Tupuna Rock: Lost, stranded and assumed dead, the ancestors' spirits must guide them

By Klaus Brauer

Tūpuna Rock is a tale of two teenage siblings raised in Canada by their Māori mother and Canadian father. While on vacation in Aotearoa New Zealand, their borrowed sloop is disabled in a storm with only the two teens aboard. Having lost their navigation gear, after six days adrift with no sense of direction, they beach their damage

• Language: English
• Publisher: Limestone Point
• Release date: Jan 2, 2024
• ISBN: 9798989719532

Klaus Brauer

Klaus Brauer has been a student of navigation for more than fifty years. Holding degrees from MIT and the Stanford Creative Writing Program, Klaus writes and carves his dugout Oceanic sailing canoe on San Juan Island in the Salish Sea.

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Tūpuna Rock

Tūpuna Rock

Lost, stranded and assumed dead,

the ancestors’ spirits must guide them.

Klaus Brauer

Tūpuna Rock

a Limestone Point book

Copyright © 2024 Klaus Brauer

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form electronic or mechanical without the written permission of the author, except for the inclusion of brief quotations in a review.

The author hereby grants permission for the reproduction of his drawings and associated text from Chapters 4, 5, 6, 7 and 8 in support of science and mathematics education.

Text and drawings by Klaus Brauer

The chart in chapter 3 is based on Land Information New Zealand (LINZ) data which are licensed by LINZ for re-use under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license.

Cover art by Richard Fraker

To the Reader

Enjoy the story. You can read without slowing to study any of the science or mathematics described in this book. On the other hand, you may enjoy taking in all the detail – at first read or by returning later.

What matters, is that the novel’s characters came to understand and use the knowledge and skills of the ancient voyagers – as their extended Pacific clan, inheritors of their ancestors’ genius, can today.

Contents

1 ​Fishing

2 ​Afloat

3 ​Ashore

4 ​Latitude

5 ​Longitude

6 ​Tūpuna

7 ​Toki

8 ​Making Ready

9 ​Sea Trial

10 ​Voyagers

11 ​Intercepted

Author’s note

Acknowledgements

Glossary

Star Names

Celestial latitude at the time of the migration

Bibliography

mō ngā tamariki ō Te Moana-nui-a-Kiwa

for the children of the Pacific

1​     Fishing

Under a clear blue sky, the rocky ridge rising from the northern shore of Whatupuke Island was awash in sunshine. The ridge, in turn, radiated warmth complementing that of the direct midday sun. It was the day after Christmas, summer there in the Southern Hemisphere. Barefoot, wearing only a floppy hat, t-shirt, shorts and life jacket, the young skipper leaned back in the cockpit and let the boat drift for a minute as he thought about his classmates shivering back home in Vancouver.

The steep, 200-metre-tall ridge sheltered the boat from the wind that had provided a sporty sail out to the islands. While his older sister, Anna, enjoyed fishing in the calm water, Per, the skipper, played with the boat, sailing the ten-metre sloop slowly back and forth. He occasionally dropped a float over the side and, after sailing onward for a bit, practiced a man overboard recovery manoeuvre, coming about to sail slowly back to the float and bringing the boat to a halt a metre to windward of the float. As the boat drifted down on the float, he ‘rescued’ it with the boathook.

The fishing was less successful than the man overboard drills, but no one was keeping score. Fishing was therapeutic for Anna, just as sailing was for Per. Both activities require continuous attention; but the required level of attention is low, aside from when there is a fish on the line or the sailing conditions turn challenging. That sustained, low level of attention is ideal for pushing day to day worries to the side. Per, generally a good student, was struggling in French, the least favourite subject for many western Canadians, but French was absent from his thoughts as he sailed back and forth in the calm water downwind of Whatupuke. Anna was in her final year of high school, in the midst of applying for university admission. Some university applications were due within weeks, but under the bright blue sky that afternoon, she was focused on the lures she played in the water, without a thought of applications or essays.

As the afternoon wore on, the other boats in the area departed one by one and headed back to port. A man at the helm of one of the last to leave gave a dramatic wave to the teens, sweeping his arm toward the west, toward the harbour entrance twenty kilometres away.

‘What do Kiwis do on Boxing Day?’ Per wondered aloud.

‘Eat Christmas leftovers, I think.’

‘That dude must have a lot of leftovers he needs help with.’ With that quip, Per dismissed the gesture.

In time, the drama of the departing boater’s wave began to trouble Per. He had been watching the wind waves rolling through the gap between Whatupuke and Motu Muka, the next island to the west. The wave heights hadn’t suggested strong winds, but closer examination revealed the tops being blown off waves. ‘I think it’s time to head in,’ he announced as he assessed the sails. He had the midsize jib up and the first reef in the mainsail, appropriate to his estimate of the wind driving the waves. ‘You know what?’ he added almost as an afterthought. ‘Just to be safe, we should have our harnesses on.’ They donned their harnesses and clipped the tethers to the jackline running along the cockpit floor.

As soon as they emerged from Whatupuke’s wind shadow, a gust knocked the sloop down nearly flat. ‘Let out the jib!’ Per yelled to Anna above the howling wind as he eased the mainsail out. He started the engine and ran it up to full power to get into Motu Muka’s wind shadow as quickly as possible.

With the sloop back on her feet, Per looked to the south, through the gap between Whatupuke and Motu Muka, saying no more than, ‘Holy crap!’ Whatupuke’s high ground, which had sheltered them from the wind, had also blocked the view to the south, where mountainous black storm clouds had formed. Massive wind-blown waves were breaking in the shallows and rocks between the islands, leaving only smaller, newly formed wind waves to emerge from the gap. Those smaller waves had deceived Per’s estimate of the wind.

Once snuggled into the lee of Motu Muka, Anna took the tiller to steer the sloop’s bow into the diminished wind while Per went forward, hauled down the jib and tucked the second reef into the mainsail. After stowing the midsize jib below, he emerged with the storm jib, a small bright-orange headsail, which he raised from the bow.

Returning to the cockpit, Per studied the churning surf in the twenty kilometres of open water between Motu Muka and the mainland. He went below once more to retrieve wet-weather jackets and trousers. ‘Yeah, it’s not raining,’ he hesitated before adding, ‘yet. But waves are going to be bashing us on the windward beam all the way. It’ll be a pretty wet ride, even if we get back before any rain comes.’

While donning his wet weather gear, Per began to explain the plan to Anna. ‘We’ve got to make due west to clear Bream Head. I’d rather make a bit south of west to properly enter the fairway into port.

‘The engine is great for motoring this boat along when there’s no wind, but the engine itself isn’t powerful enough to push through the wind and waves I see out there. We’ll need sails up, too.

‘The storm jib, flying from the bow, will want to turn the boat toward the north, so stand by to ease it out if I ask. The main will have the opposite effect, wanting to turn the boat to the south. I’ll manage the main. We’ll be managing our heading with both the sails and, of course, the engine streaming water past the rudder. Make sense?’

‘Yup.’

Anna was not an experienced sailor, but he knew she could figure it out. It was all just forces and angles, and she could do trigonometry in her sleep. Per took the helm while Anna put on her wet weather gear. He checked that their life jackets, harnesses and tethers were all secure before asking, ‘Ready?’

‘Yup.’

‘Here we go.’ Per turned the bow to the west and pushed the throttle forward.

Once clear of Motu Muka’s shelter, still somewhat sheltered by a few smaller islets, waves began pounding on the little sloop’s windward bow, and it began to turn toward the north, away from their heading back to safety. Anna let out the jib enough to keep them headed slightly to the south of Bream Head. Waves beating against the windward side of the hull threw spray by the bucketful over the rail into the cockpit. As expected, it had become a wet ride.

Anna was able to steer with the storm jib while the smaller islets provided some shelter, but once the sloop emerged from the islets’ shelter, the mainsail was overpowered by the waves beating against the windward bow, and the boat began to turn toward the north. ‘Just let the jib run out,’ Per called over the howling wind as he hauled the mainsail in hard to turn the boat back to the west.

The little sloop was losing speed and the rudder becoming less effective when a huge gust hit. With a low boom like the bursting of a massive balloon, the mainsail ripped from its aft edge all the way forward to the mast. Out of control, the bow spun northward as the useless mainsail flapped angrily.

‘So much for clearing Bream Head.’ Preoccupied with keeping them afloat, Per was emotionless.

‘Where then?’ Anna asked apprehensively.

‘We run for Ngunguru Bay, find shelter behind the head by Pataua at the south end of the bay.’ Looking north, they could make out the head in the distance.

Per caught Anna glancing up at the torn mainsail flapping uselessly in the wind. ‘Grandpa Koro won’t give a rat’s ass about the sail, if we get ashore safely,’ he assured.

‘Per, I’m gonna send mom, dad, Grandpa Koro and Grandma Karani all a text to tell them what we’re doing.’

‘Good idea.’

‘I turned my phone off so it wouldn’t be searching while we were out here. It’s down below in my dry bag. Can I use yours?’

‘Yeah, that’s probably better. You send texts all the time. I don’t know about mom and dad, but you send so many texts that I don’t look at half of them.’

Per’s attempt at humour fell flat. ‘So my texts are spam?’ Anna asked in a hurt tone.

‘No, I just meant, since I’m usually too lame to let them know what I’m up to, they’re sure to open a text from my phone.’

Anna tapped out the message on Per’s phone and hit ‘send’. After a minute she reported, ‘It didn’t go. No reception. I’ll check for reception every now and then, and resend when we have some.’

Per didn’t hear Anna’s last sentences; he was focused on the boat. ‘Annie,’ he commanded, ‘winch in the storm jib a bit. Manage it to pull us northward.’

Per’s mind was consumed with sailing the boat with a new wave overtaking them every few seconds, surfing down the face of one wave before falling into a trough and being beaten on the stern by another. Some of the thumping on the stern sounded leaden, and Per turned to find the small dinghy they had been towing, now swamped, was being thrown against the stern by the advancing waves.

In an instant the tiller controlling the rudder became stiff, intermittently pulling hard to starboard. Per looked astern to discover that the tiller pulled just when the dinghy had fallen back to the full length of its tether. As he fought the tiller, he shouted over the noise of the wind and crashing waves, ‘Annie, I need your help back here.’

Anna secured the jib sheet and joined Per at the stern.

‘The dinghy’s tether is fouled on the rudder. I can’t steer. I need you to cut the tether.’

Anna gave an inquiring look.

‘Yeah,’ Per offered, ‘Grandpa Koro won’t give a rat’s ass about the dinghy either.’ With a free hand he gave Anna his rigging knife.

Watching Anna lean out over the stern of the pitching boat, trying to seize an opportunity to cut the tether as the dinghy fell back repeatedly before being thrown forward against the stern again and again, Per suddenly called out, ‘No! The dinghy will break your arm before you have a chance to cut the tether. Just cut the end secured to the sloop; maybe a loose end in the water will allow the tether to work itself free.’

Shortly, when the dinghy snapped once again to the end of its tether, there was a mean crunching sound from inside the hull, and the dinghy disappeared behind a wave. The tiller moved freely, too freely, and had no apparent effect on the rudder. Per threw open the hinged bench on the port side of the cockpit and leaned in to inspect the connection to the rudder. The rudder was completely gone, and water was flooding into the boat through the hole left by the rudder stock.

Per jumped down past the hinged bench, landing on the bottom of the hull with a splash. Lying in the water, flat on his chest, he reached under the cockpit floor to cover the hole left by the rudder with his palm while searching for something to plug the hole. Turning his head upward he called to his sister, ‘Look for something to plug a hole about five centimetres across.’ In a few moments, Anna appeared above him holding the conical wooden plugs kept to plug broken pipes. ‘Yeah! Give me the biggest one.’ He took the plug but handed it back after a moment, ‘It’s too small and the hole’s ragged.’

Anna returned with the plug wrapped in a towel. ‘Is that big enough?’

‘Yeah, I think so.’

The boat pitched and rolled as Per worked the plug into the hole. Seawater sloshing around filled his nose and left him sputtering several times, but he finally got the plug firmly in place and jammed a tool box between the top of the plug and the underside of the cockpit floor to hold the plug down.

Per was back in the cockpit, studying the boat’s motion in the waves overtaking it, when the water down below found its way to the engine’s air intake. The engine didn’t sputter; it stopped dead, seized by a cylinder full of water. It was finished.

The storm jib remained intact, alternately pulling the boat along and collapsing as the stern sashayed in the waves. Needing some sort of rudder to stabilize the boat’s motion and keep the storm jib inflated, Per recalled a trick he had once read. Retrieving the backup anchor from its nearby stowage, he secured the anchor to a cleat on the port side at the end of ten metres of line and then eased it overboard. The drag of the anchor kept the boat turned just enough to port to keep the jib inflated on the starboard side.

As Anna threw bucket after bucket of water out of the cabin, Per evaluated the situation. It was definitely time to call for help. He glanced at the GPS, pulled the hand-held VHF radio from a pocket of his life jacket, pressed the transmit button and spoke slowly and