I will now proceed to tell you everything worth telling, and some things not, starting from where we last left off in French Polynesia and ending up (happily) in New Zealand. I should mention, though, that while our adventures are not yet over, our circumnavigation is on hold for an indefinite period, possibly years, making this the final "Voyage of the Saros" update for now. (Though we are considering a spin-off along the lines of "Auckland: the Adventure Ashore.") The reasons will become apparent as you read on, but here's a brief summary: a) New Zealand strikes us so far as a beautiful country with a high standard of living (thanks in large part to a peculiarly rational government) which we'd be crazy to leave in a hurry; b) by a wonderful stroke of luck, we've arrived at a time when our professional fields are both growing rapidly here and our skills in great demand; and c) we've had quite enough of passage-making for a while, thank you!
Society Islands, French Polynesia (cont'd.)
Huahine. We never got our bikes back (you knew we wouldn't). We left with fond feelings for the place all the same, oddly enough.Raiatea & Tahaa
These two islands are nested together within a single surrounding coral reef. This arrangement makes for fantastic sailing conditions: a large and breezy but protected lagoon with numerous scattered islets (motus) to meander among, and nary an ocean swell to be seen (or felt). In Raiatea, we caught up with our friends aboard Danza and spent a couple of very pleasant days docked at the marina where they were planning to spend the season. We then circumnavigated Tahaa and, just before moving on, anchored near a boat yard to arrange for some minor repairs. An aluminum cleat at the starboard bow had cracked while we were anchored in heavy swells at Puerto Ayora in the Galapagos, and we were finally able to replace it here. We also hired a marine radio expert named Jean-Yves to figure out why we were having trouble being heard on our SSB (single side-band) radio.Our Adventures with Jean-Yves were intriguing from start to finish. To begin with, no one could find him. The marina was supposed to have ties with him--he was nominally their marine radio consultant--but for two days they tried and were unable to reach him. "His phone is out of order," is what they seemed to be trying to tell us, in French. Well, did he per chance have a radio? No, Jean-Yves apparently didn't monitor the radio. Was there anyone else, then, who knew something about marine radios? No, absolument nobody. So we turned our attention to other things--two years of cruising has given rise to an equanimity we would never have believed ourselves capable of--and made our way to the nearby town of Uturoa to do some shopping. On the way back, now overloaded with groceries, we met with a downpour. We stuck out our thumbs and were quickly passed over by a number of cozy-looking four-wheel drives, but before long a small station wagon pulled over and rescued us. The driver chatted amiably with John in French, while in the front passenger seat her teenage daughter puzzled over what appeared to be a brand-new cell phone and a set of instructions--in German. She asked hopefully if we spoke any German, but we had to tell her no. As we neared the marina, pleasantries gave way to actual information, and we learned that the driver's husband sometimes worked at this marina. He repaired marine radios and his name--we didn't have to be told--was Jean-Yves. And if he wasn't answering his phone, well the instructions were afterall in German!
The very next day, Jean-Yves paid us a house call, as it were. I can't say much about the technical particulars of what he did--I tried not to pay too much attention lest I should get anxious and try to tell him what to do, which would surely have defeated the purpose of hiring an expert in the first place--but Jean-Yves left an impression nonetheless. He spoke French, like almost everyone else, and indeed looked French enough, but there was something decidedly un-French about him: he idled at a distinctly higher rpm than other ex-pats. About once a minute he would issue apparently involuntary outbursts of sentiment toward assorted products and manufacturers ("Copper wire c'est MERDE!" "Icom radios--TRES BON!" "Vinyl electrical tape ees SHEEET!") and it took all our concentration to catch the key words in the steady stream of French he muttered the rest of the time. But he was cheerful and good-humored, and nothing if not entertaining. Having had little success on this first visit, he arranged to return the next day with more equipment, and announced that he would be at the dock waiting for us at eight a.m.. John, to whom the concept of punctuality meant little or nothing after two years of cruising, tried to confirm the arrangement by repeating it, but when he said it it came out like this: "OK, so we'll expect you some time after eight--you can call us on the marina's VHF radio when you're ready to be picked up at the dock." To which Jean-Yves replied, "I weel be ready at eight; I yam Suisse."
Ah. Swiss. As in the Swiss watch. But don't the Swiss generally understand German, enough to operate a telephone anyway? Perhaps not; I must remember to ask one (a Swiss I mean, not a telephone). The other, perhaps related, question I refrained from asking Jean-Yves was why a radio repairman would permit himself for days on end to be incommunicado to potential customers--not even carrying a, you know, radio. The important thing is, he did return (at 8:00.00) and found, and fixed, the problem with our radio. Four months later the radio still works, having worked all the way to New Zealand, and we are immensely grateful. But interestingly, the Adventures with Jean-Yves story ends as enigmatically as it began. After completing his fine work on the radio, Jean-Yves was about to seal the tuner back up when I expressed concern about the moisture that had gotten into it, causing some of the damage he'd had to repair. He had taken pains to prevent any reaccumulation of moisture, but I wondered if the tuner was truly dry enough to be safely sealed up again. He proposed a simple solution: he had a supply of dessicant packs and would bring us some. This was beyond the call but very convenient for us, so we graciously accepted the offer. And we waited. And waited. I called and this time we arranged the specific hour that he would come, but, Swissness notwithstanding, he didn't show. John called to remind him; another time was set; that time came and went; no Jean-Yves. I called one final time. I don't really speak French, but I had the clear impression he was assuring me that he would arrive the following morning at nine with the dessicant. He didn't, though, and so it was that we finally sealed up the tuner, sans dessicant, about a week after we laid eyes on Jean-Yves for the last time. In our minds, he will forever remain an elusive man, a man evidently unsure where he stands on the matters of accessibility and punctuality, and an excellent marine radio repairman.
Bora Bora
On September 15 we left Raiatea in the morning and arrived at Bora Bora in the evening. Bora Bora is a beautiful island, thought by many in fact to be the most beautiful in all of French Polynesia, though its praises are frequently followed by a lament for what its beauty might have been were it not for the heavy tread of tourism and the hotel industry. Not having seen it before the fall, I won't comment on this except to say that there's still plenty of magic left. Had it been the first Polynesian island we'd seen, I think we would have found it irresistible, swum and snorkeled for days in its magnificent lagoon, and hiked and explored the interior thoroughly. We would have staked out its serenest anchorage. And we would most definitely have sniffed out the best buys in French cuisine. We would probably not, on the other hand, have gone to any great effort to get to know the locals, as it is widely rumored that the French and islanders alike have grown quite crabby on this island, in no small part because of all those tourists, I'll bet.But as it happened, Bora Bora was among the last French Polynesian islands we visited. Like the majority of American cruising sailors heading west with the Trades, we'd landed first in the exotic Marquesas in the northeast corner of French Polynesia. More rugged than the Society Islands, and accustomed to far fewer visitors, the Marquesas made a luscious yet wild and other-worldly landfall for us. Naturally, we would have welcomed the sheltered lagoon and creature comforts of an island like Bora Bora, but in many ways I'm glad we arrived at these only obliquely, and had occasion to get to know the essential, uncut version of a tropical island first.
From the Marquesas, which are craggy, high volcanic islands without reefs, we passed (without stopping) through the Tuamotus--low, flat, ring-shaped islands (atolls) whose reefs have expanded and central land masses have receded, leaving behind the pale green-blue lagoons of travel brochure fame--and on to the Societies. The Societies (this is by way of a recap, if you're asking yourself why it all sounds so familiar) are high volcanic islands coupled with lagoon and reef, and as such could be said to combine the other two island groups' best features. All the same, because this is the island type we got to know best--we spent two months in the Societies--we found ourselves growing less susceptible to its charms over time. There are, after all, only so many possible variations on the basic arrangement of reef, lagoon, mountainous interior, and French Polynesian culture, and we figured we "got" the concept. This would be sacreligious talk to many a cruiser, of course. Some sailors cruise west through Polynesia for one season, summer in New Zealand or Fiji, and then cycle through again via eastern Polynesia once more in what can become an endless loop. Or they pick a single island group--Tonga's Vava'u is a favorite--and spend months in search of the most beautiful or remote anchorages. But our own unique brand of wanderlust demands a different sort of diet: we must feed it new experiences with some regularity. Also, we feel the need to get out of the sun once in a while! This, then, will make clear our state of mind (living together in such close quarters, we frequently find ourselves having to share a single state of mind) upon arriving in Bora Bora: we could see that it was lovely, we were obliged to stay for a few days, and we could hardly wait to leave again.
What we did accomplish in Bora Bora: John went scuba diving for the second time in ten years (the first was at Huahine, where he was joined by me in what was to be my first and last diving trip--don't ask me to explain why; I just didn't like it) and swam with giant manta rays and had a grand old time; and I briefly went snorkeling at a recommended spot in front of a resort hotel and saw lots of pretty fish.
Maupiti
Maupiti is a small island populated by a small community of Polynesians. The most exciting thing to happen to us there was the process of entering through the narrow break in the reef while trying to keep an eye on the thundering wall of surf mere feet from us on either side. We anchored in perfectly transparent water--fifteen feet of it or so--and were soon marvelling at the strength of the tidal current as it reached full ebb. Each day for exercise, I swam against the current until I could see our half-buried anchor. This took me as much as ten minutes--have I mentioned how little exercise we've been getting?--though I could make the return trip in about 6.5 seconds.
There were two other boats anchored not far off. On the day we arrived, soon after we dropped anchor, a single-hander on one of the boats radioed us to ask if we'd gone aground. Certainly not! We'd sailed well out of the channel--entirely on purpose--and had followed the charted depths till we were right where we wanted to be. But we only thanked him politely for his concern, and spared him our self-congratulatory reflection on how long it had been since we'd been aground (a year), and indeed on how far our sailing abilities had progressed in general. Though careful never to become complacent, we do permit ourselves the occasional pat on our own backs.
To return to the subject at hand, Maupiti is best known by cruisers for two things: the scary entry channel I've already mentioned and the high, sheer natural rock formation that juts out to one side of the port town and forms the backdrop of the port itself. The tiny town itself does not offer much--no internet access, for example, or not the day we asked, anyway--and if there was a restaurant or hotel, we never saw them. But John took the pleasant two-hour walk around the base of the island, at the end of which he declared himself to be an object of some fascination for the island's younger female population. Frankly, that's about all I remember of the place.
Mopelia
I've already spilled our secret that we were by this point restless to head off for new sights, and you may imagine we were long past seeking out secluded anchorages in paradisiacal (usage note: my dictionary--American Heritage, 3rd ed.--offers no fewer than five different ways to form the adjective from "paradise;" I chose this one at random, but was impressed at all the options) locales in the now too-familiar French Polynesia. But that was before Mopelia.The entrance to Maupiti had nothing on Mopelia's. There was so much swirling surface commotion in the waters outside the reef break at Mopelia that it was obvious we would be sucked down some sort of gigantic bathtub drain if we went any closer. We had timed it badly and now faced the ebbing tide; the prudent thing would be to stand off and wait for the tide to turn. On the other hand, we were sleepy after sailing all night to get there and the prospect of a restful nap at anchor merited serious consideration. While I was still deliberating, John began to get this squinty-eyed look on his face like the proverbial action-adventure hero about to throw common sense to the wind and in the next frame we were plowing ahead at full throttle. I'm sure we looked like a sock in a washing machine from overhead but from our vantage point things didn't go too badly. We did work the engine a bit hard, and our subsequent discovery of a hole in the engine's exhaust elbow suggested we'd achieved new heights in exhaust pressure. But the experience nevertheless represented a milestone in that it vindicated our decision not to throw the engine overboard all those innumerable times we'd wanted to.
We hadn't heard anything about Mopelia except that it was practically uninhabited and that the only people we'd be likely to run into would be pearl divers from Maupiti and the occasional French military representative. There were no other boats in the lagoon when we arrived, and only a couple of small houses away in the distance. We snaked our way between the coral heads and anchored in a clear spot over white sand. Gradually we took in our surroundings and it dawned on us that a) we were effectively alone here, a hundred miles from the next nearest island, and b) a more idyllic place to be stranded for a while would be hard to imagine.
One morning a few days later, we awoke before the sea breeze had stirred the water. The first thing we noticed, however, was not the sheet-of-glass motionlessness of the water. Instead, we happened to look down through the water, so clear and still it was rendered nearly invisible, and were interested to discover that we had swung at anchor through 180 degrees and were now resting atop a massive coral head. In murkier waters this knowledge would have been frightening, but the ability to look the treacherous rock in the face made all the difference. John dove down to study the situation up close. Seconds later he burst happily out of the water and announced that there was in fact plenty of room between the bottom of our keel and the top of the coral; we'd been fooled by an optical illusion. We lost no time in taking advantage of our new location: we went snorkeling. There were dozens of colorful fish, including several puffer fish, and I stayed in the water to admire them long after John had returned to the boat. Then I had an unpleasantly close encounter with a shark and abruptly stopped having fun. It was about five feet long, mostly black I think, and the thing was between me and the swim ladder. I slowed down to allow it to get out of my way--I didn't want to have to hurt it, you see--and it wisely did so and everyone was happy.
Mopelia was one big, wonderful beach, miles and miles long. Beach along the ocean separated by a wide strip of palm trees from more beach along the lagoon. The ocean beach was wild and the going was difficult. The shore consisted of hard, packed sand under a dense cover of hearty bushes and plants and weirdly shaped pieces of driftwood. The surf, crashing and roaring with abandon, was separated from the accessible areas by slippery expanses of rock and scattered tidal pools. We saw miniature sharks in the pools and tried unsuccessfully to photograph them. On the lagoon side, all was calm and the hermit crab was king. This was a great beach for shell-hunting, though John will never forgive me for inadvertantly bringing home two shells not yet vacated (the sound of the shells migrating precipitately from my pocketbook to the floor brought us running to the aft cabin, where we found them wandering anxiously). I brought my camera to the beach several days in row and took dozens of photos I was sure would all be of National Geographic quality. They weren't that, exactly, but they did preserve the place for me nicely.
We spent almost a week at Mopelia, ostensibly waiting for the passing of some bad weather we kept hearing about on the SSB radio, but any excuse would have done; we wanted to stay. When we did leave, it was only for fear of running out of water (it hadn't rained in weeks and there was, of course, no tap to connect our hose to). Then again, it may have been the French military invasion that forced our hand. The day before we left, two unrelated military units showed up out of nowhere. One sizable group patrolled around noisily in half a dozen speedboats--the mothership that appeared to have spawned them stayed outside the reef and hovered there stealthily for some time before moving off--and before long we were politely interrogated and offered assistance (we said we were fine, which we were). This group would be staying at a military facility at the far end of the island. We didn't ask their intent and they didn't volunteer it. The second group--the informal guys--also paid us a visit. They'd come to Mopelia to assist the Maupitian pearl divers, which seemed rather nice of them, and were planning to camp out in tents on the beach. Nobody suggested we should be moving along, though we'd technically cleared out of French Polynesia two weeks earlier, but we took our cue all the same.
Rarotonga, Cook Islands
Saros spent a full month tied to the wharf in the island's sole harbor. As the harbor was completely open to the north, without benefit of a breakwater (a recent effort to add a second wharf had been undone in a hurricane), the size of the swells at times defied belief. With persistent attention to the matter of how much to tension the various lines attaching us to shore (we were tied to the dock stern-to, a bow anchor keeping us pointed into the waves), we did finally manage to eliminate most of the jolting action. Indeed, this time, having learned from our mistakes in the Galapagos, we neither chafed through any lines nor bent any cleats. What we couldn't fix was the difficulty of transferring from boat to shore and vice versa. The boat had to be kept a certain distance away from the wharf so as not to be dashed against it in a big wave. Rather than stepping off the boat directly onto the dock, you stepped into your dinghy instead, pulled yourself over to the dock along one of the stern lines, and then scaled the wall using whatever you could find to assist you. In our case this was an old tire that had once served as a bumper. The procedure worked well enough, on the whole, and I was sometimes able to carry it off in one seemless motion wherein, standing proud, I would sail triumphantly from boat to wall--a regular Washington crossing the Delaware--and even stay dry in the process. There were other days, though, many of them, when the weather was bad and a north wind kicked up the seas and spurred on the swells. To get to shore on days like this I was forced to cover up head to toe with foul-weather gear and prepare to have a miserable time of it. The procedure was very different on such days. First, I would hang on to the stern rail with both hands as the boat pitched and tossed, lifting her tail and the precariously-dangling swim ladder six feet in the air before plunging them angrily back into the waves, and I would wait for biggest, nastiest wave to come and go, seizing the infinitesimal pause afterwards for my moment of action. My feet scarcely making contact with the ladder, I would jump headlong into the dinghy which was soon off galloping madly again, and if I was lucky I would be thrust skyward by a wave just as I neared the hanging tire. The saltwater drenching I invariably received, in spite of all the protective gear, was almost enough to keep me from leaving the boat under these conditions, but imagine if you can what it was like inside the boat in these waves and you will see why I needed to escape the harbor at all costs.
Sadly, John's stepfather died during this period. John flew home to be with his mother; we agreed that I should stay with the boat. He was gone for about two weeks, and the time passed slowly.
There was, in addition to John's return, another occasion I had to look forward to in two weeks' time, only this one had the opposite effect on the clock: cyclone season would begin on November 1. As you may recall, Saros had faced similar circumstances once before, lingering dangerously for more two months of the 1999 North Atlantic hurricane season in that hurricane magnet, the western Caribbean. With the help of weatherfaxes, careful planning (careful otherwise, I mean--if we'd really been thinking, we would have been somewhere else entirely), and some old-fashioned good luck, we safely reached the Panama Canal just as the first big tropical storm systems were showing up. The situation we now faced in the South Pacific, though reminiscent of that experience, differed in some interesting ways. In both regions, Caribbean and South Pacific, the probability of a tropical cyclone in the first month of the season is about thirty percent. In the second month (July and December, respectively), this increases to forty and fifty percent. But while the odds of a cyclone occurring in the South Pacific in the third month--January--are still a measly seventy percent, in the Caribbean in August they soar to one hundred and fifty percent, or three cyclones every two years. That's one difference. A second is that the South Pacific is a vast body of water; the Caribbean is, comparatively speaking, tiny. There is a downside to this for the Pacific cruiser: it takes longer to sail anywhere from anywhere else--should you want to be ashore when the big one hits, for example. On the other hand, it is comforting to consider how much of that enormous ocean will not be in the path of any one cyclone.
The other difference has to do with the danger of heading out of the South Pacific cyclone belt too early, and straight into the teeth of the higher latitudes' late-spring gale season; the two different storm seasons overlap inconveniently for a period of several weeks. We couldn't allow ourselves to be caught unawares by an early cyclone, and yet neither did we relish the significant odds of encountering fifty-knot winds and battering seas in the famously unpredictable southern thirties. I will revisit this troublesome problem later, but I am just trying to give you an idea what went on in my head as November approached: it was not as if the official start of cyclone season represented an acute increase in risk (I did appreciate this); and even if we left for Tonga immediately, we'd only wind up waiting around till the end of gale season (I appreciated this, too); besides, if the first cyclone did come early, it was a big ocean and we would probably be okay (here's where I'd become highly agitated).
While I waited for John and the cyclones, I kept busy in various ways. First, I simply took in my surroundings, and the following is a sampling of what I noticed. The inhabitants spoke English, not French (you would have noticed this, too). They spoke it with a funny accent--the New Zealand accent. When I first started hearing it, I found it so interesting that I jotted some notes down, and came up with a phonetic guide to speaking Kiwi. But after a while, I heard so much of that it now sounds about the same to me as an Ohio accent. Which is to say, if you can't recall hearing an Ohio accent, no accent at all. Unfortunately, I've lost the phonetic guide and somehow can't seem to reproduce it.
It would be silly for me to describe the Rarotongan personality--silly because I would be tempted to remark on how friendly, charming and helpful everyone was, and clearly not all Rarotongans are this way all the time, nor would I want to imply that the French Polynesians are, by comparison, not this way. Still, there is something to this impression I got, something stemming from the colonial pasts of the two regions or their present-day political status (French Polynesians still resent their subjugation by the French, many voicing bitterness about past abuses, even if the majority would not for the moment choose independence, having long since become financially dependent on France; Cook Islanders, "independent in free association with" New Zealand, are to outward appearances a more contented people, though I can't say I heard their opinions first-hand), or some other influences I am unaware of. The atmosphere throughout the island is a congenial one, and if the climate has something to do with this--it is hot but not too hot, and the nights dry and cool--the people, and the well-designed civic infrastructure, surely do as well. Anecdotal evidence doesn't count for much, I know, but if you should require an example of what I'm talking about, the following may serve: one day while wandering through the woods in search of a particular path, a hiking companion and I sought the guidance of a local resident. She didn't know of the path herself, but insisted on phoning another area resident for us to ask. The second woman knew less than the first, but asked me lots of questions (she clearly thought me very confused and hoped to discover the root cause of my misapprehensions) and in the end steered me on a course back to town. We found the path on our second attempt--it was more or less where we'd thought. The point is, these two women were genuinely concerned about our well-being, and went out of their way to be helpful.
A number of things impressed me about Rarotonga's main town, Avarua: its lovely, unobstructed waterfront; the flower-lined and well-shaded path running the length of town down the median strip; the large weekly farmers' market featuring the freshest, sweetest corn I'd ever tasted, and other such rarities (to a cruising sailor) as watercress and arugula; a movie theater showing three different movies nightly, cleverly rotated so as to bring back the popular ones interittently for weeks on end yet allow for variety throughout the week; a great public library, open for use to resident and visitor alike; the Telecom-operated telephone/internet center open 24/7; a nice, cheap laundromat; accessible restrooms, without the usual "Customers Only" restriction; a reliable bus service running clockwise and counterclockwise around the island, morning till night; and--I've saved the best for last--good, affordable restaurants. (What made them affordable, I should explain, was the exchange rate: the U.S. dollar buys 2.2 New Zealand dollars.)
Oh, and one more thing: rental bikes for about US$18--per week. While John was away, I took my camera and cycled around the island and into the interior a bit. The center was mountainous, but in the farm country between mountain and ocean were good roads for biking. I also found subjects galore for my animal portraits. (This may be a phase I'm going through--John thinks so--but I think of it more as a niche I'm in the process of cornering.) There were pigs everywhere--pleasant, clean & wholesome-looking pigs. Also, goats. I must say, I'm exceedingly proud of the goat series I shot.
I went walking, too. Once. I took a four-mile walk in a big loop starting from the harbor, going along the ocean road past the airport and the golf course, and then turning inland to take the rural back road ("Ara Tapu") back toward the harbor. After the airport buildings, there was a lonely stretch of road at the end of which I was chagrined to see a trio of large, hairy dogs eyeing me. I carried a crude walking stick for protection, but at fifty feet I was overcome with shyness (I haven't yet come to terms with this as frank dog-phobia) and hung back. I tried hitching a ride past them but no cars stopped. Then a kind man on a motorbike pulled over, sympathized with my plight and graciously offered to carry me safely past the beasts. This was only the second time I'd been on a non-enclosed motorized vehicle, and, climbing on to it, I tried to remember what I'd learned the other time, with John on the island of Providencia. With my feet, I located the little passenger foot rests, and with my arms I reached around the man's ample middle and clung tightly. A second's reflection, though, and the discovery of the hand-hold behind me, revealed the gratuitousness of this embrace--mortified, I withdrew my arms to their rightful position, but not before spying the happy grin on my chauffeur's face. The remainder of my walk was an anti-climax, and I grew bolder with the dogs, but after that I stuck to biking.
Before John left, we were working out our itinerary in the sand at Rarotonga's best beach--Muri Beach--when we met a German couple, Annette & Thomas, who'd just arrived in the Cooks and were beginning a six-month travel vacation, to include New Zealand and Thailand. We spent time together while John was away--biking and eating, mostly--and I was extremely grateful for their company; together we summoned a good amount of hilarity. When John returned, we four rented kayaks and paddled out to the reef, whereupon both couple's kayaks immediately got stuck on the reef. This happened repeatedly, and before long we could see we were not acting in the best interests of the reef (nor the kayaks) and turned back before we could do any more damage. (Whose idea was that, anyway?). We have since heard from Annette and Thomas by email, and if we ever get as far as Europe, maybe we will see them there.
I made another interesting acquaintance on Rarotonga. But first I must tell you about the engine problem. The day John left for Ohio, we started up the engine in order to charge the batteries, but no sooner had it sprung to life when there was a strange noise followed by a dreadful burning smell. We turned it off immediately and warily looked it over, always at these moments expecting to see something as dramatic as the time, in the Cayman Islands, we discovered the engine several inches from the engine mounts. This time, however, there was nothing grossly evident, only the bad smell which was strongest in the vicinity of the blower (which removes hot air from the engine compartment). We tried to restart the engine, for diagnostic purposes, but now it wouldn't start--giving me some idea about the prognosis, at least. John had no choice but to leave for his flight, and I was left scratching my head and blinking at the miserable hunk of iron that was our engine.
The blower was the place to start, we'd reasoned as John was leaving, because it was electrical--this smelled, literally and figuratively, like an electrical problem--and was wired into the ignition switch in such a way that perhaps, if it had shorted, its malfunction might interfere with starting the engine. Also, the blower had been making other strange noises intermittently for weeks, which up until now we'd ignored. So the first thing I did was to clip the blower wires and turn the ignition key again, but there was no response. Not even a "click." Then I disassembled the blower to see if there had ever been anything wrong with it--there hadn't--and spent part of an afternoon putting it back together and reconnecting the severed wires.
Next I checked the starter battery, which is usually kept on a separate circuit from the house bank so we don't accidentally run both down together, but which for about a day had been connected in parallel with the others--we sometimes do this briefly when the house bank is low and we can't bear to run the engine yet. It was low-ish, though I didn't think this was the problem, but to be certain I borrowed a battery charger from the powerboat next door and fully charged all the batteries. Still, the engine refused to start.
My final effort, an attempt to test the various components of the starter circuit, was too much of a stretch for my nascent engine-repair skills, and I knew I was licked. John no longer required the assistance of a professional mechanic when he tackled such problems, but I was new at this and not above asking for help (actually, the thought hadn't occurred to me until that point, or I might have given up sooner). I found an auto parts & repairs center up the road that looked like it got plenty of business, and I told them my troubles. The following morning, the owner, who I'd spoken with, showed up with one of his mechanics, a tall young Rarotongan man wearing company overalls. They made arrangements for the trip back--the mechanic would call the owner when he was ready to be picked up--and the owner drove off. The mechanic followed me aboard and listened without interruption while I detailed the steps I had taken. I must have indicated that I hoped to solve the problem by means of discussion alone because he smiled, finally, and said he thought perhaps he should have a look at the engine himself. A minute later, the starter was on the table, its blackened, twisted innards speaking for themselves.
Slowly it came back to me: we'd left the old, repaired starter in place when we bought that spare in Costa Rica, and that meant there was a new starter somewhere on the boat. I tracked it down--we keep all heavy, clunky items together where they can do no harm, in the water heater locker--and the mechanic had it installed in no time. The engine, of course, started up on the first try. There was just one thing, he said: we still didn't know what had triggered the failure. He made a few suggestions, which I privately dismissed; my own, unexamined belief was that the ancient starter with its well-worn brushes had long outlived its intended life span. I thanked him heartily for the job he had done and told him we would likely bring more business his way when John returned and we replaced the ruptured exhaust elbow (the new one was on order from New Zealand).
He turned to go, then paused. "I have a surprise to tell you," he said. I was all ears. "I'm not just a mechanic: I'm a prisoner!" What was there to say to this? I asked a few polite questions about prison--Have you been there long? Is it nearby? Are the other prisoners nice? (Well, maybe that isn't quite how I phrased the last question.)--and he supplied answers to these and one of my unspoken ones (it was murder, or more likely manslaughter or negligent homicide; I'm fairly certain he said "murder," though the story he told suggested it wasn't, technically). He was part of a work release program (a very liberal one, from the looks of it) but had two more years to serve. He was married and was, by degrees, building a house to live in with his wife and child upon release. Oh, and he wasn't planning on being a mechanic anymore once he got out; that was just something to do in prison. Well he could have fooled me; a skilled mechanic with a talent for listening, who can tell a good yarn about life on the inside--if that's not a marketable commodity, what is?
Niue
At long last, John returned and we were off once again. We left on the second of November, and in spite of the season, I allowed John to persuade me to stop at the island of Niue for a few days.Niue is larger than Rarotonga, yet its population is tiny. It, too, is closely associated with New Zealand and shares the same currency. It has not, however, been developed to nearly the same degree, for three reasons that we could see: it has no harbors (Niue wisely provides free moorings for cruisers, though they are effectively out in the ocean); no beaches; and it is linked to New Zealand, 1800 miles to the southwest, by a single, overpriced airline. Its principal road is the requisite loop road around the perimeter, but with hardly any view whatsoever; you could circuit the island and mistake it for central Florida, says John who has experience of such things. And it's hot--damn hot.
How is it, then, that Niue makes our Top Three Islands list, in company with the Galapagos (all of them) and Huahine? It's what you can see there if you venture off the road. The striking natural formations of the land and the careful effort by the tourist board to preserve native beauty while adding safety and comfort features; these attributes got our attention. In fact, we'd give anything to go back there--anything, that is, except the exhorbitant price the airline currently charges to fly there. I am compelled to admit, sightseeing is not the only thing we enjoyed while we were there: we also took advantage of the exchange rate both to rent a car and spend a couple of nights at Niue's resort hotel--Niue's only hotel, as far as we know--where we had a wildly luxurious time, by island standards, for very little money. (If there'd been any restaurants, we'd have gone there, too.) But it was the spectacular limestone caves and other rock formations that we will remember.
Niue feels like the rock in mid-ocean it is, the surf attacking it with a vengeance and the wind a continual presence. Its high limestone walls are slowly but surely being hollowed out, one cave at a time. Around the island, probably numbering a hundred or more, are caves of every possible description. The ones we saw were regularly filled by the tide, and best visited at low tide when the water within was still and lagoon-like. Others were dry and quite deep, and a guide was recommended for these. Interspersed with the caves there were also magnificent tidal pools, lined with coral and filled with fish; we found wonderful snorkeling conditions in one, but were cheated out of a proper visit by the incoming tide.
On the windward side of the island, in the southeast, was the best discovery of all. Identified simply by a sign marked "Togo" in the woods at the edge of the road, the place was reached by a thirty-minute hike through a fragrant forest. Exiting the woods, one emerged at the top of a steep descent to the sea, and was suddenly aware of a vast array of crude rocky pinnacles and spires protruding from the ground. The unusual rocks lined the coast as far as the eye could see, marching in columns, it seemed, down to the water. We followed a walkway to an outcrop of boulders from whose tops we had exquisite views of the water far below us. A little ways before this, off to one side, a tall ladder led nearly vertically down into a chasm. Peering into it we spied, incongruously, an oasis of white sand and tall coconut palms, the only recognizably tropical features in the otherwise alien landscape. A bit like Bryce Canyon in Utah, Togo was nonetheless a true original.
Tonga
We didn't stay long in Niue. Even the five days we spent there were two days longer than we'd planned, but there was a wind shift and so we waited until the Trades had resumed. Our second-to-last passage, Niue to Tonga, was fine--which is to say we couldn't wait for it to be over, though nothing specific went wrong.Tonga is self-governing and has its own currency. It is, in fact, a kingdom, and its official name seems to be The Kingdom of Tonga. Its long-reigning king was, in earlier times, famed for his size (tall and massive), which set a Guinness Book record. There are purported to be postcards available in Tonga which show the king, at a later time, using an exercise bicycle, surrounded by sweaty bodyguards jogging in place.
Cruisers will tell you there is no point to going to Tonga--other than to sit and wait for a weather window on route elsewhere--if you don't visit the Vava'u group of islands. Well, we didn't visit them. Cruisers are still talking about what a mistake we made. It was no mistake, though, honest, just part of the revised plan: we left Rarotonga late, we left Niue late, and by mid-November we were sufficiently spooked by the cyclone thing to take the shortest route to Nuku'alofa, Tonga's biggest town (and incidentally, its closest port to New Zealand). We would have enjoyed seeing Tonga's beautiful Vava'u islands with their lovely anchorages, and we could, arguably, have done without seven or so of the fourteen weeks we'd spent in French Polynesia. But we couldn't turn back the clock, and frankly, we didn't feel much of an island deficit after all we'd just seen: what we yearned for, for reasons we didn't yet understand, was New Zealand. We had time to kill in Tonga, however, and by golly, Nuku'alofa was good enough for us.
Nuku'alofa was the biggest city we'd seen since Papeete, Tahiti. New York it wasn't; no movie theaters, for example. But it had its strengths. I was very pleased with the postal service, which I had occasion to test. The DHL office also came through for us; we'd ordered a new autopilot from New Zealand. There was a yuppie cafe straight out of Seattle, which formed a central meeting place for the cruising community. There was a decent-sized bookstore, and there we discovered The Guardian, the first real source--and an excellent one, we felt--of international news & reviews we'd seen since we found a single issue of The International Herald-Tribune in Papeete. (I should probably say, the first western-liberal-oriented source.) There were supermarkets. There was internet. And there were various handicrafts to consider purchasing. The best known is probably the tapa cloth--pounded from the bark of trees, and dyed in elaborate patterns with ink also made from trees.
We simply didn't have the time to get to know any Tongans very well. We did receive a visit from a family who'd given us a ride the day before and then boldly asked if they could come see our boat, but it would be misleading to imply we participated in a cultural exchange with them. The family consisted of a man in his thirties who'd recently retired, after seventeen years, from the phone company and had since taken up commercial fishing and built himself a boat; his wife, who was also learning the trade; and their two young daughters. That was all we ever found out about them. They sat politely in our cockpit and hardly uttered a word. They had brought fruit for us; we served juice and cookies. In the time it took me to withdraw my hand from setting down the last glass of juice, the four had drained their glasses, stacked them in a column, and resumed their silent contemplation of the cockpit. They refused seconds--even the four-year-old--and hardly touched the cookies. They gave us tentative answers to a few questions we asked them; mostly, they sat quietly, looking at nothing in particular. Inspired by an idea, I introduced into the mix two brightly colored rubber balls, and the two girls instantly metamorphosed into children, laughing and bouncing the balls all over the place; their parents, too, came to life as they tried, with evident amusement, to keep the balls from going overboard. The revelry was fun while it lasted, but the visit was brief and, in the end, unenlightening. I know what you're saying to yourself, you're saying we did learn something interesting about Tongans afterall, we just failed to recognize it: we learned that they're curious yet exceedingly shy. Yes, but... Besides, we already knew this about them--we'd read it. Sure, okay, it is interesting to see for oneself. But conversation is so much more efficient a means of learning about what people are like! Don't I appreciate the value of cumulative observation, you ask? Can I really be so lazy as to require my cross-cultural education to be spoon fed to me? Okay, okay, already. I give up. You win. (I did, by the way, manage several nice photos of the visit, which the family indicated with uncharacteristic enthusiasm that they would like copies of.)
Tonga gets a "C" for public safety measures. Looking down at the ragged, six-inch, magenta-hued scar on my right leg, I am reminded of just how impoverished Tonga's efforts were in this area. After dark one evening, I was trying to get back to the breakwater we were moored alongside when I stepped suddenly into thin air as my foot entered a concrete-lined drainage ditch. Unfortunately, though perhaps saving me from spraining my ankle in the process, my shin above the ankle made contact with the edge of the concrete on the way down, and was flayed open almost to the level of the knee. The injury precipitated a moment of terror--at the damage I might have sustained (the pain was quite bad), but also at the recognition of how very many dangers await the unwary, such as I had just proved myself to be.
I'll spare you the details of my convalescence. The x-rays taken at Nuku'alofa's Vaiola Hospital were normal, and, though the swelling took weeks of leg elevation to eliminate, my recovery is now almost complete. The mental trauma is also long past, though I always watch where I put my feet now.
Ours was one of the last boats still planning to sail to New Zealand this season. Most cruisers head south earlier, focusing their efforts on avoiding cyclone season, though they risk the much greater odds that they will be caught in a gale. There were definite benefits to leaving late, however, even apart from the diminished risk of gales. One was that the cruising community was much smaller so there was less competition for space in the harbor, and for the various facilities that cruisers (us included) tend to monopolize, such as the computers at internet cafes.
Another benefit of being part of a smaller, later group of boats was that we were a self-selected bunch who felt comfortable studying the weather charts and planning strategies. This created a social mood which was pleasantly laid back, while at the same time remaining alert and circumspect. There were various gatherings, including one to celebrate a birthday and another for Thanksgiving, and much visiting and consultation over weather matters--namely, how to choose the optimal moment to leave. We were all receiving weatherfaxes, and consulting a website featuring additional reports and charts. A smart Kiwi weatherman, Bob McDavitt, answered questions we'd sent by email. We read books such as Steve & Linda Dashew's "Mariner's Weather Handbook." This book provided basic information and also, helpfully, explained the finer points of what had gone wrong in a famous boating catastrophe--the Queen's Birthday Storm--six years ago on the same route we would be taking. The storm, essentially a gale that developed hurricane-force winds, had not been predicted until it was too late to avoid. A number of cruising sailboats were caught in or near it, and, in several cases, responded with doomed strategies that placed them in far greater danger. As a result, boats and lives were lost. We studied all the information we could gather together, and came up with a plan. Then there was nothing to do but wait for a favorable weather scenario. So we socialized some more.
And then one day, the twenty-ninth of November to be exact, it was time to go; our weather had arrived. We were the last boat in the group to leave. Our water tanks were empty and, around town, everyone who could have supplied us had also run out. In the end, we paid the Nuku'alofa Fire Brigade to supply us (this was a first for them--us too) and by mid-afternoon we were on our way.
Opua, New Zealand
Though we never did manage to catch up with anyone else, we flew along at a good pace for most of the trip. The group's strategy had paid off, and we had the benefit of steady wind on the port quarter because of a low to the southeast. There were, in fact, no weather issues whatsoever; there were no cyclones building in the north; no gales in the south. I deeply regretted not getting a website update off in time to leave you in agonizing suspense about the outcome of the passage, but perhaps it was superstition that prevented me. The passage was not without its mishaps, though, I assure you.The first thing to stop working was the autopilot. We had just replaced it, and here it was broken already. (We were almost impressed.) While John had it apart to try and fix it, we switched to using the wind vane self-steerer. Which was propitious, because we just happened to notice that one of its lines had chafed down to the last slender fiber. The repaired autopilot seemed to work, so for now we simply switched back again, and later John tackled the tedious chore of replacing the wind vane lines. But soon we had a new issue: we did not know how much fuel was left in our tank--the fuel gauge is useless--and we had emptied the last of our regular jerry jugs; all the additional fuel on board was in three clumsy wide-mouthed containers we'd bought in Tonga at the last minute, and we couldn't imagine how we were going to transfer the fuel into the tank without spilling it. So we did what anyone would have done: we turned our attention to other things.
Not five minutes later, the engine started to behave oddly, the rpm's slowing down and speeding up again in a random pattern. "We're running out of fuel, John," I said. "Actually," replied John, "what you're hearing is the sound the engine makes as the boat rides up and down in the waves." "Oh," I said, "It's interesting that I never noticed before how it does that." "Mm," said John. "It's also interesting," I continued, "how the waves can make the engine sound exactly like it did that time we actually did run out of gas, in the Boston Harbor." The engine chose that moment to come to a standstill; we had, of course, run out of fuel. Filling the tank was the least of our problems now; there was so much air in the fuel lines that it took us an hour to get rid of it all.
Now we had a working engine again, full fuel tanks, and a tenuously working autopilot. Something had to be done to restore the normal state of uncertainty and turmoil, and I was just one to do it. All I did was to insist we stop the engine every six hours to check on our oil leak (no, I haven't mentioned it before) and top off the oil if necessary. Not a bad idea on the surface of it, I'm sure you'll agree. So on the evening before our anticipated arrival at Opua, New Zealand, we were enjoying a beautiful sunset and marveling at the land beginning to emerge in the distance, when we turned off the engine for the last time. Which is to say, we were unable to start it again.
More accurately, it started for a few seconds, but something was wrong; we stopped it and tried again, but now it wouldn't start. It was the starter. I recognized the smell. Our new starter. We wanted to cry. John took it apart and poured the powdered remains into a cup; there wasn't much left apart from that. The lesson hit home so hard we practically suffered whiplash: the mechanic in Rarotonga had been trying to warn me that something had caused the last starter's malfunction, and whatever it was had struck again. We were not long in figuring it out; the ignition key switch, exposed to salt spray for months on end, had stuck and the starter had terminally overheated. We looked up at the sails, flapping in the dying evening breeze, and we knew it would be a long trip to Opua.
I had the first watch of the night. I tacked for a while at three knots, then two, then one. Around midnight, and for another two hours, the GPS indicated we were moving at 0.00 knots. This was the least exciting time I can remember ever spending, and, ironically, I will never forget it.
In the morning, the wind picked up and we began to feel hopeful about an early afternoon arrival. With John at the wheel, I gathered up all the food we thought risked confiscation by the agricultural safety officer, and made a giant casserole. A layered ensemble of potato slices, caramelized onions and custard, it was delicious--a far cry from the usual last-day-of-the-passage fare.
Well fed and happy now, we were primed for the docking stunt we were about to pull off. It would not be easy, you see, because the wind was steadily rising, the tide was on the way in, and we had no engine. We did consider all this, but, really, it was hard to take seriously when we'd just crossed the most capricious stretch of water in our entire sailing history, and nothing had happened! (We didn't count the engine & autopilot failures, which by now you must know we take as a given.) We were alive! Saros was okay! We had crossed an ocean--the biggest ocean--and proved our mettle and we could now stop sailing if we wanted to! And we did want to, but more about that later.
And so, a tad overconfident, we radioed Customs and the Opua Marina to notify them of our imminent arrival. Our friends Ellen & Todd, aboard Mandolin, were monitoring the radio and called to offer assistance but we demurred. Thinking back, we're unsure why we did so, but it could be how Todd prefaced the offer. He said, "I don't know how comfortable you are docking without an engine--" and we heard, "Personally, I think it's a piece of cake, but maybe you're inexperienced." (The correct translation, we learned the hard way, was, "Personally, I wouldn't dream of trying it under these conditions without assistance, but if you're feeling lucky--") Determined to succeed, we constructed a game plan. First we inflated the dinghy and trailed it alongside the port stern. John climbed down and tied it firmly in place, and then attached the outboard. Back at the helm again, John steered us under mainsail into the harbor and beyond it into the crowded anchorage next to the marina, hoping on this first pass to see what maneuvering would be required of us. Then he turned the boat around to go back the way we'd come. But now we faced the wind, which was stronger than ever, and also the incoming tide; we were not making headway. My STAT presence in the dinghy was requested, and I gunned that puny 2.2 h.p. engine for all it was worth. This worked, after a fashion, and we didn't hit anybody, though I knew this only by feel; the larger boat blocked key regions of my visual field.
Upwind of the marina, we turned around again and John gained control of the situation briefly. And then we picked up momentum and started off at a diagonal, straight towards a line of high-priced motor yachts tied to the breakwater. Nothing John did would straighten us out. We had too much sail up. More important, the current was flowing at an angle to the orientation of the marina. I ran the outboard full throttle in reverse and we straightened out, inches short of a crash landing. Then we careened out the other way, in the direction of the marina slips and the vessels therein, and one or two very agitated boat owners. By this time, the customs agent wringing his hair on the dock had some backup, and several kind people assisted us in various ways (the customs agent among them). We were dragged dockside by means of several long lines, and soon we were safely tied in place. When we'd completed our customs clearance, I asked the agent what our arrival had looked like from his position on the dock. "Yuh had a bit 'o trouble, I saw, but twas nothing to some o' what we get aroun' here--and those are folks as have working engines." He was kind. Me, I was just grateful to have been so low to the water, I never knew what was happening till it was over!
We've been at the marina in Opua for three weeks now. Opua is situated in the Bay of Islands, one of the most popular spots for Kiwi cruisers and foreignors alike. It is absolutely beautiful, the lands unspoiled (we don't count the grassy, sheep-filled hills and meadows which, technically, represent devastated forest), the waters reasonably sheltered, and most of the numerous islands uninhabited. Also, it is almost as far north as you can go in New Zealand, and so is about as warm as you can be in this country. Today, for example, it is in the mid-eighties, though my chattering teeth woke me up at four this morning to let me know my third blanket had fallen off me.
Since we got here, we've been planning on spending several weeks exploring the bay by boat, before heading south for more populous regions. So far we've gotten as far as moving from a marina slip to a spot on the breakwater, which costs less. We keep meaning to leave, but it's so nice here. I'm sure the rest of the bay is wonderful, but the view from right here would be hard to beat. Seriously, though, it's not really a question of inertia; a lot's happened since we arrived. We bought a car, for one thing. May I brag? US$790 for a 1991 Nissan Bluebird station wagon--not a sportscar, I admit, but neither is it the station wagon of Brady Bunch fame; the engine is surprisingly powerful, and it's a slick little car in pretty good shape. This is not a suspect price around here--all used cars go cheap here, where a dearth of affordable cars ten years ago led to an arrangement where Japan ships used cars here by the thousands. Better than the price, even, was the ease of taking ownership: we decided we'd take it, paid for it, flashed our U.S. drivers' licenses, signed the title, and drove off. It took, oh, about three minutes (after the test-drive). The registration arrives by mail; the license plates, which stay with the car for life, are already on it.
When we'd dropped off the two mangled starter carcasses at the local marine engine repair place, washed all the laundry--twice--and sent all the salt-encrusted cushion covers to the dry cleaner, we packed our bags and drove south to look for jobs. We would be visiting Auckland, at a million people the largest city in New Zealand, and Wellington, the capital, at 400,000. Knowing little about either, John favored Auckland, because of its size, and I preferred Wellington: it is a more concentrated, less sprawling city so one doesn't need a car there (Auckland has no subway and would not be at all easy to get around without one), and it is also said by some to be the country's cultural and intellectual capital. As we drove through the scenic countryside, our thoughts were at first entirely on our surroundings. But when the road became busier and the cars more numerous, driving turned into a harrowing experience; this was the first real challenge we'd faced since being introduced to left-side-of-the-road driving. Furthermore, despite the great hurry everyone was in, the miles--er, kilometers--passed slowly, and it gradually became apparent that road travel in New Zealand takes far longer than in the U.S., a combined effect, maybe, of smaller, curvier highways and smaller cars. The 230-km/142-mile drive to Auckland took about four hours. The good news is, we liked it so much there, we didn't have to bother with the 639-km/396-mile trip to Wellington.
Auckland is a lovely city. It's not known for its architecture, but it makes up for this by being full of parks, little triangular ones squeezed in everywhere and plenty of large ones, too. It's got water all around it--Auckland can be reached by boat from both the east and the west coasts--and a short drive north or south and you're in the country again. The most unexpected thing about it for us was how hilly it was, easily rivaling San Francisco in this department. It doesn't feel like San Francisco, though; it feels much newer, and is dominated by a mostly sophisticated, entirely wired, post-GenX youth culture. Low-priced, multi-purpose internet centers abound. The biggest movie house is on prime piece of real estate in a high-rise mall devoted to youth-oriented entertainment venues such as state-of-the-art video arcades and a Borders bookstore (we did see some elderly people in the Borders--at least my age, I mean--but they looked slightly uncomfortable). The restaurant scene might also be aimed at this generation, though we benefitted from it enormously: an infinite variety of cheap, ethnic restaurants all conveniently lined up along the central avenue.
We inquired as to job possibilities, and the responses were favorable. I am reasonably assured of work at one of Auckland's three public hospitals, and John, too, was told he will most likely get the job he wants; we dropped off our CVs and were advised not to expect a response till after the holidays (this was a few days before Christmas). We would make U.S. salaries multiplied by 0.44 (the exchange rate), as we'd suspected, but if the New Zealand dollar were any stronger, the jobs might not even be available in the first place.
We drove back to Opua and celebrated Christmas and New Year's, and now we're just waiting for one or two things (a package that arrived in Rarotonga for us after we'd left; new propane tanks; the completion of this update) and then we will start sailing back down to Auckland, lingering in the Bay of Islands along the way. The mechanic was able to conjure a working starter from the remnants of the old two; we still don't know how (or whether) this was possible, but the hybrid starter works fine and the engine is working again.
We really like it here. We liked traveling, too, but it's the being places and not the getting to them that we enjoyed; we simply do not like passages. As a matter of fact, we can't bear the thought of any more passages. The motion aboard Saros is insufferable at times. Sometimes there's almost no relationship, even, between the sea state and the quality of the motion; serious discomfort is just the nature of passages--for us, aboard Saros at least--and we've never gotten used to it. Now here's the interesting part: we still want to go off and see more places, after we've worked for a good long while, and we'd still like it to be by boat--this boat. To this end, we've hatched the following plan: we'll save our money and have the boat shipped to the next destination, which will probably be the Mediterranean. It all seems so logical! We hope you aren't terribly disappointed. We'll keep having mishaps and misadventures, just like before; we'll probably go aground all the time; the engine will continue to give us trouble; and we'll surely run out of money in Italy. But we won't keep complaining about those awful passages! And we'll save so much time. Plus, we won't face the perils of, well, piracy and politics in the Red Sea. Really, you'll see, it is for the best.
As for the website, this is definitely not the end. For one thing, our posted photos are six countries behind! You've got to see our Galapagos pictures, and I was also hoping to air my grinning goats, from Rarotonga. To date, we haven't found anyone on our travels with a scanner that takes slides, but we have not given up. We would also like to continue the updates; check back with us in the spring.
Happy New Year!
