On to Tahiti

            Perhaps we should have realized what we were getting ourselves into from the moment we left the south pass. The East by Southeast wind, the beginning of an ebb tide and the narrow pass combined perfectly for some incredibly large, choppy, stomach-turning waves that we had no choice but to take right on the bow. Although we were pounding the boat through something that I imagine to be like the North Atlantic (only a little warmer) we were making very little headway out of the pass.  We soon discovered that the weather stripping had failed on the front hatch and the entire V-berth was completely drenched and would remain that way for the entire passage. After a couple hours of beating South away from Faka Rava we were finally able to turn to the West, right around sunset, and assume our course for Tahiti.

We were still under a reefed jib, doing around 6.5 knots, and the motion had eased up, but was still nowhere near comfortable. The first night was a little rough. The large high-pressure system we were trying to avoid had not quite settled in yet so the winds were still moderate, but the swell coming from three different directions as well as the soaked V-berth made for a rather sleepless night. We eventually took to just sleeping on the floor as it was impossible to stay in the windward berth, especially when the occasional Southerly swell came right on the beam and threw us across the cabin.

            Needless to say we were all a little pissed off the next day. Nerves were running high and every one was doing there best to stay out of each others way. We attempted to fall into our usual passage habits of reading and relaxing but the uneasy weather, the lack of sleep and the anticipation of getting to Tahiti were making it difficult.  The three-direction swell continued and the winds were slowly increasing but we figured that we had put enough distance between us and the high pressure system that we would hopefully avoid the worst of it. Sunset came and went and we were still under a reefed jib with our only consolation being that we were just over 70 miles from Tahiti. After another substandard dinner of overcooked noodles I went to bed early in anticipation of my last, hopefully uneventful, late night watch on Ardea.

            Just before 2 am, after no sleep, I got the call to get up. Nights on Ardea always struck me as sort of bizarre. Often in a half dazed state, one always wakes up to the night lights of the nav station, which cast a dull red-orange glow over everything and always cause me to question, if only for a split second, whether this is just some messed up dream. The winds were noticeably heavier but not much more than 20 knots. I helped Taylor jibe as the winds had clocked around to the North and were causing us to point well below our destination of Papeete on the Northwest side of Tahiti. With Ardea on course once again, Chittick went to bed and I remained sitting at the nav station trying to pass the time for the next three hours. Reading was impossible and besides going up to the cockpit every 20 minutes or so adjust the wheel, I just sat and contemplated the end of my trip. I would be flying home from Tahiti so this was a farewell of sorts for me; my last night watch on my last passage aboard Ardea. Being on the boat for so long had caused me to be very comfortable with my own thoughts; I could spend hours in my own head oblivious to the outside world.  I got caught so deep in thought that only the heel of the boat from a big gust of wind was enough to cause me to snap out of it and go check on the boat. 

            The puffs of wind had been pretty heavy, but this one was different. You could feel it almost immediately. The boat pointed up into the wind and we heeled over more than we had all night. “Connor get up, we have to reef again,” I yelled from the companionway. Needless to say he was not overly enthusiastic. “How much jib do we have out,” was his reply. “Just get up I need your help.” Even after months at sea I still would not consider myself an “expert” sailor and I knew that this weather was like nothing I had ever dealt with before. I think Connor could sense the urgency in my voice and we both piled out of the cabin with no time for life jackets or harnesses. I knew that this was the most wind we had experienced on the entire trip but with the urgent tasks at hand I didn’t really recognize the magnitude of the situation.

We were in a full Gale. There was no time to waste, and both of us went to work reefing. I was disoriented and slightly panicked and Connor didn’t mince any words in telling me to get the boat off of the death angle and point downwind. In the confusion I accidently jibed, to which Connor, in so many words, screamed at me to figure out what exactly I was doing. We eventually got everything settled, and with only a handkerchief of jib out, I still had to hand steer as the 40-50 knots of wind was way too much for our windvane to handle. We finally had time to harness in and the full scale of the situation was realized by us both. The gale blew itself out over the next hour and Connor assumed steering duty from me as my watch ended. I went down below and attempted to sleep. Suddenly a conversation from earlier in the day popped into my head. Chittick and I had been reminiscing about the trip, and I told him how I was pretty bummed that we had had such light wind the whole time. I remembered telling him how I hadn’t had any Hollywood moments, where I thought I was going to die, and I had wished for just one gale so I could know what it felt like. Upon remembering this conversation, I smiled at the way things work out sometimes.

The gale blew itself out and by the time I emerged the next morning the seas and wind were surprisingly calm. Everyone was in a foul mood after not having slept for two days and not much was said between us as we were all just hoping to get to Tahiti and have a cold beer or two. The wind died down so much that all the sails were hoisted and we were still in danger of not making it to Papeete in the daylight; which would mean another night out at sea. I relieved the autopilot of her duty and hand steered for most of the afternoon as I knew that this might be my last chance to sail a boat for a while. We eventually started to motor as the wind died down even more and we pulled into the main pass of Papeete as the sun sat low in the sky over Moorea, 20 miles to the west. We were unsure of where we to anchor and headed towards downtown and the main ferry terminal. It turned out that there were a few nice docks, located right off of the main road, and since many of the boats had gone over to Moorea for the puddle jump rendezvous, there was plenty of space to pull in Ardea, bow first, right up to the dock. We had made it, the sun was setting and we were in downtown Papeete, the first city we had seen since Puerto Vallarta, two months prior.