Pounded 2014 Crash. A wave slammed into GANNET, my ultra-light Moore 24, and swept the deck from bow to stern. Now that I had removed Velcro that was inadvertently blocking drain channels on either side of the companionway hatch less water came below and most of that through the aft end of the hatch where to provide ventilation I had not inserted the slat. Two waves later the little sloop become airborne. I had known that 20 to 25 knots from ahead would turn GANNET into a submarine. I had not realized that she would also become a glider. Short flights. Crash landings. GANNET’s interior magnifies sound. It was like being inside a drum beaten by a madman. I did not see how she could survive. How any boat could. ——— I have never much believed in weather windows. I don’t want to leave with a bad forecast, but I have observed that you never get any closer to your destination if you remain tied to the dock. I have deliberately left in a gale when the wind was likely to remain under forty knots and behind me. That on my last two boats, 36’ RESURGAM and 37’ THE HAWKE OF TUONELA, was just good sailing. However this time I did sail for Vavau, Tonga, from Apia, Samoa, in a ‘weather window’. Three other boats left too. We were all deceived. Twenty to twenty-five knots between Samoa and Tonga was forecast to decrease to fifteen. Except it didn’t. The passage started well enough. I sailed GANNET from the dock at the Apia Marina under mainsail in the first breath of breeze. No need to fit and then remove the Torqeedo outboard from the transom. Out in the harbor I engaged the tiller pilot while I brought in and stowed dock lines and fenders, then unfurled the jib and took the tiller myself to sail out the pass. In the ocean I engaged the tiller pilot again. When I left San Diego two months and almost five thousand miles earlier, I had four working tiller pilots on board. Now I had two. The morning was sunny and pleasant. We were on the lee side of Upolu, broad reaching to clear reefs that extend far offshore, heading west for almost thirty miles to the end of the island before making the turn south for three hundred miles to Vavau. I looked up and found that the masthead Windex that was functioning properly at the dock was stuck again and went below and cut two pieces of red yarn that I tied to the shrouds as tell tails. I had sailed from Apia to Tonga once before, and in mid-afternoon reefed the mainsail in preparation the wall of wind I remembered accelerating around the west end of Upolu. But I didn’t expect chaos. Strong gusts of wind. No wind. Jagged black waves leaping up from all directions as if in overfalls where seas of unequal height meet. The tiller pilot couldn’t handle it, so in full foul weather gear, I took the tiller myself. Self-steering devices can only react. Sailors can anticipate. As we entered the open ocean and were exposed to the full force of the wind conditions were as bad as I expected. GANNET close-hauled on port tack against twenty-five knots of wind, gusting a bit higher. Steep eight to ten foot waves close together. GANNET’s first reef is at the normal second reef level. So under double reefed mainsail alone she settled on 201° true. I hoped that as we moved away from the islands the wind and waves would decrease. They didn’t. I had forgotten to remove the American flag from the backstay. It was fluttering wildly, but to try to remove it now was far too dangerous. Automatically I glanced up at the masthead. The pounding had shaken the Windex free. An hour later, just before 6:00 p.m. sunset, our speed had dropped to 3 knots, so I put on foul weather gear, opened the companionway, and unfurled a t-shirt of jib, which brought us back to 4.5 to 5 knots and the start of a horrible night. The sky was smoke. The sea pewter. I tried to sleep, but know I didn’t until at least 4 a.m. Just before midnight wind accompanying a brief burst of heavy rain rounded us up and the off course alarm went off. I got up and furled the small amount of jib. GANNET continued under reefed main alone, leaping off waves and landing with terrible thuds. I lay on the port pipe berth, the one to windward so water coming through the companionway fell away from me, until at 4 a.m. two especially shuddering landings caused me to get up, put on foul weather gear and headlamp and go up and tie in GANNET’s second reef which is at third reef level. I had never used that reef before. It helped. Returning below, I took off the foul wether gear and sat in total darkness at Central, what I call my usual location facing aft on a SportASeat on the cabin floor against the main bulkhead. I drank a box of apple juice and fell asleep sitting up. During the night something started to groan. At first I thought it was the rudder and with daylight crawled aft on the pipe berth and found that it wasn’t. Eventually, amidst all the other noise, I determined that it was coming from the starboard bulkheads. There were no cracks. They appeared secure, if unhappy. With first light I could also see that GANNET was hobby horsing up and down and going no where. I went to the companionway and set a tiny amount of jib. GANNET resumed clawing her way toward Tonga at 4 to 5 knots. Usually I write my passage log in my laptop. On this passage I never risked removing it from its waterproof Pelican case and wrote by pencil in a water resistant notebook, At 8:45 GANNET’s motion eased dramatically. A glance at the cabin compass showed why: we had fallen off to 270°. A climb on deck revealed that the tiller pilot had died. I was not surprised in those conditions. Raymarine 1 had given me perhaps false optimism by lasting 4,000 miles. No. 2 had inexplicably died in moderate conditions after less than 24 hours. This one, No. 3 had lasted almost a thousand miles. I now had only the old Autohelm that came with the boat and decided to save it. I turned GANNET back on course, almost close-hauled, balanced the sails and tied down the tiller. In those conditions and small sail area I noted that she had a slight lee helm. She held course. Down below I opened the tiller pilot housing. There was not a lot of water inside. I removed that with a paper towel and a Q-tip. Closed it. Took it on deck. Hooked it up. Nothing. I also tested the Autohelm, which I hadn’t tried to use for three years, and it worked. I took it back down below with me and left GANNET to sail herself. Despite the wind, the day became sunny and hot. Around noon I considered setting a bit more jib. A crash changed my mind. But conditions were slightly improving. After a protein bar lunch I fell asleep sitting up and woke to find wind of less than twenty knots. I unfurled more jib and adjusted the tiller line. GANNET began finding smooth patches and accelerating to 6 or 7 knots before bashing into or leaping off a wave and stalling to 3. By late afternoon the wind was the forecast 15 knots. GANNET was still taking a lot of water over the bow, but it wasn’t blowing all the way aft, so I set the Autohelm to steer for the night. A change in wind speed or direction would throw the tied down tiller steering off and I needed sleep. The Autohelm is noisier than the Raymarine. A low moan. I hoped it was also more waterproof. Whatever was groaning around the bulkheads had stopped. I’ve seen it happen so often before: what was so hard becomes with a change in wind force or direction so easy. GANNET was sailing smoothly through reduced waves two and three knots faster than when she was smashing into them. The night couldn’t have been in greater contrast to the night before. Wind moderate. Seas low. Little angle of heel. I slept soundly until two hours before dawn when the wind began to increase. Timing, if not everything, is a lot. I went on deck at first light, disengaged the Autohelm, tied down the tiller again, and furled some more of the jib. By mid-morning the wind was back above 20 knots. GANNET was heeled 30° and leaping off waves. I don’t like 30°, but I had reduced the jib to a tiny scrap and there was nothing more I could do. We had 120 miles to go. I really wanted this to be an easy day. It wasn’t going to happen. A wave crashed into GANNET’s side. Not even a very big one. Thunderous. I opened the companionway—foul weather gear a given—and furled the scrap of jib. GANNET stopped moving forward and yo-yoed up and down. I eased a few feet of jib out. She started making her way forward. Leaping and pounding. Waves smashing. Incessant noise. We just have to get through this day and night, I told myself. In early afternoon I went on deck and tied loops to the tiller and positioned blocks for sheet to tiller self-steering in case the wind shifted. Tying the tiller down only works close-hauled or on a very close-reach. And while I prefer to steer an accurate compass course approaching landfall, it was far too wet to risk the Autohelm. As we staggered on under solid low overcast, I diverted my mind from bedlam with an early gin and tonic and working a jigsaw puzzle of a drawing of San Francisco on the iPad mini. With GANNET continuing to leap off waves—and if we were to make any progress, she must—I knew I wouldn’t get much sleep that night. There are times when I have figuratively said to the ocean, “All right, then, bring it on.” And to my boat, “I’ve eased your way as much as I can, but now you are just going to have to take it and hold together.” Thus far they have. But these landings were wrenching. My left shoulder ached. Facing aft wedged into Central with flotation cushions, heeled so far to starboard, my weight was on that shoulder. At an unseen sunset, hidden by total cloud cover, we had 80 miles to go. For once without foul weather gear I opened the companionway to reach out and bring the mast-mounted Velocitek below to change batteries. Two waves leapt on me. Shorts and t-shirt soaked and changed. A fierce night. Again with little sleep. I went to my berth early, but got up at 9:30 and finished reading Ralph Ellison’s INVISIBLE MAN. Then back to the pipe berth where I maybe got a little sleep after 2 a.m. At dawn Vavau Island was visible nine miles ahead. A darker gray shadow against gray sky and sea. The north and west coasts of the island are sheer 500’ cliffs. My foul weather pants had been thrown from where I stow them between the pipe berths to beneath the companionway during the night and were wet inside. I put them on anyway rather than dig out the other pair. As we neared the passage into the islands, the wind began to be affected by the land, gusting and dying. But the passage itself opens to the southeast, directly to windward. I steered as we tacked up it. Using the tiller extension from the forward end of the cockpit where I could reach the jib sheets to tack, then back to the tiller. Twenty-five knot gusts buried GANNET’s lee rail. But the waves were only 1’-2’ and we powered through them at 7 and 8 knots rather than leapt. Off one of the small islands in the passage there were three power boats near what I first thought were exposed rocks before one of them spouted and I realized they were whales. The power boats followed the whales. I did not. After beating up the first passage, I was able to turn northeast up better sheltered water for the final three miles and engaged the Autohelm. With it steering I fit the outboard bracket and Torqeedo, lowered and furled the main, prepared dock lines and fenders, and called Neiafu Port Control on my handheld VHF with no response. GANNET sailed the last mile at six knots under full jib across smooth water. It was wonderful. As we neared the narrow entrance into almost land-locked Neiafu, the wind headed us. I started the Torqeedo fifty yards off the first channel buoy and furled the jib. When we turned into the harbor, the wind jumped in force and I had to give the Torqeedo more RPMs than usual. There are two wharfs at Neiafu. Yachts are advised to tie up to the smaller fishing wharf rather than the larger commercial one. But even the fishing wharf is beyond GANNET. Two big catamarans were tied to the fishing wharf on either side of a local fishing boat. Men waved me to tie to the fishing boat. I came alongside and handed them my lines.

Pounded

2014

Crash.

A wave slammed into GANNET, my ultra-light Moore 24, and swept the deck from bow to stern. Now that I had removed Velcro that was inadvertently blocking drain channels on either side of the companionway hatch less water came below and most of that through the aft end of the hatch where to provide ventilation I had not inserted the slat.

Two waves later the little sloop become airborne. I had known that 20 to 25 knots from ahead would turn GANNET into a submarine. I had not realized that she would also become a glider. Short flights. Crash landings. GANNET’s interior magnifies sound. It was like being inside a drum beaten by a madman. I did not see how she could survive. How any boat could.

———

I have never much believed in weather windows. I don’t want to leave with a bad forecast, but I have observed that you never get any closer to your destination if you remain tied to the dock. I have deliberately left in a gale when the wind was likely to remain under forty knots and behind me. That on my last two boats, 36’ RESURGAM and 37’ THE HAWKE OF TUONELA, was just good sailing. However this time I did sail for Vavau, Tonga, from Apia, Samoa, in a ‘weather window’. Three other boats left too. We were all deceived. Twenty to twenty-five knots between Samoa and Tonga was forecast to decrease to fifteen. Except it didn’t.

The passage started well enough.

I sailed GANNET from the dock at the Apia Marina under mainsail in the first breath of breeze. No need to fit and then remove the Torqeedo outboard from the transom.

Out in the harbor I engaged the tiller pilot while I brought in and stowed dock lines and fenders, then unfurled the jib and took the tiller myself to sail out the pass. In the ocean I engaged the tiller pilot again. When I left San Diego two months and almost five thousand miles earlier, I had four working tiller pilots on board. Now I had two.

The morning was sunny and pleasant. We were on the lee side of Upolu, broad reaching to clear reefs that extend far offshore, heading west for almost thirty miles to the end of the island before making the turn south for three hundred miles to Vavau. I looked up and found that the masthead Windex that was functioning properly at the dock was stuck again and went below and cut two pieces of red yarn that I tied to the shrouds as tell tails.

I had sailed from Apia to Tonga once before, and in mid-afternoon reefed the mainsail in preparation the wall of wind I remembered accelerating around the west end of Upolu. But I didn’t expect chaos. Strong gusts of wind. No wind. Jagged black waves leaping up from all directions as if in overfalls where seas of unequal height meet. The tiller pilot couldn’t handle it, so in full foul weather gear, I took the tiller myself. Self-steering devices can only react. Sailors can anticipate.

As we entered the open ocean and were exposed to the full force of the wind conditions were as bad as I expected. GANNET close-hauled on port tack against twenty-five knots of wind, gusting a bit higher. Steep eight to ten foot waves close together. GANNET’s first reef is at the normal second reef level. So under double reefed mainsail alone she settled on 201° true. I hoped that as we moved away from the islands the wind and waves would decrease. They didn’t.

I had forgotten to remove the American flag from the backstay. It was fluttering wildly, but to try to remove it now was far too dangerous.

Automatically I glanced up at the masthead. The pounding had shaken the Windex free.

An hour later, just before 6:00 p.m. sunset, our speed had dropped to 3 knots, so I put on foul weather gear, opened the companionway, and unfurled a t-shirt of jib, which brought us back to 4.5 to 5 knots and the start of a horrible night.

The sky was smoke. The sea pewter.

I tried to sleep, but know I didn’t until at least 4 a.m.

Just before midnight wind accompanying a brief burst of heavy rain rounded us up and the off course alarm went off. I got up and furled the small amount of jib. GANNET continued under reefed main alone, leaping off waves and landing with terrible thuds.

I lay on the port pipe berth, the one to windward so water coming through the companionway fell away from me, until at 4 a.m. two especially shuddering landings caused me to get up, put on foul weather gear and headlamp and go up and tie in GANNET’s second reef which is at third reef level. I had never used that reef before. It helped.

Returning below, I took off the foul wether gear and sat in total darkness at Central, what I call my usual location facing aft on a SportASeat on the cabin floor against the main bulkhead. I drank a box of apple juice and fell asleep sitting up.

During the night something started to groan. At first I thought it was the rudder and with daylight crawled aft on the pipe berth and found that it wasn’t. Eventually, amidst all the other noise, I determined that it was coming from the starboard bulkheads. There were no cracks. They appeared secure, if unhappy.

With first light I could also see that GANNET was hobby horsing up and down and going no where. I went to the companionway and set a tiny amount of jib. GANNET resumed clawing her way toward Tonga at 4 to 5 knots.

Usually I write my passage log in my laptop. On this passage I never risked removing it from its waterproof Pelican case and wrote by pencil in a water resistant notebook,

At 8:45 GANNET’s motion eased dramatically. A glance at the cabin compass showed why: we had fallen off to 270°. A climb on deck revealed that the tiller pilot had died. I was not surprised in those conditions.

Raymarine 1 had given me perhaps false optimism by lasting 4,000 miles. No. 2 had inexplicably died in moderate conditions after less than 24 hours. This one, No. 3 had lasted almost a thousand miles. I now had only the old Autohelm that came with the boat and decided to save it.

I turned GANNET back on course, almost close-hauled, balanced the sails and tied down the tiller. In those conditions and small sail area I noted that she had a slight lee helm. She held course.

Down below I opened the tiller pilot housing. There was not a lot of water inside. I removed that with a paper towel and a Q-tip. Closed it. Took it on deck. Hooked it up. Nothing. I also tested the Autohelm, which I hadn’t tried to use for three years, and it worked. I took it back down below with me and left GANNET to sail herself.

Despite the wind, the day became sunny and hot.

Around noon I considered setting a bit more jib. A crash changed my mind. But conditions were slightly improving.

After a protein bar lunch I fell asleep sitting up and woke to find wind of less than twenty knots. I unfurled more jib and adjusted the tiller line. GANNET began finding smooth patches and accelerating to 6 or 7 knots before bashing into or leaping off a wave and stalling to 3.

By late afternoon the wind was the forecast 15 knots.

GANNET was still taking a lot of water over the bow, but it wasn’t blowing all the way aft, so I set the Autohelm to steer for the night. A change in wind speed or direction would throw the tied down tiller steering off and I needed sleep.

The Autohelm is noisier than the Raymarine. A low moan. I hoped it was also more waterproof.

Whatever was groaning around the bulkheads had stopped.

I’ve seen it happen so often before: what was so hard becomes with a change in wind force or direction so easy. GANNET was sailing smoothly through reduced waves two and three knots faster than when she was smashing into them.

The night couldn’t have been in greater contrast to the night before. Wind moderate. Seas low. Little angle of heel. I slept soundly until two hours before dawn when the wind began to increase.

Timing, if not everything, is a lot.

I went on deck at first light, disengaged the Autohelm, tied down the tiller again, and furled some more of the jib.

By mid-morning the wind was back above 20 knots. GANNET was heeled 30° and leaping off waves. I don’t like 30°, but I had reduced the jib to a tiny scrap and there was nothing more I could do.

We had 120 miles to go.

I really wanted this to be an easy day.

It wasn’t going to happen.

A wave crashed into GANNET’s side. Not even a very big one. Thunderous.

I opened the companionway—foul weather gear a given—and furled the scrap of jib. GANNET stopped moving forward and yo-yoed up and down. I eased a few feet of jib out. She started making her way forward. Leaping and pounding. Waves smashing. Incessant noise. We just have to get through this day and night, I told myself.

In early afternoon I went on deck and tied loops to the tiller and positioned blocks for sheet to tiller self-steering in case the wind shifted. Tying the tiller down only works close-hauled or on a very close-reach. And while I prefer to steer an accurate compass course approaching landfall, it was far too wet to risk the Autohelm.

As we staggered on under solid low overcast, I diverted my mind from bedlam with an early gin and tonic and working a jigsaw puzzle of a drawing of San Francisco on the iPad mini.

With GANNET continuing to leap off waves—and if we were to make any progress, she must—I knew I wouldn’t get much sleep that night. There are times when I have figuratively said to the ocean, “All right, then, bring it on.” And to my boat, “I’ve eased your way as much as I can, but now you are just going to have to take it and hold together.” Thus far they have. But these landings were wrenching.

My left shoulder ached. Facing aft wedged into Central with flotation cushions, heeled so far to starboard, my weight was on that shoulder.

At an unseen sunset, hidden by total cloud cover, we had 80 miles to go. For once without foul weather gear I opened the companionway to reach out and bring the mast-mounted Velocitek below to change batteries. Two waves leapt on me. Shorts and t-shirt soaked and changed.

A fierce night.

Again with little sleep.

I went to my berth early, but got up at 9:30 and finished reading Ralph Ellison’s INVISIBLE MAN. Then back to the pipe berth where I maybe got a little sleep after 2 a.m.

At dawn Vavau Island was visible nine miles ahead. A darker gray shadow against gray sky and sea. The north and west coasts of the island are sheer 500’ cliffs.

My foul weather pants had been thrown from where I stow them between the pipe berths to beneath the companionway during the night and were wet inside. I put them on anyway rather than dig out the other pair.

As we neared the passage into the islands, the wind began to be affected by the land, gusting and dying. But the passage itself opens to the southeast, directly to windward.

I steered as we tacked up it. Using the tiller extension from the forward end of the cockpit where I could reach the jib sheets to tack, then back to the tiller. Twenty-five knot gusts buried GANNET’s lee rail. But the waves were only 1’-2’ and we powered through them at 7 and 8 knots rather than leapt.

Off one of the small islands in the passage there were three power boats near what I first thought were exposed rocks before one of them spouted and I realized they were whales. The power boats followed the whales. I did not.

After beating up the first passage, I was able to turn northeast up better sheltered water for the final three miles and engaged the Autohelm. With it steering I fit the outboard bracket and Torqeedo, lowered and furled the main, prepared dock lines and fenders, and called Neiafu Port Control on my handheld VHF with no response.

GANNET sailed the last mile at six knots under full jib across smooth water. It was wonderful.

As we neared the narrow entrance into almost land-locked Neiafu, the wind headed us. I started the Torqeedo fifty yards off the first channel buoy and furled the jib.

When we turned into the harbor, the wind jumped in force and I had to give the Torqeedo more RPMs than usual.

There are two wharfs at Neiafu. Yachts are advised to tie up to the smaller fishing wharf rather than the larger commercial one. But even the fishing wharf is beyond GANNET.

Two big catamarans were tied to the fishing wharf on either side of a local fishing boat. Men waved me to tie to the fishing boat. I came alongside and handed them my lines.