Passage to the Gambiers

[Kyle]The morning we planned to leave Pitcairn we woke early and popped our heads outside to check that Begonia and Nemo were in their same locations. Nemo was nowhere to be found. Concerned that we had either swung some unexpected direction or dragged to a new location, We went on deck and did a full 360 to see if all of our other reference points lined up. They did.

A more detailed search with binoculars revealed Nemo already most of the way to the horizon and just about to disappear behind the cliffs to our north. I guess Chris couldn’t sleep and decided to just get on with it and leave before daybreak. He does that.

Nemo and Begonia taking the same passage (Is that a Race?)

We had our anchor stowed an hour later after having breakfast and were now in hot pursuit. They had about a ten mile head start, but we can usually sail faster than monohulls even a few feet longer than us, so I figured we could catch them by afternoon. Nemo and Begonia have almost the same waterline length.

They sailed out of range of our AIS receiver and then reappeared twenty minutes later. Ten minutes after that, they disappeared again. We would get a good gust of wind, speed up and their little icon would pop up. A few minutes later, it would reach them and they would pull away again.

I tried every trick I knew for three days and we never could close the gap. Oh, if only our Secret Weapon hadn’t blown out on the way to Easter, we could have zinged right by them without having to hardly lift a finger to adjust anything. Who am I kidding? The minute they saw our spinnaker, theirs would have gone up too, and they would have remained an unapproachable purple speck on the horizon. Chris is so competitive. {Maryanne: Someone here certainly is.. Ha!}

We had to wait until daylight to enter the pass

The winds were frustratingly less than forecast and when it became apparent that neither of us would make it there by nightfall; we both slowed down and joined up for some formation heaving-to until daybreak. In the wee hours, the running calculation that’s always going in my head told me it was time to stop going sideways and start steering under bare poles to the pass. Our getaway was so slow that I don’t think our friends realized what had happened until I called them at sunrise and said, “Hey, are you guys coming or what?”

“What.”, “You go ahead. We’ll meet you inside.”

We entered the pass on the northwest side of the Gambier group. It was straightforward, apart from the part where the depth goes REALLY fast from a zillion to 5m in just a few boat lengths. The bottom is white sand with black coral heads everywhere and it just suddenly appears out of deep blue water. The water is so clear, it looks like the depths are half of what they are. It was tempting to panic and slam the boat into reverse, but we were dead center in the channel, right between the buoys, so I decided to take a deep breath, trust the chart and press on.

The depth stayed as advertised, plus or minus a meter or so as we passed over coral heads, and then dropped back down into the featureless blue of the twenties and thirties. We were in.

We followed the marked channel as it wound its way around the island of Mangareva and occasionally passed over similar shallow patches just to keep us on our toes. On the other side, we found the well-protected anchorage of the island’s only town, Rikitea.

The anchorage is protected on two sides by high land and the rest by coral reefs skimming the surface and is accessed through a very narrow and winding channel. Between the coral are three or four large patches of sand down between fifteen and twenty meters down. These depths need a lot of swinging room and as such, there was only room for about a dozen boats to anchor without risking bumping into each other. We headed over to a big open spot behind the eleventh boat and perfectly centered in it found a float for a fish trap. Grr! Now we were on anchoring plan B: Find a spot where we are not likely to bump another boat IF the wind doesn’t shift or, if it does, hope we all swing the same direction at the same time. We squeezed between the float and another boat, erring as much as we dared on the side of the float. That got us the stink-eye from our neighbor, not so much because of the small chance we would present an actual hazard to them, but because our swinging circles overlapped. In boats, the swinging circle is effectively the boundary of personal space, so we just invaded their personal space as if we had just set up a picnic on the corner of their front lawn.

An hour or so later, Nemo came in, milled around a bit and set up a picnic on our front porch. I would have complained and sent them off, but we knew full well that they had nowhere else they could go either, so we decided to keep a real close eye on the weather for any unexpected changes and hope for the best.

After my very early morning, I had expected to run out of energy as soon as the anchor dropped, but I was still going pretty strong so I tackled the job of de-lifeboating the dinghy a day earlier than planned. This left us free to go ashore and get our inbound clearance out of the way, which would remove the onerous task from the next day’s chores.

{Maryanne: We're finally back in French Polynesia and in the tropics - water to swim in, French Baguettes, and coconuts galore!}

Ashore at Pitcairn

[Kyle]The swell had died down significantly during our second night after arriving at Pitcairn Island. Still, after seeing the longboats come in the day before, both us and Nemo decided the $50 (each) fee to have a longboat skipper come out and retrieve us was preferable to risking our dinghies and our necks trying it ourselves.

Aboard Nemo were Chris and Elayne. Elayne was having some orthopedic trouble and didn’t feel up to making the big timed jump into the longboat as it came alongside Nemo, so it was just us and Chris for the day.

Arrived at Pitcairn

The local boats are stored in the boatsheds in the tiny harbour

We were met at the harbor by Charlene and a couple of others, who greeted us with hugs and placed leis made of seashells around our necks. We were then invited to hop on board their muddy quad bikes for the trip up the Hill of Difficulty to the town square for clearance, where we were met by more friendly people.

Pitcairn is a lot prettier and more lush than I expected. There were lots of flowers everywhere. The place had the atmosphere of a giant botanic garden. Still, it felt a little weird to be there. Since Pitcairn only has fifty-six residents, every last one of them is famous to anyone who has read anything about the island. The last thing we had read was Kathy Marks’ book, Paradise Lost, detailing the 2005 trials for sex crimes that seem to have been occurring for their entire history since the Bounty. We recognized the names of those who had taken sides one way or the other during the scandal and it was hard to make friendly chit chat knowing what we knew about their personal histories. Maryanne observed that nearly every woman we met with a position of power had been ones who had defended the men with the predominant ‘boys will be boys’ argument.

We met the Constable, a lovely Scottish Woman from the outer Hebrides, serving her two year term on the island. She was very forthright and open about the situation and we all agreed the best thing to come from the trials was to shine a big light on the problem and thus hopefully break the cycle. New children still aren’t allowed on the island and the three that are left are watched very closely.

First sights and scenery, along with some exposure to the Pitkern language and the bells once used to signal to the population any news (before VHF)

Once we had cleared in, Chris, Maryanne and I set to walking as much of the little island as we could for our day ashore. Pitcairn is less than two square miles, so you would think we could have made short work of it, but it is extremely rugged and it quickly became clear we would have to pick and chose what we wanted to see.

St Paul's Pool was a little rough on the day we visited, but the walk was great.
Bounty treasures are dotted everywhere (including this cannon)

We started by walking to Ha Point, where we were able to climb out onto a narrow ridge and sit upon rocks perched high above Bounty Bay, with Begonia, Nemo and the supply ship far below. Chris called Elayne on his handheld VHF and told her where we were. We all waved our arms like crazy, but Nemo was so far away, she couldn’t make us out and we couldn’t see her. Oh, well. On to the next thing, St Paul’s Pool.

It was a bit of a walk and to keep us entertained, we asked Chris what was his story.

He’s an interesting guy. He is one of those people possessed of an almost insatiable need to tinker with and modify every mechanical thing within his reach. He was constantly asking us for advice as he kept referring to himself and Elayne as “new to sailing”. “New to Sailing” in their case meant that they had ‘just’ bought their boat five years ago in France and had ‘only’ sailed it this far, across an ocean and a half. Hey, Chris, I think it has probably been safe to take off the old training wheels for a while now.

The real reason he thinks he’s new at all of this is that he and Elayne had spent the previous seven years traveling by road. It wasn’t the usual drive the Trans-Canadian Highway or to visit as many National Parks as you can type of driving, although they did that. Their trip took them to over 160 countries on all six continents that have roads, including a lot of places not on tourist routes like Libya and Afghanistan. His stories would make a war correspondent cringe. Not only did they do all of that, but they did it living on and in a car he had built himself from parts of other cars he found in scrapyards. He wanted it to be fixable anywhere, so it had manual brakes, manual steering ,manual clutch and an engine that could be started by hand if necessary. He says sailing comes less naturally to him, so he still feels new to it.

We walked past Pitcairn’s only beach at Down Rope, where Nemo had sheltered for three days. It was easy to see why they hadn’t scaled the spray covered cliffs to come ashore until now. Further on, we descended a staircase of a few hundred steps to St. Paul’s Pool. St. Paul’s is supposed to be the only swimming hole on the island and we were looking forward to a refreshing dip after our long, hot walk. The swell crashing through the gap between the entrance rocks was forceful enough that that day, the place would be more appropriately named Certain Death. It was pretty, though, so we scrambled over the rocks above and enjoyed the views.

Eco Trail and Christian's Cave

We climbed back up the stairs and then took a meandering route across muddy roads to an eco trail culminating at Christian’s Cave. The cave is where Fletcher Christian reputedly made daily scans for pursuing Royal Navy ships or others with which they might be able to trade. The first part of the trail was lovely, but the last few hundred meters to the cave involved climbing a sheer rock face at a forty-five degree angle. The view from up there was great, but not much more so than the one slightly lower down. I guess the point was that the cave was an ideal location to scan without being seen. Lurker’s Cave.

Getting down was quite scary. My shoes seem to have about a forty-five and a half degree traction limit, so I took the safe precaution of crab walking all of the way down on my hands and feet. It must have looked funny, but almost doubled the surface area I had stuck to the rock face.

Back in town (Adamstown), we found most of the island at the store unpacking containers and inventorying them. We located one of the people we recognized from the morning and announced our readiness to take our weary, muddy bodies back to our boats. In the meantime, we found a couple of things at the store that everybody swore to us wasn’t earmarked for others and walked to the harbor.

The prison is now mostly a tourist shop and a few random offices (with showers)

"All Hands" when the supply ship finally delivers
and we manage to score with a desperately needed new pair of shoes for Kyle

A few minutes later, several quads arrived. The boat was launched and we were given hugs goodbye. We had ordered some fresh produce from Shawn Christian. Rather than ask for specific things, Maryanne had just told him to give us a variety of what they could spare with a $40 limit.

We depart from the dock with a ton of provisions
find places for them all aboard ready for the next passage

As the boat went in the water, a woman showed up with a quad covered in veggies. We thought we were going to be asked to select what we wanted, but the whole lot was for us. Chris’ order came on a different quad. For forty bucks, we ended up with a mountain of lettuce, a few tomatoes, lots of cucumbers, onions, too many eggplants and some fresh herbs – WAY more than we could ever get for that in a grocery store. We were also given two large (and heavy) stalks of bananas, each with about 100 fruits. They were little Apple Bananas, not the big, Stodgy Cavendishes like Chiquitas, but that was still a lot. I had two or three every time I was just the slightest bit puckish, but it still took a while to get through them, even when Maryanne helped by making daily banana muffins.

We made the jumps back to our boats and then our haul was tossed over to us. We were safely back aboard after a busy day. The harbor was much calmer. Between that and all of our exertion, we slept much better than the night before.

Passage to Pitcairn

[Kyle]The noise and motion at Hanga Roa had me awake well before it got light out. I made a last check on the weather and did what little remained to be done in the dark for our departure. Maryanne joined me a little while later and at the very first hint of daylight, we started pulling up our anchor.

Passage to Pitcairn Island

It was a real ordeal. Begonia was pitching up and down wildly, sending spray and occasionally green water over the bows. The wind made it hard to keep the boat straight unless I was actively steering her with the help of asymmetric power. The floats we had attached to the rode to keep our line and chain above the coral had a tendency to head for our propellers if they weren’t caught just as they went under the trampoline. In order to do this while Maryanne was operating the windlass, I had to take Begonia out of gear and run forward, to which she invariably responded by slewing sideways and threatening to turn the whole mess into a tangle. It was a huge relief when Maryanne reported that the anchor had left the bottom.

We left the anchorage in reverse so that the trip line float would stream forward and not toward the props. Maryanne pulled it in, we spun around the right direction, and we were out of there.

The wind was not favorable for the trip to Pitcairn, but since there was now no safe anchorage on Easter, we had no choice but to leave into the rain and strong headwinds of a passing front. It was miserable to be sure, but no more so than the anchorage and now we no longer had the stress of worrying about dragging ashore.

By noon, the wind shifted from NNW to SW and we were able to turn on course, ease the sheets and go fast. The wind held for four more days and we were able put in just under 200 miles for each of them.

Slowly the wind began to die off, and then it shifted back to headwinds again. They were short lived, but turned the seas into a sloppy mess. The new tailwinds weren’t quite as strong and our swinging mast caused the sails to bang back and forth as they alternately filled and collapsed.

We had originally planned our route to pass near to two uninhabited outlying islands in the Pitcairn Group, Ducie and Henderson, hoping to get a close look at them or possibly even fit in a stop. Updated forecasts indicated our window of tailwinds would be ending soon. That and our reduced speed made us scrap Henderson and limit Ducie to a quick pass. Ducie is a large atoll and we were hoping for at least a few hours reprieve from the relentless southern swell as we passed through its lee. When we got there late in the afternoon of Day 7, Ducie revealed itself as a low line of trees on the horizon, but did not seem to have any mitigating effect on the seas. It was now looking like we would have to sail as fast as we could on a direct course to make Pitcairn before sunset two days later.

We didn’t make it. Thirty miles out, with only three hours of daylight remaining, we called Charlene, the Deputy Mayor, to ask about conditions in Bounty Bay. We were really hoping she would tell us there is a huge patch of sand at such and such location, with no hazards, but we had no such luck. Once we were done with her, Nemo called us. They had arrived three days earlier and had been hiding from the winds on the far side of the island since. They had just moved to Bounty Bay and confirmed that it was far too rocky to be able to find a spot to put the anchor at night. Armed with all of this new information, we decided to slow way down and heave to just off the island until morning.

When Maryanne handed Begonia over to me at midnight, I thought about it for a while and decided it would be more fun and interesting to do some sailing. That would also help me stay awake. I decided to circumnavigate Pitcairn Island.

By morning, we were close hauled with two reefs in each sail as we came around Adam’s Rock into view of Bounty Bay. It was a mess. 2-3m swell was rolling through and exploding into spray on the rocks.

Nemo looked to be having a miserable time. They were pitching through about fifteen degrees and rolling sometimes up to forty. The spray on the rocks astern of them was often higher than their mast. It reminded us of something we had seen another cruiser write: Pitcairn makes Easter Island look like a marina.

Indeed it does. We deployed our anchor, all of our chain, all of our nylon rode and all of the floats and lines necessary to keep it all from getting snagged down there. Once we were settled, I took a swim to check it all out. Our anchor was too deep to reach, but the visibility was good, so I could see how it was doing. We had missed the sand patch and it was holding onto a small crevice in the rock with the tip of its fluke. That’s less secure than I would have liked, but the rest of the bottom looked no better, so it seemed unlikely that re-anchoring would produce a better result. At least there were plenty of other things for it to grab onto if it lost its grip. Since I was already in the water, I also swam over to Nemo and had a look at theirs. Their anchor was well buried in sand with no coral or rocks within the length of their chain. They seemed to have found the one good spot. When I got back aboard, I called them on the radio and gave them my report. They said they were uncomfortable, but knowing their anchor was well dug in would let them rest a little easier. We both decided to stay aboard for the day to keep an eye on things and made sure our boats stayed put.

We had plenty to entertain us. The quarterly supply ship had just arrived as well and the island’s two big longboats were shuttling back and forth with everything the island would need for the coming months. The longboats are like giant motorized canoes with hulls deep and wide enough to hold two or three mini shipping containers. The harbor at Bounty Bay is only large enough for one of these boats at a time. As they arrived from the ship, they would stop and wait for a lull in the surf blocking the entrance. The guy on the bow would then signal and they would go racing in. At the very last second before the wave caught up to them, they would make a blind ninety-degree turn around the corner, leaving the last of the curler to take a slap at their stern. Leaving was the reverse process. A lookout on the pier would give the signal to the helmsman and the boat would come booming around the corner out into the swell. Every time they passed by us, we would smile and wave and they would smile and wave back.

Work stopped at sunset and a couple of hours later, the generator was shut down and the island went dark. It loomed above us as a black velvet veil blocking the stars to the west. We listened to the crash of the breaking surf behind us and spent a restless night thinking about our anchor in its little crack and just how quickly we could get the engines started if it let go.