Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
“Wouldn't it be better if we waited until the morning?” he asked wisely.
“Yeah, probably, it's only a couple of hours away from day break anyway. It would be very
nice to just sail in at sunrise.”
I was standing with the tiller raised up, peering into the murky night. My heart was in my
mouth; there was something very wrong with Déjà vu's sailing performance. I knew her
too well. Gavin noticed it too.
“I could swear that we aren't even moving forward,” I said, straining to see in the sluggish,
dark, swirling water below.
We were heeled over on the starboard tack and, under normal conditions, would be moving
at around four knots. Now it seemed as though we weren't even making any headway, al-
most as though we were sailing on the spot. When I turned the helm one way or the other,
she responded her bow too quickly, and suddenly I realized that she was being gripped by
a powerful four knot current.
I told this to Gavin and he went white, “Jesus Christ, we should just head out to sea as fast
as we can!”
I agreed, and I warned him we were coming about, putting us on a tack out to sea. Déjà
vu's response was extremely sluggish, and she took forever to come about. When she fi-
nally did, she would not speed up enough to hold her new course, and we felt as though a
giant hand was holding us back.
Quite frankly, it was terrifying. We felt it was very possible for this strong, lunar induced
current to hold us in its grip and drag us onto a reef where, with the rough waves we heard,
it would smash Déjà vu to pieces. There was just no response to her helm, and we were not
sailing at all.
“I'm going to start the engine; see if that helps a bit.” I went below and turned on the vari-
ous inlets and, with Gavin's aid, fired up the little ten horse engine. There was a slight dif-
ference and we decided to head out to sea again away from the tidal influence. I reckoned
we were about three miles out when I finally shut down the motor and hove to. We drifted
very slightly back towards land. “That's fine; we'll have sunlight long before we get to the
entrance.”
I observed a couple of red mast lights on land and attempted to figure out just where we
were. I took the tallest dark mass as the top of the mountain peak marked on the chart in
conjunction with the red mast lights and got an RDF bearing on Nadi airport. With this
triangle I was able to determine pretty closely our position relative to the shore. We were
about two and a half miles out and needed to sail farther south to enter the harbor entrance.
