Passage to Ono June 13 Janet "This is like being in the Sounds, only warmer," I said to David as another howling gust slewed Navire around on her anchor.
"Yeah, but we're not on a mooring," he replied, as he set the anchor alarm on the GPS in case we dragged in the night.
*** "The gribs show 20 knots south east, 2.5 metre swell, and showers." I relayed.
Gribs are surface pressure charts with arrows that show wind direction and velocity.
We'd had enough of Suva Harbour, engines running all night, diesel streaked water, ships weaving their way through anchored yachts, and grey muggy weather. We were ready for the tropical experience, sunshine, turquoise water, diving, swimming. The social life had been good in town, regular drinks with other cruisers and a meal out, but many boats had headed off to outer islands, time to go. Shopping done, fueled up, my cold in abeyance, the only thing to sort was the weather.
*** "Is it light out there yet?" David called from the V berth, rudely awakened by the alarm.
"No, but it will be by the time we tie everything down," I said.
As David wound the anchor up, half expecting it not to budge having perhaps wrapped itself around some rusting old car body, he called for a bucket. The snubber line and anchor buoy line were coated in slime threatening to sully the decks. Suva's last gift to us.
We motored out through the coral pass in the grey dawn. David has a penchant for famous last words. Outside the harbour the boom was slatting as we motored over large swells, no wind in our sails.
"I'm really concerned we are going to have to motor all the way." He said grimly.
I just laughed. The first of these prophecies that he lived to regret was when he uttered the words "Looks like we are in for a trouble-free trip," on our delivery trip bringing Navire down the east coast from Auckland in 2007. The following day we encountered 70 knots of wind off Palliser Bay (64 is hurricane force), got towed in to Wellington by Lady Elizabeth (police boat), and ended up featuring on Coastwatch.
Sure enough a few miles off Vita Levu the wind rapidly rose to 20 knots, 25, 30 and peaked at 40 just north of Kadavu, five hours later. It was grey all day and wet in frequent squalls. Waves splashed over the boat, mostly missing us as we huddled under the dodger, a miserable pair singing to keep our spirits up.
I actually reefed, twice (did the cabin end). There is hope for me yet as a useful crew-member. The wind kept shifting left and right making it hard to keep our course.
Not far out of Suva our navigation computer went down. I hadn't set up a back up route on my Mac, the second of our three computers, normally standard practice.
Now me and going below were not compatible, but David wasn't 100% either, so I took a deep breath and went below to enter the route and connect the laptop to the GPS. I had to scramble for the rail a couple of times but finally it was heartening to see Navire trucking across the screen, faithfully following her route.
Now ideally you navigate coral reefs in full sunlight so you can see the various colours that indicate depth. Brown is not a good colour, brown with foaming is definitely not good. We stared at the wall of gray where the chart said Ono was. It appeared and disappeared in squalls. Bloody hell we were going to have to trust the GPS completely, which they say you should never do. Just outside the reef I had the inspired idea of copying the coordinates of a track someone had given us, from another computer, onto the Mac. As we were entered a bay on the east side of Ono the cloud lifted and we could see the island. At least we wouldn't bump into that.
Anchor down, engine off. I was completely buggered. Encrusted with salt, I stripped off and wiped down. I heated up leftovers, threw in an instant curry and ravenously made up for the day's complete lack of food, the fish well fed on the way. The couch beckoned. It swallowed me. 7.30pm saw us in bed, our promised margarita relegated to another day.
***