Monday, October 14, 2019

Tenia Islet, and a fright when snorkelling..

[Kyle]There were a few days of northwest winds in the forecast ahead. Before they started, we cut our trip to Ndo short and pushed further northwest in the last of the southeast trades. Then we would hopefully get a following wind most of the way back to Noumea.

Tenia Island sits just inside yet another pass, St. Vincent Pass, at the far north end of the main lagoon. Then there’s a gap where it’s necessary to go out into the deep ocean before arriving at the next lagoon. That next lagoon sounds interesting, but was a bit too far for us to get to in the time that we had, so we decided to make Tenia the furthest we got on that side of the city.

Since we were on a mooring in the back at Ndo Island, it was easy for us to untie and let the wind push us away under bare poles into deeper water. As we drifted slowly, we had plenty of time to set up the spinnaker for the easy downwind run to Tenia. Once it was flying, we shot away and within half an hour, the mooring field behind us had disappeared over the horizon.


Sailing towards Tenia

Tenia had all sorts of glowing things written about it in various guide books and blogs. Most talked about the amazing snorkeling there amongst colorful coral gardens. Tenia was also reputed to have turtles, a resident pod of dolphins, frequent hammerhead sharks and even the occasional dugong. We were really looking forward to it.

As it was the weekend, we arrived to find the island occupied with campers who had arrived on runabouts. Since we were relatively far from the city and since the actual anchorage is quite big, the festivities seemed much more spread out and sedate than back at Ndo. There was one other catamaran in the anchorage. We anchored a reasonable distance away – close enough to wave hi, but far enough to not be looking in. When I tried the former several times, I got blank stares, so I decided I was happy to have them “over there”.


Sunsets at anchor - always an excuse to hang out in the cockpit

In the morning, we were up early. The forecast was for no wind until noon, then it was supposed to blow like hell. We wanted to get in our snorkel at slack water and with the benefit that it was calm and the water wasn’t churned up. We were initially disappointed to find the usual half good, half dead coral occupied by the usual assortment of fishes. We decided to head further away from the island toward the inside of the reef hoping that things would liven up a little as they often do when getting away from spots that have been over loved, so to speak.


Snorkelling was OK

Things did start to get a little more colorful farther out. I had really been hoping to see hammerheads, as I have never seen one up close, but there were none to be found. {Maryanne: We were just planning a snorkel within the lagoon (not at the pass itself where we'd probably have a better chance of sighting hammerheads).}

After a while, I started noticing we were being set to one side by a pretty strong current. A little further on as the water shallowed near the reef, it seemed to be getting stronger and turning to take us over the reef. The tide was falling and I was worried the current would speed up more, so I tugged on Maryanne to get her to stop and then suggested we give up and go back to the island. She agreed.

We reversed course, but found we were still going in the same direction, only a little slower. We kicked harder and almost, but not quite, stopped. This is where things instantly became much more serious. I abandoned “sightseeing mode” and switched to a full arms-and-legs push at the highest pace I figured I could manage for ten minutes straight. After that, I planned to count on adrenaline to extend my ten minutes.

At that pace, I was barely able to creep forward, but just barely. Maryanne was also creeping forward slowly, but falling behind me through the water. I slowed down, so as not to lose sight of her, but then we both had basically stopped. Then I looked back and saw her stopped. She was being swept over the reef out to sea. Like me, she had also gone into a high speed swim, only she had been basically sprinting. She was now totally knackered and had stopped to catch her breath. {Maryanne: my legs are shorter than Kyle's, and my fins too, he had a definite advantage; it seemed no matter how much I kicked I was not making any progress and still being sucked backwards and at risk of being pulled over the reef and out to sea}

I then had to do that thing you see sometimes in the movies where one of the characters has to be really mean to another character they care about for their own good. “What the hell is wrong with you?”, I screamed. “Swim, goddammit!!” She then put her head down and pushed hard alongside me.

After a while, she stopped again and we did another version of our previous interchange. She kept saying she couldn’t go on and that I would have to come and get her in Begonia. That wasn’t going to happen because I was by no means certain that I was even going to get out of this pickle myself. Even if I did, it would take me hours to the dinghy and then to Begonia and then to get Begonia outside of the pass where I could start searching. There would only be about three hours of sunlight in which to do it. Nobody would ever see her again. If she wasn’t going to make it, I was going to have to stay with her to increase the chances that we would both be spotted. Those odds were barely better than Maryanne being out there alone. By far, our best option was to keep swimming.

I grabbed her by one arm and started towing her. That didn’t work because we were each down one swimming arm and were now definitely losing ground. I let go of her so I could have my arm back. We both started swimming as hard as we could.

We were now in the surf zone. As the waves crashed over us, they threw us forward about three meters before the current dragged us backward another two. I made the mistake of looking over my shoulder to see that we were swimming through some very big, scary surf. We couldn’t worry about that now. The important thing is that we were moving forward. A wave would hit us, everything would disappear in a cloud of aerated water, and when it cleared, we would be just a little forward of the spot where everything had disappeared.

After what must have been twenty minutes of this, the water deepened slightly, the waves subsided, and our forward progress improved. We both backed off the intensity until we were just creeping forward, which gradually allowed us to catch our breaths. After a while, we were able to swim at our normal snorkeling pace again. We quickly fell back into the habit of slowing down at bommies and pointing out interesting things to each other. It was silly, but psychologically, I think we needed to move away from the panic into something that felt more normal to us.

We were still being swept past Tenia Island faster than we could overcome, so we swam sideways to the current and decided to settle for a landing anywhere downwind of the dinghy we could manage. Our wetsuits flopped onto the beach as if we weren’t still inside of them. We were a lot more tired than we had thought. Fighting gravity to stand upright had to be done in stages and with help from each other.

Since we were safely on dry land, we decided we might as well walk back to the dinghy the long way around the island. The sand was blinding white. We watched fish in the shallows flee from black-tipped sharks and generally enjoyed being able to amble along the beach back to the dinghy, followed by a sedate row home, where the whole day had started. Whew!


Once back on land - we took a long walk around the island to calm ourselves down and go back to enjoying the views

2 comments:

Mommy Carla said...

What is your mother to say after reading how you were both almost lost at sea? I had keep reminding myself that you must be alright in order to write and post the blog. How utterly frightening an experience for you. Terrifying. Was there a time when you just collapsed into the exhaustion you both must have been experiencing?
So glad you were okay, but sheesh...scary!

Mommy Carla said...

Such a frightening thing to have happen. So pleased you are both ok and living to tell about it, but whew...you must have been totally exhausted.