Stupid. Stupid. Stupid.

I am first obliged to say that I am wracked with guilt over the incident that I'm about to relate. It's all my fault; unfortunately, Captain Hindsight doesn't save sailboats, but it seems so obvious now how it all should have been avoided. Wait, don't freak out. Ardea is fine. But it was a close one; I got very lucky in the outcome regarding a situation that I should have foreseen, but that I remain tempted to say was bathed in a vat of unluck.

We sailed from Uoleva back to the harbor at Pangai in anticipation of strong northerly and westerly winds courtesy of the tropical storm that had formed near Minerva Reef. We sought protection for Ardea and Saltbreaker. Two boats were already in the harbor, both of whom were friends, and a number of others had decided to sail sixty miles North back to the Vava'u group to wait it out. Unfortunately, all four boats had to cram into the southern part of the harbor as the ferry and freighters needed room to maneuver. All four of us were anchored bows pointing West with our sterns tied to large ships' stanchions ashore. Ardea was on the northern edge of the group, two anchors out, stern facing the rocky shoreline, which came to a point off her port quarter before angling East. When we first arrived, the winds were from the predominant direction, east-southeast, so it was our stern lines that held our boats in place. The next day, the wind backed to a northerly and built; it was blowing 25 to 30 knots, gusting a touch higher, and slowly but surely became a northwester by the evening. The breeze was unabating.

I went to bed feeling uneasy as the rain came down in sheets. I hated to have those rocks so near to my stern; the wind showed no signs of letting up, and we didn't expect it to do any such thing until it had made its way to a southwest direction. I couldn't really pinpoint it, but I felt uncomfortable. I was stressed out. I was worried. I think we all were, but we didn't really talk about it.

I woke up suddenly at about 0415. It's hard to say exactly why- a combination of noise and motion and the fact that something changed, I suppose- but I opened my eyes, lying in my berth in a cabin battened down as the rain continued to come down in torrents. It was windier. A squall had come up. That is where the processing in my weary brain had got when I heard the awful, horrible, gut-wrenching sound of Ardea scraping. The adrenaline was in my blood and I was out of my berth like a bat out of hell. I threw the companionway open and launched myself into the dark and rainy night. The wind whipped me with raindrops but I was completely unaware; somewhere in the process I managed to put a massive bruise on the back of my left shoulder but I have no idea when or how. I had only one thought, just one goal. I fired the engine and gunned it in forward; the scraping hadn't continued the whole time, but I wanted away and fast. When I was well-off, I brought the throttle back a bit and, with it still in forward, went forward to haul in some anchor chain. Only then did I notice that someone was on the deck of each of my three neighboring boats; I would later learn that I was the only one who scraped, but the squall had brought everyone from their slumber.

I was soaking wet, cold and exhausted, but it didn't matter. There was no way I would be getting back to sleep. I sipped coffee as the sun rose and ran through it all over and over in my head. How stupid of me to fail to put the scenario together ahead of time. It was the hardest blow of the storm, hitting forty knots, and the direction from which the wind came put me stern to the little rocky point of the shoreline. My anchors didn't drag, but they didn't need to. The heavy winds put me hard on the catenary and the rodes were stretched back; all it took to make me scrape was that last bastard of a factor: the tide. The squall had managed to come at low tide, push me towards the nearest rocks and stretch my anchor lines so I was as far astern as I could get. And Ardea has taken such good care of me. Even writing this now, I could cry at the idiocy of my oversight.

When the sun came up the wind was already backing to the west-southwest, so I was no longer just forward of the rocky point. Even so, I rowed out and put a third anchor out and hauled Ardea further toward the middle of the basin. Three anchors. That was certainly a first. My boat was secure, though, and it bought me a lot of peace of mind.

After breakfast, I dove the rudder to inspect the damage. Thankfully, it appears as though the rudder never came down on top of a rock. There is merely some paint scraped away from the side; I pushed and pulled fore and aft to check the shaft and all seemed well. Luck. I had been very lucky. I am ashamed to have let it come to that. I should have put that third anchor out the night before; I had felt uneasy. I had consider hauling in some more rode that night but was worried that if I pulled in too much the anchors would drag, which could have been much worse. The third anchor. It wasn't getting anything done sitting in the lazerette. I risked my boat for what would have been fifteen minutes' work. Shameful.

I had gotten away with one, to be sure, and resolved to learn from the mistake, for what else could be done? I also thought back to the Drifter's Net, which I had listened to with Saltbreaker the night before; some of the boats reporting their positions were really in the thick of it, with Adventure Bound reporting 10 meter seas and 55 knot winds. On that thought, I could really count my blessings and try to move on. In any case, the winds were making there way South and dissipating.

The tropical storm never quite reached the status of named-storm, though it came very close. In fact, we weren't quite sure exactly where the cutoff was and in learning that it was at sustained winds of 64 knots, we also found the list of names for this year's storms. Actually, there are several lists, apparently to keep a little anticipation involved. The first storm takes a name that begins with "a", of which my favorite of those available was, Amos. Alas, Amos is yet to be, but the storm that shall remain nameless is one we and our cohort will not soon forget.

With the triple-anchor setup holding strong, I felt comfortable enough to head to Blue House with Alex to pick up a to-go order (nobody felt comfortable leaving the boats for long...). We called over to Oyaragh and Tamarin on the vhf and before long found ourselves picking up fried chicken and beer for four boats' crews.

I sat on Saltbreaker enjoying our now ritualistic mid-day meal, drinking beer and watching the weather. It really dominates things for a sailor, the weather, especially when it's bad; on that day, we had nothing else to talk about. Sometimes the conversation would follow a tangent one way or another, but always it would come back after a gnarly gust or a wind-shift or an anchor line screaming it's high-pitched whine under load. We would chat about the barometer (which had dropped 12 millibars in 14 hours, bottoming at 999 mb, for those of you to whom that means something), the clouds, the temperature; I would often come back to chastising myself for having let my boat find rocks. As one beer became two, though, then three, then rum, we realized we were gradually feeling better about it all. The instruments on Saltbreaker assured us that gusts were still hitting thirty knots, from time to time, but we were convinced of the power of booze in dissipating the weather. As the sun was going down, the wind really had dropped off to the high teens and moved southwest, so our boats were not so threatened. We moved on over to Ardea and I whipped up some pasta and opened up a bottle of bourbon. We'd pulled up GRIB files from Ha'Apai to New Zealand; the tropical storm was moving on, and our time had finally come. We figured we may as well have ourselves a send-off; I had been up since well-before dawn, though, so while we managed to kill half the bottle, I was out cold before too long.

Sure enough, the winds backed to the southeast and the forecast was rather good. For the second time, we headed to town to stock up on fresh mangoes, carrots, onions, potatoes, peppers and a few other fresh provisions. That afternoon, 09 November, I weighed three anchors, one from the dinghy, one (the Danforth) standing on the sea floor and hauling it up with all my might, as it was too dug in to pull up from the dinghy, and the third as normal. I had the engine running just in case, but never had to put it in gear. With anchors up and everything ready to go, I waved goodbye to Saltbreaker and the Tongan kids on the quay, unfurled the jib, hoisted the main and was underway, inbound for Opua, Bay of Islands, New Zealand.

The first night on passage was a tiring one; it wasn't until after sundown that I was west of the majority of the Ha'Apai islands, but there were still a few obstructions that I had to watch for. I sailed close hauled and slept in 25 minute intervals. At one point after dark, I was lying in the settee berth and I heard a strange thump. I had a visitor; this time, it was a type of shearwater, I think. I assumed the bird meant to take a rest on Ardea and stumbled into the cabin by accident. It was stuck, though, since it couldn't hop high enough to get out and it's wingspan was much to large to be of use in the cabin. I grabbed a towel, gently put it over the bird's body, and placed him in the cockpit. He hopped around a bit, jumping from the seat to the floor of the cockpit, and I went back to my berth. Soon, though, he was back inside. It was chilly out there, I thought. So, as the bird walked up and down the cabin floor unperturbed by me, I set up the towel for him on the floor at the base of the v-berth. Before long, he found it and settled in. I was a little annoyed since I knew that it was a foregone conclusion that he would defecate with no regard for my teak, but I hadn't the heart to turn him out. I decided to call him Amos. We were both tired, though, and interacted little that night.

As the sun began to rise, the wind was up a little and Ardea had found the ocean swell, the last islands of Ha'Apai visible to port. I'd lost track of Saltbreaker's lights sometime in the night, but they were around somewhere. When I got up to check the horizon just after dawn, the noise of my movement woke Amos up. He'd been sleeping forward where the light remained very low and was, I think, a bit embarrassed to have slept so late. He began wandering up and down the cabin floor again, for a while exploring the cave underneath the settee table and once again confirming that he could not open his wings fully anywhere.

"Time to go fishing, huh?"

I went and got the towel and Amos fussed little this time around. I picked him up, walked him to the companionway and placed him in the cockpit. He walked toward the stern, stopped and looked at me for a few moments. Then he took off and began his day of scooping up and down, careening among the waves only a few feet from the surface, searching. I went back to bed.

As I got more south a fairly big swell was running from the southeast, probably three meters or so. The wind was nice, a fresh fifteen knots, also southeast. It was a little less than ideal to have to sail close-hauled or close-reached, but the big swell was beautiful. I sat in the cockpit for several hours today just watching it.

I was under full sail all night, but slowly took in canvas throughout the day. Now I am making about six knots under a reefed mizzen, a double-reefed main, and about half the genoa. The swell seems to be dissipating a bit, but the deck remains wet, with water coming over the bow and running over the starboard toe-rail every couple of minutes. There's nothing more to hit until Minerva, though, which I will pass on Monday (Sunday in the U.S.- I crossed the dateline on the way to Tonga). I'll only stop there if something changes with the weather, as the window is for now looking good to go straight to Opua. At this stage, I anticipate arriving on Monday 19 November. All is well aboard, despite the upwind sailing, which has become unusual but which brings fond memories of the Bay. Ardea seems to be holding up to the swell very nicely, I've managed to cook a decent meal without flying across the cabin, and I am currently ahead one sunken ship to none in a multi-day SSB radio Battleship duel with Saltbreaker, though I only sunk their frigate. I'm trying to enjoy these last few days in the warm weather, though it already seems to be getting cold; I was wearing a fleece under my deck-harness during the day today! In spite of the cold, I am mainly just excited to knock out this last passage and be in New Zealand; just over one thousand miles to go.

*Posted via radio; Shiptrak position updated