Unexpected Destinations

  •  We were now sailing 2,300 km North of Auckland, New Zealand, making good daily distances around the North of the Tongan archipelago, somewhere South-West of Tongatapu, a small group of islands that formed the Northern most islands of The Kingdom of Tonga.  I awoke to the mainsail and genoa flogging. It sounded like Valhalla had become becalmed. I rolled out of my bunk, tired after a disturbing night of tacking into north-easterlies with the north-westerly ocean-set catching us side on and pushing us west. We had set out from Fiji and were heading for Apia, Western Samoa. I climbed up the gangway, into the cockpit and rubbed my eyes, the horizon was just visible, dawn was not quite breaking. Graham had deserted his watch and gone below and was fast asleep and Howie was asleep at the helm. I grabbed the wheel and brought the ketch to a point where the light breeze caught the main, she healed slightly to starboard and the flogging stopped.
  • “Any sight of land?” I asked the yawning helmsman.
  • “Nope” he replied as he shook himself awake, clearly embarrassed that he had been caught napping on watch.
  • We were two days and three nights out of Taveuni Island, Fiji. Our course was somewhere east- of north-east towards Apia, Western Samoa. It was overcast and there was no moon, there had been no moon. The north-westerly set, I suspected would put us some distance east and south of the plotted position that the crew would have logged and charted that night. My own deck-watch had been from twelve to four and before I had relinquished the helm I had warned the new watchmen to keep a sharp lookout for the northern most of the Tongan islands.
  • We all stood two watches per-day. Mine was from noon to four-pm and midnight to four-am. With six of us onboard we shared two watches each, in pairs and took turns about on the helm each hour. Two-man watches, revolving every four hours, a sailing practice which stretched way back, probably to the earliest ships. We had no modern auto-pilot. A wind-vane steering setup I had considered unnecessary because Valhalla was not set up for short-handed sailing, besides sailing with a bunch of mates was fun. The ketch rig and her large sail area, designed for racing made it practical to have at least six able crew onboard with someone always at the helm. We navigated by trailing a walker-log and marking up distances and compass bearings on paper charts every half hour. One man on the helm the other, trimming, navigating, making mugs of coffee and preparing snacks for his companion on deck and the next meal for the crew. Most clear sunrises, sunsets and at midday, I would take a sextant shot to confirm Valhalla’s position and unlike the last leg, this time we had some good confirmation, so I was comfortable with our position.
  • When overcast, sextant shots are not possible. Like on our leg from Auckland to Suva when we had encountered seven days of bad weather, during which I had not been able to get one clear sextant reading. When you’re out in the middle of an ocean in bad weather, tacking back and forth, day after day, noting wave sets and checking ocean current charts, with little horizon, one has to rely entirely on that paper chart. In those day when we sailed by the seat of our pants, a trailing log and compass become the umbilical-cords which connect you to your position on the earth. Still, on the seventh day of the Auckland to Suva leg, we made our expected landfall within hours of our ETA, which proved to us the accuracy of the old manual charting techniques and the accuracy of our watch keepers.
  • Ann Brittan, the previous owner, who had circumnavigated in Valhalla told me once. “I never feel safer than when I’m 100 miles from the nearest land.” So, the westerly set, and Ann's safety warning alerted me to possible danger of the northern Tongan Islands.  
  • Customarily, when we crawled out of our bunks we would head for the stern rail to relieve ourselves, well the men anyway. With my back to the helmsman and with one hand busy the other on the stern rail, I squinted my eyes towards the starboard horizon.
  • “What’s that then?” I nodded towards a low land formation which appeared along the dawn horizon. I swung my eyes around to port…
  • “Bloody Hell! And what the f..k is that then?  I barked at the shocked helmsman who was now wide awake and gawking from me adjusting myself, to the volcano, then the island and back again.
  • “Wasn’t there before,” he attempted sullenly.
  • Not more than a few kilometers to port a huge volcano had materialized out of the ocean, some half a kilometer in height, it loomed threateningly in the blue-grey, early dawn. 

  •  
  • Without waiting for a response, I sprung down the narrow gangway steps in one leap and turned to the chart table to check the chart.  The commotion had awakened the rest of the crew. One by one they stumbled onto deck to see what was up and were stunned by the sight of the volcano and shocked at having slept whilst sailing through the middle of two unbeknown islands, in the pitch black of a moonless night.
  • Next… the sacred island of Niuatoputapu

 


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