Disappointment Island
26 May 2010 | Isle du Desappointement
Steve
I woke Manjula at 4:30 AM. For the second night in a row, we had enjoyed the most comfortable and easy passage we had ever had. The moon was not quite full and illuminated the sea, the many fluffy tropical clouds, and the sails on our boat. The sea state was so calm, that we kept commenting on it over and over all day. The temperature down to the low 80s was perfect. The word perfect itself was the only thing imperfect about the conditions, not having the power to really express the loveliness and ease of the scene. I went to sleep on the couch for a couple of hours and awoke to another beautiful, calm, day.
Manjula asked if we should try and pass close to the unfortunately named Isle Du Desappointement. The island of Disappointment. We had scene it as a hazard on our route and wondered if you could stop. The cruising guide described it as two islands. One inhabited and the other not. Both were surrounded by coral reefs and neither had a pass into the lagoon. The guide finished it's description by saying, "few yachtsmen visit". That assessment was both discouraging and appetizing. We were worried that our charts were incomplete and did not show enough detail to go near, but Manjula's curiosity was stronger than my concern, and we agreed to change course and sail the 20 miles out of our way to cautiously approach the islands. Any hint of reefs and we would abandon our approach. We had time to burn anyway. In the calm conditions Endless Summer had been surprisingly fast. Even though the wind was very light, with our big Screecher flying from our bow sprit and our full main sail, we were making 8 to 10 knots. The odd thing about it was that the speed was almost imperceptable because everything was so quiet. Usually there are a certain set of sounds and motion associated with different wind and boat speed levels. As the speed increases so too does the combination of groans, shivers, creeks, splashes, and wake sounds. But in these flat conditions and light winds, we were just swooshing along quietly. I had to repeatedly look at the speed instruments to believe we were hitting 10 knots. The wind angle must have been just perfect. And it had stayed that way for over two days and two nights. So with the good speed, coupled with our plan of entering the pass after the morning low tide, we expected to have to slow down and wait until morning before approaching the island. So a little detour would not hurt our arrival time.
We dowsed the screecher and rolled out the small jib in order to point higher into the wind and make the islands. As we came within 12 miles we both strained to see...anything. Our electronic chart showed very little detail. Really just one step better than, "there be dragons here". We were concerned that the island could be much closer than our GPS and charts indicated. A phenomenon not too uncommon in less traveled areas. Many sailors get into trouble relying on fancy electronic charts not realizing that although they are slick and full color on the computer screen, the actual data can date back to the original surveys in the 18 or even 17 hundreds. It is fairly common to see your boat depicted as anchored over land in many parts of the world where charts have not been updated. With this in mind, we proceeded with our eye balls peeled looking for any sign of wave action or change in color of the water ahead, both indications of shallowing water.
Then Manjula said, "there it is!" She meant to say, "land ho!", but in her excitement forgot the strict protocol. We were about 10 miles out and sure enough we saw a low green patch dead ahead. We sailed on and as we came within about 6 miles were constantly going back to our chart to check the shape of the fringing reef and see how far out it stretched away from the island. We thought we saw white wash breaking on the fringing reef, and for a while thought we saw red channel marker buoys. Our depth gage was blank indicating it was deeper than 500 feet. Not surprising given the chart indicated the depth to be 14,000 feet 10 miles out, and still 6,000 feet just a mile off.
Now we were getting close and I started to head slightly off to approach the island with the safest wind angle. Leaving an easy and quick turn down wind in the bag for the minute we saw any shallow water. We continued like this until Manjula announced that according to our chart we were over the reef. I said our depth gauge is either broken or we are still in over 500 feet. Now we were in full view of the island. What we had thought were red channel markers were actually metal roofs on a cluster of very tidy looking buildings. The island was a mile wide in both directions being fairly round. It was covered with vegetation. Coconuts, bushes, and as we saw later, very large mango trees. The entire island was surrounded by a perfect white sand beach running into the sea. We saw 4 men each in his own canoe floating in front of an area of beach with some large rocks and possibly a stone warf. Now only a quarter mile off we stopped. We "parked" and just floated scanning the area with our binoculars. The 4 men in the canoes were facing away from us and did not seem the least bit interested in our presence. With the binos, we could clearly see areas of shallow water immediately off the beach at both ends, but otherwise the water was a uniform deep purple blue.
After taking some time to assess the layout, we decided to have a closer look. Manjula stood on the cabin top in order to better see water color changes and we slowly proceeded. We continued closer, checking our depth gauge, but were still getting nothing. The water was so clear, that we felt pretty sure we would see the bottom so we just motored right on in and continued until finally about 75 yards off the beach I got a reading. 319 feet. We could see a narrow coral reef immediately off the beach and it was so calm we could have motored right up to it, but our depth gauge was still showing 260 just off from it. Some kids sitting under a palm tree started waving and shouting at us. One of them was waving for us to come ashore. It was tempting too, but anchoring here was just not possible. We were closer to the beach than we normally anchor in 10 feet, and we were still seeing 200 to 300 foot depths. We motor sailed down the island and then turned off shore, pulled out our big head sail, and set off. I'm guessing the kids were glad to see us and hoping we would come ashore, while the adults fishing in their canoes were used to this. The few cruising boats that made it this way would pull in and look around. After a short while with no way to anchor they would do as we had and just keep on moving. Indeed a disappointing island.
The weather forecast was for south easterly winds. It turned out that most of the wind was from the north east. We decided to sail the best angle for our sails and let that decide which island we would land at. Originally we were planning on Keuehi, but with so much north in the wind direction it had pushed us about 125 miles further south. We decided to make land fall at Raroria. This small atoll is the place where Thor Heyerdahl made land fall on his famous Kon Tiki. He had built a balsa raft and set out from Peru to drift 4000 miles to the South Pacific in hopes of proving his theory that the islands of the Pacific were populated from South America in this way. The book chronicling his journey was one of the things that inspired me to sail the oceans. So it seems appropriate that as I write this we are about 50 miles out from our first Tuomotu land fall. The atoll of Raroia. We expect to arrive tonight and stand off the island about ten miles waiting for day light. Then approach the pass and wait for the end of the outgoing tide to enter the pass. --
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