Get Lost On Purpose

Author: Drew

  • Neiafu Harbor, Vava’u, Kingdom of Tonga

    What a cool place. We cruised in early yesterday morning after probably the best sail we’ve ever had. We flew the spinnaker right up until dark the day we left Niue ghosting along at 7 knots. The next morning I flew it again for a couple of hours till I started seeing 9.5 knots. I figured maybe it was a good idea to keep the mast standing upright and I took it down. We stopped briefly at an anchorage right around the corner from the main harbor (Lotuma Bay #5) to take showers, clean up the boat, and give a couple of other guys the chance to check in and get off the wharf before we made our triumphant entrance. We could already hear our friends from Zen and Honeymoon on the radio so we gave a call and announced our presence. It’s was like entering a reunion. All the boats we’ve met along the way and all the people whose voices we’ve heard and never met all seem to be here. Even Jeff and Julie from Flashback who we affectionately call Ma and Pa after someone mistaked us for being their children! Check in was relatively simple. The Quarantine and Health officials were standing at the dock when we tied up so they came aboard first. I handed over the papers they needed with a couple of candy bars and some diet coke hoping to speed up the process. Twenty minutes later, paperwork done, we couldn’t figure out why these guy were still sitting on the boat. They were thumbing through some of Margie’s magazines, hanging out like they were right at home. I guess they needed a few minutes to study up on the latest Cosmo and Vogue before they decided it was time to go and finally they dawdled off the boat. Next came Customs. Simple. Then I took a walk to the bank and Immigration while Margie, sitting on the boat at the city dock, somehow ended up with some fresh bread after a local paddled by and made her a deal. Ten minutes later we were tied to a mooring owned by the Aquarium Cafe with three dinghies and all our friends hanging off the side of Dosia. Nice.

    Then came our first Friday night in Neiafu. Picture it. A georgeous harbor surrounded by hills and mangroves. A hundred plus sailboats, some charter, but mostly cruising yachts from all over the globe. Huge multimillion dollars catamarans with paid captains all the way down to 27′ single handers. Converted race boats, sleek lined Italian yachts, refurbished classics, and junkers. It doesn’t matter. On Friday night, everyone gathers at the Mermaid, home of the Vava’u Yacht Club for drinks. Right on the water with its own dinghy dock. T-shirts, burgees, and flags hanging from the ceiling. Happy hour prices on a selection of beers from Oz land, NZ, the local Ikale and Maka brews. Heaven on earth. After losing hope in French Polynesia and the Cooks, here it is. The perfect image of a south seas sailor bar in its truest form. It still exists. Where else can you find a 70 year old single-hander with a white beard in crocs and a tie-dye shirt arguing with a pressed linen German couple off a sleek 60 footer about the finer aspects of rum distillation? Classic.

    When you wake up in the morning and can’t remember what you had for dinner or if you even ate dinner or where you might have tried if you were so inclined, you had a good night. If it weren’t for the missing cash, I might have thought we missed my favorite meal of the day. I know it was pasta and I’m positive it had bacon in it because that’s something I rarely forget. Each bacon experience should be cherished. I haven’t a clue what Margie ordered but that’s alright…neither does she. We haven’t had a night like that in a long, long time and even though I felt like a million bucks this morning when I woke, I would have preferred to not wake up belching vanilla infused rum. In order to not take responsibility for the over-indulgence, I need to blame someone else. So Flashback, you’re it. It’s all your fault. 🙂

  • The Wildest Place I’ve Been

    I keep on saying it…Niue and Beveridge Reef (a part of Niue) were the wildest places I’ve ever been. Here’s why:

    1) The anchorage at Beveridge alone was an experience with the high winds and waves coming over the reef coupled with first time anchor drags and the resulting late-night, pitch-black resets. We haven’t sat calmly still at anchor since Aitutaki. It’s not comfortable but I guess one could see it as part of the wildness. I’d like to say we’ve grown accustomed to rolling around and sudden shifts of the boat while we’re “safely” anchored but screw that. Nobody likes that stuff. It was all part of the adventure though.

    2) The whales. From the first sighting outside Beveridge to basically living among them in the mooring field at Niue, the whales defined this part of the trip. People pay loads of money to experience nature like that. We had it outside our backdoor for free.

    3) Spearfishing at Beveridge. Patrick and I were all by ourselves in the water for hours on end while the only other people within hundreds of miles, Marge and Rebecca, were still over a mile away on an upwind dinghy ride. It was surreal. Hunting fish through underwater ravines and avoiding the curious grey sharks and the white tips will be a memory long after my blisters heal. The fact I duct taped my feet and ignored the pain of each fin stroke shows just how much fun it was. I’ll never forget losing that last really nice grouper to the white tips. Little f_c_ers!

    4) The hikes to the chasms and caves on Niue aren’t too long but nobody can deny they are dangerous. The eroding limestone is sharp and at some points you are basically crawling over the stuff. At other places large holes are hidden by decaying vegetation and still other places are covered in slippery rock. It seems the whole island is made for breaking ankles. And then there’s those huge dropoffs, cliffs, deep chasms and caves, massive seas crashing around everywhere throwing spray 30 feet in the air….basically everything you’re there to see. Check out these videos of us pushing the limits or being just plain stupid. Whichever, it was an adrenaline rush. The rock Allan and I were standing on was actually moving with the power of the waves coming in!

    **video will be inserted here** whenever I come to the realization that, yes, sometimes you have to pay for internet and I realize that internet is slow as crap here and I just have to be patient!

    5) Vaikona Cave. This place is wild and dangerous and scary and it’s almost ridiculous they allow people to explore on their own. That being said, I loved every minute of it. I’d do it again in a hot minute.

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    6) Even though we don’t have a dinghy at the moment and didn’t have to deal with it, you gotta love a place where the only dock in the only “safe harbor” on the island has a crane to lift your dinghy out of the water so it doesn’t get destroyed on rocks in the swell.

    7) Sea Snakes. I saw them on a dive I did with Seth and Elizabeth from Honeymoon and I saw them on the surface but one morning when I answered a call from a neighbor boat looking for a diver to untangle their anchor from the rocks I saw way too many of them. They are funky and weird and venomous as hell (harmless to humans because their mouths are too small) and Niue was my first time being in the water with them. One more wild thing to experience.

    So there you are. The wildest place I’ve ever been. Looking back on the last month, we’ve had crap weather and lost the dinghy but I still can’t complain. Somebody sent us an email saying we should put a donation tab on the site to try and recoup some money for what the dinghy mishap might cost. I considered it for a moment and thought about how much it ticks me off when cruisers or travelers ask for donations on their blogs. Margie reminded me of how f-ed up I thought it was that a certain cruiser was (and still is) bumming money off Latitude 38 readers and they keep on giving it to her. If you don’t have enough to be out here and pay for your lifestyle and your repairs and your f-ups, you shouldn’t be here. Don’t give me money to perpetuate my dream while putting yours off. So Get Lost On Purpose shall remain free of that crap. After all, I’m out here on a sailboat in the South-freaking-Pacific. What could I possibly have to complain about?

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  • Rollin on the Rock – Niue Style

    The mooring field here in Niue has turned rolly. The swell is coming around the northern point and we’ve been miserably rolling all around as monohulls do when they sit side to the seas. It’s uncomfortable but livable. We enjoy getting off the boat whenever possible but, of course, without a dinghy, we’re at the disposal of others. It’s not been a huge problem though. After a great dinner aboard Follow You, Follow Me with Allan and Rina the other night they offered up their dinghy as a loaner while they took a night in one of the local hotels. It was super nice of them and gave us a chance to get some shopping done without the worry of overloading some poor guy who offered us a ride but didn’t really have the space! We spent a good bit of time the last two days on the internet posting pics on the blog, figuring out what’s going on in the world, and studying New Zealand in hopes of finalizing a place to stay. I also filled the propane tank. I say I filled it cause this time I actually did. I’m mentioned the problems I’ve had finding places to fill my “California special danger tank” since we left the states. So far no problems in Jamaica, Panama, and Tahiti but in Ecuador there was no place in the county to have it filled so I had a small adapter made to gravity fill the tank. So I spent a couple of hours Wednesday standing in the backyard of a hardware store figuring out how to gravity fill an empty propane tank from a full one without blowing myself up. Now that I know the secret, it’s freaking easy!

    Niue is an interesting place. There are abandoned houses everywhere. Much of the population up and moved to New Zealand so there’s barely a 1000 people left on the island. In 2004 a cyclone devastated the northern, western, and southern sides. Ninety foot high waves washed over the island taking houses and all the vegetation with it. Somehow only two lives were lost. A lot of Niueans decided at that point to give up and leave. Rebuilding was just too hard. The people still seem happy and everyone is ridiculously friendly but in my mind there’s an underlying feeling that something is missing. It’s like that storm took away a large part of the island’s spirit. It’s such a unique place I hope to see it grow again. It’ll be interesting to watch its progress and stop back through here next time we sail this part of the world.

    We had a potluck gathering at the yacht club on Thursday. Margie made her super dip which is always a huge hit and disappears faster than anything else. Tim and Ruth on Victory Cat had tons of Spear Fish and Wahoo they grilled up. Someone made a birthday cake and even though I sang, I couldn’t tell you who’s birthday it was. I always love having Margie along on the gatherings. She doesn’t know a lot about boats or sailing but she’s such a conversational powerhouse, she steers discussions right away from broken watermakers and low pressure systems to family left behind, boat fashion, and Hollywood gossip. She’ll bring even the hardiest of sailor down into a discussion of why she’s a better match for Tom Brady than Giselle.

    With the loss of the dinghy and the unknown amount of money it’ll cost, we are looking into ways of saving money in the next few months. I think we’ll end up storing Dosia on some sort of a mooring in NZ while we travel home for the holidays. It’s up to $200 cheaper than a dock slip although it’s hours farther from the airport. It seems I made the mistake of buying a nonrefundable plane ticket or I, myself, would be staying in NZ for the holidays. Candidly, I’m still thinking of skipping the trip since it’s not necessarily the ticket cost but the cost of living during that month at home that kills me. Guess we’ll see how that one works out. We are, however, in negotiations on a dinghy and could have a possible replacement lined up. Fingers crossed.

    Well, today’s biking excursion appears to be canceled by the grey and raining skies. Maybe tomorrow. We plan to leave on Tuesday for Tonga since the sail westward is only 240 miles but takes 3 days since we cross the international date line and skip an entire day! From that point on, we will be one day ahead of everyone back in the states instead of hours behind! Seth and Elizabeth’s joint birthday bash on Honeymoon is this Saturday and we wouldn’t miss it for the world! Plus our friends on Zen, Karma, and Flashback should all be arriving there soon.

    Stay tuned for some interesting blog posts concerning the future of this trip and our plans. Wallets are emptying, clocks are ticking, and things are starting to take shape for a potential end and/or long hiatus in our journey. I wish it could last forever but alas, all good things…..you know the rest.

  • R.I.P. Dinghy

    —–Ahhh…Beveridge Reef, what an unkind animal you can be. We sit here on your sandy shelf and wait and wait for good weather to explore your outer reefs, inner lagoon, and your mysterious windward shipwreck. When finally a day comes, we join our neighbors for a day of spear fishing and collect your bounty as though it were our own. Grouper, Jack, Parrotfish…all relinquish themselves to the spear tip. Though we look carefully, you hide your lobsters and leave us with only molted shells. “Tis the Season” I guess, but the fishing is good. Blood gathers in the dinghy and the surrounding waters and you send your sharks to fend us off. Whitetips, no problem, but when your rally your Grey Reef sharks, we retreat and head home, taking with us pounds of fish for untold meals to come. We plan our first feast that evening aboard the good-ship Brick House, a Valiant 40 from Rhode Island. We gather and socialize while the wind outside rises, the anchor lines stretch. A shot of fine Italian Amaretto begins the meal. We sit. And then you knock us down.
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    It was two hours before Patrick climbed up into the cockpit to check on things. Our dinghy was gone. A miscommunication, a mistied cleat, it’s not really important. Patrick took off in their dinghy for the mile and a half trip across the lagoon to search the other side. Even with a full moon, a good light, a night vision scope, and two hours of searching…no luck. My Caribe dinghy and Nissan outboard, together one of the most expensive pieces of equipment on the boat, were gone. Either it hit the reef, flipped, and got smashed to bits or it cruised right out the pass and is halfway to southern Tonga. We thought about leaving immediately, in the darkness, to try and catch up to it, but what if it really was on the reef and this isn’t exactly a friendly place to come and go in the night. What if we passed it in the night? We looked at the situation again the next morning. A small windshift, a twelve hour headstart, a dead downwind sail, an approaching low pressure system…what were the actual chances of finding it? Patrick reexamined the reef taking into account the angle of the wind and current and surmised it most likely hit some breakers and flipped. An APB went out on all the nets for boats in the vicinity to keep an eye out. The government of Niue and the entire anchorage Alofi was notified since it could float in that direction if it did make it out of the lagoon. After a brief period of mourning, Marge and I could do nothing but pick our heads up and start searching for a replacement. Patrick and Rebecca have agreed to alter their plans as needed to help us find another one. They feel awful about it and though it’s frustrating as hell, it was an honest mistake and could happen to anyone. Right now, it sounds as though the Moorings base in Vava’u Tonga may be our best bet. I’m hoping Zen and Flashback who are only a week or two away from there can send out some feelers and make some connections. The last thing we want to do is spend weeks waiting anywhere for a shipment from the states. Thankfully a few boats have offered up loaners as well.

    Other than that, we’re still here in Beveridge. There a small system passing over us today and tomorrow and we’re heading to Niue on Monday. We went spearfishing on the outside of the reef again yesterday. My feet are so blistered and raw from hours in my fins I duct-taped the balls of my feet and put on some socks. The sharks got a lot more curious. They’d swim right up to me near the surface, even if I was hanging on the side of the dinghy. A quick glancing blow with the spear gun sent them running. We finally gave in and let them have the reef. We weren’t doing so well anyways with only two groupers (one large and one small) for the day. Not that we didn’t try. Patrick and I spent hours in the water chasing groupers and parrots through the ravines and caverns of the reef. We dropped the carcass of a huge grouper to the bottom. The Grey Reef Sharks and huge snapper fought it out for the remains while we hid off to the side and watched. I wish one of those snapper would let me get close enough to shoot it. Another boat, Peter and Nikki on Bagheera arrived this morning and we all moved to the northwestern side of the lagoon in anticipation of a windshift. So far it’s the prettiest day we’ve had since arriving. In a half hour or so I’m putting my wetsuit on Margie and we’re heading out to snorkel the inside of the reef. It’s nice to be outside enjoying this place finally. Even though there’s a black cloud hanging over us from the loss of the dinghy, we’re doing our best to soak up the rays and go to sleep happy. I’m hopeful it’ll all work out in the end.