Frontal Boundaries

When we left Beveridge Reef at 1100 on a Friday, the winds were light and out of the southeast. Having burned a lot of fuel motoring from Rarotonga to Beveridge, we were determined to sail as much as possible, so we put out the genaker – a very light, large sail – and drifted toward Niue at a stately pace. The seas were calm – as referenced in my posting below, Stained Glass Bluegrass – and we enjoyed the relaxing pace of the first day. The next morning, at around 0800, as the sun lifted over a glassy sea, we saw a weather front approach us from our south. Stretching from horizon to horizon, a dark line of low clouds crept northeastward. The weather forecasts had predicted this front, a product of a massive high pressure system moving eastward from Australia. In the southern hemisphere, highs rotate counter-clockwise, so the front we were watching that morning represented the boundary between the warm air of the sub-tropics to the north, and the approaching mass of cold air brought up from the higher latitudes down south (remember that it’s winter down here). We dropped the genaker, and put out the smaller headsail, and even reefed it down to 1/3 its intended size, and waited.

By 0830, the front crossed our bow, and in a matter of just a few short minutes, we went from no wind and flat seas to 25-35 knots of wind and seas that quickly built to 6-10 feet. I was again amazed at how quickly wind energy is converted into waves and swells – as if the ocean was an engine just waiting to be plugged in and revved up. We picked up speed quickly, and soon were surfing at 7-8 knots under the small triangle of sail. Had we been in more of a hurry, we could have easily let out more sail and gone much faster, but we‘ve learned to take things easy. It’s not a race.

By midnight, we had made the northern tip of Niue, having elected not to try and make the southern tip, since that would have placed our boat between the wind and the land – the proverbial “lee shore.” A good decision, since for friends who went south things indeed went “south” and they managed just barely to make the point without running aground. Once at the northern tip of this island – an island resembling a oblong layer cake thrust 30 meters up from the ocean, with sheer cliffs and no surrounding reef – the seas abated, as were lying in the lee of the island, and we had a comfortable passage down the western side of the island before picking up a buoy at 0200 Sunday morning. Niue is a raised coral island, and lacks the reef and attendant passes that would otherwise have necessitated a daytime approach. We fell into a deep sleep, and woke the next morning to an island unlike any we’ve visited to date.

Just as the previous day’s frontal passage brought on a dramatic change in weather, so it seems the geology of Niue has created a dramatically different environment. Carrying the analogy a step further, the island itself, a protectorate of New Zealand, declined an affiliation with the Cook Islands we had just visited, choosing instead to be independent. In fact, Niue’s culture also represents a boundary of sorts – between the Polynesian and the Tongan, just to the west. As we explored the nature and culture of the island over the next few days, the passage of the mid-ocean cold front boundary foreshadowed other new experiences, at distinct odds from the islands we’ve left in our wake. It’s a different island. Below, some vignettes capture the differences.

Lady Farmer Piggery

We rented a car to visit the island’s many hiking and swimming spots, and along the way, spotted a sign that got us wondering: what do pigs have to do with hair cutting and ear piercing? After spending a fruitless half hour driving up and down two-track dirt roads, looking for the elusive Piggery, we ended up asking someone in town. It turns out that the local custom is to delay the cutting of the eldest son’s hair until he turns 16, and then to throw a large day-long part of friends and relations. Each attendee brings a gift of cash in an envelope, and at the end of the day, the envelopes are opened, and, in order of contribution, each attendee receives a parting gift, with the gift currency being pigs (for high rollers), chickens, and crops. The island record for cash receipts of this “once-in-a-lifetime” offering is $36,000. Today, the custom extends to all sons, and, in a sign of the times, to girls and their ear piercings as well. Baby pigs cost about $250 each, so many families raise pigs alongside their growing children, and the event becomes a nice way to cash in on one’s crops. The community, in effect, shares its wealth that way, a strategy employed in their restaurant schedules as well.

Schedules and Sharing the Wealth

The island’s supply and tourist chain is served by a single weekly flight (130 seats) from New Zealand (Fridays) and a monthly supply ship. You can go anywhere you want, as long as it’s New Zealand, and anytime you want, as long as it’s Friday. There are only about 1500 permanent residents here (annual GDP = $10 million, NZ$ -- which is about $8M US$), with the population having taken a serious dip after the massive Cyclone Heta (largest in recent world history) hit the island broadside in 2004. Many houses were destroyed and then abandoned, and the island still shows visible signs of this calamitous event. Restaurants are open on a revolving schedule, with a different restaurant open each day – thus assuring sufficient volume of business for each, and permitting each to staff for a reasonable turnout. Another example of collective thinking on a small island.

That’s not to say there aren’t entrepreneurs here; we spotted one sign for a consulting agency; interesting mix of skills, but relevant here to be sure!

They are also big on community gatherings, and each village takes one day a week to come together and weave, sell local produce and trinkets, and gossip, rotating days and opportunities. We got a kick out of this sign.

Night Fishing for Flying Fish

At the new moon, when the tides are high and the sky is dark, the local fishermen take to their boats and, with a light ablaze on their bow, make strafing runs across our little anchorage, running their boats back-and-forth in sweeping circles, holding circular nets on poles atop their gunnels. Under the water, the hahave, or flying fish, that are so very common in these Pacific waters take flight in small schools, propelling themselves out of the water and “flying”across the surface, wings a-flapping, for a 75 meters or so before diving back into the water. The local fishermens’ poled nets collect these fish as they skim across the surface, and the fish become bait for their wahoo fishing. These flying fish are a dietary mainstay of the mahi-mahi we often catch while sailing, and oft is the morning when we have to clean our deck of a few (crash-landed) flying fish who have found their way onto our boat.

Caves, Caverns, and Chasms

By Limu Pools, where the springs empty into the sea

The geology of Niue, referenced above, is unique for the Pacific islands. Like others, it began with a volcano surfacing, and a reef forming. Unlike others, the Niue the volcano and reef then sank en masse, and then, lifted up abruptly in a single geologic moment, creating an island that resembles a round layer cake jutting up sharply from the sea. At the island’s edge, the water falls off to thousands of feet just a few dozen feet from shore, and thus the island lacks the traditional circling reef that would otherwise protect its shores from the relentless pounding of the ocean’s waves. This absence of a protective reef is a major reason Cyclone Heta was so devastating, and is likewise responsible for the amazing coastal geography of Niue.

Jennifer swimming in the Royal Bathing Pool

We spent a few days touring the coastline’s many features, including a chasm formerly reserved for the royal families’ swimming habits, as well as the landing site of the original inhabitants. The shoreline is dotted with caves and chasms, and the limestone rock shows the same kind of weathering behavior as the caves of North America – stalagmites, etc. The coral also weathers in strange ways, and you can see here the hundreds of pinnacles that now jut upward from the underlying lush landscape.

Chasms at water level

Standing on the overhanging ledges

Limestone formations

Canoes are stored in the seaside caves

Pinnacles of eroded coral

The eastern shore, open to the tradewinds

Descending to a
sheltered beach

The sheltered beach

Walking Fish

No pictures here, but there’s a fish that inhabits the tidal pools of the immediate coastline that can walk. They skitter along the sides of the pool, inching themselves along on the rough-textured coral, and then disappear into the tiny nooks and crannies, before dropping again into the water and swimming to the other side of the next pool. Adaptation at the boundary between sea and shore.

Diving Among the Swimming Snakes

We went diving in waters clear enough to see over 75 meters – as if we were diving in air. The dives were other-worldly, and we dove into the cliffs that mark the edge of Niue. Descending onto the very narrow shelf along the island’s edge, and leaving the dark blue depths of the deep ocean just behind us, we would glide into and along narrow chasms, underneath the overhanging rock, and disappear into the island coastline’s vast underwater network of dark tunnels and magical caves. With our underwater flashlights illuminating the coral walls of these tunnels, we would swim for a few dozen meters or so, and surface underneath the island, and find ourselves in a dark dome-like cavern, with stalactites and stalagmites everywhere, bobbing up and down to the rhythmic pulse of the ocean’s swells. We were joined by sea kraits – or sea snakes in the vernacular – extremely poisonous but extremely non-aggressive. They’ve never had a biting attack here, and apparently you’d need to jam your finger into their mouths to get bit. We managed to avoid jamming our fingers into their mouths, but both Jennifer and I were more than a bit apprehensive during our first swim with the snakes. They would slither through the water, shimmying their flattened tails, banded in white and black. The underwater scenery was well-worth the anxiety, and we gained a new appreciation for the remarkable geology of the special island.

In addition, we found Nemo – and its twin, swimming within an 18” diameter sea anemone. These gorgeous and surreal invertebrates lay flat on the ocean floor, with thousands of small undulating flagella, each sifting the water for nutrients. The “Nemos” of the world swim in and among the anemone’s flagella, picking and cleaning them, and nourishing themselves in the process. The one we saw was especially large, allowing several fish to swim in and among the flagella.  Just before surfacing on our last dive, we also swam up to a Hawksbill turtle. We were able to check each other out for a few long, peaceful moments, eyeball to eyeball, not 5 feet apart, before we bored him and he swam on in search of tasty chunks of live coral to nibble on.

The Next Boundary

Now, it’s onward to Tonga, and to get there, we sail across the Tongan Trench. It’s over 35,000 feet deep, one of the deepest parts of the world’s oceans, and it’s where the great tectonic plates are folding underneath one another, allowing the formation new ocean floor, and giving birth to new islands as the new earth rises to the surface. On the north end of the Trench, the plates are moving at 10 inches a year – the fastest plate movement on the planet, and there are many new islands being formed in Tongan waters. The charts can be out of date in a matter of years, as what had been the briny depths turns into a rising bit of land. We’ve got up-to-date charts, as well as cruisers lists of unmarked hazards, but we’ll be keeping an eye out. Over the last few years, boats sailing along in these waters have been the first to see new land. As they sail along, the ocean begins to bubble up and smoke, as the superheated magma began to erupt, and pumice appears. Other boats have found themselves sailing through rafts of pumice, precursors to the actual elevation of the volcano above the surface.   They caught it on video, which you can see here.

Alofi Wharf, Niue

We leave tomorrow, from the tiny anchorage off the village of Alofi. The dinghy dock – notice the crane on the wharf is a final unique feature of this wonderful island: each dinghy is hoisted ashore, and laid on the concrete quay, protected form the relentless surge that ebbs and flows against the shoreline. Our little “Doodlebug” is safe from the chafing, and it’s a nice ritual every time we arrive ashore and return to the boat.

Another island. Another frontal boundary. It can feel like a new world every day out here, and we’re loving it.