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We did all the usual
stuff we always do: cleaning and drying the dive gear
and kayaks and stowing them below; removing and packing
the sails; running halyards out and disconnecting
sheets and tackles; tying down the booms, dismantling
and stowing the solar panels below; taking down antennas
and disconnecting electronics; dismantling and bring
down the wind generator; lugging in the life-raft, EPIRB
and “useless bag” with all the life jackets; taking all
the fuel jugs off and stowing them in a shore-side
container; and generally making the topside as clean and
“small” as we possibly could. Inside we cleaned out
the cupboards and fridge, vacuum-sealed any foodstuffs
we thought might last, and gave away the rest. We
packed up all our clothes (too many!) and bedding in
space bags, cleaned all surfaces and the overhead to
fight against mildew, and closed unnecessary
through-hulls. And of course toward the end we stowed
the outboard on its mount and deflated the dinghy, tying
it up into a neat package, and covered it with a tarp on
the front deck. All these were things we would have done
no differently if the boat were on the hard in boatyard.
The big difference
was the mooring. In preparation for leaving the boat we
had decided on Larry Schneider’s mooring field that
surrounds his wife Sheri’s floating Ark Gallery
in the outer
anchorage of Tapana, as opposed to any of the cyclone
moorings available in Neiafu. If disaster hit and the
worst happened and T2 suffered some kind of
damage, being in Tapana would mean she’d be along way
from help, but we both were persuaded that a lot worse
could happen by keeping her downtown where there would
be so many other boats that could break free and so much
more potential debris to fly around from all the
buildings.
Larry’s mooring
field is a grid constructed of big anchors and lots of
chain crisscrossing in the relatively shallow water
behind a bit of land that gives amazing protection from
the prevailing winds. He has about eight moorings of
which he considers three strong enough for cyclone
conditions. He is always adding chain and anchors to
them as he comes by them, and the mooring allotted to us
on the NE corner was one of the strongest as he’d
specifically built it for our friends Danseuse de la
Mer last year. But T2 is about twice the
bulk of de la Mer, and we started to worry about
our exposure to the North and West, the directions of
the longest fetch. In those directions Larry had two
150 lb fisherman anchors on about 100’ feet of heavy
chain. Fisherman anchors, for those not familiar with
the term, are the ones that actually look like
traditional Popeye shapes with a stock (or bar) at the
top perpendicular to the flukes. They generally hold a
boat by hooking their weight into rock or coral.
Unfortunately, within the range of the rode, there
wasn’t much coral around, and the flukes of Larry’s
anchors were only buried about six inches into the
sand. Should a big blow come to visit with winds from
those directions, we felt those anchors could drag. We
wanted some burying anchors and some big scope to back
them up.
So we decided to add
our own ground tackle to the grid. This involved a lot
of discussion over Larry’s homemade beer on the deck of
the Ark. Larry was of the opinion that we were
over-cautious. Maybe. In fact, probably. But our
experiences in the Virgin Islands and later in Baja have
sustained our philosophy that you can’t ever be too
cautious with respect to hurricanes. You can’t ever
over-estimate what the worst might be. It seemed
foolish to leave our ground tackle in the chocks.
And so, in the end,
we put down both our rodes: the rope and chain combo
with the Fortress 37 got laid out to the north alongside
a crowned pair of fishermen, and the 300 feet of chain
with our primary 60lb CQR got crowned onto the single
fisherman to the west. Additionally, Don strung a spare
rope rode from the mooring to a chain around a
coral block toward shore…just for the hell of it.
Sheri’s
Ark Gallery and Larry’s charter Trimaran Orion
All this
took several days of coordinated effort with Larry and
his Tongan helper Noa in the work boat and one or the
other of us on scuba on the bottom.
Then we started
worrying about the pennants. Larry has one big pennant
that comes up from the buoyed swivel where all the
connections to the mooring field hang at about 25 feet.
Heavy though it is, and protected with chafe gear as it
is, we couldn’t stop thinking about how useless all that
ground tackle would be if the pennant chafed through or,
worse, if the swivel broke. And so we added three more
pennants, one of which was shackled with chain to the
shackle below the swivel, all to be put on in the event
of a storm.
Of course the most
important element of the plan to leave Tackless
in Vava’u had nothing to do with all this hardware. It
was the personalized care she would receive from Larry,
Sheri and Noa who would open her up to air every day
possible and from our friends Peter and Sandi who had
pledged to look after the bottom in exchange for access
to our dive compressor.
We took a break from
all our departure preparations on Thursday the 24th
of November to join twenty-four other American ex-pats
and Tongans for a Thanksgiving feast at the Sovereign
Residence. The Sovereign Residence is in fact the home
of the Princess when she is in town, but it is being
converted into an upscale inn. The stately home (for
Tonga) sits overlooking the harbor, and the cloudy
evening gave the harbor a moody cast. We enjoyed
cocktail on the patio with a circle of friends and
listened to the harmonies of a terrific string band from
the village of Pangai. The meal was elegant if a bit
unusual, reflecting a New Zealand chef’s earnest take on
America’s most classic meal.
It was a classic take on
the important cruising adage: don’t travel thousands of
miles only to expect everything to be just like home.
All and all, Don and I felt very thankful for our
lifestyle.
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