The charts in Fiji are not that good. We knew this and we had seen with our own eyes that they were sometimes inaccurate but in the end even this knowledge did not save us. When we were leaving Musket Cove and headed out to The Yasawas we had an encounter with a reef that probably took a year off of my life. We knew that there was a shallow area coming up: the area on the chart looked to be twenty to forty-five feet deep. We thought we were safe aside from an awash rock on the charts. Brett had me up on the bow as we motored North on the inside of the island chain to keep my eyes peeled for the rock. It was nine in the morning, there were low clouds in the sky and the water out here was filled with some sort of small plankton or jelly fish that gave the water a milky blue hue. All of these things conspired to give me a very low visibility but I was not worried. After all, I had stood on the bow many times and watched for obstacles ahead. I had always seen them in enough time and usually Brett would alter course before I even had a chance to give him direction as he was using the forward looking sonar and had the ability to see under the water as well as the tools of radar and chart plotter.

So even though I could only see about eight feet in front of the boat I was not worried. We were looking for one rock and even if I saw it at the last moment we would be able to steer around it easily. When I saw the water turn from blue to splotchy brown it was no rock. It was a wall of rocks, what the yachties call “bommies” or large rock outcroppings covered in hard coral. I saw the bommies when they were about nine feet in front of us and it took me about one second to realize this was not good (one second equals about three feet). I screamed at the top of my lungs for Brett to hit full reverse and waited the agonizing seconds while the boat slowed…. and then hit. We had only been going four and a half knots when we hit reverse but full stop is just not possible in one boat length. For the first time since owning Fearless I heard and felt the sickening jolt of metal on stone as the keel slammed into the bommies and Brett tried desperately to get the boat out of the minefield. He yelled to me to drop the main so we would not get pushed further into the field and I scampered over the deck and dropped the main as my life flashed before my eyes. As my body did what was required of it my mind was racing. I saw land and knew that we could swim for it if anything happened to Fearless so it was only our home that was in jeopardy. Only, yea right .

I tried to get a higher vantage point, standing first on the railings on the bow and then on the aft arch. It did not matter where I went: in the brief moment that we had taken to get into the bommie field we were surrounded. Backing out with the rudder exposed was not an option. Desperate to find a solution and with my mind groping I turned to Brett and yelled that maybe one of us should get in the water but as I turned towards him the words stuck in my throat: he was already putting on his goggles and I was running for the wheel. During this frantic scramble I had been of two minds: one doing what could be done and the other searching for a solution to this problem, now my mind was wiped clean as I concentrated on the wheel, the speed of the boat and Brett’s commands as he hung off the back of the boat. Two things became my world: the speed of the boat and the angle of the rudder as we slowly moved through the water. The slow motion ballet of turning the boat around obstacles I could not see, Brett watching as the keel and rudder skimmed bare inches from bommies as we had no way to go but forward. From first sight of bommies to escaping the field had to take a span of seven minutes but it seemed like an eternity that I will never forget.

When we got to the anchorage we both dove the boat and looked at the damage that had been done. The keel looked bad: chunks of lead missing from the wings on the side of the bulb and a small crack on the rudder. The hull had not hit and we had taken on no water so in that respect we were doing pretty well but now we were faced with a decision: go back to Fiji and have the boat hauled right away or continue on and plan on getting it fixed in Australia. Sailing a damaged boat does nothing for your confidence but at the same time we knew we would not get the type of professional service we wanted in Fiji and we might even get trapped up there for cyclone season so we took a photo of the bottom, marked where the cracks were so that we could monitor their stability (here’s to hoping they do not get any bigger) and we continued on our way. We were a little shaken but feeling confident that Fearless was going to come through in flying colors: she has not let us down yet!

The Yasawas are supposed to be the most picturesque beaches in Fiji and also have some of the more remote villages that still practice the old customs. After all of Brett’s stories about his time here and what fun he had in the villages of Fiji I was really looking forward to putting our recent drama behind us and participating in a kava ceremony. I wanted to meet some of these famously friendly local Fijians. A friend of our’s on Theopolis named Jay was there as well and we took our small landing party to shore. We found a small village and we all went there to perform the ceremony of sevu sevu, the donation of kava to the chief of the island.

As soon as we landed the dinghy a small boy came up to us and offered to take us to the chief. When we arrived at his hut we were ushered into some chairs and “the chief” sat on the floor. Already we knew that something was wrong. According to Fijian tradition you are never to sit higher than the chief so Brett asked him why we were seated in chairs and he was on the floor? We discovered that though he was the son of the chief there had not been a chief here for a year, but he was the next in line. If we came back next year he would be the chief for sure. Okay, I guess, although it seemed a little fishy. He was unable to really explain to us why there was no chief for a year since his English was very poor (to be fair it was better than my Fijian) but after some discussion (though no invitation for a visit to the village for a kava ceremony or a dinner) he told us that we had presented sevu sevu and were free to roam the village.

We explored and found a village that was quaint and unassuming with a small footpath that led between rows of neat houses. The laundry was hung out to dry behind each house and there were women everywhere doing their daily chores but we seemed to inspire very little interest which was unusual for an island that is this far out of the way and too small to have a paved road. There were flowers growing on either side and a young boy selling leis, which was curious. Why was he selling leis in this miniscule village with nothing but a dirt path to speak of? It did not take long to discover why. A cruise ship had just arrived. So much for the whole remote island bit, hugh? We walked down to the end of the trail and saw there was a pack of about forty tourists with their guide. On one of the more remote islands that we visited in Fiji we were beat to the punch by a gaggle of tourists, cruise ship tourists. Generally speaking these are the worst kind of tourist since they are so insulated from the culture of the places that they are visiting that they are more likely to wear inappropriate clothing, say inappropriate things and generally make a bad name for foreigners in general. They swarm the islands they visit in large groups and socialize with each other and then they all return, en mass, to the ship from whence they came to continue drinking and eating incredible amounts of food. All of the sudden the disinterest we had met with on our walk through the village made more sense and we hustled away before we got trapped in the moving tide of humanity and snapping cameras.

On our way back to the dinghy we did manage two interesting encounters. We met Ebbie, a boy who wanted to know if we drank kava and eventually invited us to drink kava with him and his friends. Provided that we had the kava and he would prepare it. It was arranged. We then met a young woman who informed us that John, the man that we had presented sevu sevu with, was not the next in line to be the chief at all. There had been no chief on the island for over twenty years and there was no indication that John would ever be chief. In fact he was not even the head man of the village. Tony was the head man of the village. In short, John had just scored some free kava. Oh well,the loss of the kava was no big deal. I was about to find out what Brett had been telling me all along: kava looks and tastes like tepid, muddy water and its allegedly “narcotic” effects are not even as strong as a good cup of coffee.

We had arranged to meet with Ebbie for kava at eight in the evening and it was nice and dark when we motored up in the dinghy to the beach. In contrast to normal “island time” tradition he was waiting for us at the appointed time and had a light for us to follow him to the place where we would drink. We hustled into a small shack with grass mats and the kava preparation began. This entailed taking the ground root in a mesh bag and squeezing the juice into tepid water. It was muddy in color and tasted like it looked. Many of his friends showed up and soon we had a proper circle going. I was the only woman present and was doing my best to be a “good girl.” This entailed sitting with my legs tucked together to the side (it is impolite for girls to sit cross legged) and being mild mannered and demure. My legs were cramping in no time and my tongue was getting a deep groove in it from all the biting it was receiving but I battled through it all to try and get a glimpse of the Fijian culture I had heard so much about.

The conversation was kind of like pulling teeth. We would ask questions about kava, their village, their traditions and their conspicuous lack of a chief (which they seemed unwilling to discuss and maybe even a little embarrassed about) and they replied in broken English with short, curt answers and then continued talking amongst themselves in Fijian. I was hoping that the kava would be a bridge to understanding their culture but when our friend, Jay, started to yawn a little they made it very clear that it was okay if we wanted to leave. I mean, really, if we wanted to leave it would be just fine. Really. After their third urging that if we wanted to leave it would be fine we took the hint and left. It was a vaguely disappointing encounter with the culture of Fiji: a sham chief, a remote island paradise that has been invaded by cruise ships and a kava ceremony that was graft for free kava and a swift boot for us once they had what they wanted. I left feeling disappointed.

This is the taste in my mouth that stayed with me after our departure from the Pacific Islands. It seems that the caucasian culture has infected these remote islands, and not in a good way. While the islands themselves are stunning and there are so many beautiful places and amazing things to do (the mind boggles at all the possibilities for fun and adventure here) the culture seems to have been subverted with Christian ideals until there is not much left of what was originally so unique and wonderful about the people who live here. There is a undercurrent of resentment for the way that their islands have been stripped from them, and who can blame them? We are seen as either an interloper or little more than an opportunity to make some cash. Of course there are exceptions to this rule and I did have some interesting encounters with islanders, the younger people had less of this negativity and I certainly had experiences in the last year that do not conform to this stereotype. But when I remember the year as a whole the best times that I remember are with the other yachties or are in places where the tourist influence is so great that it was practically like being in a western culture with an exotic backdrop. So this may have something to do with me and my lack of understanding or it may be a larger symptom of a culture that is in its death throws and struggling to maintain its individuality while embracing the twenty first century. Whatever the reason there is a sadness here that is just under the surface but that exposes itself in subtle but ever prevalent ways when you least expect it.

When we left for New Caledonia the wind was perfect and we had an excellent passage. We did the entire 650 miles in four days. When we arrived in New Caledonia there was a kite-boarding competition going on and the horizon was swarming with colorful kites against a azure sky and intrepid boarders hanging on for dear life. The buildings were modern and the shopping was very cosmopolitan. There was a real big city feel to the place and I could sense the we were inching closer and closer to civilization. It seemed that from the Marquesas onward there had been a steady trend towards modernization and multicultural cities. Our first task was to dive the boat and take a look at the keel and rudder. We were satisfied that both seemed to be in the same condition that they had been in right after we hit bottom: a good thing. At least the damage was not spreading.

It was a brief stop but we managed to go to the aquarium, see a jazz festival, and to top it all off we had a crazy night on the town with Mark from Myah that sent me reeling. The night began sedately enough with a band playing sleepy french songs but we quickly decided to look for another place to go. While talking to the bouncer a group of kids came out and after a short discussion about the best place to go they offered us a ride. We hung out with them at the next place and it was not long before everyone started buying rounds. I was the closest in age to any of the kids there who seemed to be ranging in ages from 21 to 25. My people. It was too much fun dancing for the first time since Tonga. I probably had one or two (or three) too many, I’m afraid. The night seemed to go by very fast and the bar was closing before we knew it so one of the kids, an English exchange student named Tory, offered up his place to go and party. A large group of us went on our way to a meeting point where we would pick up another car and then on to Tory’s place. We hung out at the “meeting” spot for some time and no one showed up so we figured there had been a miscommunication and went along to his apartment. Well, apparently the rest of the group had gone directly to his place and had been arguing with the doorman for the last half of an hour. There was a lot of yelling (all in French) but it all came to an end when the doorman announced that the police had already been called (a phrase that did not need interpretation). Party over.

We were supposed to go out to a small island the next day but I was in no condition to go anywhere. Delay of game. Instead, I held down the bed all day. When we did get out to the island the next day it was a speck in the ocean with topless sunbathers and a beach perimeter that could be circumnavigated in ten minutes. We enjoyed the calm ocean breezes for the next few hours but it was not long before we were feeling the boat yanking underneath us in the building wind. We tried to sleep but whenever I would start to drift off the boat would jerk underneath like it had just been hit. After the experience with hitting the bommies we were both a little jumpy and this was doing nothing for our relaxation. At about two in the morning Brett and I went on deck and got a longer rope for the mooring. The additional stretch that provided was enough to reduce the yanking sensation and let us sleep in peace.

It was time to leave New Caledonia and as usual we had been keeping a close eye on the weather and had checked out of the country when it looked like some good passage making weather was on the way. But as soon as we checked out of the country the weather fell apart. We headed out in flat seas with no wind and watched as the weather reports kept promising less and less wind. After calculating our arrival time for Australia we realized that we could only go five knots or we would arrive on the weekend and be subject to overtime fees and so even though the wind was light and we were making slow progress it was better to sail than to arrive early. Fearless is a good light wind boat and she was holding up well, making good time even in wind as light as seven knots. But when the wind got variable and was not enough to fill the sail she was getting flogged unmercifully and there was more than a bit of smacking and banging. In the midst of the steady banging there was a really loud one that woke me from sleep and Brett called me up to drop the sail asap. The boom-vang, which is the part of the boat that provides the upward and downward tension for the boom, had broken. We got the sail down and the wind was behind us enough that we were able to sail on the jib alone so I told Brett I was going back to sleep and we could fix it when I got up.

By the time I woke he had rigged a rope pulley on the boom for the downward tension and all we had to do was provide an upward tension by rigging a backstay. That meant that Brett would have to go to the top of the mast and drop the line down the hollow center. Going to the top of the mast is not fun. We were in light swell and what is a mild rocking on the deck becomes a wild pendulum swing at the top of the sixty foot mast. He is secured by the same line that we use to pull up the sail and when he gets to the top he is relying on me to both bring him up and drop him down. For obvious reasons this is a very stressful situation. I know that if anything happens to me (i.e.: I fall overboard) there is no one to turn the boat around. We can’t stay still for the maneuver since staying still would make us rock more, we reduce the rocking by trying to keep pace with the mild swell, in short there is no way that I would be able to keep up with the boat if we are motoring and this is really freaky. Brett tried to feed me the line but it was not coming down the mast and eventually we had to give up. We decided that the sail itself provides some lift for the boom and we would probably be okay with the jury rigged pulley and the sail fully raised. We were wrong.

It took two days for the halyard (the line that holds up the main sail) to chafe through. Now we had no backstay and no halyard. Brett was going to have to go up the mast again and this time there was no option but success. We had to rig something or we would not have any sail at all. It took two trips up the mast and probably three more years off my life. The entire time he is up there I am imagining him plummeting to the deck and breaking his back, me falling overboard and watching Fearless sail away with him stranded at the top of the mast with no way to descend. The list of things that can go wrong during this procedure are varied and gruesome and I found myself crab walking on the deck and holding white knuckled to whatever I could get my hands on. We were finally able to get both the halyard and the backstay rigged and the sail continued on seas so flat you could see the reflections of clouds in them.

On our final approach into Australian waters the weather kicked up and we had steep waves and heavy wind. We were on a spare halyard with a damaged keel and rudder and so we made a mid ocean detour and came into Brisbane instead of Bunderberg so we would be closer to the boat yard where we were going to get hauled out. With the swell up and the wind whipping us we were enjoying our dinner in the cockpit when a large wave started to crest just off of our port aft quarter. I looked at the wave and said “crap, that’s going to suck” Brett turned and looked at it and had enough time to agree with me that yes, that was going to break on us and there was nothing that we could do about it. We could see through the wave as it came up to about three feet above the deck and watched as it broke on the dodger and blasted through every available hole. One hole that a sheet comes through, the zippers that were not entirely zipped and the spaces between the zippers themselves became a sieve that allowed water into the cockpit and soaked us completely to the bone. It was cold and the weather was bad enough that even changing clothes was a chore but the slow motion comedy of it all did not escape us and we sat and cracked jokes about watching our doom approaching and getting slapped by it anyway until I decided that I was going to finish my soggy sandwich below and nap off the rest of my break. Brett made the bizarre decision to tough out the rest of his watch in soaking wet clothes and when he came down to wake me was blue from the cold.

It became clear that we were entering more civilized waters when we were hailed by name over the VHF with not a boat in sight and nothing on the radar. As I scanned the horizon to try to find the boat that had hailed us Brett talked to the Australian Coast Guard and discovered that it was not another ship that was hailing us but a plane that we could neither see nor hear. They had spotted us from the sky and wanted to know if we had obtained our visas and if customs had been informed of our arrival. All of our paperwork was in order and we signed off with the coast guard feeling a great weight lifted: we had been in water that was not patrolled for so long that knowing there were boats and ships close at hand was a great comfort.

We have been here for a few weeks now and have gotten the boat up on the hard, again. The keel and rudder have only cosmetic damage and we have had the boat surveyed, ex rayed patched and gone over to be sure that we are in a save vessel. We still have a long way to go and confidence in Fearless is crucial to our state of mind. At this point I am sure that we have done everything that we can and that she will be in as good a shape as she ever was when she goes back in the water. We have replaced our dinghy and outboard, sanded down the toxic stench in the fridge and recoated it with gel coat. Of course we broke the cooling plate when we tried to get it out of the freezer but we were able to get it all fixed in a timely fashion and will have the fridge up and running again soon… This is only a small sampling from the three typed pages of Things To Do that we have been working off of since we arrived in Australia. We have decided to spend the first part of our time here doing chores and taking advantage of the great chandleries here. We figure that if we are going to be miserable while up on the hard we will at the very least get all of our chores done so that when we get put back in the water we can really enjoy ourselves and all that Australia has to offer.

Thanksgiving was a day of rest and phone calls to family with the boat full of turkey smell. I could only find a seven pound turkey (I guess Thanksgiving is not big here) but that did not stop us from having all the trimmings and our own private day of gluttony with three pies and ice cream to top it all off. Other than that we did manage to take a day and explore Brisbane. After all we had heard about Brisbane being not that special we were surprised to find it a very beautiful city with a lot to offer. There are world class museums, a manmade beach with a kiddy pool in a public park, great places to shop and world class dining. Since there are so many things about Australia that are the same it is fun to discover the differences and the quirks that make this place unique. The Australians have not disappointed when compared to their reputation for a warm, friendly group who are without guile and who really just like to have a good time. We are surrounded by really nice people. Christmas here is different, though. The frantic pace of shopping at home is not even scratched here. We discovered this when we tried to go to a mall to get some cheep dinner last Sunday (fridge is still out of commission so we have been eating out for most meals) and discovered that the mall closed at 3pm. This is under three weeks before Christmas, thank you very much, and we were both shocked and amazed that this land can be so similar but then so different in such a fundamental way. It is going to be a grand adventure once we get back in the water and I am getting really excited to go exploring after all this work on the boat.