Nov 2012 TONGA TO OPUA & HOME !!

November 2012

Weather Watch in Vavau

For the first two weeks of November in Vavau we are looking at the weather systems roaring across the Great Australian Bight into the Tasman and onto New Zealand,  because this is where the weather that affects the South West Pacific originates.   We are specifically looking at the volatility and intensity of the spring equinox gales that should start decreasing over southern latitudes from mid November so we can commence our passage south to make landfall in Opua. 
  

Sadist Sailors we are not.  If we can use technology and weather predictive software to our advantage we will, because getting there in safety, comfort and in one piece without outside assistance is half the fun for us. 

At this time of the year there are literally hundreds of yachts from round the world either currently on the water en route to New Zealand or in the starting blocks in Tonga, Fiji and New Caledonia assessing weather data and sharing their thoughts on the 1000 mile nowhere to hide open ocean passage south, with a reputation for ever linked to the Queen’s Birthday.  Irrespective these cruisers have selected New Zealand over summer as the place to avoid the cyclone season in the Pacific as they split time and budget between working on their boats and sailing or driving the length and breadth of the country, before they start heading back up to the Pacific islands in April to continue their mostly westward cruising around the planet.

In Tonga, Fiji and New Cal pre-departure inter-vessel communication is mostly in group huddles in the waterfront bars and cafes or literally in the public domain over the VHF and SSB Radio frequencies and it’s the ultimate in live reality entertainment going.   The same weather broadcast can be interpreted in dozens of ways by dozens of different cruisers with the resulting misinterpretation becoming misinformation in short order.  Cruisers are prone to act like reef fish swimming every which way depending on who has the gift of the gab on the airwaves.  Well that’s how it sounds to us.  We feel it’s more ‘Caveat Emptor’ let the sailor beware; select your weather source, make your own call and stand by it until further updated information is available for analysis and interpretation. 

Compared with just five years back there are countless weather prediction websites, software programmes, professional weather routers, government agencies, satellite system providers, weather fax, pactor modem and good old radio operators out there vying for business.  Some are free and others only a credit card or PayPal debit away.   Either way the cruisers challenge is to find the most user friendly and lowest bandwidth method for downloading data whilst at sea.

Notwithstanding the humour generated listening to the cruisers, the reports of Hurricane Sandy pushing 14ft tidal surges into New York harbor and downtown Manhattan this week confirms the importance of heeding weather warnings and getting interpretation correct.

Underway

Finally we decide the time is right to up anchor so we visit the authorities to clear out of Vavau for Opua, top up the fuel tanks with duty free diesel and head to Port Maurelle our favorite anchorage at the western end of the island where we can operate the watermaker, scrub the hull and have our last swims in the tropics in crystal clear waters.  There are a dozen yachts in the anchorage all with the same plan prepping to sail for either  Opua, Whangarei, Auckland, Tauranga or Nelson.

Pic 1 At anchor Port Maurelle

False Start

Sitting at Port Maurelle we learn of a possible cyclone, maybe the first of the season developing north of Vanuatu which looks like it may track southeast over Fiji, Tonga and then toward NZ over the course we are planning to take to Opua so we defer our departure and return to Vavau to anchor in the shelter of the landlocked lagoon and clear back into the country until the system passes.   A small number of other cruisers surprisingly make the decision to press on from Port Maurelle and sail south to NZ with dire consequences in one case, for a yacht named “Windigo”.

Meanwhile back in Vavau waiting for the next Weather Window

Sitting back in Vavau waiting for the cyclone to materialize all we got was a bit of rain and a few hours of 20+ knot winds with the worst passing to the west on a southerly course to affect the yachts en route to NZ many of which either weathered it in Nukualofa or at Minerva Reef or toughed it out at sea. 

SSB Radio listeners soon picked up on the aforementioned “Windigo” rescue unfolding and were counting themselves lucky they were not out there.  

Meantime the local Vavau Radio VHF  airwaves were alive with amateur weather forecasters to entertain us with their take on the weather until news of local intrigue took precedence.  A yacht was reported high and dry on the reef to the south east of Vavau and all cruisers were asked to refrain from going out to look or help as it was a police matter, but they asked if any cruisers knew of any small white stock European yacht overdue from crossing the Pacific this season.   This got the cruiser net gassing and it was subsequently announced that there was a body in the cockpit but no other details were being released at this stage.  All and sundry cruisers were trying to recall who it might be because in the course of sailing across the Pacific you tend to recognize yachts from different ports of call.

Being a single male in a small white yacht we immediately thought of an elderly Kiwi gent from Tauranga we had met in Panama who had not responded to an email we sent him from Tahiti.  So P trundled up to the Police Station to ask if it was this particular yacht.  Instead of being helpful the police sort of interrogated him without answering his request and simply asked that he leave his mobile phone number and he left rather confused with the police informing they would be in touch.    Later the same day on checking out for the second and final time as the weather was now coming right we asked the Customs officials about the yacht on the reef and they had no trouble advising us it was definitely not our friend.  Phew what a relief!!

To add to the intrigue, we later heard the boat on the reef was loaded with illicit drugs and the subject of a major trans-national border control collaboration that was tracking the yacht across the Pacific from South America enroute to Australia, until it came to grief on the reef.  

Off Again

So off we go again from Vavau out to the Port Maurelle anchorage, where we wait for another few days until the swell left from the passing weather dies down. When we finally get out its still rough and blowing 15/20 knots so we tuck in a reef to power through it sailing for 6 hours at 8knots but then the primary GPS that drives the main navigation system fails and we have to connect a backup system via a laptop chart system, which is ok but not really satisfactory.  To fix the problem we  decide to stop the night in an anchorage at Nomuka -Iti  in the Hapaai’s, where we had previously stopped back in 2007.  

B to her credit remembered reading something about this problem and hunted out some notes.  Turns out the GPS aerial has a small miniature battery that speeds up satellite acquisition and if this battery fails the system simply needs to be turned off and rebooted to acquire in a slower manner.  That’s all it took so we stayed the night had a good sleep and did not subsequently turn the system off again until we reached Opua.

Pic 2 Sailing Pic Departing Vavau,   Pic 3 At Anchor Nomuka-iti

From the Hapaii’s we sailed south for 36 hours to spend a night at anchor inside Minerva Reef North which is a strange experience literally at anchor inside a low near round reef about a mile in circumference in the middle of the ocean sheltered from the ocean swells outside.

Pic 4 Minerva Reef

The 5 day sail from Minerva to landfall at midnight off Cape Brett and subsequent berthing on the Quarantine Dock at Opua at 3am was the end of an uneventful often calm but at times a typically gutsy sail particularly as we neared the NZ coast. 

Home at Last

That’s it back at the point of departure…deal done, loop the loop, threesixzero, circled the bubble.  Time for some shut eye until the border control people wake us with the Customs Patrol reality television show people in  tow !!!   But guess what, they are not coming aboard Musketelle with their sniffer dogs because we have a certain Turkish national feline on board that will disrupt their precise sniffing role, so we get the low profile no less thorough no camera treatment by the same official who checked us out back in 2007, and that suits us and WiFi just fine.

We cannot go into the marina and are required to anchor off until the border officials can give us more information about how they are going to handle WiFi.  We anchor in clear water and are pleasantly surprised when our former yacht ‘Lion New Zealand’ aka ‘Phantom of the Straits’ that we owned for 10 years takes her mooring next to us.  Talk about 6 degrees of separation with our two Ron Holland designed babies side by side, that brought back some memories.

Pic 1 Lion NZ Opua

We are subsequently informed that WiFi is required to be quarantined aboard Musketelle at anchor either off Opua or anywhere else we nominate for six weeks until 11 January at which time she then goes ashore to a land quarantine facility at Takanini, South Auckland for 10 days before becoming eligible for liberation to terra firma NZ.   We promised her this outcome in Marmaris way back in 2009 when she said she wanted to come all the way to NZ with us.  What were we thinking, many thousands of dollars later this wild Turkish Kedi is about to become a Kiwi Kat.   Turkey to Takanini to life on the Tamaki…..what a story, we cannot wait for her book.

The Windigo Rescue Saga

The 38ft yacht “Windigo” en route from Port Maurelle to NZ is ultimately hit by the predicted heavy weather south of Minerva Reef and its crew of two knocked around in the dead of night resulting in them requesting rescue, which involved another yacht electing to sail back to assist, multiple flights by both RNZAF and New Caledonian rescue aircraft, a container ship diverting and the RNZN frigate Otago which steamed at full speed from Auckland for over 30 hours to reach the scene.   The couple were initially rescued by the container ship and then transferred to the frigate Otago for return to Auckland.  Clinically efficient and on the surface a credit to all concerned in rescuing a couple in distress on the high seas.

But maybe not……

The decision to proceed with the rescue was no doubt predicated on the initial call for assistance from Windigo which may have been premature but that is the role of professional rescue experts to ascertain before setting the full rescue mission in motion.  Subsequently watching television footage of the rescued couple merrily disembarking RNZN Otago in Auckland and looking at other media reports had some cruisers obviously concerned that this very costly rescue effort was maybe due to misjudgment and misinformation by the crew of Windigo.  Worse the decision by the rescue co-ordinators to allow the yacht to be left drifting as a hazard to other vessels in the knowledge that tens of cruisers would be sailing from Tonga and Fiji through the same waters in the weeks following, never mind its fate beyond.   Apparently the rescued couple naively harbored plans to reunite themselves with the yacht at a later time, so they requested the yacht not be scuttled and the rescue authorities obliged!!! 

Musketelle on the last leg of her circumnavigation was one of those following yachts and we were not impressed with the lack of knowledge and whereabouts of Windigo, with Taupo Maritime Radio requesting details of any sighting position to be reported.  Not at all comforting.  

We departed Vavau, Tonga with the yacht ‘Follow Me’ and indeed this yacht became entangled with one of the liferafts dropped by the RNZAF Orion, and after diving over to cut away the tangle then knifed and sank the liferaft on instructions of NZ authorities.  It could have easily been Windigo that ‘Follow Me’ or any number of us could have collided with possibly requiring another rescue, so ‘Follow Me’ decided to guesstimate the drift factors then went looking for Windigo, successfully sighting her happily drifting on her waterline with sails neatly furled and after 5 days the diesel engine still idling away.  This was not a disabled yacht.  

The fact is Windigo was knowingly sailed into the path of a possible cyclone resulting in a no doubt bad but not life threatening experience for its crew but also a costly multi craft rescue effort that was probably not necessary.   There were numerous yachts in the greater area of water en route to NZ at the time Windigo called for assistance, most of which had departed before the cyclones path was accurately predicted and they all got through the same weather system and seas with known discomfort and tension associated with open ocean passage making, with individuals on other yachts also getting physically knocked around.   

NZ registered yachts departing NZ are required to comply with the at times contentious safety requirements of ‘Section 21’ which involves costly safety and communications equipment with an emphasis on accessing weather reports.   Incredibly during our six years circumnavigating we regularly listened to some cruisers lacking the most basic adequate equipment instead relying on other cruisers for relaying weather forecasts and conditions, which is the equivalent of nautical Russian Roulette that relies on others covering the cost of mopping up the collateral damage.   The cost of an SSB Radio is often sighted as the reason for inability to source weather at sea but in recent years the more reliable alternative, the SatPhone has brought the cost down markedly. Unfortunately many yachts that have satellite phones hold them exclusively for that last resort emergency call without researching the options to source and download compressed weather data in all its various on-screen formats.  

For the hundreds of ocean cruisers sailing the planet that go out of their way to dig deep to fund training and maintain the systems and safety equipment required to survive at sea this sort of high profile rescue might make for good social media footage but that’s all.  Notwithstanding any sailor wants to be caught out and be hit by heavy weather there is an absolute necessity to plan for the worst, have storm sails and contingency plans to ride weather out.  There are today countless weather prediction programmes freely available at little or no cost to avoid and minimize weather impact so it is not unusual to meet cruisers who circumnavigate without ever unfurling their storm sails.

Windigo was a retired charter yacht from the Caribbean being repositioned to NZ by its owner to be imported on arrival and such vessels are renowned for being built for purpose and minimally equipped for off shore sailing.   Adding solar panels, a wind generator and a satphone as a last resort backup for emergency calls do not make a bluewater cruising yacht.  Ironically if Windigo was to have reached NZ safely and then been used to depart offshore again as an NZ vessel she and her crew would be required to meet the onerous Section 21 safety and training requirements alluded to. 

Making that emergency call was an easy get out of jail for the Windigo crew,  but the ramifications are far reaching,  not to mention in this case a major financial loss to her owners with the yacht at last reports still drifting out there as a major hazard to other mariners.

Little wonder this rescue is being thoroughly analysed because to the genuine cruising sailor the Windigo saga grates as it impacts negatively on cruisers, and the reality is this weather system was not much more than a gale.