CAPTAIN RICHIE - NZ TO TONGA
A week had passed since our proposed departure date and there wasn’t much more that I wanted to do to keep preparing Moon River, apart from making some messes around the place by taking something apart to fix it to pass the time - but I figured that wasn’t a good idea if we got the go ahead weather-wise to get ready.
The crew had gone home after our overnighter trip to Moturoa Island and I was meeting many other rally sailors without Carolyn who I felt was missing out on this social milling about talking about weather and route pros and cons.
As the weather stated to look OK for a Monday 27th May departure the crew started coming north to Opua and we started to get quite excited. The departure plan was for the customs clearance to take place on Sunday afternoon (if anyone wanted to get started early) or first thing Monday and then be ready as soon as the wind started to turn.
The forecast was for a front to be moving across the upper north island overnight Sunday and be over the Bay of Islands by approx. lunchtime Monday. Some boats got cracking on Sunday evening and got a 12+ hour jump to get further north away from the worst of the front while the majority of the remainder of us were so keen to get underway to Tonga that we headed out at approx 8am while the wind was still blowing and rain still falling into 30-35 knots and 3m swells - not the best start for a passage!
I was busying myself with keeping an eye on other boats and tidying up downstairs and was comfortable letting the rest of the crew helm as we left the Bay of Islands - I didn’t take the helm until about 1pm and noticed immediately that the steering wasn’t right - I had seen the crew consistently turning to starboard but I had just put this down to being new to helming MR and being a bit over keen - but once on the helm I could tell that she wasn’t turning to starboard! MR was so well balanced that with the reefed main and headsail she was comfortably sailing along at 60degrees apparent by herself! The rest of the fleet was slowly heading further east that us. I could also hear a strange pressure release noise inside coming from the rear cockpit locker so I was bound to dive in and see if there was anything to see or hear. The contents of the locker was emptied into the cockpit and bottom of the companionway while I attempted to get inside the locker - headfirst and upside down and quite horrible with water getting splashed in and running downhill to my face! I could hear the pressure release sound and it sounded like it was coming from one of the hydraulic arms - that shouldn’t be happening - like there was something stopping the rudder and the ram was using a relief valve. I was being horribly sick once out of the locker (quite comfortable in there upside down for some reason) and spent my time between locker, toilet and the iridium calling and texting Carolyn and our mechanic Jason. Without a solution I decided that we couldn’t sail to Tonga like that (not being able to turn to starboard) and made the decision to ditch the safety and camaraderie of the rally fleet and turn for home. The emergency tiller was installed, Maritime NZ radioed and it took both Jay and Andy to leverage the tiller to take us about and head back to Opua. By now the weather was much more comfortable and we could relax somewhat and stay a bit drier. it was a slow tiring trip home keeping pressure on the tiller to keep us comfortably high enough into the wind to get back down the harbour.
As we approached the Paihia channel we were welcomed back by dolphins and a calm night - I was interested to see if the steering would work again so turned the valve on the hydraulics back on and everything was fine. I presumed that the hydraulics were failing due to the pressure on the rudder due to the sea conditions - we had never been out in something like that before. We entered our previous berth at 1am with the blessing of border control and joined our neighbours Squander to lick our wounds and recover - they had returned with a torn main sail.
The next few days were a bit of a blur of getting our customs departure cancelled, the crew returning to work in Auckland (again) and preparing the boat again for the eventual passage. Gypsy Soul had also returned that afternoon with their head below waterline creating a syphon and filling the bilge - Pete and Kevin became good mates over those days discussing the weather and getting on our way.
Investigation of the hydraulics with SeaPower started with a new helm pump as they suspected a failing valve inside the 40yr old unit (which it wasn’t), a proposed sea trial to see if I’d get the same result?! (which i declined), and then we eventually pulled the rams apart to find a completely disintegrated seal which was allowing the fluid to pass between compartments. The pressure was on to find a replacement seal, re-install and bleed the system in time for a tight weather window on Saturday 1st June. Carolyn drove new seals up from Auckland I night before she was due to fly to Tonga with the boys and everything was completed Saturday afternoon by SeaPower to allow us to get underway early Sunday morning.
The advice from Bob McDavitt was that we had a narrow window between 2 fronts and to head north as far and as fast as we could before the next front would catch us.
We did this for 2-3 days while we found our sea legs, set into the routine well and had some great sailing conditions before calm seas to motor through before the front hit us.
We had 36 hours of 30knot northerlies to work our way through. We hand-steered almost all of it to have something to do, plus as the autopilot wouldn’t have coped well with those conditions - while on watch in the rain and spray working in pairs (Richard and Lissa / Jay and Andy). I was consistently getting texts from Carolyn who was now in Tonga on a beachside bungalow with wifi about my speed and heading and comparing us with Gypsy Soul who were also out there somewhere.
MR did a great job through those couple of days with no major breakages – we managed to tear the mizzen stackpack, but once it was reefed we secured everything through the reefing points – it stayed reefed for another few days taking a bit of a hammering only to be torn on its way down flapping itself silly.
We emerged from the 2-day hammering to find ourselves with a 3 day run along the rumbline to Tonga and had some great fun surfing down huge slow 5-6m swells where Lissa hit 13knots max instantaneous speed!
Our final night on approach was a very fast run with MR on a broad reach as she steamed towards Tonga seemingly in a big hurry to arrive. The next morning was beautiful as we could see the previous days swells smashing into the southern coast line and lighting up the blow holes at dawn.
I negotiated my first ever reef entrance fairly happily and we motored across the Tongatapu lagoon towards Big Mama’s. Unbeknownst to me, our AIS signal had dropped out (a problem of heat while motoring I suspect) so no one knew for sure that it was us – only Carolyn was monitoring our predict wind location but it was only updating hourly and there was no way to reach us until we were in VHF range.
We were hailed over the VHF and welcomed to Tonga but informed that we were to hurry ashore to complete immigrations so that the officers could finish lunch get onto the 2pm ferry boat home. No time to change clothes or tidy up!
We untied the cobweb of knots for the dinghy, headed ashore to Big Mama’s and were greeted by the boys swimming out to meet us! They were supposed to stay away from us until we were all signed in to Tonga – good luck with that!
Once all formalities were complete we had a great relaxing time on the beach with swims with the kids, some great tasting beers, bombs of the nearby wreck and told some stories to Carolyn and kids.
We all retired home to MR and squeezed the family of 6 on, plus Jay, Andy and Lissa all somewhere. Jay flew home the next day while Andy and Lissa headed to a local resort to enjoy Tonga for a few days. Well earned after an exciting passage!
Most of the other rally yachts had headed north the previous day but over the next few days we made much better friends with Varekai, Bendalong, Equinox 2 and Gypsy Soul after they arrived 2 days after us.