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This great past week, including diving, kayaking, exploring the lagoon around Bora Bora all pales in comparison to our big event yesterday.
One of the challenges of sailing in the lagoons around the Society Islands is the many coral heads and reefs – many of which are not charted. Yesterday, while we were picking our way through the very narrow channel, with me on bow watch, we inadvertently misread a cardinal buoy and –you guessed it – ended up on the reef.
This was even more nerve-wracking than normal as the wind was gusting between 15 – 20 knots and the current was running at about 8 knots – pushing us ever closer to the main reef. Peter responded to the situation quickly and took out our stern anchor in the dinghy to hold the boat from being thrust further onto the reef.
Once back aboard, he was getting ready to deploy our second (main) anchor when I noticed that our dinghy was speeding away all on its own (yes, 2nd mistake, not tying the dinghy – keeping in mind things were a little hairy at this time). Peter then swam off in the water (luckily grabbing a life jacket.he swam like a demon and finally caught up with it and managed to drag himself on board.
At this point I was trying to flag down passing motorboats that were taking hotel customers back and forth, but they went by so quickly, they either didn’t notice we were stuck on the reef, or chose to ignore us. I was quite keen to call for assistance, but Peter was still determined that we could manage to get off the reef by ourselves.
We were continuing to drift further in to the reef, and the tide had already turned from high tide and was moving towards low tide. Not a good situation when you are on a reef. We emptied all our water tanks to raise the waterline, but this still wasn’t enough to lighten us and get us off. As Peter and I were hauling the main anchor to the stern of the boat, I noticed that the dinghy was full of water. When I mentioned it, Peter said “well of course I was soaking wet”. I said “not that wet!” and we realized that the plug had come out of the dinghy and it was in fact sinking! This would be funny if it wasn’t a true story. It was really no big deal as I just hopped in the dinghy, replaced the plug, and bailed it all out.
After all of this, with late afternoon fast approaching, I was able to convince Peter to sound the alarm. He reluctantly called a Pan Pan on the radio (this is one call down from a mayday when life is in danger). No one responded to the first call, which was amazing considering all the hotel boats that were going back and forth. On the second call, we got a response from a fellow cruiser from Norway sailing on a 58' boat. He was fairly close by at anchor and had a big, strong boat so came to our assistance. He couldn’t get close to us, as the channel we were in was less than 15 feet wide and surrounded by coral heads and reef. Instead he anchored out in the deeper water and he (Jan) and his son-in-law (Urwelcum) came over in their dinghy.
Fortunately, just before they arrived, a fast boat went speeding by us, and his huge wake enabled QuickStar to get off the reef! That should have been the end of it, but of course, we still had to bring in both anchors that had been deployed off the stern. The first one was no problem. I kept QuickStar in a slow reverse to hold her off the reef and to compensate for the current, while Peter brought in the anchor. He was pretty exhausted after dealing with this for over three hours.
Our main anchor refused to come up! It was stuck on a coral head.
Another local power boat, with three strong men, came over and offered their assistance. Now we had two boats helping us out.
We rigged up a chain and line to pull up the anchor from the power boat. It still wouldn’t budge. Juan came on board and helped to maneuver QuickStar in the narrow channel as we continued to fight with the chain. Peter was hauling it in and I was tailing it. We weren’t really getting anyway and it looked like the only answer was going to be to cut the anchor (which would mean leaving it there and leaving us without a main anchor and then coming back with a diver and equipment to retrieve it another day – since darkness was less than two hours away at this point). Fortunately, the anchor did shift and we got it loose – ALMOST.
Turned out that it had a full coral head attached to it. At least we were free, so we motored out of the channel, very slowly with this huge coral head attached to the anchor and then we tied up beside Jenny to get the coral head off. This was accomplished by raising the anchor with the halyard and disengaging the coral head.
We all breathed a sigh of relief and then went to anchor in a lovely little bay. We spent about an hour cleaning up the boat – mud everywhere, including ourselves covered from head to toe from hauling anchor chain and adding a few more bumps and bruises. Luckily the damage to QuickStar was fairly minor with only a damaged toe rail and a damaged life rail from the anchor line.
We invited the gang from Jenny over for gin and tonics to thank them for their very valued assistance. Another reminder how important it is for cruising boats to monitor Channel 16 (the distress channel) while in anchorages. You never know if you will need help or can render help to another vessel. We are deeply grateful to Juan and Ella and Benedicta and Urwelcum – with much apology for the spelling of their lovely Norwegian names.
Peter didn’t sleep most of last night, busy beating himself up for the error in navigation. He also popped a couple of Advil this morning as his back is feeling the effects of putting out and hauling in all the anchor chain. To add to our little comedy, we have just checked the weather and there is a warning in effect with hourly warnings being announced on the radio. The wind is going to begin building tomorrow and increase to over 40 knots per hour for the next four days with 100% precipitation called for. We will be moving to a more secure anchorage and probably hunkering down until it blows by. We should be in for quite the ride. (Our departure to Mautipiti is on hold until this passes).
On a more light-hearted note, we sure enjoy the many rainbows. The diving has been fantastic, with our best dive so far this year featuring sea turtles that swan with us, lots of black tipped sharks, moray eels and so much more. We’ve also had time to do some kayaking. The locals here are constantly out in their outrigger canoes (they are all in great shape) and they love to play in our wake.
Sadly, the coral and reefs have all been almost decimated by the Crown of Thorns Starfish and topped off by the cyclone that came through last February. I was going to report on that this week, but our little “incident” upstaged it. Next week, I’ll explain the situation regarding the reef. You can see in this photo that the corral is all but dead beside the black sea urchins.
So, tomorrow we will be heading out of Dodge and back to the Yacht Club where we will probably grab a mooring ball for added safety and wait out the storm in the comfort of their patio bar, with fellow cruisers. (They also televise the World Cup, so it won’t be such a hardship, ha,ha).
Congratulations to Danny and Ashley for getting possession of their new house yesterday. June 17th is quite a day to remember!
Until next Friday……play hard
P.S. While I've been doing the blog Peter went over to visit with Ella and Jan on s/v Jenny. He says she is absolutely beautiful - a 58 foot Hoek Design that Jan (Isaksen) built himself. Also turns out to be the same designer as Erica XII (mentioned last week) and she is actually 175 feet (as opposed to my description of being more than 130 feet). We are going to head over to the Lagoonarium with Ella and Jan to swim with the rays before we head out. Thanks again to the gang on Jenny
P.S.S. Currently there is a mayday on the radio - two people have gone overboard enroute from Raiatea to Bora Bora. Hopefully this will turn out alright!
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