Part II: Cook Islands Turnaround
By Marc Edge
Our arrival at Rarotonga in the Cook Islands was a wild one and, in retrospect, perhaps a harbinger of things to come. As we left Maupiti, the last stop on our three-month tour of French Polynesia, the wind began to die, usually a sign it would soon switch direction. The strong southeasterly trades we had been riding through the South Pacific were gone, but the seas they had whipped up were still high. On our course southwest to Rarotonga, the waves would hit us on the beam, lifting us up on one crest after another and dropping us down into the following trough. This wouldn't have been too bad if we were sailing, but without the sails up to counterbalance the weight of our heavy keel, we were rolling qround quite a bit. The worst thing was that the engine would continually die because of air getting in the diesel fuel lines. When the waves rolled us, they would push the fuel in the gravity-feed fuel tank to one side and air would go down the fuel line. Five or six times I had to go below and bleed the lines to get the engine going again.
By the time we got to the small harbor beneath the towering lava pinnacle, the wind had switched around onto our nose and we were making little progress against it. I called on the VHF radio to a boat I knew that was already in the harbor and asked what the conditions were like "inside." Not bad, I was told, but the wind, now coming from the west, would blow us onto the concrete customs wharf where we would first tie up, so setting a breast anchor to hold us off the dock. Coming into port, I called the harbormaster, who told me to land between the freighter on one end of the wharf and a sailboat on the other. Getting closer, I could see there was only about 50 feet between the two vessels. I called on the handheld radio again and was told that sure enough, that is where we would have to tie up. While I was having second thoughts about the possibility of squeezing into such a small spot without hitting one of the other boats, especially with the wind picking up as it was, I decided to pull out of my approach and go around in a circle and give myself time to better assess the situation. The wind had other ideas, however and at that moment a huge gust came up and I found myself unable to get the boat's nose through it. That meant we were going in, like it or not. The skipper of the docked sailboat was perched on the bow of his boat, exhorting me to motor forward lest I crunch his hull. Ahead loomed the steel hull of the inter island freighter! Needless to say, it was a most harrowing landing, but the worst was yet to come.
The wind indicator on the ship's instruments showed the wind speed was now 25 knots, gusting higher and blowing us right onto the concrete wharf. We put all our fenders out on the starboard side and held Markenurh off the dock with all our strength, while the harbormaster scrambled his crew to hang large rubber tires off the wharf to protect our topsides. I knew they would leave ugly black marks on the hull, but that was better than the alternative -- scrapes and dents in the fiberglass. One of he cruisers I knew, whose boat was stern-tied to the nearby yacht quay, came by to assist and after helping us fend off for a few minutes offered to get his dinghy to take our stern anchor and set it off our beam so we could winch ourselves off the dock. We continued to fend off with all our might, with the aid of several large Cook Islanders, while we waited for Ernie to come back in his dinghy. By now the seas in the narrow harbor were quite violent, stirred up by the screaming wind. Markenurh would roll and lurch despite being securely tied to the wharf. On one particularly dangerous roll she caught her forward toe rail under the wharf and a great splintering of teak ensued. The next thing we knew, the aft lifeline was hanging limp, having been ripped off the gate stanchion by the menacing concrete dock. Five minutes went by, then 10 and soon we began wondering where the heck Ernie was. Then, over our shoulders as we fended off, we could see a great commotion at the yacht quay, accompanied by shouting and the sound of engines starting. Then we saw two boats pulling up their anchors and motoring into the middle of the harbor to reanchor. It turned out Ernie's big boat had dragged its anchor in the wind and was bashing into the next boat, which then was slamming into its neighbor in the nautical equivalent of a three-car pileup. His neighbors decided anchoring out where there were no other boats to bash into was a much better idea.
Things were getting quite wild and we were becoming drained from the exertion of fending off for half an hour when we saw the harbormaster's boat being launched. Its crew attached a heavy floating line to the hurricane mooring in the middle of the harbor and was tying it to a boat down the wharf from us that was being slammed into the corner of the coral harbor. We hollered to them to come and take our stern anchor and set it 50 feet or so from the boat. Winching in the anchor line, we finally got some separation from the unforgiving concerete wharf. I'll tell you, we slept well that night. Weather like that was a regular occurrence during our stay at Rarotonga. One week later, the wind picked up to 40 knots at night, and the French boat beside us began dragging into the Australian on the other side. His engine luckily started -- he'd been having trouble with it -- and he and the Australian skipper took off from the yacht quay to anchor in the harbor. John and I rigged up the spotlight to try and catch what was going on in the dark, but all we could see was a curtain of pelting rain. I switched on the radar, but couldn't pick out the steel-hulled sloop in all the turmoil. John suggested he take the dinghy and go out to assist them in anchoring, and I agreed. But just as soon as he set off, the wind that had been blowing us onto the yacht quay switched around 180 degrees and was now pushing us OFF the dock. That made things much more comfortable aboard, but infinitely more perilous for John. If the unreliable outboard on my tender quit on him, he could be swept out to sea! I still couldn't see a thing in the blackness, and had to get on the VHF radio to call other boats in the harbor and ask if they could spot him. Finally, a boat on the other end of the quay reported they saw him tied up on the end of the customs dock, behind a small cruise ship. Whew! John came back several hours later, close to midnight, soaked to the skin, having spent most of his time with the harbormaster's crew in their shed, sharing a bottle of Scotch.
One thing about Rarotonga -- it's an interesting place. A high volcanic island without the fringing coral reef that builds up over centuries as older volcanic islands like Bora Bora recede into the ocean, you can cycle or take the bus around the island and also hike across it, up past the needle-like pinnacle. We also enjoyed the Cook's Lager they served at the open-air bar across the street from the harbor and the fried chicken at the takeout restaurant next door. It was also nice to get back to an English-speaking country after three months of trying to get by with our fractured French in Tahiti. The Cook Islands are an independent country, but are associated economically with New Zealand. Their economy was in a horrible state when we visited, as the government was basically bankrupt and had to call for assistance from Auckland.
One souvenir of Rarotonga I'll always treasure is the interview printed in the local newspaper. I went to their office to place a classified ad for crew, as Sylvia was leaving us there and flying back to Tahiti to be with Michel, whom she'd met in the Marquesas. I was dictating the ad to the clerk there when one of the reporters, having overheard what I'd been saying, came out of the newsroom and said she saw a story. She asked if she could come down to the harbor the next day, take my picture and interview me for the weekend paper. Having been a journalist for more than 20 years back in Canada, I knew exactly how she felt. It must have been a slow news day. Teresa came by the next day as promised and we chatted for a while, and the article that appeared the next day looked very good, with a picture of me grinning on a quayside bollard. But I make copies of it for my news writing students not as an example of good journalism, but to show how careful you have to be as a reporter in getting the facts straight. There must have been a dozen factual errors in the story, but NEVER MIND! It looked good and that's the main thing.
We never did find a third crew member, nor did we find the small propane bottles we needed to fuel the one-burner swing stove which enabled us to cook under way in a pitching sea. The hardware store near the harbor was expecting more to come in on a freighter soon, but we waited several extra days without luck before we finally decided it was time to leave. We loaded up on fried chicken and sandwich makings to last us the way to Niue, the next island, a few days to the west.
Where in the world is Niue?
One thing we learned about the South Pacific is that
the trade winds rarely blow constantly, as they are fabled to. Cruisers
who had sailed other oceans told us they had never seen anything like the
Pacific. It was either all or nothing as far as wind went. On our trip
to Niue, it was nothing, unfortunately. We lost the wind a few days after
leaving Rarotonga and had to motor for the last 36 hours to get to Niue.
Now, you're probably thinking, I don't know a lot about some of the places
I visited on my voyage, but at least you've heard of places like Rarotonga,
Bora Bora and Tahiti. But I bet you've never even heard of Niue!
Niue (pronounced New, eh?) is one of the world's smallest independent countries but largest uplifted coral islands. It is about 600 miles west of Rarotonga and 200 miles east of Tonga. It's about 10 miles wide and because it's uplifted -- formed as a coral reef around a volcanic island and then lifted up by volcanic pressure -- it is laced with caves and chasms. We only planned to spend a few days there but actually stayed 10 days, partly because we enjoyed it so much there and partly because the wind was howling at 40 knots outside the bay. We joined the Niue Yacht Club and because there were so many new members in port -- cruisers waiting out the weather -- were invited to attend a special general meeting to pass the new club constitution because there was finally enough members for a quorum. Like Rarotonga, Niue is also populated not only by natives but also by fun-loving New Zealanders, and the Niue Yacht Club meetings are held in the beverage room of the Niue Hotel. We cruisers had been given a copy of the draft constitution when we arrived and were invited to join for $20. The purpose of the new constitution was to restructure the club executive. Traditionally, the premier of Niue had always been commodore of the Yacht Club, but that was strictly an honorary title, and it fell to the vice commodore to do all the work. Understandably, he didn't think that was quite fair, so a new position was proposed for the premier, with the actual head of the yacht club becoming commodore. There were the other usual club positions, secretary and treasurer, but then there was another new position to be created -- cabin boy. This was obviously a bit of a lark, because the duties of cabin boy as set out in the draft constitution were "to provide rum for members at meetings."
I must admit I got into the spirit of things as the meeting went on -- being as it was held in the bar and we were drinking pitchers of the local Fiafia Lager -- and when it came to the part about creating the new positions, I thrust up my hand to speak. I objected to the sexist connotations of the term "cabin boy," suggesting the name of the position be changed to "bosun" as it is in our club, the Bluewater Cruising Association. I asked how they would like it if a woman sailed in with a sail locker full of rum which she would be prepared to share with yacht club members but for such exclusionary terminology. In fact, I said, I just happened to have a case of rum in my sail locker which I'd picked up in Mexico for $2 a bottle and hadn't touched since the Coke to mix it with was more expensive than that in French Polynesia. I knew I wouldn't be able to get that much liquor past the notoriously greedy customs officers in Tonga, so I made the meeting an offer: they change the name of the proposed position to bosun, name me to the post and toss in a free NYC T-shirt and I'd be prepared to contribute one bottle of rum for each scheduled meeting of the yacht club over the next year. Just out of caution I asked the meeting's chair just how many meetings that would be, he held up four fingers, and boom, I was appointed the first bosun of the Niue Yacht Club. I wrote that report up for Currents as the minutes of the meeting. I'll bet most who read it thought I was making it all up.
John and I spent an interesting time at Niue, going around the island with fellow Canadians Bill and Kathy Clark on Ardmachree and Mark and Abby O'Neill on Anesthesia. We went spelunking through the caves and climbing the chasms that dotted the coast. Outside the wind continued to howl and we watched the waves crash into the windward side of the island, glad we were safely anchored in the bay and not getting backed around outside. We waited and waited for the wind to die down, but it just kept blowing. Finally, we decided it was only two days to Tonga and we could endure a pounding for that long, so we decided to leave.
Down and out in Tonga
After all our motoring to get to Niue, the batteries
were well charged, and the solar panels and wind generator helped keep
them topped up, but after 
10
days they were getting low, so I decided we should motor for a few hours
after leaving Niue to charge the batteries, even though we could have sailed
off our mooring. We were motorsailing away when the engine started to make
this horrible screeching noise. Going below, I saw the water pump leaking
all over the engine and shut her down. Closer inspection showed the water
pump to be shot! We had more than enough wind to get to Tonga, but how
would we get in the winding entrance? We decided we would just have to
sail i as close as we could get and then call on the radio for help.
Little did I know that John had chosen this two-day passage to give up smoking. By not bringing any cigarettes along, he hoped to kick the habit. To me it just seemed he was disagreeable, objecting to every sailing decision I made and wanting to do everything differently. As we were sailing in through the islands of the Vavau group at sunset, I got on the VHF radio and called for assistance on Channel 16. From attending cruising seminars in Puerto Vallarta before we set off across the Pacific, I knew that one peculiar feature of Tonga was that cruisers tended to refer to anchorages not by name but by the number they were given in the cruising guide distributed by The Moorings charters. I had a copy of the Moorings book aboard and pulled it out, noticing there was an anchorage on our approach to Neiafu harbor. I called for assistance to "any boat in anchorage Number Six." First John objected that he thought I should call on Channel 72, which was used by the Moorings. I replied that we'd been monitoring Channel 16 and had heard lots of traffic. Then he said he didn't think cruisers referred to anchorages by number but by name, and I guess I kind of lost my temper. Well, I know for sure that I lost my temper. Our predicament and John's continual sniping over the past two days had finally gotten to me and I asked him in at no uncertain volume to "please stop objecting to everything I do." I'm sure John was just as fed up as I was with the way things had been going, with only two of us aboard to stand watch, no way to cook a hot meal, and now no engine. I just thought his response was childish. "OK, that's it," he said. "You just lost a crew." He got fairly abusive verbally, and when I asked him to please not talk to me that way, he came back with the classic response: "I'll talk to you any way I want." After we were under tow, I apologized for yelling at him, hoping that would prompt him to do the same for his behavior, but he wouldn't even shake my hand. After we were safely tied up to a mooring buoy, we were quarantined until we could be inspected by customs the next day, but John had one request for our friends Bill and Kathy on Ardmachree when they offered to send over a hot cooked meal -- could they also please send over some cigarettes? I didn't want to lose John as crew because he was an experienced sailor, but even in the clear light of the next day he couldn't be persuaded to stay and ended up sailing off a week or so later on a much bigger, much faster boat out of San Francisco. Just by chace I ran into him a few months later at the holding lounge of the Honolulu airport as we were both flying home for Christmas, and we arranged to get together and exchange photographs. We hoisted a few and told a few tales and there seemed to be no hard feelings.
Back in Tonga, my immediate problem wasn't lack of crew because I wasn't going anywhere soon for lack of an engine. I asked around and was referred to a charter operator who was a competent diesel mechanic. It took a month for us to track down the necessary parts in Australia and have them delivered via Auckland, but soon I was ready to go again. All I needed was crew. That's when Russ and Horst sailed in, two surfers in tow.
George and Anthony seemed eager enough to get to New Zealand, and they promised to work "really hard" getting the boat ready to go because they didn't have enough money to be able to contribute toward the voyage financially. I had always taken crew aboard on a cost-sharing basis, asking them to pay their share of fuel and moorage and a per diem -- usually $10 -- toward provisions. But out in the middle of the South Pacific, I was beginning to see a shift in supply and demand for crew. There were more boats looking for crew than there were qualified candidates, and some boats were even offering to pay crew. I agreed to pay their way while they worked on the boat and while we were under way to New Zealand, with the understanding we would part company there. The one question was whether their four surfboards (two each) would fit in the aft berth, and they did.
George, an American from North Carolina, and Anthony, a Brit, didn't have much sailing experience. They had been surfing in South America, they explained, when they got work as line handlers in Panama. They hitched a ride on a boat that needed crew and told many tales of its irascible skipper, who had underprosivisioned the because he was short on funds. They ran out of food on the way to Samoa -- stopping only in Bora Bora on the way -- where he had a brother who could loan him some money. I soon came to see how a ship could run out of food with George and Anthony aboard. They ate like horses, but had no cooking skills, so guess who ended up doing all the cooking? They had been at the South Pacific Festival of the Arts in Apia, Western Samoa, where they had made friends with the other young people aboard the flotilla of cruising yachts in attendance, typically teenaged children of the owners. They all spent their late nights at the local watering hole and would typically roll home about 2 a.m., meaning George and Anthony wouldn't fall out of bed until about 10. That was fine with me. I'd work quietly on writing until they arose and then, after making coffee for them we'd set to accomplishing some task aboard. I'd then make lunch and then they'd usually take shore leave in the afternoon before dinner and their usual night of partying. Eventually we got everything done up and were off, planning a stop at the southernmost island of Tonga and the capital city of Tongatapu.
After a brief stop at Club Hunga at the entrance to Vava'u to visit Kiwi Pete and his Tongan wife Happy at their "resort'" we set sail south for the 200-mile passage. It was during those two days at sea that I realized things wouldn't be easy with George and Anthony aboard. The problem wasn't that they didn't know much about sailing (they didn't) but that they thought they did. It was the old adage of "a little knowledge is a dangerous thing" in action. They had sailed on two boats by this time and were constantly pointing out that the way I intended to do something wasn't the way it was done on one or other of those boats. George was a chronic questioner -- he always wanted to know the rationale behind anything I wanted to do, be it a sail change or course adjustment. Anthony was more argumentative -- he would simply dispute my judgment at just about every turn. The clincher came when we were attempting to navigate the tortuous entrance to Tongatapu. It was just coming dark, but having called ahead to Bill on Kathy on Ardmachree , they said that would actually make coming in easier, because we could see the lights on the buoys marking the channel. They gave me the co-ordinates they had used and I entered them into the GPS as waypoints marking our routes in. As we approached, I asked George and Anthony to keep an eye for the green light that marked the entrance. I had the autopilot steering toward the waypoint that marked its position on the chart. We could see a green light, and Anthony insisted it was the entrance. The only problem was that it was abeam, and the entrance position, I knew from the chart and GPS, was ahead. After I explained how I could be so sure, they scoffed that I would rely on GPS for navigation, citing the example of a boat that had gone on the reef in Samoa by relying on GPS. They insisted the green light was the entrance, and I altered course for it before closely consulting the chart. Double checking everything, I concluded the light we saw was not the entrance but instead the nearby reef! I put my foot down at that point and insisted we would come in my way and changed course for the entrance waypoint over their objections.
Things sort of went downhill from there. We anchored in the harbor that night and waited until morning to stern-tie to the quay. I had anchored where I figured, from the experience of having stern-tied several times now, the anchor would have to be to keep the bow from going too far downwind in a gust of the prevailing trades. Oh no, George and Anthony insisted, we would have to re-anchor before stern-tying. Why would we want the anchor way down the dock like that? "OK," I said, "we'll do it your way." Of course, where they wanted to put the anchor wouldn't keep us in the space we had chosen, next to Ardmachree, so we had to put it back to where I'd put it in the first place. By now I was losing my patience with these two clowns. They thought that because there were two of them they could out-vote me or something. I was going to have to make it clear that a ship was not exactly a democracy and that from no on what the captain said was going to have to go. They didn't like that very much from the sound of their grumblings. They also had a different idea of what our stopover in Tongatapu was going to consist of. My idea was to get the boat ready to go as soon as a weather window opened, then if we had to wait an extra couple of days we could go around and do a bit of sight seeing. Otherwise we could miss the opportunity to set sail with a favorable wind and be waiting another week for the next storm-free weather window to open. George and Anthony had other ideas, however, and went and rented bicycles. The next morning, after rolling out of bed at their usual hour, they announced they were taking the day off -- it was Sunday, after all -- and going bike riding. I guess I got a bit peeved at this and insisted they do a bit of work around the boat first, handing them the jerry jugs to fill the water tanks with. Much more grumbling ensued, and by the time we were eating the sandwiches I'd made for lunch, I had just about had enough. I told them perhaps they should look for another boat because I didn't feel comfortable with such unco-operative crew. Oh, they protested, that wasn't fair. There had been lots of boats looking for crew in Neiafu, and I would strand them in Tongatapu, where there were hardly any. I knew they had been talking with my friend John Blaine, single-hander out of Tacoma on Vahevella, but he didn't have room for both of them and had to fly home to San Diego suddenly due to the death of his father. OK, I told George and Anthony, we'd start all over again. They would have to work hard helping me get the boat ready to go to New Zealand, we'd make the passage, I'd pay their way and we would part company on arrival. They agreed to that, but the next day Anthony announced he had found another boat and wanted to go with his friend Stuart Wild, a Canadian crewing for Pete and Camille Gannon on Sojourner. Getting rid of the argumentative Anthony was fine with me. George was somewhat more co-operative and I figured he'd be even more so if I did away with Anthony's bad influence. I went with Pete to the Tongan immigration authorities at the pice station with a letter requesting Anthony be transferred to Sojourner 's crew list and handed him Anthony's passport and the $700 deposit money I had received from his previous skipper, Horst on Balloo.
When Anthony left,
I told George he could go too, because I didn't intend to feed and house
him if he was just going to jump ship at the first opportunity. He insisted
that he would sail to New Zealand with me if I found a third crew, and
I set about doing just that, hanging my usual sign off the stern rail.
But as the days went by, I heard disturbing reports from another skipper,
Dave Ball on Windy Lady, that George was looking for another boat.
I also heard Pete on Sojourner unsuccessfully calling Vahevalla
on the radio net. I asked him about it and he said George was trying to
get ahold of him because I wanted to get rid of him as crew. I said that
wasn't true and Pete said he would refrain from getting involved in any
future attempts by George to go behind my back. I confronted George about
what I'd heard and he insisted he was only trying to get ahold of John
as a backup if I couldn't get a third crew member. A few days later, I
heard Vahevalla calling on the VHF radio for help in navigating
through the island's entrance. I gave him the co-ordinates of the waypoints
I had used to get in, and then when he was in the harbor I got in my dinghy
and helped him stern-tie to the quay. John was so grateful that he offered
to take me out to dinner that night. Just then I figured my luck changed,
because a Swedish engineer walked down the dock looking for a boat sailing
to New Zealand. Jorgen , who owned a 34-footer back home and wanted to
sail the south seas aboard it some day, had been in Fiji looking for a
boa to crew on as experience. He hadn't found one and had taken the short
flight to Tongatapu to look there. We chatted for a while and he seemed
a perfect fit. George came back from town and I introduced them. Jorgen
said he would sleep on my offer and rather than take his flight back to
Suva, scheduled for the next day, he would bring his duffle aboard in the
morning if he decided to join us. I went out to dinner with John in a jubilant
mood, feeling I would finally fulfill my dream of sailing to New Zealand
starting the next day.
The next day, George was up and about uncharacteristically early. He was organizing his belongings, and it looked for all the world like he was packing. Finally as he finished he announced that he was leaving Markenurh and intended to sail to New Zealand with John on Vahevella. "No you're not. I just had dinner with John last night and he didn't say anything about taking you on as crew. Besides, you promised to crew for me if I found a third person, and I did." Well, George said, he didn't think Jorgen was going to come back. I pointed out to George that he was legally under my care as far as the Tongan immigration authorities were concerned, and he would not get off my crew list without my written consent. I explained to him that the $700 deposit he had given me was to ensure that I could pay his way home if necessary, and that I was prepared to do that before letting him get away with breaking his promise to me. I guess the discussion got rather acrimonious, and just as I had doubtless impressed upon George the tenuousness of his position legally, guess who walked down the dock? Jorgen! I figured that would be enough to make George see reason and honor his commitment to me, but such was not the case.
I went ashore in the dinghy and got Jorgen, explaining to him that I was having a bit of a problem with George, that he was under the impression that he would be sailing to New Zealand on another boat. Together we asked George what the problem was, but he would only say he got "bad vibes" from me. He was insistent he was going with John, so I went and spoke to John and he said he had only intended to offer George passage if I couldn't get a third crew member. After much discussion, George moved onto John's boat and Jorgen flew back to Fiji. I guess I was fit to be tied. I was so close to getting to New Zealand, and one lousy surfer had decided to ruin my plans. John and George came aboard to mollify me, but I would have none of it. I fairly screamed at them to get the hell off my boat. The next day John came back by himself and was apologetic. He was wrong to do what he did, he said, and I could have George back if I wanted. I declined the offer and told John that I was prepared to sign George off my crew list and return his passport, but that his deposit money was a different matter. I figured that was a good faith deposit and he had showed bad faith, which would in turn cost me money in finding new crew, and that would come out of George's deposit. That was the arrangement I had made with both Sylvia in Mexico and John in Tahiti, that they were signing on for the passage to New Zealand, and their deposit was refundable on arrival there. If they decided to jump ship before New Zealand I would deduct from their deposit any reasonable costs I incurred in replacing them. George, of course, wasn't very happy with me for that, but then again, I wasn't very happy with him for what he'd done to me. John and I went to the police station and I signed George over onto his crew list.
Tensions in the harbor, needless to say, were fairly high at this point. Anthony and George were both gunning for me, and George promised as he went by in John's dinghy one day to "kick my ass" if I ventured ashore, so I stayed on the boat as much as possible. A few days later, however, I got a visit from a Tongan official dressed in the traditional "lava lava" skirt, who requested my presence downtown at the police station. There was a police wagon parked on the quay, and I was directed to sit up front with the uniformed driver, while George was asked to sit in back with the plain-clothes official. At the police station, we were ushered into the office of the head of immigration, an enormous Tongan woman. George had complained to her about my refusal to refund his deposit money, and she wanted to hear my side of the story. After explaining to her the sequence of events, she agreed that I was within my rights to keep George's deposit money after what he had done. But, she added, she was also within her rights, as the head of immigration, to ask me to leave her country. I protested that I couldn't lave without crew, so she suggested a compromise. I would retain a portion of George's deposit money against my expenses of replacing him as crew and she would be happy to renew my visa for another two months. How much did I think would be reasonable to withhold from George's deposit money under such a compromise, she asked me. I thought for a moment and suddenly realized I was in a foreign country, a looong way from home and very, very alone. I considered asking for half George's deposit in compensation -- $350 -- or maybe $300, but then I decided to demonstrate how reasonable I could be. Flying two crew down from Neiafu would cost about $200, I reasoned aloud and I usually charge crew $10 a day room and board. George had been aboard for exactly 20 days, which would be $200, or the cost of flying two crew in from Neiafu, I said, so I would be willing to settle for that. She said she thought that was a reasonable amount, but George was furious. He said he thought $50 was more reasonable, but had no success in persuading the Tongan immigration official. We were transported back to the quay in the police van, with George muttering the whole way. The skirted official came aboard with me and I counted out $500 from a wad of bills and that was that.
The next day, with the weather window wide open, most of the cruisers headed out, and I was left feeling very much alone. Crewless again! Would I ever get to New Zealand? It was now the second week of November, and leaving past the end of the month risked running into an early-season cyclone. What was I going to do? Well, I got to work again, hung my "Need Crew" sign off the stern again and set about putting up notices around town. Within a week or so, I met a young Swedish woman, Pernilla Jonsson, who had sailed on her father's boat back home and was planning to return to New Zealand as soon as the waiting period for her visa expired in a few weeks. We discussed heading for Fiji, four days away, where there might be more crew about, before heading south to New Zealand. If I couldn't find more crew, I could stay at the new Vuda Point marina on the near Nadi, where my neighbors Dave and Ane Street on Cabezon were planning to spend cyclone season in the new marina that is supposed to be a safe hurricane hole. Pernilla and I were set to leave the next day, when a Brit named Johnny Schinas walked down the dock and asked about my sign. Inviting him aboard, it turned out Johnny was on his way to Thailand to work on a film shoot in January. A sound man by trade, he said he'd worked in the recording business in London, and I asked him what records he had worked on. He named a few groups which I didn't recognize, but then mentioned he'd worked on Big Audio Dynamite's first album. Geez, I said, I've got that album, it's one of my favorites. I rummaged in the cassette drawer and found its case, but not the tape. Then it dawned on me where it was -- it was in the tape player. I took this as an omen and began to think things were finally going my way. Johnny was an experienced sailor, having cruised as a youngster with his parents. In fact, he'd sailed in to Tonga eight years previously on their boat with his friend Hugo, who had bought land in the Hapai'i group in central Tonga, where he had started a rustic "guest house." Johnny was on his way to visit Hugo on idyllic Oalevu Island, and suggested Hugo might be interested in sailing to New Zealand as well on his way to work as a set designer on the same movie shoot in Thailand.
From the way Johnny talked about Oalevu Island, both Pernilla and I were interested in sailing there, so we decided to head out the next day for the overnight trip. We certainly weren't disappointed in Johnny's description -- Oalevu Island is your quintessential South Pacific Island, with its while sand beach, clear blue water and nearby reef for snorkeling. Hugo, who looked like Fabio, was a very engaging Londoner who spent half the year at Oalevu, which he ran with his Tongan partner, Sony Kaifoto. The facilities were crude, without running water or other such amenities, and the Captain Cook Guest House catered mostly to the backpacking crowd, who camped there for $10 a night. It turned out Hugo had too much work to do around the place to get away before January, but Johnny agreed to come to Fiji with Pernilla and I. Hugo, however, intervened, possibly wanting his friend to stay there. he pointed out to Johnny that he'd come there to visit Tonga, not Fiji, and if I wanted him to crew for me to Suva, I should be prepared to pay his airfare back to Tonga. Soon Pernilla insisted on the same condition, but I was in no position to pay their airfare, so it looked like I was going to get stuck in Tonga. Curses, foiled again! I did manage to prevail on Johnny and Pernilla to help me get back to Neiafu, which was a secure hurricane hole with strong moorings, and offered in exchange to let them stay aboard until I went home for a planned trip for Christmas. I returned to Vavau a beaten man. I had been away for more than a year by then and was anxious to return home, if only for a visit. I left Markenurh on a sturdy mooring and flew home for a few weeks.