Molokai Reef (10 page)

Kara
nodded her understanding.

He
went forward and after removing the snubbing lines, engaged the
windlass to retrieve the anchor chain. The electric windlass pulled
the chain over the bow roller, across the deck, and then dropped it
through hawsepipe into the anchor locker.

As
the windlass retrieved the chain, Gybe flashed back upon his find of
a few days ago. To himself, he mumbled “no bodies, please.”

The
anchor had set well. When the anchor rode was straight up and down,
one-to-one scope sailors would say, Gybe stepped off the UP button
and locked the chain stopper. He waited.

Sherry,
a former girlfriend had taught him the Zen method of anchor
retrieval. Often, he had seen sailors use their engines to break an
anchor loose. They would rev up the engine in forward gear and drive
the boat over the anchor, putting large forces on the chain, cleats,
windlass, and anchor. According to Sherry, all one needed to do was
tie the rode off with one-to-one scope – straight up and down.
Correctly, she commented, no anchor can hold under those conditions.
Any small wave would rock the boat or the pressure of the wind on the
hull would break the anchor loose.

Before
Gybe drifted into other areas of Sherry’s expertise, he saw the
chain slacken.

He
stepped back on the UP button. When the anchor cleared the water, it
was clean. Expected, because he had sought and found a patch of sand
on the bottom

When
anchoring around coral, he always sought patches of sand for the
anchor. He didn’t want the anchor or chain to damage the
fragile coral. In the Caribbean, moorings were positioned in popular
anchorages. Visitors could tie to the mooring without danger of
damaging the bottom life. No such moorings existed in Hawai‘i.

The
anchor climbed from the water and slid into position on the bow
roller. Gybe secured the anchor with a chain stopper. He didn’t
want it bouncing around while he was sailing.

Kara
was nervous when he returned to the cockpit. She hadn’t done
anything – not motored nor steered – obeying Gybe’s
earlier instructions to do nothing unless requested. Without the
anchor, the boat was slowly drifting.

“
Ready?”
Gybe said as he took the wheel from Kara.

“
Yes,
but we’re drifting.”

Gybe
slipped the transmission into forward, revved the engine, and turned
the wheel to starboard away from the island.
Ferrity
moved
out the channel alongside the Kaunakakai commercial pier. Fifty
yards beyond the red buoy that marked the entrance to the channel and
slot through the reef, he turned the boat eastward.

“
Take
the wheel. I want you to point the boat into the wind while I raise
the main sail. OK?”

“
Oookaaay”

“
It’s
easy. See that arrow at the top of the mast. It points into the
wind. Right now, it is pointing to the right of the boat. That
means you need to turn the boat to the right. It steers just like a
car. Got it?”

“
Sure.”

Before
getting underway, Gybe estimated the wind at ten-knots with gusts to
fifteen. There would be more wind once they left the lee of the
island, but for now, he would hoist the mainsail with no reefs. Kara
kept the boat into the wind as Gybe raised the main. He wrapped the
halyard twice around the winch and tightened the luff of the sail.

“
Fall
off to starboard.” He shouted to Kara

Perplexed
didn’t describe the look on her face. Kara was not a sailor.
Gybe doubted that she understood his command, but reveled in the
screen-saver of expressions on her face. He knew her thoughts. She
didn’t understand the unique lingo used by this clique to
intimidate outsiders. Fall off? What could that mean?

Would
she ask for clarification? Would she guess and take action? Her
response would help Gybe understand this headstrong young woman.
Would she assume that “if a man can do it I can” and
prove her gender-equality? Or would she recognize her limits in a
field about which she knew nothing and ask for clarification?

Noticing
that her cursor had stopped blinking, Gybe pointed towards the other
island. “Turn the wheel to the right. Aim for the corner of
Lāna‘i over there.”

Gybe
returned to the cockpit and slipped the engine into neutral. With
Kara pulling on the starboard jib sheet, he eased the control line to
the roller furling headsail. The sail filled and he showed Kara how
to trim the sheet with the Lewmar two-speed self-tailing winch.

Both
sails, jib and main, were drawing nicely as
Ferrity
heeled to
starboard and accelerated to six point five knots on a port tack.
Gybe pulled the engine kill switch and the noisy diesel shuddered to
a stop. The only noise was the swish of water beneath the hull.
Aaaaahhhh.

16

Nearing
the island of Lāna‘i, Gybe tacked
Ferrity
and aimed
for Maui. As he completed the turn, trimmed the jib for the new
course, and let
Ferrity
take her head, he heard Kara shout.
“Whales.”

In
the direction Kara pointed, a fountain of water fell to the surface
above the back of a large humpback. There was a smaller whale,
probably her calf, alongside. Because the whales were moving towards
Ferrity
, Gybe turned the wheel hard to starboard; left the jib
sheeted to port, and slid the boat into a heave-to position,
effectively stopping the boat with all sails up.
Ferrity
drifted slowly downwind, broadside to the small waves. Downwind
towards Lāna‘i, a position he didn’t want to hold
for long.

He
explained to Kara that the area between the three islands of Maui,
Moloka‘i, and Lāna‘i were part of Hawaiian Islands
Humpback Whale National Marine Sanctuary designated by Congress in
1992 and formally dedicated in 1997. The entire sanctuary covered an
area of thirteen hundred square miles around the six largest Hawaiian
Islands.

“
The
law requires us to stay at least one hundred yards from the whales.
Drifting is the best we can do.” Gybe told Kara. “That
looks like a mother and her calf. At forty feet long, she could
weigh as much as forty tons. For adults the rule of thumb is a ton
per foot.”

In
the distance, they saw another whale breach. As they watched, they
spotted several other pods, one in every cardinal direction.
Although still on the endangered list, the humpbacks had made a
remarkable recovery. Recent estimates revealed that up to four
thousand whales visited the Hawaiian Islands each winter. They
arrived as early as October and stayed until April or so.

Gybe
had seen dozens of these creatures in the past, yet they still
fascinated him. Kara told him about watching the similarly sized
gray whales that migrated along the California coast. This was her
first experience with the humpbacks. Both species were baleen whales
and ate up to a ton of food per day.

“
You
should visit the Maui Ocean Center or the Pacific Whale Foundation
while you’re here in the islands.” Gybe said as he kept
a sailor’s eye on the downwind Lāna‘i.

After
the whales moved away, Gybe released the windward jib sheet and
trimmed the leeward sheet so that the jib could again draw. He
returned the boat to a port tack towards Lāna‘i, similar
to their course before he tacked towards Maui and saw the whales.
Once
Ferrity
had enough headway, Gybe tacked and set a course
close to the wind. He estimated at least two more tacks before they
arrived at the moorings off Lahaina.

Nearing
the Lahaina Small Boat Harbor, Gybe furled the sails. Commercial
boats occupied most of the slips. For the other slips, there was a
decade long waiting list. He motored
Ferrity
past the harbor
to show Kara the waterfront. The Lahaina Yacht Club maintained
several buoys just offshore from their clubhouse. In the past, he
had been able to tie to one of these moorings. Today, however, like
horses tethered in front of a saloon, sailboats hung from every
mooring.

“
Looks
full.” Kara exclaims.

“
Yeah,
I know another place. We’ll go to Mala Wharf.”

Gybe
motored northward along the coast. Less than a mile from Lahaina, he
pointed out the old Mala Wharf. Completed in 1922, Mala Wharf proved
to be too treacherous for ship landing. The only ship to dock at
Mala suffered extensive damage. The wharf closed in 1950. The
builders had ignored the strong current that ran through the area.
Today, the wharf sits abandoned and gradually falling into the sea.

North
of the wharf, randomly spaced moorings held twenty or more vessels.
From previous visits, Gybe knew that individuals had installed most
of the moorings. They lacked the rectilinear orderliness of
government intervention. The variety of boats paralleled the free
spirit of the mooring field.

Just
beyond the moorings and this side of the large resort, Gybe selected
an anchorage well clear of other vessels.

On
the bow,
Ferrity
carried two anchors with separate rodes.
Each anchor rested in its own roller, which eased deployment. Gybe
released the safety bar from the Bruce anchor and eased the
twenty-kilogram anchor over the bow, locking the rode to hold the
anchor just at water’s edge.

He
returned to the cockpit and showed Kara how to maneuver the boat to
the spot he had picked. “I’ll signal you when to stop.
Remember, we want to stop with the bow into the wind.”

Before
returning to the bow, he suggested that Kara turn
Ferrity
in a
circle and experiment with the throttle.

On
the bow, he used simple hand signals to direct Kara to the right or
left. When the boat was near the spot that he wanted, he held up a
fist as a signal to stop the boat.

Kara
slipped the transmission into neutral, paused for a couple of
seconds, then reversed the engine. Hearing Gybe release the anchor,
she shifted the transmission back into neutral and awaited the next
command from the bow.

When
the boat drifted to a stop, he had released the three-eighths chain
rode until the anchor rested on the bottom. With no forward motion,
the wind was already moving the boat backwards. He turned and
motioned Kara to back the boat slowly.

As
the boat moved back, Gybe released more chain until he saw the
fifteen-fathom mark on the chain. The depthsounder had indicated a
depth of five fathoms in this area. With this three-to-one scope, he
snubbed the chain and returned to the cockpit.

With
the engine controls still in reverse, he revved the engine to
two-thirds power to set the anchor. While the engine backed, he
returned to the foredeck where he confirmed that the anchor had set.
He turned towards Kara and with his hand slashing across his throat
he indicated that she should cut the engine.

While
the engine cooled under idle, Gybe eased out another ten fathoms of
chain before attaching the two nylon snubbers. Between the wind that
swept down off the mountain and the current that raced through the
anchorage, Gybe wanted to insure that the anchor didn’t drag.
Or if it did, it would have to drag a lot of iron.

Kara
appeared behind him.

“
What
are those?”

Each
of the two snubbers was a twenty-five foot length of three-quarter
inch three-strand nylon rope. Using a rolling hitch, he tied one end
of the snubber to the anchor chain. Kara tied the other snubber to
the chain just above the first one. With the windlass, he eased out
more chain until the knots were just under the water, then he tied
the end of each snubber to a cleat on the foredeck. When he eased
out more chain, the chain hung loose as the nylon ropes absorbed the
load of the anchor chain.

“
The
nylon stretches and dampens the pull of the anchor system on the bow
of the boat.”

After
shutting down the engine, Gybe put Kara on the air pump and told her
to inflate the dinghy.

“
Equal
rights, you know.” Gybe told Kara. “You should have it
inflated in a few minutes.” The pump was a double-action, high
volume, vertical-stroke air pump commonly used by river rafters. He
connected the hose to the inflatable floor.

“
When
the floor is inflated, move the hose to the inflatable keel. Then
inflate each of the side chambers. I’ll get the outboard
ready.”

Kara
braced her feet on each side of the pump and started lifting the
T-handle. . Double-action meant that it pumped on the up-stroke as
well as the down-stroke.

Back
in the cockpit, Gybe saw that the outboard was still on the rail.
There was nothing to do to get it ready so he pulled a cold ale from
the reefer and kicked back under the dodger.

“
What
the hell are YOU doing?” Kara rasped out between breaths.

Like
his cold bottle of ale, but for entirely different reasons, beads of
water glistened on Kara’s forehead. “Is the dink ready?”

Gybe
shoved the inflatable over the side and moved it to the stern of
Ferrity
– under the small boom holding the outboard
motor. Kara lowered the motor and Gybe affixed it to the transom.
After loading the fuel tank, life jackets, and an equipment bag
containing repair parts and running lights, the dinghy was ready.