Green Ghost, Blue Ocean

by Jennifer M. Smith

  Nik was seasick on the first night out. At this point he was so practiced at the art that he could vomit into his mouth while he lay in his bunk and hold it there until he made it to the stern rail where he spewed into the sea. By the second night out, despite being medicated, we were shoulder to shoulder at the stern rail. It was distressing. We were not getting better at overcoming seasickness. I settled into my mantra: This won’t last, this won’t last, this won’t last while Nik visualized La-Z-Boy chairs in suburban living rooms. Finally, we got used to the motion after about four days. Too bad it was only a six-day trip.

  At Suwarrow we anchored with six other sailboats behind Shelter Island. We went ashore by dinghy and stepped onto the makeshift wharf. On shore, still in use were the cabins built by the famous Tom Neale, a New Zealander and author who lived alone (by choice) at Suwarrow over three periods totalling sixteen years, between 1952 until his death from cancer in 1977. It felt like a castaways’ island – a swing dangled from a leaning palm, several large hammocks fashioned from old fishing nets were slung between the trees, and a conference of makeshift benches encircled a fire pit.

  We met the locals, all two of them. They were the marine preserve caretakers, John and Tom, each in his seventies, and both excellent hosts. They had a Panga-style open boat with a twenty-five-horsepower outboard that they used to entertain cruisers. Sailors who chipped in fuel were taken fishing in the pass. The day we arrived they had reeled in mahi-mahi, barracuda, and a whopping yellowfin tuna. Another day, an outing for shellfish produced a catch of over a dozen huge lobster. The caretakers hosted a potluck dinner every night featuring the day’s catch and whatever other delights cruisers brought to shore. In this way, John and Tom ensured they had variety in their diet and augmented their small supply of stores.

  Our enjoyment of the castaway’s life was cut short when the weather changed three days after our arrival. Three days of reinforced trade winds meant Shelter Island wouldn’t be much of a shelter anymore. The increased winds would sweep across 11 NM of open water inside the atoll, straight into the anchorage. Upon hearing the evening forecast, we planned to move to a safer anchorage the following day, but the stronger winds came early.

  Before morning a significant wind chop had developed in the lagoon. Our bow was jerking wildly and we woke to the sound of a loud snap. Our anchor bridle had broken and the line and hook sank to the bottom. Nik quickly fashioned another bridle out of our dock lines and went forward. He could see from the bow that the violent motion on the Ghost was the result of shortened scope. The wind direction had shifted in the night and Green Ghost rotated ninety degrees in the anchorage, hooking a deep coral head in the process. Instead of being held by the length of chain attached to the anchor on the bottom, we were on a short leash, held instead by a short length of chain wrapped on a coral head off our bow.

  In daylight, we turned the engine on and tried to better our position. But attempts to untangle our chain from the coral were fruitless. Even with Nik in the water, shouting instructions to me at the helm it couldn’t be done. Our only solution was to let more chain out, to increase our scope and lengthen the catenary, creating more elasticity in our ground tackle.

  Only one boat in the anchorage had managed to get their anchor up and move across the inner lagoon before the wind picked up. The remaining five were pinned in the uncomfortable anchorage like we were.

  As the day wore on, the chop got steeper and our bow bounced more wildly. The pitching was so furious that we were taking water over the bow. We kept a close watch for chafe on the bridle. We didn’t dare leave the boat. All day we sat aboard our bucking bronco hoping everything would hold. Even if we could have gotten our anchor up, it was no time to be moving around in the coral-studded lagoon. Visibility was poor in the white-capped waters.

  We listened to anxious discussions on the VHF radio. Other boats were experiencing similar difficulties. One sailor reported he was going through bridles every couple of hours and he worried he would run out of spare line.

  The reinforced trade winds did not let up. Of our six days at Suwarrow, three of them were spent confined to the boat on a stressful anchor watch. It was worse than being at sea. We endured three nights of interrupted sleep in our sea berths, we were tired and out of sorts, but we had to leave on the next offshore passage. It was time for us to head for the Kingdom of Tonga. Once again, we had company coming.

  All sailors tell potential guests the same thing – that we may or may not make it to the rendezvous location on time. You tell yourself that you won’t allow prior plans to alter your thinking, but they do. Sailing to a schedule can cause you to make poor choices: to sail in weather you wouldn’t normally sail in, to go to sea with equipment not operating at 100 percent, or to set out on a journey when you aren’t physically ready. Normally we wouldn’t leave on an offshore passage as exhausted as we were leaving Suwarrow, but we felt that we couldn’t turn up in Tonga days late with the excuse that we’d been sleeping. To meet with our next rendezvous on time, we had to go.

  After a boisterous 723 NM passage making better than 140 NM per day, we arrived in Tonga five days later, a record time for our heavy-hulled home.

  Landfall in Neiafu harbour was a treat. The Tongan islands of the Vava’u Group reminded us of the Gulf Islands off Vancouver. We felt like we were home again, only in a tropical setting. Thinking ourselves quite smart for arriving on Sunday, a full twenty-four hours before our friend was due to fly in, we were startled to find Gwil standing on the wharf as we pulled into the customs dock. It wasn’t Sunday. It was Monday. We’d failed to notice that in sailing from the Cook Islands to Tonga we’d crossed the International Date Line.

  The Pacific fleet had spread out since leaving French Polynesia. There had been many routes to take – north to Samoa, south to the Cook Islands, over to Niue, or straight across as we did. Neiafu was a reunion of all the yachties we’d met in the Pacific, resulting in one of the greatest pressures (and pleasures) of the cruising life, a very hectic social schedule among the sixty-odd boats in the bay.

  Our time in Tonga was full of fun. Explorations took us into swallows’ caves where the late afternoon sun sent shafts of light to the bottom sixty feet below us. Above, great stalactites hung from the darkness. We allowed our dinghy to drift while we jumped in to snorkel. Swimming inside the cave in the clear water I had the sensation I was flying, soaring through a sapphire blue sky over the pinnacles and spires of a stalagmite city below. We visited another location where we dived down eight feet and swam fourteen feet in through a black hole in a vertical coral wall. We surfaced inside spacious Mariner’s Cave, an opening in the limestone completely sealed off from the outside air, the only light coming in through the watery entry. Inside I kept trying to de-fog my mask until I realized the fog was on the outside, not the inside of my goggles. Even in a light swell, water pulsing into the cave compressed the atmosphere within. When the sea receded, the moisture in the air condensed into a heavy fog, the result of the water vapour cooling as it expands. As each swell entered, our ears popped and the air cleared. Then our ears cleared and the heavy fog reappeared as the next swell receded.

  Island walks and beachcombing complemented the beautiful snorkelling. It was in Tonga that my passion for shell collecting began. Up until then I’d resisted collecting things to store in our tiny living space but the beachcombing in Tonga was so rewarding it became impossible for me not to pick things up. The abundance of stunning shells amazed me, each one a work of natural art.

  Tongan time flew by and, after our leisurely cruise through the Vava’u group with Gwil, we looped our way back to the main town of Neiafu. I had a special event to look forward to. It was my thirty-ninth birthday and I wanted to celebrate in style. Weeks before arriving in Tonga I’d spread the word by radio and e-mail, asking many of our friends on other cruising boats to join us at the Mermaid Grill for a birthday party. I was honoured as friends sailed in from other countries specifically to be in Tonga for that
date. International well-wishers spoiled me throughout the day with three birthday cakes, handmade cards and gifts, a paper birthday crown, fireworks, sparklers, and bubbles. A large group of sailors enjoyed dinner at the restaurant, cold Ikale (beer), and colourful Jell-O shots. With music and dancing, surrounded by friends I had a fantastic birthday party, one I will never forget and certainly one I hoped to repeat, as I planned on turning thirty-nine a few times.

  At times Tonga’s similarity to the Gulf Islands went a little too far. The weather became most Pacific Northwest – overcast, windy, and varying from drizzle to an entire day of downpour. The unfavourable weather delayed our departure from the Vava’u Group for a full week.

  Once underway, we enjoyed anchoring off the beautiful uninhabited islands in the gorgeous Ha’apai Group as we day-sailed south to Nomuka. From there we made our final 60 NM dash to the capital of the Kingdom, Nuku’alofa on Tongatapu, the stepping-off point for the passage to New Zealand.

  We departed Nuku’alofa for North Minerva Reef. This is such a simple sentence that it can’t possibly impart the weight of this decision. No other crossing on the Pacific was more talked about than this one. We’d been sailing in the trade wind belt plus or minus twenty degrees off the equator for the better part of the year. The thought of sailing into the higher latitudes was unappealing not only because of the cooler weather we would experience, but also because of the low pressure systems we were bound to meet en route. As many a passage planner has written, it isn’t a matter of if you are going to get hammered on the way to New Zealand, it’s a matter of when.

  The atmosphere in the fleet reminded me of exam time. There was an undercurrent of both group panic and quiet brooding. When you crossed paths with other sailors at the market or the fuel pump, the usually loud jovial cruisers were speaking in hushed conspiratorial tones. “Did you get the latest weatherfax? What do you think? When are you going?” It was just like university days, predicting what would be on the final exam. Concerns, weatherfaxes, and e-mails were shared among the fleet of boats hovering in Nuku’alofa. We religiously tuned into the radio broadcast weather forecasts several times a day. We all wanted to pass the test, the crossing to New Zealand.

  Low-pressure systems are bred somewhere over Australia and traverse the Tasman Sea and the northern part of New Zealand before moving east across the southern Pacific. New systems pop up and pass through about once a week. The general strategy is to leave Tonga as a low-pressure system passes over the northern tip of New Zealand and hope to make it safely into a New Zealand harbour before the next low comes along.

  With almost 800 NM between Minerva Reefs and Opua, New Zealand, you must make at least 100 NM per day to make landfall before the next system passes over. If you don’t make it in the weather window between fronts, you risk getting caught in a nasty low-pressure system off the north cape of New Zealand, a situation that has caused more than a few shipwrecks in recent history.

  The trouble is that when there is a low over northern New Zealand, there may be a high over southern Tonga and that means you may depart on a windless sea. And because you needed to be making your mileage, smart use of your engine and your fuel was a major part of the passage strategy. Green Ghost carries 120 gallons of diesel in two fibreglass fuel tanks and we had no qualms about using it.

  We had a great start out of Nuku’alofa on our trip south to Minerva Reef, enjoying a perfect fifteen-knot wind on the beam, flat seas, and incredibly beautiful sailing for our first twenty-four hours. The following day the wind became light and the sea, flat. On our second night at sea the only ripple on the ocean was the wake behind Green Ghost. It was eerie to see the ocean that lifeless. It was as though somebody had turned the lights out and the wind off, as though the whole world had stopped and we were the only thing in motion. We motored through calms for thirty hours in order to get into the shelter of Minerva Reef by the afternoon of the third day.

  As we approached the co-ordinates for North Minerva, it appeared to be no different than every other middle-of-nowhere patch of water on the Pacific except that we counted more than twenty masts sticking up out of the ocean. They were all anchored within the protected waters of the lagoon. At high tide, a ring of breakers could be seen around the reef. At low tide, the reef was exposed, allowing long walks on the coral ring. Spear-fishers in the fleet had a heyday collecting lobsters and hunting the huge fish that call Minerva home.

  Within forty-eight hours we were motoring out of the pass, leaving a single boat behind. Armed with the same weather forecast we could all see that it was the right time to go. We had our weather window for the 785 NM dash to New Zealand.

  I awoke from my off-watch sleep and glanced at my watch. I was early. I wasn’t on for an hour, but I felt well rested and decided to get up. I stumbled into the galley to put the kettle on, then I glanced into the cockpit to see how Nik was doing, but I didn’t see him there. He must have woken me up as he came below to use the head, I figured. So I went forward and looked in the head. He wasn’t there. Hopefully, I moved the shower curtain. He wasn’t there either. Hmm, he must be on deck, I thought, starting to feel a little worried. Maybe he woke me up stomping around overhead. With rising concern, I walked aft again, climbed the companionway stairs, stepped out into the cockpit, and turned around to look forward. I looked toward the bow through the dodger. I didn’t see him. He wasn’t there. I leaned over to the starboard side, to look around the dodger and see forward around the mast. There was nobody on deck.

  “Niiiik!” I screamed, terror-stricken. I’d been asleep for three hours. When had he fallen overboard? I thought I was going to vomit. Nik was gone.

  “Jeez, what’s your problem, I’m right here,” his voice came back.

  “Oh my God,” I said with my hands on my heart. My knees buckled and I sat heavily on the cockpit seat. “Oh my God,” I repeated as my eyes filled with tears. “I thought … I thought you were … gone.”

  “I’m right here.”

  “But I thought … you’d … gone … overboard.” I was breathless.

  “I climbed up the rat lines to have a look. I thought I saw a whale.”

  Nik had climbed about eight feet up the rope ladder I’d made in our portside rigging. When I looked for him, it hadn’t occurred to me to look up.

  “Don’t ever do that again,” I scolded him.

  “Ah, you love me!” he joked and embraced me when he returned to the cockpit. “Settle down! I didn’t fall off. It’s okay.” Then he gently turned me to look forward again. “Keep your eyes peeled,” he said, pointing. “At about eleven o’clock, I think you’ll see a whale spouting …”

  For Nik, it was business as usual, but my heart was still beating rapidly. I’d just experienced my worst two minutes of the whole trip.

  Despite all the hype about weather, and that frightful two minutes aside, our trip to New Zealand was one of our best voyages. We had a little bit of everything wind-wise, but overall, uncommonly flat seas. We had twenty-four hours of beating into a southwesterly for our final day, but on the last day at sea before a beautiful landfall, a bit of work to weather was tolerable because we knew the torture wouldn’t last.

  We were nostalgic as we closed in on Opua. So much had happened in the fifteen months since our departure from Vancouver. On our journey south and west, we’d sailed into a different world. The seasons had changed inside out. It was November and it was spring. The Southern Cross appeared in the night sky and slowly lay down on its side; a rising Scorpius now took a dip beyond the horizon every night.

  Before our departure from Canada, I’d worried that nights at sea would be frightening but by the time we were sailing into New Zealand I’d fallen in love with the starry night sky. It was dawn that was the nuisance. I’d come to realize that the sun was just one more star rising and when it did, it ruined my view of all the rest.

  We arrived in Opua, New Zealand, in late November 2001. We tied up in a slip at the Opua Marina and walked up the ramp toward s
hore. A pace before the threshold Nik stopped me.

  “Wait,” he said. He took my hand. “We should do this together.”

  Hand in hand we jumped from the floating dock onto terra firma where we high-fived one another, wide grins on our faces. We had done it. We had crossed the Pacific Ocean.

  CHAPTER 12

  New Zealand

  (November 2001 – May 2003)

  Our tans began fading and our feet blistered when we crammed them into long-lost shoes, but we didn’t care. We smiled non-stop for days as we settled into beautiful New Zealand. We were overjoyed to be there, overwhelmed with the self-satisfaction of having the Pacific in our wake, and relaxed by the thought of having offshore passages behind us for a time.

  After exploring the Bay of Islands area, we sailed down the east coast of the North Island and arrived in Auckland just before Christmas. We tied up at the Bayswater Marina on Auckland’s North Shore and we didn’t move for months. It was cruising downtime.

  While life was easy tied to a dock in a first-world English-speaking country, there was still much to get used to. We had the usual complications with understanding the Kiwi accent. In New Zealand, yis is yes, tin is ten, and sux is six, but six is sex; you pronounce the letters “wh” (and sometimes “th”) with an “ff” sound; and don’t pronounce “r’s” at all, unless there are two of them. We bought a used cah (car) that had a boot and a bonnet. We pushed a trundler around the grocery store. We ate fush and chups at the seaside. We often heard that something was “sweet as” but nobody seemed to know sweet as what. Hanging similes were everywhere. “Cool as,” “strong as,” and “sick as” were common expressions, but, again, as what exactly? We never knew.