PWAC Victoria: Ian Douglas, Writing Sample

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Cruising the Coral Sea

by Ian Douglas ©

With a warped sextant and celestial skills grown rusty, this reef-strewn stretch of the Pacific was no place for a navigation exercise. Published in Pacific Yachting, Oct. 1994.

" . . . desert island." Hanging out in the galley, waiting for the dive compressor to clatter to a stop, I catch the end of one of Tim's tirades. Always on about something, today he's raving about a remote cay, far out in the Coral Sea, a region mined with barely-breaking reefs, a sailor's Elm Street. "You gotta check it out, nobody goes there, it's magic. Diving's unbelievable, there's red-tailed tropic birds, frigate birds swooping all over the place."

Survivors of three years filled with "days of boredom, followed by minutes of sheer terror"--oft-quoted description of ocean cruising--MJ and I are always on the lookout for unusual landfalls to add variety to our terror. But, as MJ points out, we haven't touched a sextant since arriving in Australia a year earlier. (This adventure happened BGPSBR--"before grey plastic sextants became redundant," before GPS units became as common as car phones.)

"I think we'd better give that cay a miss--head over to the Bougainville Light and then cut across." Doing my best prudent mariner imitation, I concur, totally in agreement that the Coral Sea route does look dodgy, missing all those reefs, searching for an island only 10 feet high.

Abandon best intentions, adventures soon follow. Sailing up the Great Barrier from Townsville, we meet the RV Sirius, outbound from the Marine Institute. Saying last farewells to friends onboard, Tim tempts us one last time with tales of spectacular diving around this desert island--the sun is brilliant, the breeze is light--"what the hell, let's do it."

That evening, a strange sound tears me from a warm bunk. Out in the moonless night, the wind has risen to a steady 35 knots on the nose. Staggering forward, I find the number one genoa trying to abandon ship. Hastily lashed to the lifeline during a sail change, it had been ripped free by a rogue wave. It was a warning--we'd grown slack during our year dockside.

Safely past Pith Reef, the wind and seas continue to build, so we drop our sails and lay ahull till dawn, when we grab star sights to fix our position. But sailing toward the cay's charted position, we find only empty ocean. Puzzled, we try some sun sights, only to discover we're in the middle of a partial eclipse of the sun. Wrong time, wrong place for a navigation exercise. By dusk, all we know is: 1) we're lost, 2) somewhere in the Coral Sea, surrounded by reefs, 3) with a sextant we strongly suspect has warped in the hot-enough-to-fry-eggs heat of an Australian summer.

Scanning the horizon at dusk, one last time, we spy a tiny glint of golden sand, dead to windward. Motor-sailing flat out, the light fails before we reach the cay. Dropping the flogging main sail, we motor slowly forward in the warm darkness, navigating by nostrils, the stench of seabird droppings getting stronger and stronger.

With vivid memories of reef-edges plummeting straight down into unfathomable depths, watching the sounder flicker is terrifying. The demonic screams of the sea birds finally are too unnerving, so we put the engine in neutral, with the bottom still 180 feet below us. Having lost faith in our sextant, reluctant to lose the cay, we drop our main anchor, 100 feet of chain and 150 feet of double-braided nylon rode. If the anchor holds, great, if not, it would at least slow our drift. We collapse into our bunks for a long, uneasy night with the wind moaning through the rigging.

At first light, we stumbled onto the pitching foredeck to get good and bad news: the sandy cay, crowned by a thin straggle of Tournefourtia, is still in sight, meaning the anchor had held. But the rode was badly chafed. Quickly starting the engine, we motored forward and began to crank in the windlass. The braided nylon shivered bar-tight as the bow sinks down; the violent pitching threatens to rip the windlass free, perhaps taking a chunk of foredeck with it. Some 180 feet below, the anchor was fouled on coral.

"I can't dive that sucker free, so we might as well do an Eric and Susan." Whenever danger seemed to threaten the Hiscocks--consummate voyagers--they'd retire to the cockpit for a cuppa. Following their example, we'd barely reached the companionway when there was a loud "twang." The boat was drifting and our dilemma was solved, although maybe not in the way we'd hoped. Motoring up to the island, we set not one, but two spare anchors in 30 feet of crystalline water. Plunging in with mask and snorkel, I checked they'd both dug well into the sand before we retired for a stress-relieving nap.

Later in the afternoon I went snorkelling for dinner. A pair of coral trout lurking under a ledge were surprisingly wary, and when I try a shot, two grey sharks rush in from nowhere, crashing into the coral trying to grab the fish. Suddenly it seemed like a fine night for spaghetti.

Next morning we rowed ashore in the dinghy, laden with binoculars, bird books and cameras--plus the EPIRB, three bottles of water and survival rations. We were taking no chances after the previous day's adventures.

Crunching over the crushed coral sand, red-tailed tropic birds and frigate birds wheeling overhead, gave us a spooky "we're-the-only-ones-left" sensation. Taking a last look at Silver Willow, we made a quick circuit of the windward side of the cay, revelling in the fresh sea breeze. (For pungency, a seabird colony ranks second only to a sea-lion rookery.) But despite the sweet air, we didn't dawdle for fear that by some freak of nature both anchors might break free. We had no wish to play out our own season of Gilligan's Island.

For five days we explored the nearby reef, waiting for the winds to abate. Finally the breeze dropped to 35 knots or so, and we raised anchor. As we bashed to windward, the windcups promptly spun off the masthead. Next to go is the bookshelf in the forepeak; overloaded with 800 pages of the fishes of Australia, volumes flew everywhere. When the toilet-seat went airborne after its hinges had shattered, we finally relaxed. Things happen in threes, now we were back in the cruising mode.

Eventually we located the Solomons using a combination of suspect sextant and its cheap backup. The only chain available in local hardware stores was long-link, which wouldn't fit our windlass. However, we did notice the link fence outside the government offices looked to be the right size. Luckily, we were saved from committing a nefarious deed when we bump into a Kiwi marine goods salesman at the Honiara Yacht Club. After placing an order for a new CQR, chain and nylon rode, we spent four weeks cruising anchorages still scattered with rusting WWII wreckage.

When the time came, we returned to Honiara and met the container ship bearing our new ground tackle. Picking up a GPS soon after our desert island quest, we vowed we'd still use celestial to check our position. That resolution soon went the way of all good intentions. We had the sextant checked in Japan where we confirmed that the plastic frame had indeed warped--the explanation for our navigational woes in the Coral Sea. Replacing the lost ground tackle burned up a fair chunk of the cruising kitty, but sailing adventures are much like the proverbial pilot's definition of a good landing--"anything you can walk away from."

Ian Douglas
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