To Tahiti!

After snorkeling Ben and I hurriedly put snorkel gear away, packed things up in the cabin, cleaned up the cockpit a little, took sail covers off then started to pull anchor. Osprey didn't snorkel with us in the morning so they were a little ahead of us pulling anchor. If you recall my first post about Fakarava, the anchoring is a little suspect due to the coral. Brian ended up in the water, diving on their anchor to free it. We were a little worried Ben would have to do the same, but it ended up being simple enough for him to just be at the surface directing me.

He would pop his face out of the water and tell me to run back to the cockpit, turn the wheel hard over port/starboard, put it in forward/reverse, how long to have it in such a position then I would run forward again and he would tell me to either take in anchor or give the chain slack with the windlass. It didn't take too long for us to untangle the chain and head toward the pass.

I helmed while Ben navigated the pass. Unfortunately we couldn't sail it since the wind was right on the nose and the channel was too narrow to tack. The wind seemed good and when we got a little ways out of the channel we were still excited about moving on to Tahiti.

Once we cleared the actual pass, though, it turned out to be really big swell. When Ben checked the weather the other day he said there'd be good winds but he left out the fact that we should expect 8+ foot seas. The forecast also was a little on the small side--we saw seas bigger than 12 feet.

That size swell wouldn't be a huge deal since there was really good wind. We were seeing nearly 8.5 knots with the working jib and a double reefed main. 8.5 knots = only one overnight to Tahiti! Woo!
While we were bashing around thanks to the swell an awful clunking started from the rudder. At first Ben thought it was just the upper bearing breaking loose from the fiberglass job he did in San Diego but when he stuck his head in the lazarette he saw it was the lower bearing. The lower bearing of the rudder is just above the waterline when we're on anchor but as soon as we start to sail fast the stern wave raises the waterline considerably--enough that the lower bearing is under water.

The reason he knew it was the lower bearing was because water was POURING into the boat. The bearing effectively sealed the hole. We really couldn't see more than that while going so fast, so Ben dropped the headsail and reefed the main again. I didn't know yet that it was the lower bearing, but I did as soon as he got on the radio to Osprey. The conversation when something like this:

Ben: Well, our lower rudder bearing failed and it looks like we're taking on about 10 gallons of water an hour. Since we can't fix it in Fakarava we're going to keep heading to Tahiti.

Richard: Ok, we'll change course to stay within VHF distance.


When Ben said all this I had no idea if our bilges could keep up with that level of water or if the rudder would completely fail and we would lose steerage or anything. He did eventually explain that the electric bilge can do 30 gallons and hour and we have two manual pumps just in case. We also wouldn't lose steerage so there wasn't any danger of us drifting aimlessly in the Pacific. Phew.

The next two days were completely miserable. I was seasick enough that anything but a horizontal position was unbearable. Which meant no cooking. We ran out of crackers that first afternoon so the second day we didn't eat anything. It was also impossible to slow the boat down any less than 6.5 knots--even with just a mainsail up. Pretty impressive for a boat that's headsail driven.

BUT by the second morning we could see Tahiti and the swell had died down considerably. I woke up feeling famished but not queasy at all and whipped up some cinnamon rolls. We were so hungry I couldn't wait for them to bake all the way. Even doughy they were delicious.

Once we pulled into the anchorage outside of Marina Taina we kept our eyes peeled for a good calm place to anchor. When we asked another boat about the holding (how well the anchor will set) she pointed out a private mooring that would be empty til August. Score--free mooring! No anchor to worry about. Picking up the mooring went really smoothly even though we'd never done it together before and I haven't seen it done since Catalina (April 2012).

We cleaned up the boat as the other boats that left Fakarava at the same time came into radio range. Osprey showed up a couple hours (ok maybe not that long) after we did and immediately wanted to hear how things went with the rudder.

Since it was Winter Solstice we decided to celebrate with happy hour at La Casa Bianca. Our new neighbors in the anchorage, Bella Vita, joined us and listened to our rudder woes. They were really amazing about offering help, tools, whatever we needed.

It was really great to relax after sailing over 200 miles with a broken rudder bearing while taking on water. Did I mention the SAT phone stopped working as well? It was a bit scary, but turned out ok.