Huh. Those clouds look funny.

“Ah man, are we getting another front?”

The wind, which had blown from the northwest since about four o'clock in the morning, had died off completely over the last couple of hours. We sat in the cockpit of Saltbreaker; the sea was flat and the sky clear for the first time in several days. We had just finished dinner: dogtooth tuna chowder made by the Kleemans (Alex and Nick) with the fish they had caught the day prior and honey bread rolls made by myself. We swirled rum mixed with lime juice and sugar round in our glasses as we reminisced a bit and mused the things we looked forward to regarding our upcoming high-latitude re-entry. Alex was the first to notice the clouds.

They were a long line of cumulus, maybe stratocumulus, stretching east-west and approaching from the south. The moon was bright and we could see the dark line on the water beneath the front but couldn't tell if it was wind, rain or only the shadow. We stood on deck and watched the system lumber toward us. Just before the clouds were directly overhead, a gentle southerly breeze came up. Saltbreaker began to swing round on her anchor; I watched as Ardea, anchored two hundred feet to the east followed suit.

We could hear Saltbreaker's anchor chain drag across a coral head as she came around and set bow to the southeast.

“Errr,” as the grinding went on, “we're destroying that bommie.” Nick noted the unfortunate but unavoidable.

“Yeah. Imagine how many thousands of tiny lives are being lost down there,” I replied.

We do everything we can to avoid such occurrences, not just because we want to preserve the coral, but because getting the chained wrapped up on bommies is nothing good. It's hard to plan for these things though- there we were again watching the wind clock around contrary to the forecasts, contrary to our selection of anchorage and positions. Fortunately the wind that came wasn't strong. “Ahhh, another lee shore,” I thought to myself, reflecting on the day prior, when I had made the sixty mile sail from Vava'u to Ha'Apai.

I had spent a day and a half anchored off of Lape Island in Vava'u; it's a tiny island where thirty or so folks make there homes. I only went ashore once, taking a walk through the little village with Jess, Cal and John from Oyaragh; there were loads of little kids about, who took a break from the constant ingestion of mangoes to show us their school and collect for us some of the prolific fruit which had just come into season. You couldn't walk on any island in Vava'u without feeling the squish of mangoes under your feet.

On Thursday I pulled up the anchor and sailed a weaving course among the islands of Vava'u to Maninita, the southernmost island with a miniscule anchorage into which I pulled for the night. A large and deep depression (low pressure system) was passing to the south, so winds were from the northeast. The direction wasn't great, but I needed to get a move on before the breeze shut down for a few days following the passing of the system. The forecast was for 10 to 15 knots, northeast to north. I went to shore and walked round the island, disrupting briefly the hundreds of birds that nested there; then I jumped in the water with my spear, shot a fish for dinner, ate and went to bed.

I arose before the sun. I walked to the bow with first light, noting that the sky was licked with a splash of red. I knew the old adage, but as I hauled in anchor chain I thought, “It's really more of a pinkish color anyway.” At 0600 I was underway.

Until late morning the winds were pretty light and the angle was tough to stick. I was making only about four knots and concerned that I wouldn't make it to Ha'Ano, the northernmost island in the Ha'Apai group, by nightfall. A mild front came through, though. It brought a lot of rain but also a fresh twenty knots of breeze. I began to make up for lost time. At about 1630 I was lined up with the entry to Ha'Ano, only about a mile and a half out from the anchorage. There was not a soul around though. No other boats, no activity ashore, and the rain kept coming. I had already spent more than two days without interaction and I had another couple of hours of daylight left, so I decided to head to Lifuka, another eight miles southwest, instead of hunker down to wait out the bad weather alone.

I checked the chartplotter. There is a lot to hit in this island group. Reefs, rocks, islands all over the place. I got a bearing and went back on deck to gybe. I doused the mizzen, not needing the extra power and not wanting to deal with three sails. I got Ardea on course and was steering for a point I could just see in the distance when the rain slacked up a bit. I looked astern and saw a big frontal system moving in from the northwest. It looked like a line squall, but I didn't really think it could be one.

Soon the rain came back. This time it was pelting. Not long after, the cloud line overtook me and brought in the breeze. The visibility dropped; the island to port, only a couple of miles off, was obscured by rain and low clouds. I furled the jib and started the engine. I wanted to get out of this and I couldn't hold the bearing under sail. Rather than sail out and gybe back, I figured to motor sail under the double reefed main I still had up.

I sat there steering the boat and only when I realized that the rain drops were stinging as they struck my back did it occur to me that it was really windy. The breeze had come up to something around thirty-five knots and the swell had come up too, though it wasn't more than two meters or so. Still, it was a steep chop and I was surfing down waves at a heavy clip, forced to use a lot of rudder to keep the bow pointed down the waves. The visibility got still worse. I could only leave the helm for a few moments at a time, concerned that I might get rounded up and knocked down by the combination of heavy gusts and steep, short-period swell. I cracked the companionway open and peeked in at the plotter.

When I had set the waypoint to which I was steering, the conditions were fine; I had only to shoot a gap between the northern point of Lifuka, whose reef stuck out to the west a bit terminating in a chunk for some reason named 'Mariner Patch', and a couple of small reefs to the west. The slot was a little bit less than a quarter of a mile wide. I think it was the Mariner Patch thing that started to trip me out a bit; I'm sailing a Mariner 31, after all. It felt very ominous. Furthermore, it was then less than two miles away and I still couldn't see it. I could only make out the main spit of land just east and I watched the swell that had only just recently passed under my keel roll over and spill onto the reef that bordered the spit. I longed to be on the other side of that piece of land, sheltered from the swell, anchored and secure so I could hole up in my cabin and rest. It had been a long day. I stared out at that stretch of land and watched the breakers; I was steering the boat ceaselessly and thinking how nice it would be if my engine stuck with me on this one. I really didn't like the idea of the gap outside Mariner Patch. I began to consider my options.

I was still far enough away that I could take a harder angle on the waves without risking a knockdown and head out clear of all the rocks; from there I could gybe back and take a safer angle into shelter. For a moment it was clear that this was the best option. I quickly remembered, though, that I was running out of daylight. The added distance would eat up the rest of the light. There were far too many obstructions to navigate at night, not just into this anchorage, but really anywhere in Ha'Apai. I really could not stay out. I had to get the boat to anchor. I couldn't heave-to for I had literally no sea-room and would quickly be on the rocks. I couldn't turn back and go to the anchorage at Ha'Ano for it would mean a beat into gnarly conditions and would take hours; that anchorage offered little protection from this wind direction anyway. I had to steer my original course.

For the first time, I looked out at the reef, listened to the breakers and wondered if I would end up on it; I had never been so close on a lee shore, certainly not with a sustained thirty-five knots. I considered putting shoes on; I figured if I was going to end up on the reef, I would want to have shoes on. It wasn't a super-rational thought. There was no time anyway, though. Steering was a full time job at this stage. I was getting close. The engine was kicking with a nice beat. I checked the gauges and it looked good. I figured I would have to trust it. I waited until Ardea was in an off-the-wind portion of the undulating course she took with the swell; then I threw the cleat on the main halyard, hopped on the cabin top and got her down quick. There was time for one sail tie. I jumped back to the helm. At this stage, I had to open the companionway so that I could see the plotter from the helm. Mariner Patch had come into view but there were subsurface obstructions about and I needed to see the chart. I had to take a high angle on the waves to get some clearance on that damned Patch.

The rain was near-sideways, coming from astern and finding it's way well into the cabin. I cleared Mariner Patch, though, and I could see the beach on the leeward side of the northern point of Lifuka as I brought the helm over to port and took an angle in. I was half a mile offshore when I took a sounding; only twenty-five feet already. It was getting near dark and there was no way I'd be able to see any bommies so I couldn’t risk going in much closer. It would've been nice to have that much more protection from the swell, but already it had calmed considerably. The wind remained, but there was nothing that could be done about that with islands whose tallest trees reach barely a hundred feet above sea-level.

I rounded up into the wind and went forward. I dropped the hook and paid out a ridiculous amount of chain; I put a fender out on the chain to keep it up off the ground so that I might keep some catenary if there were coral heads down there, set the snubber and paused for a few moments.

“Well, that worked out. Got a little hairy.” That was about the extent of my thoughts on it.

I was soaked to the bone. I dropped my yellow John Deere hat in the cockpit where the mildew that had already inoculated the brim would have a chance to proliferate, threw off my harness and my soaking shorts and jumped into the cabin. I slammed the companionway shut and made a log entry. It was pitch dark by then but the cabin was suddenly lit up from lightening in the distance. I grabbed a beer and went about cooking the fillets of a bonito I had caught that afternoon; I made a sauce of fresh mangoes and papaya. I had thought that the beer would taste extra good, but it didn't; it still tasted like warm Steinlager.

I was exhausted but the wind was clocking to the west. I set an anchor drag alarm on the gps and started the timer on my watch. I'd have to get up and make checks every so often until the wind died down; I had no idea how good my holding was.

Over the course of the night the wind would go from northwest down to southwest and all the way back up again. The lightening got more frequent and the thunder was intense, but it was never nearby. At about 0330 my watch timer woke me up for a check. I peeked out and it was all over. The wind was gone, the swell gone. It was totally calm. I checked the gps. The anchor had never dragged. Ardea was right where I left her. I shut the timer on my watch off and went to sleep in my very wet cabin.

The next morning I awoke slowly and spread everything out on the cabin top to dry; the sun was out and powerful. I drank my coffee in the cockpit and looked out in the direction from which I had come. It was pleasing that I had made it in there alright; there certainly seemed to be a lot of little reefs around. I thought back to what Nate from s/v Slick had said only half-joking in the Marquesas: “There are two types of sailors. Those that have run aground and those that are about to.” I was happy to remain in the latter category. In retrospect, the ordeal wasn't all that bad, though. The wind increase was unexpected, but it was manageable and much of the drama existed only in the head of one tired sailor, exacerbated by dim light, low clouds and heavy rain. I am just glad that engine held up; I've come in to port under sail by necessity a few too many times now.

That afternoon I pulled the hook and motored down to the tiny, uninhabited island at which Saltbreaker lay. The wind was light, back at the northeast, and the high-level cirrocumulus clouds foretold more stable weather; perhaps that big low had moved well onward at last. Regardless, I was happy to drop the hook near my friends and peer around; though Ha'Apai is a nightmare to navigate even in nice conditions, there were dozens of mostly low-lying islands and reefs visible in every direction, including a couple of volcanoes to the west. It would be a good place to have our last bit of fun in the tropics.

We sat in the cockpit of Saltbreaker late into the night discussing our plans and this trip at large. It had been one hell of a ride. It was hard to believe that there we sat, only twelve-hundred miles from Opua, the symbolic finishing line for our Pacific Crossing. A week or so bumming around Ha'Apai and we'd sail a few days to Minerva Reef. Then it would be only a short wait before we'd head to New Zealand, hoping the weather would allow us to leave at such a time as we would cross the latitude on 14 November from which we could see the total eclipse of the sun. And hoping the weather would be fair enough that we could see the sky when the time came. It was decided unanimously that the weather seemed to owe us a little bit of cooperation for a change.