Photo: The surf breaking over the reef of Tahiti

All the advice we received said the same thing... we'd take a beating whichever route we sailed to leave New Zealand. The traditional way across the Pacific under sail is to drop south to find the westerly winds of the roaring forties, use them to go east before turning north when the westerlies gradually back to the south and then find the easterly trade winds. These would take us to the Austral Islands and then to Tahiti in French Polynesia.

The LOW pressure weather systems coming up from the Southern Ocean and out of the Tasman Sea would be sure to throw us wild seas and a tough time. So be it, we had few other options and we could pretty much cope with anything that came our way. Fat Annie declared their intention of sailing the same route so we decided to depart together to give mutual buddy support if we ran into trouble. We'd never sailed with another boat before. To assist further we decided to use the weather routing services of New Zealander Bob McDavitt, he would advise us of threatening heavy weather heading towards us and give us routing advice. From other skippers I deduced that McDavitt went by the name of 'God' McDavitt or 'Dog' McDavitt, depending upon if we got hammered or not.

Our planned departure was delayed three times due to developing storm systems coming out of the Tasman Sea but on the 6th May we had a weather window to go. Clearing Customs from Marsden Cove, we pretty much had to tack our way eastwards from the outset in the NE and SE winds but McDavitt gave us a route that could, if the winds were kind enough, take us directly to Tahiti without the need to detour the long way south towards the Southern Ocean. It was worth the risk; it would considerably shorten our route by around eight hundred miles or so.

Despite a problem with a leaking water hose which nearly forced us to head back into port to fix it, everything went well. I fixed the severed hose with a stop fitting we happened to have onboard although it was touch and go for a while trying to repair it whilst leaning heavily in the swell. Fat Annie was around eighty miles distance NW of us and we were maintaining radio contact.

Eight days out from NZ I was uneasy with the latest wind forecast downloaded through the SSB radio so decided to seek a weather update from McDavitt. He told us emphatically that a deep LOW forming south of Fiji would move south east across our path. We would encounter ten metre seas and winds of around fifty knots. GO NORTH TO AVOID. We had little choice. Storm conditions of these magnitudes are no joke. But this would take us a long way off our route and in my mind we would be too far north to make Tahiti.

I confirmed the situation with Fat Annie via our 1800 hours radio link and both vessels turned north using the building easterly winds the weather system was now generating. The seas were increasing and from this we calculated the LOW was moving more rapidly than we anticipated, but we should still be ok. Our wind instruments showed the increasing strength but we were sailing well, hard into the wind and sea. And, if things worked out, we could ride the westerly winds north of the storm as it passed through and get back eastwards towards where we needed to be to make Tahiti. As always, it seemed, the big winds would hit us during the night. Marie reefed the main sail well down, furled in the jib and we changed to our storm stay sail sheeted tight in. Sänna was just about as ready as she could be...

The winds built through the night until a full on Force 8 blew down on us. We recorded maximum winds of 43kts and the seas, always worse in the dark, were big but not threatening. We considered heaving too, the traditional technique for riding a storm, but Sänna is a pig when hove too and we sometimes end up broadside to the seas... which is never good! But through the night the winds began to ease and it became readily apparent we'd made a good call in turning north to avoid. I stood congratulating our good fortune when, out of the blue, a huge wave crashed over our bows and swept down the deck in torrents of green water. There came the sound of a huge bang and I knew something had gone seriously wrong...

Fully waterproofed and harnessed I made my way forward along the deck whilst Marie made sure the deck light and torches illuminated the area around the mast. The next wave crashed through sending more cold water pummelling down the deck but my harness held securely and I raced forward. In the dim night light I saw the spinnaker boom swinging dangerously free, banging and crashing against the mast guards like a demolition ram. I quickly needed to secure it before we suffered serious damage but I was aware that one false move now and the boom could catch and lift me out into the sea into the pitch blackness. I needed to act fast. In the gloomy shadow cast by the deck light I saw the wave had caused the boom retaining bracket at the foot of the mast to break so I would need to lash the spinnaker boom fast. Luckily, Marie had had the sense to stuff a rope tie into my harness to take forward with me but I still had to launch myself to catch hold of the boom as it swung wildly. I made a noose with the rope tie and, as it again swung by, I launched the tie in a lasso and made a lucky strike. Just like a cowboy. I had it. I then had the simple task of tying it off to the base of the mast and I made my way aft knowing that we could best sort it fully in the morning when we had more light. Marie was impressed, I could tell...

The wind continued to ease through the next day and by McDavitt's calculations we should now have been encountering the westerlies that circulated north of this southern hemisphere LOW. But we had nothing from the west. The wind was just dying away. Both Fat Annie and Sänna were banking on the westerlies to get us back on course for Tahiti. Looking at the new weather forecast charts it seemed the LOW had moved very quickly SE and had now left us stranded. With few options, we turned SE to get the wind on our port aft quarter, trying to make some progress but this course took us no nearer to our destination. Then McDavitt contacted us through the radio to say a big HIGH pressure system was rapidly forming and we would have to go directly through it. Great! NO WIND!

McDavitt also informed us that another of his routed sailing yachts had been caught by the storm with sixty knots of wind and twelve metre seas, nearly pitch poling the unfortunate vessel. But they'd survived. And over the HF radio we talked to Gypsy Blue, a yacht that left NZ a few days after us; their boom had been badly damaged and they were now returning to NZ for repairs. So we'd made a good call and we'd been lucky...

Now we were faced with a large residual sea swell and little wind. We had no option but to turn on the engine and motor through the HIGH. From the weather chart I calculated this could take as much as three days and we'd burn most of our fuel reserves. We are a sailing vessel and do not have vast diesel tanks. But motoring provided a welcome rest and we could relax, clean everything up and dry out from the storm. I was worried about our fuel reserves, we'd have little left if we encountered further problems and we still had well over a thousand miles to go. I called our situation in to Fat Annie and informed them we may have to divert to Rarotonga in the Cook Islands to pick up diesel. I knew this would seriously jeopardize our ability to reach Tahiti, but I said little. To then make our way from Raratonga to Papeete against the prevailing trade winds would be very difficult. Half an hour later Robert came back on to the radio and told us we could have some of their diesel. He'd deduced our situation and saved the day. This was a game changer as far as I was concerned and I was grateful. We would need to rendezvous with Fat Annie and we agreed chart co-ordinates on the radio link.

The next morning, as a fantastic dawn broke across the south pacific, in a perfect cloudless sky, Fat Annie sat on the horizon waiting. This was a surreal situation as four good friends came together a thousand miles from any land in the middle of the South Pacific Ocean. They'd already launched their dinghy and loaded the jerry cans to manhandle onboard Sänna. Robert motored across the now smooth sea on his little outboard engine and swiftly came alongside. We were all smiles and laughing, Robert handed over a packet of chocolate chip cookies, a gift from Jill, and Marie passed him a hand written thank you card she's just made. We emptied the jerry cans into our tank and I had far more confidence that everything would now go well. Fat Annie then left us and motored ahead whilst we cleaned things up and readied ourselves to follow. The sea, our nightmare only a few days previously, was now flat calm.

McDavitt sent us a weather update and it seemed we'd have fair winds once through the HIGH. Easterly winds would build with enough south in them to close haul our way to Tahiti. But, again, the winds didn't quite play ball with McDavitt's forecast and it became hard going tight on the wind. We couldn't make Tahiti by my reckoning unless we made a series of long tacks to the south east as the wind backed. This would add a couple of days to our ETA but we'd make Tahiti ok. I discussed things with Marie and we decided we had few options really unless we were prepared to motor straight into the big sea. Neither of us fancied that.

So, although by now tired with fatigue after nineteen days at sea, we tacked and turned south east until we had a line on Papeete, the port of Tahiti. I got another updated wind forecast which showed winds building from the south east. I was delighted and relieved. At Last... a bonus! A beam reach for the last couple of hundred miles... but the seas would be big. The winds that would be our salvation were being driven by a big storm system coming up from the southern ocean, but it was few hundred miles south and wouldn't worry us.

Fat Annie radioed to say they were moored in Papeete. They'd motored in and arrived safely. They carried far more fuel reserves and it was a good easy option for them from their more northerly position. I gave them our ETA which by now was only half a day away. But it was raining hard and we could not see the high island in the mist and cloud ahead.

Tahiti slowly appeared out of the gloom and Marie was again the first to spy our destination. How does she do that when before now she's mistaken rocks for a dangerous ship? We picked out the buoys of the tight reef entrance to Mahiha Bay and sailed up at well over eight knots before turning into wind to drop and furl in our sails. It was scary with the surf breaking hard on the reefs either side of us but it was a glorious entry into tropical paradise. A total contrast to cold, magnificent New Zealand over 2,700 miles distance...

We nosed inside the reef and picked up a mooring buoy, surrounded by numerous foreign yachts making the coconut milk run westward across the Pacific from the Americas. The weather, calm and warm in the sunshine made a magnificent change to the hard sea conditions we'd faced, our greatest challenge since leaving the Mediterranean.

A few days later things turned foul. Big winds hurled the surf over the reef and we suffered badly on the buoy in surges which made the anchorage treacherous and dangerous...

Dave

New Zealand to Tahiti - 2,562 miles in 21 days.

Footnote; SV Nina, a US registered yacht is missing north of NZ with seven crew onboard. The storm system created by the LOW encountered by Sänna and Fat Annie caused damage to several sailing vessels making passage north to Fiji, Tonga and Australia. The search for Nina has now been called off.
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