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19th June
Rapa Island lies 600 miles away. We make a decision to head for it. We are tired. The boat is damp with salt and we need to check the bilges. It would make a welcome break, we think.
20th June
We thought we were finished with big waves, but Michael had just settled himself in the cockpit to listen to music through earphones when a wave smashed through the side curtain to pour a ton of water into his lap! Again the cushions and the various things that had accumulated there, were wet! But the stopped up ventilators proved their worth. Not a drop came inside.
That wave was not a fluke. A half-hour after the first wave, a second one came aboard. We dropped the other sails and dogged along under trisail alone. By 1500 hours the front had passed over us.
21st June
The clouds piled up on the horizon spoke eloquently of unstable conditions. On big swells we surfed toward the north.
22nd June
The wind lulls and then gusts, swinging between ten to twenty knots, and is slowly backing to the north. We can make only 3 ½ knots average. By 1500 hours it has dropped out altogether as a High glides over us. For the first time in twenty days the engine springs to life. We make a rhum-line course towards Rapa, 500 miles away.
23rd June
By midmorning we switched off the engine; by evening we were beset with squalls. Another front rapidly approached. The violent squalls provided the incentive we needed to clear the decks and haul up the storm jib and tri sail again --- but this time, with the scent of Rapa practically in our nostrils, we managed to carry the No. 2 jib through the night.
24th June
Neither of us got much sleep. Cloud covered the sky from horizon to horizon as tightly as a pan lid, with only the narrowest band of light visible. We made good progress under shortened rig, even with the swell. By dusk, we imagined the frontal system to have dissipated. In a burst of optimism Michael raised the reefed main. Rapa lay 300 miles ahead.
25th June
With a fair breeze and a full moon, which gradually became obscured by cloud, we sailed all night. Dawn glowered like a grinning Jack O'Lantern. Despite the celestial warning we hauled up more sail, setting the genoa; shaking out the main and mizzen reefs. We wanted to make good time while we could. Calms would follow.
At 11:45 Michael had a premonition while listening to the International News over short-wave radio. Sticking his head out of the hatch he exclaimed, "Tere! On deck fast!" Only just in time did he let go the genoa halyard to let the sial flutter to the sea where it rolled and flapped harmlessly in the spume kicked up by the 40-knot rush.
When the storm abated a couple of hours later, we passed into a watery world of mist-hung low cloud. Sea Quest's salt-laden interior thirstily sucked in the moisture we had tried so hard to dry out. We lit the kerosene heater to counteract the damp.
26th June.
In squalls we approached Rapa-Iti, and picked the island up on the radar at midnight. Until dawn we maneuvered offshore, not wishing to get too close in the dark.
Ile Rapa, Austral Islands
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