Over the last 10,000 miles there had been
terrible weather off Ireland, unseasonal gales and head winds
mid Atlantic and horrendous tail winds in the Caribbean, but it
was a storm southwest of Tahiti that finally rolled The Aegre....
Note: Enlargements
of the pictures can be viewed by clicking on the small image.
Ten weeks in Tahiti saw us complete a major refit.
This included a new mast, new mainsail yard, a hull repaint from
bare wood (not hard, most of the hull varnish had been removed
by wave action between Panama and Tahiti), all new standing rigging
and too many other small improvements to count. The cruising fraternity
had rallied round (with free beer) to re-launch The Aegre from
her Punaauia beach home, and within a day the planking was tight
again. No leaks.
We discovered the celebrated yachtsman Alain Colas
had a cottage on the beach adjacent to our mooring. Each morning
he would come for swim around us, often coming on board for a
chat and some Pamplemousse (delicious Polynesian grapefruit).
In due course he helped step our new mast.
But relentlessly the weeks rolled on and the hurricane
season was approaching. Already on many a morning we would wake
to grey skies and strong winds. Finally with the essentials of
the refit complete we felt we could, and must leave. First thing
on Tuesday 3rd September we caught a truck to Papeete to clear
with officialdom.
 We
trailed around in the heat from office to office, collecting a
stamp here, a signature there. It seemed endless. Finally referred
back to the first office, we arrived to find the shutters coming
down and door being locked. "Siesta" "Come back
after lunch, maybe in two or three hours" we were told by
the anglophobic official.
Julie and I looked at each other rolling our eyes.
"Hmmm" "Lets go back to the boat", "In
fact, let's just go." So we did.
 No
gunboats appeared as we swept out through the small pass in the
reef off Punaauia. Friends of the last three months came out in
their dinghies to see us off. A solitary Hobie cat followed us
out through the pass and sailed with us in the building sea and
wind as we slowly emerged from the lee of Tahiti. Then it too
turned for home. Alone once more, we plugged on, southwest into
the dusk.
'So that was Tahiti' we thought, 'and here we
are, back at sea again'. Julie was starting to feel seasick.
Two days later I sat in my oilskins, hunched on
the floor of our little cockpit out of the worst of the weather
as we ran before a full south easterly gale. It was a black stormy
night and we had reduced sail to a tiny storm jib under which
we were now ploughing steadily west-south-west towards Rarotonga,
500 miles away.
Fortunately the self-steering was working well
and appeared to be in full control of The Aegre. I watched the
compass and the hands of the clock. Midnight. "Wakey, Wakey!"
I called down to Julie. After 12,000 miles across the Atlantic
and Pacific, our routine of watch on and watch off was well established.
Now, as ever, Julie struggled out of the warm bunk, with only
the minimum of grumbling, pulled on her oilskins and life harness
and stood up in the companionway to face the miserable night.
"Gosh, do you think we're all right?"
she shouted to me, as she felt the full weight of the wind and
heard the mighty roar of a nearby breaking wave top which surrounded
the stern in white phosphorescence, slowly fading in our wake.
I looked around for the millionth time. In the blackness it was
hard to see anything. But the wind and sea had been steadily rising
since we'd left Tahiti and no light was needed to tell it was
now very rough. There was a very big swell, the tops breaking
and being blown off by the wind.
"Well, yes, I reckon so. We're only making
a couple of knots and its in the right direction, we should be
OK" I replied. I thought to myself that we'd had weather
as bad as this before and had no real problem. The boat would
swoop and dive, in an out, up and over every wave, giving a violent
motion. But unlike bigger boats we rarely got any solid water
on deck.
Julie joined me in the cockpit, closing the hatch
behind her. We contemplated the conditions. Deciding to do nothing
with the rig I waited, in our customary fashion in such conditions,
for a lull between two big waves and then opened the hatch and
stepped over the washboards into it. Standing in the hatchway
I slipped off my life harness and then pulled my oilskin top over
my head, undid the clips of my high oilskin trousers and let them
drop, then bent down, stepped out of the oilskin trousers, and
slid the hatch three quarters closed behind me. Going forward
I sprawled onto our damp but oh so comfortable thwartship bunk
and pulled the duvet over myself. Then, despite the violent motion
and noise, I think I was instantly asleep.
I awoke to a roaring noise and the terrible sensation
of going head over heels. The small cabin oil-light went out and
I realised we had turned right over, and that now in the pitch
blackness, I was lying on the underside of the deck. There was
an awful silence.
 "Julie!,
Julie!," I shouted, but there was no reply. I knew she had
been on deck.
'Must get out, must get out' I thought to myself.
My head was in an air pocket allowing me to breathe, but all around
me I could feel water. Reaching out I was horrified to find endless
obstructions, everything that could move had done so. The book
shelves seemed to be directly in my way. How could I get out?
How long would my air last? Were we sinking? Was that why it was
so quiet? Where was Julie?
Suddenly my exploring hands found a passage aft,
under the water, but seemingly clear. There seemed no other choice.
I took a deep breath and plunged underwater, and started to pull
myself aft.
A few seconds later I could feel the slightly
open hatch, now facing down into the ocean. I heaved it open and
dived down into the blackness , then felt my way under the boat
and then up, to break the surface alongside the upturned hull.
There was no sign of Julie. "Julie! Julie!"
I shouted.
"I'm here" I heard faintly over the
wind, and from the other side of the hull. I quickly pulled myself
around the bow to find her clinging to the edge of the boat. My
spirits soared!
She was OK. Just terrified. "We might as
well get out of the water " I shouted and quickly scrambled
up onto the upturned hull where I was well clear of the water,
the edges of the of the clinker laid planks providing hand and
footholds.
Julie was not finding it so easy, so sitting astride
the keel I leant over and started to pull her up. Even as I did
so I felt The Aegre begin to turn over again. I had been amazed
that the boat had remained upside down so long with so much immovable
ballast inside her, and now as she started to turn the right way
up again, no doubt unbalanced by the weight of both of us on one
side, I wanted to do all I could to help her. Accordingly I leant
outboard from the keel as far as I could, keeping a good hold
of Julie as well. Our weight seemed to be doing the trick, and
seconds later we were plunged back underwater as The Aegre came
back up the right way.
I quickly surfaced alongside but where was Julie?
I had been forced to let go of her as we hit the water again.
I remembered how she hated going underwater at any time and her
determination to learn to swim over the last year. 'She must be
under the boat', I thought, 'perhaps caught up in the broken mast
and rigging, she must be drowning'.
"JULIE!" I screamed into the blackness
of the night. I started to pull myself back under the boat in
search of her. Just as I was going under again I thought I heard
a faint call from the other side of the boat. Sure enough, she
had surfaced there. Apparently her lifeline had been tied onto
the other side, and as the Aegre rolled around to the right way
up again, so Julie had been pulled around underwater to the other
side.
We quickly scrambled aboard the now right side
up Aegre. But every breaking top was sweeping right over the boat
and pouring down the hatch into the cabin. Within seconds the
deck was flush with the sea. We were being kept afloat solely
by the buoyancy chambers in either end, built in for just that
purpose. But the main cabin was now completely full of water.
I wondered how long the boat would hold together in these conditions
and decided to inflate our Avon dinghy (which was lashed up on
deck), in case she should start to break up. At least we would
have something to get into if that happened.
This done I passed the fore and aft painters to
Julie, who was sitting on deck hugging the bottom of the broken
mast, while I, standing waist deep in the sea in what had been
the cockpit, wondered what to do next.
The companionway was the only place the water
could really get in. If I could somehow block it up and get two
minutes break from the breaking seas, perhaps I could bail out
enough water to give us a little more buoyancy, just enough to
lift over the next wave.
The companionway washboards were gone, but using
the boom and gaff trisail I made a rudimentary barrier to windward
to try and protect the cockpit from the worst of the breaking
waves. Frantically throwing water out with a big basin which had
somehow come to hand, I tried to get ahead of the incoming water.
But time and time again, just as I thought I was getting there
I'd hear a warning shout "Look out!" from Julie instantly
followed by a wall of green and white seawater. It began to look
hopeless. The situation wasn't helped by my beginning to feel
very cold as I'd been asleep without any clothes on and still
hadn't found any.
A desperate cry from Julie warned me of an extra
big wave and I clung on to the boat as I was knocked over by a
huge mass of water. I thought the whole boat was going over again,
but we surfaced in the wake of the wave, still the right way up.
Julie was swept overboard but was still attached by her life harness.
I helped pull her back and and with the boat being so low in the
water she had little difficulty scrambling back aboard. But our
lovely, possibly life saving, Avon dinghy had been torn from her
grasp leaving her hands raw and bleeding.
I saw it on the crest of a wave maybe six metres
downwind. To go after it of not? I paused momentarily. Would this
turn out to be a critical decision for our survival? If I went
after it, could I catch it? If I caught it would I ever be able
to get it back to The Aegre?. I could see fear in Julie's eyes
that our potential liferaft was almost gone. But better we're
together, than apart, I thought, and better on even the swamped
Aegre, than a barren inflatable. No, I wasn't going after it.
Within two seconds it had disappeared over the wavecrests to leeward,
rapidly merging with the greyness of the dawn. I hoped it was
the right decision.
It took with it one of our most precious possessions,
our sextant, which I'd put in it for safekeeping after it came
floating out of the companionway in its box. The inflatable dinghy,
high and dry above everything, had seemed the safest place. I'd
also placed in it a collection of odds and ends which, floating
loosely around, I thought would be valuable to save. A good knife,
fresh fruit and vegetables and more, All gone.
But there was no time for regrets. We had to get
some freeboard on The Aegre or we would die of exposure.
It suddenly occurred to me that if I could get
some some of our fresh water jerricans out from below, and empty
them, then by placing them back inside the boat, preferably up
under the sides of the cockpit, they might provide the extra buoyancy
we so desperately needed. To get them out I would have to go back
underwater in the cabin and try to find them amidst the wreckage.
They were stowed under the floorboards both forward and aft. I
knew that in all we had 22X10 litre polythene containers of fresh
water. I explained my plan to Julie and then set about going below
and getting them out. One by one I poured the fresh water out
into the sea. It seemed mad. "But we won't need all this
water if we're dead from exposure" I shouted to Julie above
the wind. I kept a careful count of how many were left.
With every empty container I stuffed back below
we rose a little higher, until eventually, with only five full
ones left, we started to lift to the oncoming waves. I desperately
bailed only to be swamped again, but now there was hope, she was
riding more like a boat, and eventually I did get a break. Bailing
like a madman I got the water down to the floor of the cockpit
and we rose to the next big breaking top, the white water passed
around us. I looked up at Julie and we smiled at each other. It
looked like we were going to survive the immediate future at least.
150 miles south west of Tahiti, and
being blown further away every moment, The Aegre now faced even
worse weather. She'd lost most of her mast, had unknown hull damage,
was still more than half full of water and the sextant and dinghy
were gone. In Part 10 of the story Nick
tells how Julie and he survived the next few days and started
to prepare themselves and the boat for a long slow voyage to land.
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