Storm off Easter Island. A night at anchor in a poorly sheltered bay, in 45 knots of wind blowing against a 3-metre swell. The beginning is in the previous report.
At half past nine in the evening, the forecast 30 knots arrived. They are promising 35 by midnight. The epicentre of the storm, with winds above 40 knots, is supposedly due to pass south of us. But apparently the wind was even stronger farther south. (1 knot = 1.852 km/h).
The version dictated by the captain an hour before this was sent to the website
The wind rose to 40, then 45. Soon bricks torn from the Rapa Nui statues by the gusts began whistling past us. Noses, ears. Even one red pukao hat went flying by.
We thought:
“Here comes the hurricane.”
But that was only the prelude.
The captain went forward to the foredeck, putting a pressure cooker on his head just in case. With one arm he clasped the mast, and with the other he gripped the chain to hold the boat at anchor through the storm. For neither the windlass nor the sturdy cleats along the yacht’s sides could withstand the force of the savage wind.
And only a terrified gannet, flying arse-first, gazed in awe at the captain’s mighty figure as he held back the storm with his powerful hands.
“Two unicorns went flying backwards as well!” the young sailor chipped in.
“Don’t exaggerate—we’re not Andersen. We’re writing documentary prose!” the cap rebuked her.
“Right, I’ve said my piece. You fill in the rest somehow, develop it—you can even embellish it a little.”
The main, truthful version, recorded the morning after the storm
The cap remained on watch, setting the main anchor alarm on his phone using OpenCPN. He marked the dangerous reef area southwest of the anchorage as an exclusion zone. A second anchor alarm was switched on on the iPad, with its screen off. This was our backup alert system.
Midnight. It is a good thing we are anchored close to land, so there is no room for the wind waves to build. Though the low-lying shore offers no shelter from the wind at all. An ocean swell of up to 3 metres rolls in from the south, while the wind comes from the north. The low wind waves meet the high ocean swell, and together they dance a jig beneath our yacht.
The anchor chain draws taut, the boat is flung about, the chain bangs against the bobstay, and the yacht shudders through each grinding leap. It makes us feel that the anchor really is dragging.
Half past midnight. Rain hammers on the deck and coachroof. The children, with a torch under their pillow, are trying to fall asleep in the forward cabin. The boat is still without power because of the lightning. According to instructions, anyone going to the toilet must take a torch.
One in the morning. Our brave little dinghy is tied astern with a line and a bungee cord for shock absorption. It wants to be picked up and cuddled, and, driven by the swell coming in from the ocean, takes a run-up and crashes into the stern every 20 seconds. In the aft cabin, the first mate hears every blow from the dinghy, the windvane steering gear and all the spirits bursting out of the ocean swell. And she is ready to jump up at any second if the alarm is raised.
One thirty. Winds of 41–47 knots correspond to Force 9, a strong gale, on the Beaufort scale. The wind is unstable: one moment it drops to 25, the next it rises to 42–45. No sooner does Lady Mary relax and begin moving closer to the anchor than a gust yanks her back. The yacht thrashes about like a rabid dog on a chain.
Two in the morning. Lightning slices the impenetrable darkness into ragged pieces. Where are we? Where is the shore? Where are the reefs? Only the lighthouse’s regularly flashing light gives us a fixed point in space. Who knows what GPS is doing here in this zone of magnetic anomalies.
Three in the morning. The anchor is holding fast. The wind is not rising above 45. Rain drums down.
Four in the morning. Once an hour, Andrei makes his way to the foredeck, bent double so he will not be blown into the ocean, to check that the line has not slipped off the roller and has not chafed through against the bobstay.
By five in the morning the wind has eased to 30 knots, and the captain calls the first mate on watch. The rain comes down, then eases; the boat is still trying to rear and prance, but without much hope now of breaking free. Even the brave little dinghy no longer asks to be picked up, but simply bobs about astern.
After the storm.
The mattress in the cabin is soaked through: there is a leak somewhere around a shroud attachment. On the galley floor there is a saucepan and some rags, filled by water that ran down the mast.
In the morning, a deceptive sun came out, and the children embarked on a great wash of their clothes. The young sailor’s set of 12 pairs of knickers is hanging from every door handle and kettle. Nastya’s things are more difficult: there are more of them, and they are bulkier.
It looks as though the storm brought a large area of low pressure. And after the sunny morning, the rainy season began. The clothes have now failed to dry for a second day, while the soaked settee’s prospects are far from rosy and may well prove fatal. On the bright side, the young sailor is building little houses beneath the mattresses propped and spread around the saloon, and she is very pleased about it.
We could not get ashore for two and a half days. Fitting the outboard in the high swell would be risky, and under oars we would not have time to dart through the rocky gap at the edge of the surf zone.
Apart from the great drying operation amid the great damp, the one pleasant diversion was a fisherman passing by who tossed a small tuna aboard for us. Just like that. And a huge thank-you to him.
While we were sealing the joint between the shrouds and the deck, a miracle happened! A catamaran arrived at the island, flying a small British flag on a dark-blue field. While our neighbours were anchoring, they ran into some sort of trouble with the headsail furler. A howling wind, rain, and the sail streaming away into the murky distance.
Andrei immediately grabbed an oar and set off towards them—what if they needed help?
The catamaran was sailed by a married couple roughly our age. We were the first people they had seen here. They could not raise Pascua Radio from the south, and there was no way to anchor on the west side now: the waves and wind were stronger there, and the port was almost certainly closed.
They had made it from the Galápagos in 10 days, compared with our three weeks. Sigh—now Nastya and I want a catamaran even more: there is much more room to dry mattresses, and its speed is something else!
Otherwise, we are having a dreary, rainy November evening, with no possibility of going out for a walk.
Tomorrow the wind will shift again, and once more we will head back to Anakena against it.
It is hard to explain, but we still like Easter Island. We are living in anticipation of our next outing and hoping for a break in the rain.
Stay optimistic, everyone!