October 15, 2007 - Enroute to Tonga

Yesterday morning we looked at the latest weather forecast and decided that we had better depart from Beveridge Reef that afternoon if we wanted to do the 370 mile passage to Tonga this week. So after one last snorkel trip we deflated the dinghy. While Sten finished tidying things on deck, I whipped up some passage food. This time I went old school - chicken casserole made with cream of mushroom soup. It isn't haute cuisine, but it does a nice job of coating the tummy. By 3pm we were underway.

During our six days in Beveridge, we had one fantastic day of light wind and sunshine. The rest of the time it either poured down rain or the wind was piping. Yesterday the 15 knot breeze created moderate seas outside the reef, which leads to current inside the reef at any time other than dead low tide. So, even though it was a sunny day, the snorkeling was difficult because of the heavy current coming over the reef. Beveridge makes you work for your pleasure.

We were talking about it yesterday, and we both agree that having some other people there to while away the rainy days with would have made it a better experience for us. It can be desperately lonely out here. Several times over the past year I have been in tears from missing friends and family. I'm much more extroverted than Sten, and I tend to feel the urge for company long before he does. But then the other morning we were listening to boats check in on the radio net. We heard a boat give a position near us. After the net, we hailed them. Switching channels to chat, Sten suggested that they might stop in at Beveridge to take a break from their squally passage. In the midst of describing the reef and the anchorage, he stated that "it is pretty lonely here." And I had thought I was the only one feeling isolated. The other boat didn't end up stopping - poor visibility caused by the rain made the reef pass into the lagoon too risky. I can only wonder how much different our experience at Beveridge would have been with some company.

The other disappointment was the fact that we didn't find any lobsters. The combination of bad weather and high seas made lobstering on the reef difficult. Sten hunted for lobster several times, but it wasn't to be. We wound up eating a lot of steak instead.

Sten, lobstering on the reef

We are glad that we stopped at Beveridge and that we stuck it out for 4 days of terrible weather waiting for that one good day. We saw some really great stuff but we are disappointed that we did not have better weather or have anyone else to share the experience with.

October 14, 2007 - Beveridge Reef

A line from Below Another Sky, by Rick Ridgeway, pops into my head each time I look around. He described climbing in Antarctica as living inside a Rothko. The same can be said for spending a week at Beveridge Reef. A horizontal white line of breaking surf divides powder blue sky from aquamarine water. Other than the detritus of a few wrecks on the reef, there is nothing else for the eye to rest on. It is quite desolate.

But then you stick your head underwater and a whole kaleidoscope of colors reveals itself. Orange, blue, green, purple and pink coral provides the backdrop for schools of colorful tropical fish and red and midnight blue urchins. On our snorkeling excursions we've seen moray eels, turtles, sting rays, spotted eagle rays, and sharks. Lots of sharks.

Inside the lagoon, behind the reef, we primarily see white tips, a curious shark that travels in packs. They are reasonably large, and it is startling to turn around a and find three of them swimming towards you to check you out, because, well, they are sharks. And we've all seen Jaws. But white tip sharks aren't terribly aggressive. Sten actually saw one being herded by a big red snapper.

A white tip, sleeping in a coral cave.

Dinghy survival pack - GPS, VHF, and snacks

While drift snorkeling the pass, we came across sharks of a different feather: grey reef sharks. Since the white tips are mostly grey, with white tips on their first dorsal fin and tail, when we first saw the grey sharks in the pass, I kept looking for the white marks that would denote their benign nature. But these guys had no white marks. Rather, the trailing edge of their tails are a dark charcoal grey - the characteristic marking of a grey reef shark, among the mostly likely of sharks to attack divers. As we floated above them, individual sharks would circle up towards us to check us out. We were both on edge, ready to hop into the dinghy at the first threat display, which they typically will do before attacking.

On our second drift we floated over a ledge approximately 30 feet below us, that dropped off to a white sandy bottom at least 70 feet further down. Two large grey reef sharks stood out in bass relief against this pale background. The water clarity here is such that we had no trouble making them out. One of them noticed us and quickly swam up to check us out. I wasted no time scrambling into the dinghy. Sten, who thought he had beat a quick exit from the water was surprised to find me aboard and already taking off my gear. As we headed back to our side of the lagoon we talked about what made seeing the sharks so cool. I suggested it was the adrenaline rush of putting yourself close to a violent creature. Sten, who thinks a bit more deeply about these things, said that it was like seeing a lion in the grasslands or a bear in the woods - it is always interesting to see an apex predator in its natural environment.

October 11, 2007 - Beveridge Reef

Last night, as I opened one of our last two bottles of New Zealand Sauvignon Blanc, I offered Sten a glass. Now, Sten likes wine as much as do. And the only beer we have on board at this point is six month old Heineken from Panama. He declined the glass of wine, saying, "No, you go ahead. I'll just have a beer." If that isn't love, I don't know what is. After months of drinking bad, overpriced French wine in French Polynesia, that first glass of Babich was like coming home. We are really looking forward to spending the cyclone season exploring New Zealand, the land of affordable, tasty wine. Oh, and we hear that there is some nature stuff we should see there too.

After a year of drying our clothing on the lifelines, it is disintegrating. Sten, while inflating the dinghy, models the latest in cruising fashion - shredded shorts.

October 10, 2007 - Beveridge Reef

The stalled front that we rode down here from Bora Bora is still parked right over our heads. For the past 10 days we have had continuously overcast skies and rainy weather. It is starting to feel like Northeast Ohio in winter. This is the longest stretch of bad weather that we have had in the 11 months that we have been cruising.

Since we have been in Beveridge Reef, the rain has poured down on us, continuously. It hasn't let up enough to get the dinghy reassembled (we deflated it and stowed the gas tank, anchor, and engine for the trip here). On a positive note, once it stops raining, I'm going to have some mighty clean lifelines on which to hang out the laundry to dry. With so much unstructured time on our hands, we have to find ways to keep ourselves from getting bored. These past few days we have occupied ourselves with boat projects and cooking.

Sten tried to interface one of our handheld Garmin GPS's with an external Raymarine GPS antenna so that he could use the handheld down below as an anchor alarm (our chartplotter draws too much power to use it as an anchor alarm on a nightly basis). It didn't work - he thinks the units might be incompatible. He also switched back to our old autopilot so that we can sleep in our bed on the next passage, changed the oil in the generator, and did half a dozen other small projects. The boat projects keep Sten physically occupied and mentally stimulated.

Meanwhile, I've been cooking. I know it seems like 1950 around here, with Sten doing the manly work of fixing stuff and the little wife messing about in the kitchen, but I'd rather bake than crawl into the anchor locker to reattach a hawsepipe. I find that cooking is a useful (and tasty) outlet for my need to be creative; I rarely have all the ingredients or equipment called for by a recipe, so I've become a master of improvisation - and kneeding by hand. We celebrated our first night at anchor with some of the steak that Dad brought us and a wonderful bottle of malbec that Storm Along gave us in Bora Bora. The next night we made Vietnamese spring rolls out of some more of the steak Dad brought us and some rice wrappers I bought 9 months ago in Iles des Saintes. They were tasty and fun. Yesterday morning I tried the David Eyre's Pancake recipe from the New York Times. This pancake turned out to be very similar to Fanny Farmer's Dutch Baby recipe, but tougher. We prefer the Dutch Baby, but will incorporate the nutmeg from the NYT recipe in the future - why not: New Zealand is going to take all of our Grenada nutmeg anyway. Yesterday afternoon I wrapped up the cooking with a batch of sticky buns (made with pecans brought to us by Dad - we haven't seen a pecan since we left the US). So now the sun really needs to come out because our tummies are distended from all the eating and we need to get some exercise. Moreover, after 10 days onboard, we are both suffering from cabin fever.

We also both wanted to express our personal thanks to The Tribe for knocking the Yankees out of the playoffs (and to Suzy for keeping us up to date on the baseball results). Go Sox.

October 7, 2007 - Beveridge Reef

I'm sitting down to type this with a cup of coffee sitting just to the side of the keyboard. The liquid in the cup is shimmying a bit, but it isn't sloshing back and forth. We are at anchor at Beveridge Reef. Finally. It has been a very long week getting here.

We are very happy to be here. We have been dreaming about this place for a long time. Two years ago, in the midst of our refit, we had dinner in Boston's South End at the Franklin Cafe with Peter and Jeanne Pockel. I had contacted Jeanne through the SSCA bulletin board. She and Peter graciously took time out of their visit to see family to give some advice to two new cruisers. We had a great meal, and left filled with wonder about one of the places Jeanne and Peter had visited on their 25 year long cruising odyssey - Beveridge Reef. They described Beveridge as a swimming pool in the middle of the ocean. No land, just a reef surrounding a lagoon, abounding with unexploited sea life in a completely isolated location. This is exactly the kind of off-the-beaten-track place that we were hoping to visit on our trip.

The next day at work, I googled Beveridge Reef. The first hit was Jeanne's account of the month they spent in Beveridge. Then it was off to try to find some charts of the spot. [God, I miss slow days at the office with unlimited internet access.] The official charts of this part of the Pacific show the reef as an obstruction, a few miles from the GPS coordinates for Beveridge that have been verified by cruisers. I found a few hand drawn charts online. We used the chart at seafriends.org.nz/niue/niue08m.gif to get in here today.

The entrance is located 20-00.06S, 167-46.62W. Enter on a bearing of 75 degrees magnetic. The reef is shaped like a kidney bean with the pass in the indented part of the bean facing west. When the swell is up like it is today, there is ton of water moving out of the lagoon through the pass. We were pushing a 3.5 knot current coming in the pass this morning.

We were concerned about how the conditions would be inside the reef with such a strong sea running, but tucked behind the windward edge of the reef, it is relatively calm. There is a bit of wind chop, but no swell to speak of. The latest GRIB file calls for several more days of this overcast, windy weather. We are planning to stay here for a while to explore, and are hoping that the wind and swell will die down while we are here. In the meantime, we'll just enjoy being at anchor. We'll do some cooking (to make sure that any weight we might have lost on the passage doesn't stay lost) and put the boat back in order.

October 6, 2007 - Enroute to Beveridge Reef, Day 6

The end is in sight. Thank god. We've been rolling viciously in the swell. Sten's valiant attempt to make pancakes and coffee wound up all over the galley floor this morning. Somehow the pancake batter launched itself three feet across the galley onto the face of the microwave. Poor Sten. He handled it much better than I would have. Then this afternoon we had another accidental jibe. This time rather than stretching, the preventer line simply snapped.

We are only 60 miles from Beveridge Reef. We don't dare approach it at night, so we will heave to about 20 miles away and wait for sunrise to make our final approach. Why so cautious? Beveridge is considered a "dangerous reef." It is almost entirely awash. The only visual clues that you are getting close are the wreck of a fishing boat and the swell breaking against the reef. Our chartplotter shows the reef three miles from the GPS coordinates on a hand drawn chart that we have. So we will be waiting for good light to approach it.

October 5, 2007 - Enroute to Beveridge Reef, Day 8,047

This hasn't been a particularly bad passage, just rolly, rough and slow - making for miserable sleeping conditions. I don't think either of us has had a complete REM cycle since we left Bora Bora. We are both dog tired. Today we had overcast skies and rain for the fifth day in a row. Lunch was chicken noodle soup and Sten made hot cocoa for a treat this afternoon. Right now he is making a batch of nachos for dinner. We have less than 200 miles to go, so we hope only to have two more nights out here before making landfall at Beveridge Reef.

October 4, 2007 - Enroute to Beveridge Reef, Day 4

We had a nicely uneventful night last night. This morning the wind died, and we turned the engine on for a few hours while we waited for it to fill back in. Sten made his famous banana walnut pancakes for breakfast. And we were both feeling well enough to have coffee this morning.

Last night we passed within five miles of one of the Cook Islands. We knew that we drew too much to make it into the pass. So we would have to anchor outside. We heard from Moonshaddow that the anchorage outside the reef was really rolly. If we are going to roll around uncomfortably, we might as well be logging a few miles. And as Sten pointed out, if we stopped, we would just have to go through the whole seasickness acclimation routine again when we departed. So we decided to skip it.

October 2, 2007 - Enroute to Beveridge Reef, Day 2

After three and half months in French Polynesia, we are so out of practice with this passage making business. True to form, I spent our first day out feeling punky. After I recovered, it was Sten's turn spend a day green around the gills. The weather isn't helping - we are running downwind in 20 knots under overcast skies. Steep waves with a short period between them keep slapping our stern around.

October 1, 2007 - Enroute to Beveridge Reef, Day 1

We had a miserable first day of this 940 mile passage. As we left Bora Bora, lines of squalls started marching across the sea. Because the squalls cause the wind to shift around, one of us had to stay in the cockpit to keep adjusting our course. We both had dismal, damp, dreary night watches. Around noon today the sun came out and we had a few pleasant hours, but late this afternoon the clouds and squalls reappeared. We've been enjoying the last of our French Polynesia baguettes and brie.