Preface: I will be catching up on the entries previous to this, and I apologize that they will not be in order but I feel that the few entries to follow should be told:
After trying Katiu two times at both passes, we sailed from about 5pm to 1am for Raraka, to try a pass that Brian had heard was easy. Aiming for a slack tide at the pass, about 6am, in order to enter the belly button atoll center without current to sail or motor against, we first set up just the jib to carry us slowly through the night. Three knots an hour wasn’t sufficient to make the distance in the time that we had granted, so we raised the mainsail and carried along on a broad reach. After a delicious quinoa dinner, we sailed through the most dangerous archipelago in the monde at night, shared some music of each other’s that we had grown to like and had become anthems for our time on Kayak, and I began to doze well for the first time in days. As I was sleeping on the galley bench, like the good ol days when we were traversing the mer, with the V berth too bumpy to soak up the benefits of a bonne nuit, Brian tried to plot our course on the old charts he had picked up for a steal of a deal. He changed the course silently, not wanting to wake me as he understood that I was sleep deprived. Knowing the charts were quelque fois in error, as we learned on Nuku Hiva, and not checking his computer plotting program, something that he had all along but hadn’t yet used, I woke up to realize that the charts were wrong by one mile. And that Brian had fallen asleep too.
THUNDER echoed through the boat and my mind lurched awake as my body was thrown through the air and flew towards the galley, any pain unnoticed until the bruises were bumped against the next day.
“EFF” was the first and appropriately strongest word to exit my bouche in my fatigued slumbering stupor, ‘That was a HUGE wave,’ I thought, as everything that was loose from tables and shelves flew and fell to starboard side. Then a BOOOM, the worst sound and feeling I have ever experienced, as I repeated “EFF” with a shudder of fear. “Quoi the Eff,” as elbows and hips hit tables and counters. “Oh my Dio.” “Feeeeeck,” in Brian’s words. “What the hell was that?” then BOOOM again as the boat gigoter / agitated and tremorred, keeling one to one side, the steel hull reverberating against something more than just ocean. We’ve hit ground…the physical feeling was the lurch and angle and rocking sway as in Ua Pou’s experience …this time with a much stronger intensity and alarm because, as Brian had mentioned earlier in the same day, we are sailing in the most dangerous archepelego in the WORLD. The Tuamotos were close to unnavigable for cruisers before GPS became reliable and available.
As it’s been a year since I have written of this experience, let me refresh and set the stage:
It was midnight. We were sailing at about 5 knots per hours. We were both sleeping. It was a deserted part of the atoll. Kayak’s cabin was at a 45 degree angle and we could hear waves breaking around the boat and every four or five waves the crest of the water wall broke on the side of Kayak, its crescendo shaking the steel structure and pushing the sideways vessel and its two in habitants further onto its rocky resting place: a terrifying soundtrack.
The sudden and violent movement of the boat subsided quickly, and as the feeling of claustrophobia and uncertainty rose, I slipped along the slope of the wooden floor, the cabin now askew and littered with our belongings, pulling myself uphill. I had to use the table, door jams and shelves as handles to pull my battered body past the galley and up the stairs to exit through the cockpit hatch. I began to tremble as I never had before, almost emulating the shuddering boat as it was lifeless against the atoll. We began to survey what in the world, what in the ocean, had happened, and tried to figure out where we were.
The moon was brilliantly bright, half full and the clear skies carried unbiased blinks of stars, illuminating a sailor’s worst fear: shipwrecked. at night. in the middle of the south pacific. “Oh…my…goodness…” I said, my language less vulgar than at the initial shock of impact, each letter uttered utterly shaking as the tense breath escaped to only one person’s ears. “What….Do….We…Do?” The white wash of waves glowed in the moonlight, a blue hue of consistency and power, as we sat outside, crouched low on the high and exposed side of the boat. We could see the sets rolling in towards us, pushed by thousands of miles of wind power, and predicted which would rock the boat further. “Hold on,” one of us would caution, as the sea swell crashed to our bow or stern, and the seemingly harmless wave two back in the set would rock us, scrape the boat along rock and push us further on the coral shelf of pink rock, the colour visible in the soft and comforting moonlight. I was so scared.
Recalling being grounded on a sandy beach in a sheltered harbour in the light of day with new friends, other sailors and boaters around to lend a hand, I learned that an anchor rowed out and dropped, then pulled upon with the winch can help to free a stuck boat, but there was no way that could happen here. The waves, rocky shelf, dark night and being alone for miles ensured that that operation would be risky and futile. “Whatdowedo whatdowedo whatdowedo” was on my mind and on my lips to a captain who was just as or maybe more stressed. The adrenaline and emergency mind was kicking in, a survival mentality and a flight or fight response. Of course, these were only realized in retrospect, after tunnel vision has been removed and a solution realized.
The low side of the boat was intermittently revealing pocked pink rock as the force of the sea broke on the atoll and washed under our hull, from a white and wet wash. Crevasses from centuries of rock being beaten by the force of the windward side of the island were filled and emptied with each swell cycle, creating a frightening image of peril if one of us had been pulled by gravity towards the rock and wet place.
As I examined our situation and moved around the outside of the vessel, now lifeless and bereft of character, I was keenly aware of the beauty of our surroundings, as much as it contrasted with the steel slug wreck that we were confined to. Perfect little pacific islands with narrow sandy beaches and waving palms were a stone’s throw away, with a good arm, yet the rocky and threatening atoll washed with water was a great barrier to the idyllic refuge. The moon created a soft yin glow to the relentless force of the ocean to our port side and illuminated the interestingly pink atoll of solid, jagged rock to starboard. It gazed upon the island, the boat, the ocean, our situation and me with the same constant stare of console and indifference. The stars glittered away, too distant and revealing light from the past, sending a message of guidance long gone.
Nature is my spirituality, and the conflicting messages I was receiving from sky, earth and sea were both over- and underwhelming as life was potentially on the line. Mechanically, because of my roots and childhood raised in a Christian household, I surprisingly asked God to keep us safe. I have too much to live for! I thought of a little book with travel advice from above that my Nana had given to me before I left. She had given it to my father almost 40 years prior, as he traveled to Europe before he was married. I wanted to bring it back to her presence to complete the cycle once again. I also thought of my Aunty Glenda’s words, as she gave me a “crash course” conversation the same day that I saw my grandfather for the last time. “Never abandon ship,” unless it’s going down. The boat will float and is an anchor, so to speak. Although the shuddering and thundering didn’t feel safe, the walls of Kayak were a safer place than the turbulent cross-zone beneath.
“Be Careful be careful becareful,” I said to Brian many times as we worked against gravity to haul the mainsail and boom from it’s angle towards the low side of the boat to the middle, where he pulled tight the sheets and I, the preventer. We took down and tied the mainsail and the job while using stanchions, boat contours, cleats and lifelines as just that: handles and lifelines! “Please please pleaseplease do not fall off the boat,” I urgently and politely requested. The imagery of proceeding with our tasks alone was too much to ponder, and a rescue of either of us not another stress that we needed to add to our predicament.
We returned to the cabin after our survey and work, in shambles but safe from the waves, besides their continuous force, feeling and sound, to ask the question of the hour: Where are we?? Brian plotted our course and realized, again, that the charts err slightly. Still, one mile from shore would have been too close anyhow. He uttered regrets and ideas too large to comprehend or pay heed to at the moment. I tried to pull him back from the future and from the past to the present, to ask What Where How and Who…
I got on the VHF radio to make a pan call in English first, which was the simplicity that my brain needed at the moment, and in French next, noticing my voice shake yet speaking strongly to convey our situation and discover if anyone was nearby and listening. Distance and time of night prevented anyone from hearing us. We decided against using the personal location beacon, as we were not gravely injured nor in immediate peril. Our solution came down to waiting for dawn and low tide, happening simultaneously in five to six hours, to launch the dingy and paddle to the village for help. The village on Raraka was on the charts and had been visited before by a friend of Brian’s so its presence was certain, giving a glimmer of hope and future, yet the moments in between would be the sole responsibility of the crew on S/V Kayak: Me and Brian.
Green in the Blue 