Straight from the Log of Juggernaut | Where is Brick House?

Straight from the Log of Juggernaut

Patrick Childress
06/28/2009, Tahiti, French Polynesia

We will post an update to our trip soon, but Patrick wanted me to post this...enjoy...

From the log of the Catalina 27, Juggernaut 14 April 1980

It took 5 days of frustratingly slow sailing to reach the Tuamotus. I timed Juggernauts speed to approach in the early morning. I scoured the horizon. Takapoto, the atoll I wanted , was not there. I had taken numerous sights of the sun and crossed all the LOPs but the atoll remained invisible. As darkness fell, I was convinced I was safely south west of Takapoto and in open water. There was no problem sailing slowly, there was no wind. Apataki atoll would be my next target. Dead reckoning put it 55 miles to the south west. Without the assurance of viewing Takapoto I could be confident of nothing. Moving cautiously, I would time the approach for mid morning.
With the sun brightening the horizon, all morning I continually took sun sights and reduced the observations to lines on the plotting sheet. When the atoll should be ten miles away I stood high on the cabin top and watched hour after hour only to be frustrated at an empty horizon. To miss this atoll, I would be sailing into the night where the atolls are spaced like bumpers in a pinball machine. With the moon being in a dark phase, it would be extremely dangerous sailing. That excitement I did not need. At 10:00 AM, there was a faint gray thread to my south west bobbing below the small but smooth wave tops. I could just make out the tops of coconut trees. I was approaching Apataki spot on the north central side of the island. I could not have been more than a few miles away. At 11:30 I motored close to the ragged shore into crystal water. The weather was calm but still a surge splashed the ocean onto jagged coral which was abruptly elevated a few feet to dry sand then thick stands of coconut palms 25 feet beyond.
I dropped the anchor with the boat not more than 200 feet from shore. All the anchor chain and rode ran out to its 150 foot length and hung straight. I could not believe the optical illusion. The water was so clear I thought it to be no more than 50 feet deep. I muscled all the rode back onto the deck and slowly motored uncomfortably close to the coral shore. Again I dropped the anchor and the light wind blew Juggernaut away from the island. With all the line out, Juggernaut eased back to stretch the anchor line. We had settled over a profusion of coral 150 below which then took a straight dive into an abyss. I had no breakfast but was to anxious to slip into the water to take the time to eat. When the bubbles cleared from around my mask, I could not believe the sights.
The horizontal water visibility was clearer than most swimming pools and reached 200 feet. The colors, soft and hard corals and fish life were more intense than the best of the Bahamas. At the drop-off, I hyperventilated then plunged. Black was in the deep water far below. On the way down I passed hundreds of tropical fishes sheltering and flitting around the sea fans and corals. Sharks were everywhere. They were no more than four feet long and kept their distance milling around just at the edge of visibility. I dropped as deep as I could go to a depth of 50 feet when my lungs signaled the time to curve back to the surface. I planned to stay only a few hours at Apataki but was overwhelmed so explored the reefs around Juggernaut till late in the afternoon. I had been in the water for several hours so speared for lunch a small two pound brightly colored fish of the grouper family. Quickly I brought him to the surface as the sharks suddenly closed the comfortable distance they had been keeping. I launched the spear gun and fish into the cockpit and I followed close behind. I don't recall where I had heard that ciguatera poisoning was common in the Toumotus. To be certain, one had to check with the locals to determine where it was safe to take fish. There were no locals near to ask. I thought this grouper was so small that if the filets contained ciguatera, it would be of little consequence.
Ciguatera is a toxic algae that grows on coral. It can be very localized, growing in one area of coral yet not appearing in the rest of the reef system. Coral-eating fish called wrass, parrot fish are of the wrass family, ingest the toxin. Parrot fish are food for grouper and other predator fish. Since the toxin does not dissipate from the flesh of the fish the larger older fish will store a higher concentration of the toxin.
After lunch I used the skin of the grouper as bait and quickly caught a shark. It was interesting that the sharks did not attack the shark that was in distress at the end of my line even though I left it to struggle for a considerable time. They would have quickly devoured any other fish that was hooked. I had heard some sharks do not like the taste of other sharks. As an experiment, I used a slice of shark flesh as bait and waited, and waited. Nothing hit the bait although I could see the sharks circling the hook. As soon as I reeled in the hook and replaced the bait with the fish skin, I hooked another shark. Four more sharks were landed this way. Late in the day I picked up anchor and sailed west. The long delay of swimming on the reefs now put me in the dangerous position of threading my way through the remaining atolls on a moonless night. Dead reckoning, the keel was my depth sounder, and my binoculars were my navigational tools. Juggernaut sailed on.
In the evening, diarrhea hit. I first thought it was from eating so many bananas and it had been at least 3 hours since I ate the fish. Soon my legs became greatly fatigued. I first thought it was from exerting myself for so many hours in the water. Two more hours passed. By then my legs would not move. My arms and the rest of my body ached. My headache pounded and I was dripping in sweat. I could not get up from the bunk, but I had to rise up to see if I was missing the next coral atoll. The self steering vane was reliable but did know when to turn. I had to use my hands to push and flop my heavy legs over the edge of the bunk. It took all my concentration and determination to reach up to grab the handholds and force myself to stand. Struggling my way up the few steps I then hung in the companionway hanging from my elbows. The wind increased and the seas were now running five feet. I was blessed with a cloudless night and a sky full of bright stars. This was just enough illumination to give me a viewable horizon. Searching through the binoculars I saw a horizontal thread, a little less dark than the night and out of line with the rest of the horizon. By now I was a paraplegic and my upper body was quickly weakening. With my hands, I scooted myself across the cockpit to reach out and twist the self-steering vane to shift my course to port and miss Arutua atoll.

The pain engulfing my body was so great I could not move from the cockpit. Although the stars were bright, across the water my visibility was black. Juggernaut charged on . Calculating the boat speed, time and distance sailed I then struggled back to the self steering vane and caused Juggernaut to zag back to starboard to avoid Kaukura atoll which I knew was somewhere ahead in the black. Every hour I forced myself to sit up and squint through the darkness and to listen for the sound of pounding surf. Morning light colored in the black and sent a tremendous relief through my soul. The atolls could be seen on the horizon behind and open water stretched far ahead. Fortunately the wind had lightened again and my boat sailed slowly. The bright sun and scorching heat forced me to crawl and fumble my way down to the main saloon, where I collapsed onto the fiberglass sole. For a full day it was by far easier to lay there than try to move. On the third day after eating that fish, I felt well enough to struggle about the boat and eat a cold can of chili. Within a week, most of the paralysis had disappeared, however , for over six months there were lingering complications. At night, I would wake up to a tremendous pain in an elbow, knee, shoulder or finger joint. Rarely were multiple joints affected but it was never the same joint twice in a row. The joint pain would last for several hours then subside. In the early stages I woke up with this pain every night. Eventually it diminished in intensity and frequency.
It became obvious that if there is ciguatera present in large fish, there is no safety in consuming a small fish.

Four days after leaving Apataki Atoll, as the sun set, the scintillating lights high on the mountain of Tahiti appeared. Just before sun rise the flashing channel lights led the way into Papeete harbor.