonald’s at noon. The committee were all yelling to be heard over the storm, making demands mostly for us to cut the anchor loose (buoy it so we could retrieve it later). Dinghy man was giving Dois the full court press for cutting the anchor and Phil was telling me delightful stories in the cockpit. The chaos was complete. I said "please excuse me Phil" and splashed out on to the deck in the warm torrents of wind and rain to pow-wow with the Captain. In that moment the decision was whether to cut the anchor loose or put out more rode. Dois and I were in complete agreement. Another rescue plan without a plan, at least none that they could share over the howl of the wind. They arrived directly from several hours at the bar and met two highly doubtful and very tired sailors. A rescue had sounded so easy until it wasn’t. Nobody else had done as much for us that night as our anchor had so we decided to trust our own instincts and put out more rode. Although their hearts were certainly in the right place, we had been through the ringer that night, and we trusted our anchor more. We sent the party away, all of them. An additional 250’ of rode was deployed and kept us in place all night. Dois called the owner of the committee boat the following morning to arrange a tow. He hired him with the condition that he stand by until he got the anchor up and then tow him to the mooring. I’m certain nobody thought we could retrieve that anchor because at that depth the ground tackle probably weighed thousands of pounds. That’s why they wanted us to cut it loose, they didn’t think it was retrievable. But they didn't know Dois and nobody knows this boat better than he does. A squall piped up just as we started picking up the rode, probably because Neptune was still angry about the solar panel. Raising the anchor became a significant problem again as the wind doubled the pull on the Mantus. Dois tried to call it off and reschedule for after the storm, but the committee boat wouldn’t concede. Phil (our jolly Brit) joined Dois on deck and kept a foot on the gypsy while I flaked chain below into the locker. Dois worried all 500’ of ground tackle right up to the pulpit. Cary, the tow/fishing (committee) boat owner threw us a tow line and expertly and efficiently towed us safely to our mooring. Smooth. Safe. There were people who felt we were risking our boat and possibly our lives to save the anchor. While we do love that hunk of galvanized metal, the decision to remain with the fishing fleet was based on our gut instinct to stop the chaos before someone gets hurt, mainly us. Dropping the anchor stopped our wild run around the bay and we believed adding the additional rode would solidify our position, and it did. The decision was also complicated by where we are on the planet; losing our ground tackle would be hugely expensive and take six months or more to get here. I’m not sure how we could recover from that. But more importantly, If we had believed that the safest thing to do was cut it free, we would have done it. Oh, and I also want to mention that Ginger was an angel during the whole ordeal. She stayed tucked into her bed where she could see the cockpit and me and only barked when someone new boarded. She’s a sailor’s best friend. And mine too! Here’s my “Great Book” recommendation; Cutting for Stone by Abraham Verghese..."on the New York Times fiction bestseller list for well over two years, reaching Number 2 at its peak in 2012. It is now one of Amazon's 100 Books to Read in a Lifetime. Acclaimed by reviewers and the reading public alike"...Don't read any summaries on this one, they give too much away. L. Housekeeping: Ashika was badly wounded and needs a bit of repair. One of the motor mounts was crushed, perhaps the culprit of the transmission main seal loss and needs 5 new ones. The trans needs to be pulled and rebuilt. The boom-vang attachment to the boom is mangled and will need a welder or a new bracket and the davits need a little welding love. The mast needs a new sail track (It's called a "Strong Track".. But not so much strong, more on that later) and the other companion way door is busted. The generator needs work, seems the water pump gave it up. The exhaust manifold on the engine is leaking and we we will need to look into what that means. We will also need to get the autopilot fixed. Ugh.
Peace
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You can probably imagine the levels of disappointment, anguish and trepidation we were feeling as we left the pass at Tarawa in our wake. Another week at sea to Majuro may not seem like that long when you are getting food, rest and all the water you want, but it was a very long time for two weary sailors scooping the dregs out of the water tanks. But a failed transmission left us no choice but to head back out into a storm besieged ocean and another 6 days of filtering, dozing and trying to fix things that break. In hind sight (wouldn’t it be nice if we had more fore and less hind), if we had entered the pass at Tarawa (Kiribati) and then lost our engine, it would likely have been a disaster of epic proportions. A boat friend who was in the Tarawa lagoon at the time told us that just inside the pass the waves had worked up serious altitude with the wind coming directly from the anchorage and a zig zagging sailing course would have made it impossible to avoid the coral heads (boat eaters) in the dark. Even if we had made it to the anchorage, there were no facilities to fix our mechanical problems and being located in the cyclone zone would be no place for a disabled boat. But I digress. Our journey was not without the wonder of sailing in a vast ocean. Being out here is a privilege and I don’t ever want to forget that, problems or not. Even the fury of a storm has an awesome beauty (when I get past my fear). Dois spent a lot of time over the next week trying to find a leak he could fix but finally came to believe it was beyond his MacGyver abilities. It was likely the main seal between the engine and the trans and there was nothing to be done about it. Having no engine for getting into Majuro in the Marshall Islands weighed heavy on us but it is still sailboat and we were determined to make the best of the situation. All we could do was pray for an end to this nasty weather before we entered the atoll. Ashika had crossed the equator just before Tarawa, so we were well into the area known as the doldrums; infamous for its unstable weather. This time of year was one when the cyclone season to the south was just starting up and the hurricane season to the north was just ending and we were in the middle of the confusion left behind. The wind was often light or non-existent in lumpy seas until a squall line would run over us and the tempest would scare me half to death. I think for the most part, Dois loved it because he’d much rather have wind than not. The moon and stars lit the way nicely whenever the veil of storm clouds pulled back, but when squalls found us at night the only thing you could see was the orange glow of the wind meter and the noise was like a freight train rolling into the station. Ashika would heel over and the howling winds would grow from 20 to 25 then 30, 35 and often reaching 40 plus. One night we clocked the boat speed at over 10 knots, (our average speed is half that) and only because we looked at the speedo, most of the time we were too busy handling the boat to glance at our speed. The storm would pass, pilfering any wind with it. We were left rolling rail to rail, sails slamming noisily, threatening unforeseen damage. We chose this time to travel this route in hopes that it might be less difficult and who knows, maybe it was. Our storm survival manual (written by me and Dois, so don’t go looking this up) was a few simple rules; 1.) Turn the boat downwind to absorb speed. 2.) Don’t panic and 3.) Peeing your pants is ok, the wind and water will wash it away quickly. One particularly dark night we were hit by a squall with winds coming from a direction that caught us Completely off guard and the preventer wasn't attached properly to stop a jibe. The boom ripped across the back end of our cozy sauna immediately changing the helm to shower stall, a place not protected from rain or wind. Another particularly vengeful squall had its way with our dinghy davits. They support our largest solar panel and when Dois heard something he looked over his shoulder to see the panel flying high, like a giant wing about to take flight. He jumped into action, grabbed the panel from the arms of Neptune while hanging onto the dinghy with his teeth. My captain; the amazing Dois. Thank goodness we bought a boat with two heads (bathrooms). Now we had a new home for the dislodged solar panel to live. Due to the lack of sun in the forward head, our journey had a few more complications. The relocated panel supplies about 30 to 40 percent of our electrical needs, so the fridge struggled and all our frozen foods thawed and the iPad competed with the Inreach and the chartplotter for power. The last two nights of this voyage were besieged by one long storm and we were tossed like a Mexican jumping bean. Sleep was illusive and fatigue was our worst enemy and these 48 hours are mostly a blur. We struggled to rest up for our sail into the lagoon at Majuro. Don't miss the final installment of the journey to the Marshall Islands, coming soon to a blog near you: Hard on the Wind in Majuro - Part 3My book recommendation is: The Fragile Edge by Julia Whitty. From Barnes and Noble: ...a quietly ambitious, if sometimes meandering, book. Are you up for tales of microscopic dinoflagellates? Interested in how the ancient Indian philosophy of Jainism may affect your interpretation of light playing off a lagoon? And don't be misled by the “hot girl swimming with a dolphin” ...
Me: Its a book about the South Pacific from the ocean floor up and I keep going back to it to read passages again and again. This is an ocean lover's book and it does have meandering parts that I skipped. The more to come… When I heard what Dois had relayed a note to our friends and family that said “more to come”, I didn’t know how much of the story I could relate. There is so much to tell, and as in most stories of boating disasters, ours comes with personal mistakes and humbling lessons, all making for a difficult-to-share story. I also find it difficult to make this a short blog/slog story. I just find all the details important. So I decided not to leave much out, but I would relate it in 3 parts. If it’s too much, put it down and read it later on a wet and stormy night while tucked in with a warm dry blanket and a bottle of the good stuff. Here goes… Dois and I motored Ashika, our Fuji45 ketch out of Funifuti, Tuvalu on a Friday. Superstitious sailors would say that was our first mistake... leaving on Friday. But our later experience would speak to a different problem entirely. We were also traveling with a jury-rigged boom with a topping lift from the mizzen to the boom to compensate for our damaged boom vang and we also still had a kluged genset running cooling water with our air conditioner pump. We were seeking a wind line and found it about two days out, thankfully. Our engine had started surging and we shut it down thinking we had a fan belt problem. Dois tightened it up best he could and then we set the sails in 10 to 12 knots of wind. We were eager to get the windvane in service because our autopilot had been making us hand steer the last 24 hours and that is enough to send a sane man overboard. Dois calls it riding the needle because you sit and stare at a glowing wind meter trying to keep the needle in a good place for the sails. I call it Hell. Ashika took well to the wind and seas and soon we were at ease with the quiet rhythm of wind in the sails on lovely purple seas. On the third day of Ashika’s great adventure, the house water pump failed, at least we thought it had. There was no water to any spigot, hose or outlet. We had 10 gallons of drinking water in jerry cans and while this isn’t “convenient”, it’s manageable until we figured out what was wrong. We knew this trip was a journey that would be sailed “hard to weather”. But sailing against a head wind can be some pretty fun sailing. Pointing the boat slightly off the wind can turn a 30,000 lb. cruising boat into a sailing machine and I caught cowboy Dois whooping it up several times. But this kind of sailing also heels the boat over, sometimes dramatically and because we forgot to close the valves that isolate the water tanks from one another, most of our onboard water had poured out of the air vent located on the top of the low side tank. D@MN. We were reduced to scooping water that was left with a small pitcher and because it was water left from the bottom of the tanks, it was a lovely shade of terracotta. We added a filtering system to our daily chores that utilized cheese cloth and a Brita filtering pitcher. The resulting water was clear, tasted ok and we didn’t get sick. I rigged a solar shower up over the galley sink for washing dishes and hands.
More to come... Keep an eye out for the second part of this journey: |
Our current book recommendation: The Hummingbird's Daughter, by Luis Alberto Urrea. It's an historical novel based on the life of the author's long-lost relative and based in Northern Mexico, not far from the Sea of Cortez (one of my favorite places). It is simply a beautiful read. Both Dois and I loved it. |
It tooks us six days to journey from Samoa to Funifuti in the country of Tuvalu. This South Pacific trip will eventually land us in Majuro in the Marshall Islands; our choice for avoiding cyclone season in this part of the world. The leg has been great, not so great and just a tad ugly. The great was the almost perfect sailing for three days on beautiful seas for the first half of the trip. The not-so-great are the squalls; some we watch come after us like Armageddon and sailing them can be a challenge while others sit like a mountain volcano and we are granted unmolested passage. The ugly is that the wind died for the second half of our journey and we have been on engine power for two days. While that makes it easier in some ways (less sail handling, a more direct route and ease of squall avoidance), we are burning precious fuel,it's noisy and it heats up the boat.
It's been well over 80 degrees with 80%+ humidity and when it rains we zip up the cockpit enclosure and wala; we have our very own floating sauna. When there is wind our time is spent managing the sails with whatever weather comes our way, napping, cleaning, reading and fixing things that break. Squalls can bring huge winds suddenly and/or buckets of rain or they will cancel any wind at all leaving us rolling with the swells in our sauna-on-the-sea. Then we motor or motor-sail and then our time is also spent napping, cleaning, reading and fixing things that break. But motoring we seem to have more time to admire the show nature puts on for us. Cloud formations can be so beautifully dramatic that I easily filled my hard disk with 100’s of every kind of fluffy condensed water mass so you must forgive me for sharing just a few (more than a few?) of the many.
It's been well over 80 degrees with 80%+ humidity and when it rains we zip up the cockpit enclosure and wala; we have our very own floating sauna. When there is wind our time is spent managing the sails with whatever weather comes our way, napping, cleaning, reading and fixing things that break. Squalls can bring huge winds suddenly and/or buckets of rain or they will cancel any wind at all leaving us rolling with the swells in our sauna-on-the-sea. Then we motor or motor-sail and then our time is also spent napping, cleaning, reading and fixing things that break. But motoring we seem to have more time to admire the show nature puts on for us. Cloud formations can be so beautifully dramatic that I easily filled my hard disk with 100’s of every kind of fluffy condensed water mass so you must forgive me for sharing just a few (more than a few?) of the many.
The following sequence of photos is what it looks like to motor right into a squall. After the last shot it started to rain, then buckets for several hours.
Our nights are mostly spent napping, snacking, reading and fixing things that break but when the squalls and clouds part we are treated to killer sunsets, lulled by the awesomeness of bio-luminescent fireflies in our wake or just star gazing at its most awesome.
Mentioned in the previous slog was our new satellite comm device; the InreachSE. I want to share a bit more about it that I didn't have time to do in Samoa. This small handheld device plots our journey by sending our coordinates via satelite to a website called mapshare.inreach.com/doisbrock. It cannot send a plot to the satellite if not outside so you will notice a few blanks on our plotted course; we did not sink, we just brought it below. But if we did sink the unit has an SOS button that sends an emergency text to the US Coast Guard with our location. If they can respond with help, great, if not they inform responders in our area. Also with our monthly fee we get 40 free text messages (extra text messages are .50 so will not break the bank unless you send me 20 texts with emoji’s, in which case I know who you are and I will get even). I can even send an update message to Facebook and Twitter. Very cool. If you would like our text address, send me an email and I'll respond as soon as I find Wi-Fi again or you can follow along here.
Mentioned in the previous slog was our new satellite comm device; the InreachSE. I want to share a bit more about it that I didn't have time to do in Samoa. This small handheld device plots our journey by sending our coordinates via satelite to a website called mapshare.inreach.com/doisbrock. It cannot send a plot to the satellite if not outside so you will notice a few blanks on our plotted course; we did not sink, we just brought it below. But if we did sink the unit has an SOS button that sends an emergency text to the US Coast Guard with our location. If they can respond with help, great, if not they inform responders in our area. Also with our monthly fee we get 40 free text messages (extra text messages are .50 so will not break the bank unless you send me 20 texts with emoji’s, in which case I know who you are and I will get even). I can even send an update message to Facebook and Twitter. Very cool. If you would like our text address, send me an email and I'll respond as soon as I find Wi-Fi again or you can follow along here.
We both read a lot, collecting and exchanging books from various cruiser book exchanges along the way or kindle finds online. Although I am not a reviewer, I might be a harsh critic because only a few books fall onto my great list. I'm going to add any great books that either Dois or I have read on passage to the end of each slog. Just the titles, I don't want to be a book reviewer. The first one is my all-time favorite; “Cloud Atlas” just because it is so clever and not at all expected. I thought it would be almost appropriate to plagiarize the title just this one time due to my abundance of clouds shots and because I am, after all… I am recommending the book.
My first recommending reading is of course Cloud Atlas by D. Mitchell
From Wikipedia: Cloud Atlas is a 2004 novel, the third book by British author David Mitchell. It consists of six nested stories that take the reader from the remote South Pacific in the nineteenth century to a distant, post-apocalyptic future. It won the British Book Awards Literary Fiction Award and the Richard & Judy Book of the Year award, and ... you must see wiki to read more.
Peaces
From Wikipedia: Cloud Atlas is a 2004 novel, the third book by British author David Mitchell. It consists of six nested stories that take the reader from the remote South Pacific in the nineteenth century to a distant, post-apocalyptic future. It won the British Book Awards Literary Fiction Award and the Richard & Judy Book of the Year award, and ... you must see wiki to read more.
Peaces
We blog for rum!
Authors;
Lauri Hamilton
Dois Brock
Yep. We are the guilty parties for all this nonsense..