On our way to Palmerston

The last couple days in Rarotonga were like being anchored in a washing machine on "agitate" cycle. Swell enters the harbor and bounces around off the sea walls making lumpy and confused seas around and under where we're moored.

Getting away from Rarotonga was a lot more work that we were expecting. All the boat moored stern-to the seawall had multiple anchors off their bows, most of which crossed their neighbors and even their neighbors neighbors. If all the boats had left in the reverse order that they arrived it probably would have been fine, but some later arrivals wanted to stay and, some (like us) had put out additional anchors as the forecast deteriorated. Needless to say it was a mess! the lines were all covered in slimy green algae so I set to work scrubbing them from the dinghy. I tried hauling up our "second" anchor (35lb Danforth with 10 meters 3/8" chain and 3/4" rope rode), set 60 meters straight in front of us, but couldn't get it free. Fine, I thought, I'd use the windlass and haul it up on our way out. I free dove along our main anchor chain, set about 60 meters out to starboard at a 45 degree angle from our bow. The chain had settled in the muck and the water was just murky enough that I couldn't see the chain from the surface, so had to dive down, find it, follow it along hand-over-hand until I ran out of breath, then tie a small line to it so I could find it again, come up, breathe, then follow the small line back down, untie it, continue along the chain, etc. etc. I only went "backwards" along the chain once (doh!). Our chain crossed under two others along the way. When I got to the anchor I tied off a line to it, planted my flippered feet on the ground and heaved it out (a properly set anchor is pretty much completely buried in the bottom, and takes quite a bit of force to free it). Back in the dinghy I hauled the anchor and chain to the surface (~25ft deep). Our anchor weighs 66lbs, plus 25ft of chain and shackles weights again as much... not an easy task to get it to the surface and into a dinghy! I unshackled the chain and let it drop back in, then went back to the boat and hauled it in using the electric windlass, scrubbing the algae and muck off it as it came up, shackled the anchor back on and got it stowed on the bow. Then back in the water to unshackle our port side rode from a large concrete block about 30 meters out. While down there I undid Dolphins and Omazy's lines from the same block. By now I was getting tired! We cast off our stern lines and motored straight ahead, out from the boats on either side of us, and hung on our "second" anchor while we retrieved and stowed all the lines, fenders, children, dinghiy, etc. OK, piece of cake so far - only need to haul up our secondary anchor and away we go. Of course it fouled, too! Dolphins saw us looking like we were free and cast off their stern lines to take our place, but we were still stuck there... an a third boat decided it'd be a good time to jump into the fray as well... plus a fourth boat that was moving in to take our place against the seawall! So there we are, four boats all competing for more or less the same space... argh! Oh yeah, and a large freighter that was preparing to depart, but fortunately he was still loading cargo while all this was going on. We motored off to one side and dropped our primary anchor so we'd stay put and could slack the rode on the fouled one. Dolphins backed away and got a stern line back to the row of boats along the seawall. Mask and fins back on, I tucked my tiny "emergency" scuba tank and regulator under my arm and down I went, again. Somehow our chain had become actually knotted around another. I'm pretty sure it happened when another boat had fouled, pulled it all to the surface, untangled their anchor and dropped everything else back in. Anyway, it was a mess. So, here I am dragging my little scuba bottle around by the regulator in my mouth ( I didn't want to take the time to mount the tank on the backback), trying not to stir up the muck too much so I could see what I was doing. I found our anchor - within 3 meters of 4 other anchors! I unshackled the rope rode from the chain, then drug the chain back to where it was tangled and proceeded to stir up such a cloud of silt so that I couldn't see anything. Ever tried untangling chains? Not fun, especially underwater in bad visibility, with three other chains around that you don't want to accidentally get more tangled in! Finally got it free, tied a line to the anchor and went back up to haul it in. Whew! So now we're hanging on our primary, and it should at least be laying on top of anything else... Dolphins came back out and found their anchor (one of the other 4 in the same spot our was) also fouled. Rob had just had surgery on his foot to remove an infected splinter and couldn't get it wet, so back in the water I go, free diving this time. Theirs was fairly easy to untangle, thankfully. Needless to say, we started this passage with me rather exhausted... The forecast was for 12-15kn wind from behind. Dolphins even hoisted their spinnaker just outside the harbor... then we got away from the lee of the island and got the full 25kn of wind on the beam and big seas. Dolphins got their spinnaker down again, but ended up a few miles downwind. We finally got everything stowed away (mountains of lines, chain and anchors!), sails up, motor off and course figured out. 'twas about then I realized that we should have the spinnaker pole out on the genoa to get the right angle, but I just didn't have the energy to jybe the main and wrestle the 20ft pole into position on a pitching, rolling, spray blown foredeck, so we sailed 20-30 degrees too far south all night. This morning I got the pole out, the main jybed and we're running at 6-7kn approximately parallel to the rhumbline but about 30-40 miles south of it. We'll have to jybe the genoa tomorrow morning and beam reach northward to get to the island. Unfortunately it'll take an extra 4-6 hours, but we should make it there just after noon. We're REALLY looking forward to a protected anchorage again, but won't get one until we get to Tonga. Palmerston and Nuie are both open roadstead anchorages, basically hanging off the "deep" side of the reef, relying on the wind to hold you away from it. If the anchor lets go, the boat drifts out to sea. If the wind switches direction, but boat blows onto the reef... Hence the looking forward to a nice protected anchorage! Ah well, we got spoiled in the Tuamotus and Societies!

-Pete