Back at the helm - sailing the Yaghan to Antarctica, Patagonia and the South Pacific

by Martensson, Helene

  We did not make a detour of two hundred nautical miles on our way to Tonga because of these stories, but because of a book written by a former ship's engineer, New Zealander Tom Neale. He was a friend of Frisbie's, and towards the end of Frisbie's life, Neale often listened to his affectionate accounts of the paradise island of Suwarrow. He became increasingly convinced that it was the place where he wanted to spend the rest of his life. He wanted to live a free and easy life there, just like Robinson Crusoe. He spent many years saving up to buy equipment, supplies and a ticket for the long boat journey from his home on Rarotonga. The schooner had to make a major detour since Suwarrow was not on the route.

  In 1952, at the age of fifty, Neale stepped ashore on Suwarrow for the first time with his fishing gear, tools, pots and pans, other supplies and his two cats. He stayed there on and off for a total of fifteen years. He loved the island despite all the hardships. As far as we understand, he lived a harmonious and happy life on the atoll. Many years later he described what was possibly the happiest years of his life in his book An Island to Oneself. We read it several years ago and became curious and fascinated by his descriptions of this beautiful atoll and his life there.

  Ever since Tom Neale wrote his book, the island and the lagoon have been a destination for cruisers from all over the world. It has long been regarded as the ultimate paradise island. Considering this we did not count on being alone in the lovely lagoon off Anchorage Island.

  The wind picked up nicely straight away, and we set sail as soon as we were out of Bora Bora pass. We raced forward at a speed of almost 9 knots in 25 knot winds. After having been sailing from island to island in French Polynesia for almost ten weeks, we felt a little out of practice; but, as always, it was wonderful to be at sea and on our way again. We swapped our traditional Bolognese for fried mahi-mahi with salad and finished off with French cheeses.

  I enjoyed enormously to yet again be sailing under the stars on the dark night sky that sat like an enormous dome overhead. Then the moon appeared, and our first night on the way to Suwarrow turned out to be very pleasant. It is always wonderful to arrive in a new place after days and weeks at sea, but it is just as nice to be heading home.

  Our last day at sea was shaving day. After much deliberation Arne had decided to shave off his hair, and he could not imagine a more suitable time for doing so than on the way to a desert island. He wanted to replace his charming grey locks with a neat, bald head. It took a while. I started by using his electric razor and completed my handiwork with an ordinary razor. Arne thought it was nice, but a little cold despite the warm trade wind. I thought my husband's new look was really cool. He was pleased too. Unfortunately, Arne's hairdresser Mia in Stockholm is likely to have lost a good and reliable customer. I found myself the owner of at least fifteen jars of Redken styling gel that he no longer wanted.

  At dawn, as we approached Suwarrow Atoll, it became clear why these reefs had been the curse of so many ships. When the atoll showed up on the radar we had seen nothing – not a ripple, where we knew it to be. We were often grateful for all the modern equipment on board most sailing boats, and which Yaghan has in such abundance. We arrived a little too early, and had to wait until dawn before we dared to motor through the entrance to the beautiful lagoon that we had seen in front of us in the haze. It was only eight o’clock on a very hot morning with the sun shining from a clear blue sky. This entrance was deeper than any other we had passed through so far. The water was dark blue and in places a dark, bottle green. The contours of stones, corals and all the small and large fish that swam back and forth were sharp and they seemed to be very close. Even though Arne called out to me that it was at least twelve metres deep I held my breath. When we had come through safely, we continued straight ahead for a couple of hundred metres before we turned to starboard, slowly approaching our planned anchorage.

  Further in, where the water was bright green and glittering, was Just Dessert with a huge American flag billowing from the stern. Before we had even sorted out our anchor we heard Mike's voice on the VHF welcoming us to paradise. A little later Dawn and Mike were sitting in Yaghan's cockpit devouring the remains of the grapefruits we had bought on Bora Bora. Just Dessert had been there for almost two weeks, and they had run out of fruit. They told us that John, the administrator, and his family were out fishing in the lagoon, and it was Sunday, so customs clearance could wait until the following day. It suited us perfectly. We just wanted to make the most of our arrival on the island we had heard so much about.

  We spent the morning listening to Mike's fishing stories. He told us about the fishing-mad Frenchmen that had been fishing at the entrance, and long before they managed to get their catch on board it had been torn to pieces by tiger sharks. In the end the sharks could not tell the difference between the fish and their dinghy, and the men barely managed to reach their sailing boats in the lagoon with their dinghies in tatters. Then Mike asked Arne if he wanted to go fishing the next morning. Mike did not have an inflatable craft but a tiny rickety, open aluminium dinghy, so Arne turned down his generous offer.

  The next day we went ashore in our dinghy. We moored at the small quay that Tom the hermit had built and which had been extended and reinforced over the past year. John the administrator, his wife Veronica and their four boys welcomed us to Suwarrow. John told us about everything you were not allowed to do on the island and in the lagoon. It was mostly about fishing in the pass and harpooning inside the lagoon. He looked relieved when we told him that we never fish, and he offered to let us stay longer on Suwarrow. As a warning, he also told us stories about how both fishermen and their catch can easily become food for sharks. The many sharks in the lagoon are a problem. This is why you are not allowed to use a harpoon on the reef inside the lagoon. The sharks arrive as soon as they smell blood in the water, and you cannot get the catch into the boat fast enough before the sharks get it. It seemed as if John's greatest problem was to keep all the sports fishermen alive.

  A few days later Mike's wife Dawn called us on the VHF. She was worried about Mike and wondering if we could prepare to go out to the pass and look for him. He had been out fishing for hours and had not been in touch. He should have been back a long time ago. While we were contemplating whether we should take Yaghan and motor out to the pass, Dawn called us again. Mike had returned at last. Dawn was happy and we were happy not to have to look for Mike among the sharks.

  The days passed quickly. We enjoyed some lazy, pleasant days on Suwarrow. Swaying palm fronds over a golden beach, a light blue or green shimmering lagoon, further out Just Dessert was outlined against the red-brown coral reef and Yaghan was bobbing up and down in the wind. We too were beginning to feel that the perfect paradise was here. Especially on days when we were walking on the beach in the early morning sun with our picnic basket, towels and books on the way to the pass where we had found a small bay with a lovely view of the lagoon. We spent hours there reading or just looking across the water.

  Then we would eat our picnic lunch, which normally consisted of bread I had made earlier that morning, chicken, salad and sometimes a bottle of rosé wine we had “cooled” in the 28 degree water.

  One day the diving boat Bounty Bay came over from Palmerston, another Cook island, with some twenty people on board. Two of them were Swedes, Laura and Per from Stockholm. It is a small world; you often come across other Swedes in strange places. Bounty Bay was on a combined tour and diving excursion among the Cook Islands. Suwarrow was one of the destinations. A barbeque was organized on the beach in the evening. Mike and John and a passenger from Bounty Bay had been out fishing for groupers (tropical perch) to put on the barbeque. Veronica had made coconut pancakes and food and drink arrived from Bounty Bay. It was a very nice and atmospheric evening with music and singing. The waves came rolling in, the night was pitch black with the stars glittering above; lovely smells were coming off the barbeque, the heat was tropical and the palms rustled in the breeze. We stayed up late.

  Dur
ing our first days on the island we swam cautiously by the boat. If we were feeling brave we swam all the way around it. After I saw a large, grey shark next to the hull we stopped doing it. We had been ashore and Arne was still in the dinghy. I had just come up on deck when I saw it. It went along the side of the boat. We did not think that we would be seeing large sharks in the lagoon, even though John had said that tiger sharks and school sharks were often spotted there. After that Arne and Heléne never swam again in Suwarrow Lagoon.

  John told us never to throw food over board, which we had not done since we arrived. On the day John delivered newly caught fish to us we had clear instructions to use the dinghy and bring the leftovers a good distance away from the Yaghan before throwing them in the water in order to prevent the sharks from going near the boats in the lagoon. The sharks were more numerous and larger than in other places.

  In An Island to Oneself, Tom Neale describes himself as a bachelor; he had never married, so he was good at cooking and cleaning. He writes that he had never wanted to let a woman into his neat kitchen. One day John told us a different story. Tom Neale was married with three kids! He had not mentioned either his wife or his children. John had met the woman, Sarah, at Palmerston where she lived. She had told John that she was Tom Neale's wife. A few years ago, Sarah and the children visited Suwarrow. John said that it had been an emotional return. There had not been a single word about them in the book that the husband and father wrote. Naturally, they found this hard to understand. In the book Tom claims that it was the American author Frisbie who had made him want to go there, but Sarah had lived there as a child. She later told her husband about the beautiful island. He neither could nor would credit her even with that. We were forced to abandon our previously positive view of Neale.

  Nothing lasts forever, certainly not our days on the perfect paradise island of Suwarrow. After about ten days there it was time to continue to Tonga. On our final afternoon I sat for hours photographing Anchorage Island from Yaghan. I tried to capture the colours and the uncommonly lovely coconut palms that lined the sandy beach. The colours of the palms altered as the sun travelled across the sky. Never before had I encountered such brightly coloured, beautiful palms. We weighed anchor at lunchtime on Tuesday July 17. We waved goodbye to Mike and Dawn, John, Veronica and the boys and slowly motored along the island towards the pass. It is not often one is sad to leave a place, but this time was sad. We knew that we would never return, even if we wanted to. It is far too remote. We both reluctantly watched Anchorage Islands and the palms disappear in the distance.

  The Kingdom of Tonga – Land of the Humpbacked Whale

  The leg to Tonga that we were now setting out on was 725 nautical miles. We estimated to arrive on Saturday July 21. We would spend four days at sea, the same as for the crossing from Bora Bora to Suwarrow. The first few days we were unhappy about leaving the atoll. Eating the fish that John had caught in the lagoon and kindly given us made us especially nostalgic.

  Soon the excitement of being on our way to new interesting destinations took over, however. The Kingdom of Tonga was waiting! Before we began to plan our circumnavigation I, like most people, did not have a very clear idea about the location of Tonga. The small kingdom in the centre of the Pacific is situated south of Samoa and east of Fiji. New Zealand is 1,300 nautical miles further south-west. Tonga is the oldest and only remaining monarchy among the Pacific island nations. It is one of four countries outside Europe that has never been under colonial rule! The others are Japan, Thailand and Ethiopia.

  Tonga is made up of 171 islands, but only thirty-six are inhabited. The islands are divided into four groups: Niuas, Vava’u, Ha’apai and Tongatapu. The capital, Nukualofa, is situated in the southernmost group of islands, Tongatapu, which is the most densely populated and the cultural centre of the islands. We were heading for the second northernmost island, Vava’u, which is a sailing centre situated sixty nautical miles north of Tongatapu. We were to spend over a month there alone, and later in the company of my children, Hanne and Patrik, who were coming over with their partners Daniel and Maria.

  The former king, who had a reputation for being one of the largest men in the world – he was over two metres tall and weighed over two hundred kilos – died in 2006, the year before we arrived in Tonga. He had been succeeded by his son, who called himself King George Tupou V. The old king was much loved by his subjects. The monarchy is highly respected. Tongans revere and never criticize the monarchy. The royal family has made some bad business deals, however. The Royal Tongan Airlines went into liquidation and the domestic airline is now run by Fiji Air.

  During our first two days there was only a light breeze, and progress was slow. Then the wind picked up and we continued towards Vava’u at a good pace.

  During the night I suddenly got the urge to check our stamps from French Polynesia and Papeete. To my great dismay I discovered that we only had entry visas for Polynesia, but no exit stamps. I contemplated the meaning of this for the rest of the night. Would we be forced to sail back? It seemed impossible, since we would have to tack all the way to Tahiti, a distance of 1,500 nautical miles. How long would it take? It was now July 20 and on August 13 our children would be landing on Tonga to join us on board for ten days. If we were to sail back to Tahiti, we would not be back in time to meet them on Tonga. On the other hand, it seemed a little drastic to envisage a scenario like this. But you never knew, the little kingdom might turn out to be very strict and bureaucratic.

  Might it be to our advantage, and would the authorities be less strict about it because we are from Sweden, which is also a monarchy? On Tonga family is very important, and perhaps they would feel bad about the fact that when Hanne and Patrik landed on Tonga they had sent their mother off on a long haul to Tahiti. The children would not be able to see their mother until they fly back to Sweden … We talked this through over and over again, and in the end we tried to figure out why we had not got any exit stamps from French Polynesia. Neither of us took the blame. We agreed that the Papeete police must have forgotten to stamp our passports, and neither of us had checked it. We comforted each other and said it would probably be all right. But in lonely moments we worried more and more the closer we got to Tonga.

  We entered the archipelago in the early morning of Saturday July 21. To our great surprise there was a chill in the air. We had to put on our fleece jackets for the first time since Chile, and it was an unfamiliar feeling. The first little Tonga islands were funny-looking; perpendicular, chunky rock islands covered in bushes and little trees, and on top were little palm trees that gave them a tousled look. The air was clear and fresh, the climate was pleasant after we had got over the first shock of cold. We motored the final stretch to Neiafu, the capital of Vava’u Islands. There were several sailing boats in the hurricane-proof Neiafu bay, either at anchor or moored to buoys. We went for the largest, heaviest and most stable-looking buoy, hoping it would keep our forty ton boat in place. We had a bad experience at Ilhabela in Brazil where we had also moored to a buoy, but had ended up drifting.

  We were greeted by a German Hallberg-Rassy right next to us. The crew told us that it was not Saturday July 21, but Sunday July 22. We had passed the International Date Line east of Tonga and lost a day. We should have remembered that since we had learned from the problems that occurred around the millennium shift that Tonga is the first country west of the date line, which is why people there call it “The Country Where Time Begins”.

  Sunday morning on Tonga where people are very devout: church bells were ringing in a white church on a hill at Neiafu. They could be heard all over the bay. All activities such as visiting customs and immigration and finding out who owned the buoy we had moored at would have to wait until Monday morning. You have to pay a fee, even though it is a lot lower than the one you have to pay in a marina. Still, someone would want to be paid.

  One restaurant, the Mermaid Café, was open although it was Sunday, and we had our first lunch at Tonga there: grille
d fish and ice-cream. We cast off from our buoy early on Monday morning and glided over to the official harbour where we called customs and immigration. After an hour three stout gentlemen came on board, officials from the customs, immigration, health and quarantine offices. The largest of the gentlemen was a customs officer, and today he was also taking care of immigration. He sat down on the settee in the saloon. It normally holds two grown up people, but the man's voluminous body easily filled it up and spilled over the edges. While checking our passports he cast an interested eye around the boat. He brightened up when he saw our television set and asked if we had any DVDs. We did. He asked if we had The Perfect Storm. He told us he had read the book and that he would like to see the film, but he had not been able to find it. As luck would have it we had it on board. I quickly tore it out of the cupboard and gave it to him. Without looking at what he was doing, and certainly without letting go of The Perfect Storm, he stamped our entrance visas. We let out an almost audible sigh of relief. With an entrance stamp to the Kingdom of Tonga it no longer mattered that we had no exit stamp from French Polynesia. The broken chain of immigration was mended. The rest of the procedure was just as swift and easy. Now formally checked in to the Kingdom of Tonga, we quickly drove back to our mooring where we, much relieved and content, had a cup of coffee. The Perfect Storm is a very good film; we have seen it several times. We would have liked to see it again, but the gift was an economical way of avoiding any trouble caused by the stamps that were missing from our passports.