Whales (part 9)
Tuesday June 14th
I was on the 9pm to 1am shift last night, and had a very pleasant first three and a half hours sailing. At that point Chris woke up, having heard something change in the sounds that the sails and rigging were making. A couple of minutes later, while we were chatting about how the boat was sailing, the shackle that was holding the jib (a small sail at the front of the boat) to it’s halyard broke. The sail flapped around and made a lot of noise in the dark, but didn’t fall to the deck as expected. Myself and Chris tried to haul it down, but it was stuck on something and there was too much wind for us to work on it properly. I woke the other two guys and called them up on deck, and after some planning and then effort and more mast climbing by Joe, we got the sail down, halyard and all, about and hour later. My response to it all this time was a bit more relaxed then previously, I think I was getting more used to the idea of things breaking and being fixed. Never and dull moment!
Whales
Unfortunately, my next shift, from 9am to 1pm, was very uneventful right until the last few minutes. I say unfortunately because we were now sailing right though the middle of the area on the chart that had so many unverified reefs and breaks marked on it. I was — we all were I think — hoping for a sight of some feature to break the monotony of the endless ocean and that hadn’t been seen by anyone since the 1800’s, but despite spending most of my 4 hour watch spent scanning the sea from the boat out to the horizon and back in all directions, we sailed well past the last of them, Jupiter Reef, without seeing anything around us but the deep blue sea.
Then, when Joe came on deck and we were doing the handover from my watch to his, I startled the poor guy by shouting “dolphins” at the top of my voice. I’d seen a fin over his shoulder, about 30 meters out from the boat, lazyily breaching the surface. Because all I saw was the fin, and it was similar to the ones I’d seen the other day when the three dolphins visited us, I assumed they were back again, but… next thing it breached again, this time led by a long sleek black body, with the relatively small fin placed well back along it’s spine. Myself, Joe and Chris cheered and shouted with delight, and someone ran to wake Niko (he got woken up a lot on this trip). As he appeared on deck, the whale disappeared, so he went back to get more sleep… and the whale promptly reappeared! After a while Joe figured out there were two different sized whales, although we only saw them one at a time. We woke Niko again, and this time the big whale stayed around for quite a while, following the boat at 30 or 40 meters distant, blowing great sprays of breath and water into the air… we watched, entranced. I was grateful and delighted to have such a close encounter with these lovely, graceful creatures. Happy happy happy.
Chris had a somewhat different perspective on it all — he had us on extra vigilant watch while the whales were around, as he didn’t want an accidental collision with a whale, either us wandering into their path, or them into ours. Fair enough too. Eventually we got back in to the routine of the day, and for the next hour or so I could see out of the galley window the fin and back of one of them break the surface from time to time as we sailed on towards Rapa.
A funny side note — we have been disposing of all our non-plastic rubbish over the stern of the boat — metal, paper, glass, food. It all sinks and eventually gets absorbed back in to the natural world it originally came from. Fine when looked at from the perspective of just one boat. Anyway, I had a load ready to chuck overboard just after the whales were here, but couldn’t do it. Not just because I didn’t want the whales swimming through our mess, but I also felt ashamed to be litter their sea… I didn’t want to be seen by them to be littering their environment. Obviously I wasn’t as convinced about that strategy as I thought!
During the night we had another breakage during my watch. The main halyard that Joe had repaired by climbing the mast snapped again. We got it under control pretty quickly, the main went back up on the spare halyard (just like the last time), but I felt pretty bleak about it. Next morning Joe commented “you are not lucky on watches” and I couldn’t disagree. I was starting to feel a bit jinxed. Not my most enthusiastic morning for ocean voyaging, lets just say.
The voyage to Rapa Iti
- Part 1 — Introduction
- Part 2 — Auckland to Tauranga shakedown trip
- Part 3 — Leaving New Zealand
- Part 4 — Trying to get into the swing of things
- Part 5 — Action stations!
- Part 6 — Now we’re sailing
- Part 7 — A very happy birthday
- Part 8 — Action stations again!
- Part 9 — Whales
- Part 10 — A day with a bit of everything in it
- Part 11 — The sky is on fire
- Part 12 — Almost there
- Part 13 — Land ho!
