At sea, South Pacific Ocean
Today we cleared the extensive French Polynesian island group, leaving its over 120 islands, atolls and motus in our wake to the east. Kailani has finally found fair winds to make a westerly course, and for the last 24 hours she has really been stretching her legs at a pace of 8-10 kts steadily. But it has been quite the struggle to get sailing again on the rhumbline. Three nights ago we had to heave-to once again for 24 hours, as we slammed into a very nasty trough of weather, influenced by a near cyclonic system to the south of us that gave us winds from the north and northwest of 25-30 kts. After 24 hours the winds died down, and we slowly started to crawl our way south and west in light winds. The decks have been thoroughly rinsed from the steady squalls that dropped buckets of rain each time they raged across us, bringing with them wind shifts and sea surges that have made for an active and exhausting week since we last wrote. We finally broke free from the lingering effects of this trough at dawn this morning and the sunshine is a welcome reprieve after days of angry seas and skies, with neither sun nor stars to accompany our watches.
On this very long passage we find ourselves reminiscing a bit about the many “strange” things we have seen as we have traversed the world’s oceans. Living as blue water sailors for decades now, we have been blessed to experience nature as not many do, seeing the world from new perspectives, and finding that it can be equal parts beauty, wonder, and terror. It is an interesting fact that more people have climbed Mt. Everest than sailed around the world. This fact emphasizes the rarity of the life we have chosen, fortunate to spend so much time crossing oceans and seeing parts of this world that are quite removed from most people’s daily reality.
For centuries man has voyaged these same oceans, some in search of adventure, new land, plunder, or seeking the answer to age old questions: “what’s on the other side? is the world flat?” History and literature are full of the lore and tales of these sailors returning to port and enchanting landlubbers with stories of sea monsters, mermaids, epic weather, new lands with cannibals, spices, and of course, the curses of the gods, or as old world sailors termed these mysterious encounters and bad fortune: “having a Jonah aboard”.
With tens of thousands of sea miles in our wake, we too have our fair share of sea stories, ranging from spectacularly beautiful, to ragingly terrifying, to the downright strange. Unlike the sailors of old, we do have the advantages of many scientific advances and explorations that inform us on much of this world’s phenomena. But this has not stopped us from having had some truly bewildering encounters. So without any further adieu, imagine we are in a pub in some salty seaside port, and we sidle up to the bar to share some pints and recount four stories to answer the oft posed question: “What are the strangest things you’ve seen out there?”
We’ll start with a story from the first time we crossed the Indian Ocean on Manu Kai. We had departed from Darwin, Australia, and were about 500 miles out to sea, well into our passage making rhythm, which is to say, pretty exhausted. Back then we did a watch system of three hours on, three off, and so one’s off-watch sleep was critical to functioning through the nights. It was the middle of the night, and I was off watch and sound asleep. All of a sudden Harley rushed down below excitedly exclaiming: “Oh my god! I just saw a UFO!” … to which my sleepy response was “is it a factor?” (translation, “do I need to get up for some reason?”). Not impressed with my lack of shared enthusiasm and excitement, Harley went to the radio. He had seen four green lights, all evenly spaced, fly in from the left in the sky, stop in front, then shoot straight up. The radio was alive with a couple of fishing boat captains reporting the same strange sighting, with their positions each 50 miles in opposite directions from us. There was no explanation for anything that could have transited that amount of air space in such a short time, stopped dead and then accelerated away. After much discussion, finally one captain signed off with “Well, mate, I’ll see ya back at the bar to talk more on this. This will really set their tongues a-wagglin’ and jaws droppin’!”. So yes, it was a UFO, an actual alien encounter.
Our next top strange encounter happened when crossing the South Atlantic Ocean on Kailani. For days the skies were brilliant with stars, the wind and seas so calm that early in the evenings Sophia and I would spend time up forward on deck for hours enjoying the brilliant swath of the Milky Way and watching each night as the northern hemisphere constellations inched their way further and further up into our night scape. One of these such nights, on my 1–4 am watch I was peacefully sitting in the cockpit enjoying an absolutely fantastic sail and brilliant starry night. All of a sudden three green massive flares came shooting out of the ocean in succession just off to starboard. I immediately took a bearing, marked the chart, and hopped on the VHF to hail any vessel in the vicinity, thinking it was someone in distress. But in my mind I thought, who uses GREEN flares? Red is the flare of distress at sea. I contemplated, I don’t know, we carry old flares aboard as a supplement for our ditch bag, maybe they show up green when they are “aged”? Repeated calls on the VHF went unanswered, so I went below to wake Harley to tell him about it: was it possibly someone signaling for help? Should we alter course and investigate further? Harley, woken from his off-watch sleep, had the enthusiasm on par that I had had for his UFO sighting, and made the captain’s call that it was not a factor, and then proceeded to go back to sleep. I was intrigued, and there was no way to try to understand this encounter. I was still a bit concerned it was truly someone signaling us. Should I report it so someone on the SSB? I fired up the SSB and used our antiquated sailmail program to email a good friend in the USCG to report the incident and ask: what could green flares indicate? The answer (thank you Master Chief Siefried) came back: submarines do test launches of their torpedoes using green flares. What the hell? They MUST have known we were right there, so whatever military was doing this was really just trying to scare the bejesus out of us. And it worked. Holy crap!
The next story is from 2004, early in our adventures as we had just set off from San Diego on Manu Kai, a day into our first Pacific Ocean crossing. We were sailing slowly under the usual low clouds of the marine layer, and back then on Manu Kai we had no real electronics like radar, AIS, or electronic charts. Pretty much just GPS, wind instruments, a depth sounder and VHF, all with handheld backups. Not very sophisticated. So we were going dead down wind, with a poled out jib and prevented main, and I had just gotten to sleep on my off watch down below. Harley, up in the cockpit, heard the VHF crackle to life: “Vessel located at XX YY (happened to be the EXACT coordinates of where Harley was sitting in the cockpit!), this is US Warship ZZZ. Your current course has you coming within a five mile closest point of approach, and we require you to immediately alter course to port.” Harley contemplated this, and then responded : “This is sailing vessel Manu Kai, one day out of San Diego bound for the Marquesas with a crew of two. In order to change course I need to wake the off watch and change our sail plan which will take at least 30 minutes. Since you seem to be moving away from our course, how about we just maintain course and speed?”. SILENCE. For quite a while. You can imagine that this poor 2nd lieutenant stuck on the middle watch in Comms had to go get the Officer of the Deck who in turn had to wake up the Exec or maybe even the Captain and tell them that there was this yahoo on a sail boat out there who wouldn’t avoid the five mile CPA. After ten minutes or so the ship came back on the VHF: “Sailing vessel Manu Kai, maintain course and speed. Please be advised that we are conducting night operations at this time.” Harley responded “Copy. Thanks.” And with that, EVERY single F-14 that was practicing night landings on that aircraft carrier was directed to fly within a couple hundred feet over the top of our mast. Up until then, I was oblivious to this whole VHF encounter, so you can imagine how the first flyover caused me to leap out of my bunk, run up top, and exclaim to Harley “what the hell was that?!” What noise! And with the low clouds, we could not really see them coming, but once they were over our mast we could see the glow of their afterburners as they roared past, leaving us with the dual impressions of deafening sound combined with vibrations that rocked the core of our bodies. They had fun with us! After a couple flew over, and I determined that none would actually include a visit from Tom Cruise, I promptly went back to bed, many pillows over my head as their night operations continued for at least another hour. What a way to start our first circumnavigation!
This final story is one that once again took place on Manu Kai. For a variety of reasons, we had left the US pretty late in the hurricane season, and by the time we were leaving Bora Bora for New Zealand it was the beginning of December, well after the normal time to go. The winds were light, very light. On Manu Kai, the only way to charge our battery bank was via the main engine alternator, so we motored for 3 hours every day to do this. As such, in order to conserve diesel for charging our batteries, we could not just motor during the light wind days. So, owing to her lack of blazing speed, Manu Kai began to develop essentially an entire eco-system under the boat. We had schools of mahi mahi fish that would come during the day (which we inadvertently scared away when we tried to lure them to a hook baited with SPAM…), and all manner of other fish presumably nibbling on whatever was growing on our keel. Anyway, we were going slowly, and as this passage took us 30 days, we spent a good portion with a waxing and then full moon. And it was on these nights when the moon was fullest that we got to experience something extremely special: creatures from the deep. Things that glowed, and wiggled, and exuded greens, blues, yellows and flashing neons as they moved. Large eyeballs the size of volleyballs. At first when they would surround our boat it was kind of frightening – I could not help but think of stories of giant octopuses and squids … were their tentacles going to come wandering up the sides to explore what we were all about? Yikes! It was magical, spectacular, and only a tiny bit creepy. Truly a unique encounter, and the kind that makes us realize how it is that sailors of old came back to port with eerie stories of mermaids and monsters. We have never experienced this again, but feel so lucky to have seen something in person that today most people can only experience via video from their living rooms, likely with David Attenborough narrating the event.
And so there you have it, a few sea stories from some salty dogs … we will save the breaking out into sea shanties until we next meet in person.
We anticipate making landfall within a week, when we can tell you the real stories of how this passage has gone … suffice it to say it has been one of our most challenging for a variety of reasons that we will bore you with later. But for now, all are well on board, and happy to be making way westward through the Cook Islands now.
18 36.9 S 157 06.2 W
At sea, South Pacific Ocean
Day 34 of passage
963 nm to Vava’u, Tonga
WOW, those are some fascinating stories. I look forward to hearing more about the UFO 👽 sighting. I recently went to a Profs and Pints event at Henry’s for beer and a presentation from an Astrophysicist at SETI. I’m obsessed. Can’t wait to hear more about your next segment. Hugs!!!
Hi you two!! I can’t begin to tell you how much I enjoy the Laughter Journey updates! But MY GOSH what a mess the winds/ lack of winds and weather have been for you. May the final week of sailing be far sweeter!
I leave Thursday for 6 months in FL. Have had nonstop workmen doing repairs and improvements at my place, to prepare for long term tenants arriving the 27 June.
Wishing you fair skies and steady winds from now until Tonga!! <3 -M
Green lights might have been military missiles. Chinese . Amazing story.
Thanks for another great entry. Particularly loved the F-14 story (a familiar type of military encounter at sea or in the air), although all were great and even other-worldly.