Pacific
November 2009 Australia to Bali
sunday november 1st 2009 (bali passage – day 3)
We ended up in Australia a couple of extra days waiting for parts. Against all odds we found this guy who happened to have the little electric engine that we needed for our autopilot. He was a few hundred kilometers away though (Horn Island is remote even by Australian standards). We were so excited that we got the guy to personally drive it over to the airport and put it in the pocket of one of the pilots that flies these little commuter planes back and forth to the mainland. That was all well and good but pilots being pilots it took us two days to find the guy. I spent a decade working around fly-boys though so just asked around to find out where the flight crews took on their post-flight beverages. Soon enough we had our engine, a hundred bucks for little piece of mind? Sold!
October 2009 Solomon Islands
thursday october 1st 2009 (liapari – solomon islands)
After a little trouble we were able to find the entrance into the lagoon we’ve been looking for. The waypoint we had was a half a mile off the mark which caused a little stress when we needed it the least. Nevertheless we were hooked up safe inside with a beer and a sigh of relief by 3PM. Despite the light conditions we made pretty good time, completing the passage in less than two days. We motor sailed a lot of the way and were quite happy for the lack of wind for a change. Now that we’ve made it I feel like I can elaborate on our patch job a little without causing any undue stress of jinx’ing our trip.
September 2009 Vanuatu to the Solomon Islands
thursday september 3rd 2009 (luganville – vanuatu)
We had the Don Pedro crew over to celebrate our anniversaries last night. It’s been two years on the high seas for both boats, and we weren’t about to let the occasion slip by without a party. Hangovers aside, today was one of those great days that remind us why we put ourselves through all this crazy stuff.
August 2009 Vanuatu
thursday august 13th 2009 (port vila, vanuatu)
Sorry about the time lapse, not much too report. We are still hanging off a mooring ball here in Port Vila. Jaime and I came down with back to back ailments. She started things off the day we were supposed to leave by coming down with a brutal flu. By the time she was fending for herself again I was walloped with a nasty head cold. To top it off the weather has been shit, raining nearly every day. We’ve been able to catch up on a few things around the boat, use the internet to do a little banking and stuff like that so it hasn’t been all bad but we are both pretty anxious to get moving again. Hopefully we will be able to get out of here and a little further North this weekend.
July 2009 Fiji to Vanuatu
wednesday july 1st 2009 (denarau, fiji)
One of the greatest things about a trip like this is the special people you meet along the way. They add color, life, a new perspective, and have different stories to share. They give you a chance to question your own ideas about things and the really good ones, the ones that you admire, leave you wanting to be a better person.
The shitty thing about a trip like this is saying goodbye to those people.
June 2009 Fiji
tuesday june 2nd 2009 (saweni bay, fiji)
We popped around the corner into Saweni Bay. It’s only a few miles South West but it feels cleaner, more secluded and sheltered than Lautoka. We liked the little city and had a good time there but are anxious to see more of this country. We’ll sleep here tonight, and complete the grueling 10 mile passage to Denarau tomorrow.
May 2009 New Zealand to Fiji
wednesday may 13th 2009 (auckland, new zealand)
Somewhere between waiting for our car to sell, waiting for an overpriced and decidedly un-sexy heat exchanger, then waiting for a calm between the winter storms to get our asses safely out of New Zealand, Pam and Ken (Jaime’s Dad and his Fiancé) finally and fittingly lost their faith in our ability to meet them in Fiji. On the tail end of their epic 6 month backpacking trip, Fiji was to be their last stop before heading home to Vancouver, and where we had been planning to meet up with them for the past 6 months. Fortunately for us they decided to take matters into their own hands and hopped on a plane from Nadi to Auckland. On Monday this week we got to see them for the first time since our Harley trip to Key West a year and a half ago. We borrowed some bedding and plopped the table down in the settee. Slapdash has been cozily sleeping 5 ever since.
friday may 15th 2009 (auckland, new zealand)
Looks like we’ll be busy right up to the last Auckland minute. We’ve been taking full advantage of this departure delay; using the time to sort out as many wrinkles as possible. We’ve been picking up all the things that experience has taught us will be impossible to find once we leave New Zealand. Random stuff like spare light bulbs for our various cabin and navigation lights, assorted fuses, clips clamps and a mixture of insultingly priced stainless steel sailing bits.
Ken and Pam claim to be enjoying themselves, but the visit is unusual in the sense that we’ve had to incorporate them into our pre-departure preparations. Ken has been helping me tune the rig and install a redundant fuel filtration system, and Pam has been busy with everything from painting us a Fijian courtesy flag to getting passage meals organized. We’ve enjoyed their company and are grateful for the help but wish we could have treated them to a more relaxed visit. They have treated us to the contents of their packs; emptying out left over batteries, headlamps, locks, malarial drugs and other bits of prized travel goodies.
Last night we managed to squeeze in a diversion. Bar de Baz, where our friend Travis works, was the venue for a little going away party that we threw ourselves. We’ve fallen in with a pretty great little crowd here in Auckland and have made a bunch of good friends that we’ll miss, stay in touch with, and have a hard time saying goodbye to. New Zealand has been very good to us. We would have a hard time leaving if it wasn’t so bleeding cold!
saturday may 16th 2009 (auckland, new zealand)
D-day. We have an appointment with Customs to clear out at 1300 today so ready or not here we go. The customs dock is a couple of miles away so we’ll try to shove off by noon. Still in a nearly perpetual state of pre-departure panic we have readied up the Slapdash, stowed and lashed, bought and returned, all the while saying goodbye to the well wishers that turned up to see us off. Our treasured friend Katie even drove all the way up from Tauranga to bid us adieu. Our lasting image of her until we meet again will be of her standing on the dock with tears streaming while trying to hold onto her purse and all the indiscriminate items we unloaded on her before leaving. Pam and Ken, Katie, Travis, a couple of Nicks (one Saffer and one Kiwi) and Jeff and Angie from God Spede were all there to make us feel really lousy about leaving. We managed to keep our appointment with customs, loaded up on diesel, and steamed out of Waitemata harbour past North Head and into the Hauraki gulf. It was pretty quite on board for a while. I think all three of us were still trying to sort out our emotions. Micah looking ahead to his first ocean passage on this small boat, Jaime reflecting on a fortuitous visit with Pam and Ken and me hoping that I will remember how to get our collective asses across an ocean in one piece.
sunday may 17th 2009 (omaha cove, new zealand)
The following entry is a fictional account of a hypothetical scenario that for legal reasons did not happen:
Exhausted and beaten into submission by a ball busting chop. Our optimism assaulted by an endless stream of coast guard wind warnings from the VHF. This was no way to begin a 1200 mile journey. We sneak into the sheltered confines of Omaha Cove under the cover of darkness. It was 1AM and we were barely 50 miles from Auckland.
10 hours earlier we had received multiple warnings from New Zealand officials during our clearance process to leave the country immediately and were even made to sign some persnickety “we’ve been warned not to stop and promise that we’ll leave” letter.
Standing on the bow braced against the bitingly cold wind, Micah flexed his eyeballs and provided direction to the helm. He kept us a safe distance from the rocky walls and multiple fishing boats moored in the bay. Jaime monitored the electronic charts and our GPS position. We found a suitable spot and dropped the hook. We slept fitly while listening to the wind howl outside of our little cove content with our relative safety and harmless act of civil disobedience.
By morning winds had moderated. The forecast was still full of doom and gloom but at least now it was South Westerly doom and gloom. For a boat planning to spend the next 10 days or so heading East North East, having a strong South Westerly kick in the pants isn’t a bad thing at all.
monday may 18th 2009 (fiji passage – day 1)
Having been preoccupied with boat projects, carousing with friends, family and random kiwis, we haven’t really spent too much time thinking about the passage itself. Sure, we’ve been obsessed with leaving but our thoughts began with making sure that we had everything in order before departing and ended with us casting off the dock lines.
With the North Island now fading into the distance behind us I’ve had plenty of time to reflect on the passage itself. Guess what? Turns out this is one mother of a trip! We will climb nearly 20 degrees of latitude during the twelve hundred mile (2184 KM) passage from Auckland to Lautoka; the equivalent of going from Toronto to Havana. The New Zealand winter weather and its South Westerly gales that we have been enjoying so thoroughly will keep us company for the first few days of our trip. For the next 600 miles or so we will be in the Horse Latitudes, apparently named so because sailing ships becalmed in the area were forced to kill horses due to lack of drinking water. We have no horses so may have to kill Micah if it comes down to it.
All in all it’s going to be one hell of an inaugural passage after being beached for the past 5 months, and what an introduction for Micah.
friday may 22nd 2009 (fiji passage – day 5)
We left amidst continual wind and gale warnings for the entire east coast of New Zealand. We were comfortable with that fact and had incorporated the forecast into our passage plan. The warnings we had received about encountering a strong SW gale early in the trip seemed like favorable conditions to us; a good way to get a jump on things and put some mileage between us and the stormy lower latitudes. Contrary to what the forecast had led us to expect, we spent the first 12 hours out of New Zealand close hauled and clawing our way into North Easterlies and moderate seas. When we had nearly lost faith in the forecast, at 12AM the wind whipped around to the South West with the abruptness of a heart attack and fed us 35 knots of bone chilling Antarctic wind right up the ass. Shivering and bundled up like Japanese tourists in Banff, we managed to get a couple of reefs in and then just held on and enjoyed the ride. By morning the wind had settled down to 25 knots, and eventually 15. We would enjoy that same tailwind for the next 3 days. Our luck continued when winds shifted to the South East and allowed us to avoid a monster low pressure system. We’ve been skirting along the edge of it for the past 24 hours benefiting from the wind around its outside edge. It’s been an active little passage for us so far, but we’re happy with the progress.
saturday may 23rd 2009 (fiji passage – day 5)
Thus far we’ve managed to skirt the worst of the low pressure system. That’s the good news. The bad news is that the tail wind we’ve become so attached to has sputtered out. Now we are motoring into light and variable winds. Even though the sea conditions are still a little sloppy, we’ll take this slow and bumpy progress over potential abuse from the dirty black system developing on our western horizon any day. Any day? We’ll see what tomorrow brings.
sunday may 24th 2009 (fiji passage – day 6)
What sorts of things go through your mind while surfing at 16 knots down the face of a 30 foot wave in a small boat? I asked the two people closest to me and here’s what they said:
- Micah: Just how big is that wave anyway?
- Jaime: I need to put some more tinned food in our ditch bag.
All I could think about was if I would get the chance to stand up soon, or if I would just have to pee in my pants.
Jaime woke me up at 6AM that morning for my shift. The light and variable winds that were with us a few hours previous had gone. They rotated and strengthened considerably, 20 knots and climbing. By the time I got Micah up and we toke in a good chunk of sail they were closer to 30. At 7AM everyone was still up, sleeping wasn’t really an option, and by that point it was pretty clear that things were going to get interesting.
The seas were building and, given the winds recent and radical changes in both speed and direction, were quite unruly. For all its virtues, the autopilot still lacks the ability to anticipate and correct our direction when running in front of confused seas. In some conditions it becomes necessary to disengage the autopilot and hand steer. Only a human can see, anticipate, and correct with the appropriate doses of fervor which ranging from the unruffled “okay a little to port and here we go up and over” to the reactionary “holy shit! Crank it over hard or we’re dead for sure!”
A couple of watery beasts quite unexpectedly slammed into our beam, which gave slapdash the opportunity to prove her stability and the crew the opportunity to shit their pants. I geared up in my crappy yet trusty Canadian Tire rain jacket, my recently gifted flashy red gortex pants (thanks Mark!) and went outside to take over for the autopilot. As soon as I turned the latch the door was caught by the wind and slammed open. It smashed closed again before I lurched and staggered around in the cockpit trying to get myself seated behind the helm. Unsheltered by the cabin, our situation took on a more frothy and chaotic face. By this time we were running in front of a steady 40 knots.
All sail, save a small corner about 3 feet by two feet, was furled and lashed and we had done everything we could to get ourselves and the boat ready for a good blow. Almost everything. Finally seated securely behind the helm, tied to the deck, with my mostly waterproof gear doing it’s best to save me from regular blasts of wind-driven salt water, I realized that I had to pee. Badly.
When the wind thrashed its way up and over 50 knots I started to worry a bit. Sure it was disheartening to see frothy white all the way back to the horizon behind us when a particularly large wave would sweep us up onto its back, but in all honesty I thought 50 knots would be a lot worse. It was seeing the wind pick up about 10 knots every 15 minutes over the past hour that had me worried. When would it stop? 50 knots seemed manageable, what about 60? 70
At about that time Jaime poked her head out the door and asked me if we were going to be okay, and not in a casual “how’s your mom?” kind of way either. No, her question was delivered with laser locked eye contact, raised eyebrows, lowered chin, and in a firmly resolved yet chillingly dispassionate voice. She might as well have said;
“No bullshit Seth are we going to die here or what?”
How do you respond to that?
“We’re going to be fine. In fact I think we’re through the worst of it now”, I lied.
Apparently I wasn’t very convincing because she pulled her head back inside and started throwing additional tins of food into our big yellow abandon ship bag.
A little later Micah poked his head out and asked the same. Having already practiced the line on Jaime I was able to deliver a much more convincing retort this time. His response was to go and make a sandwich. 5 minutes later a hand thrust out the door pushing a cheese on rye in my direction. I ate it quickly before it could be ruined by an unwelcome wave of salt water, which by this point I had developed an irrational hatred of.
On it went. The fear of what’s to come, lifted way up for a soul crushing view of the endless precession of monster waves behind us, the onset of vertigo from looking straight down the face of our platform, stomach defying gravity as we plummet to the bottom followed by a few moments in the windless trough between watery walls before we are lifted up for another cycle.
Fortunately the wind peaked out at 52 knots (just 12 knots shy of hurricane strength which begin at 64 knots). I was pretty excited to see that conditions were settling because one way or another I was going to be emptying my bladder within minutes. Up to this point it had been impossible to leave the helm. Since 7:30AM I had been sitting there with my neck craned around behind us watching for the next wave and its angle of attack. The size of these waves had been increasing all morning, and every once in a while a set would roll through so big that you would expect to see Laird Hamilton being towed into it by jet-ski. None of us were really keen to see what would happen to the boat if one of them were to hit us from the side so, long story short, I hadn’t had a leak in about six hours. Somebody passed me a bucket. Ever tried to piss in a bucket 3 feet away with 50 knots of wind? I was going to need a Plan B, and it needed to be good because Plan C was to just sit there and piss myself. Imagine that?
‘Wow, what was it like?’
Well the boat handled itself pretty well but I pissed myself… yes, literally.’
Plan B was to drop trousers and piss all over the cockpit. What this lacked in subtlety it made up for in practicality and sometimes the plan you have right now is the right plan. It took a bit of shuffling and experimenting but it wasn’t very difficult to get my jacket unzipped and release the buckles on my fancy red gortex pants with my free hand. Time was of the essence. I untied myself from the boat, carefully stood, bent at the knees and with weight centered pivoted to my right until I faced the stern. My left hand was still on the helm, a versatile posture which provided balance without having to give up control of the boat. So there I was; bent at the knees struggling to maintain stability, pants at my ankles, bare white ass facing forward and left arm stretched out in an awkward angle clutching the helm behind me. That’s when it occurred to me that Plan B at this, it’s most advanced state of execution, had a significant flaw. Within a heartbeat I would literally be pissing into a very significant wind. Too far along to retreat, I could only commit myself further by dropping my right knee. This put quite a pull on the helm and nearly dislocated my shoulder but gave me an additional 45 degrees on the wind that was more than threatening to thwart my efforts so late in the game. Come what may, this was it. My bladder and I had now both been stretched to our physical limits.
I will say without a doubt that these were by far the most difficult circumstances under which I have ever tried to relieve myself. This storm was more than a worthy adversary. As if to give me a nod for my efforts it sent a couple of waves to wash over everything and erase all evidence of the battle. In the end we called it a draw. No crushing defeat, no witnesses, no categorical victor. As such, I can only take pride in having given it my all, and hope that there won’t ever be a rematch.
 24-May-2009 07:51, OLYMPUS IMAGING CORP. u1030SW,S1030SW , 3.5, 5.0mm, 0.033 sec, ISO 125 |
monday may 25th 2009 (fiji passage – day 7)
Motoring in leftover slop now. Conditions? Light and variable.
So within the span of one day we went from 10 knots, over 50 knots, and then nothing. The wind gauge actually read zero point zero at one point.
Trade winds? No such luck. Fortunately we’ve been luckier with our fishing than with our sailing. Fresh fish tacos provided for a welcomed respite.
wednesday may 27th 2009 (fiji passage – day 10)
Progress has been painfully slow. Close hauled and beating into NW winds again. Unbelievable. We keep telling Micah that it’s not usually like this but I wouldn’t blame him if he didn’t believe us at all. It’s been a difficult passage. The storm helped us make up for our meager mileage the day prior, but then it left us with nothing. We’ve barely been putting in 100 mile days, and have either been close hauled or motoring ever since. I tallied up our remaining fuel this morning. We have another 12 hours of diesel to spend before we will have to shut the engine down in order to leave us with an adequate reserve to negotiate our landfall. Fiji is surrounded by reefs, trying to navigate them without the use of our engine in these fluky winds would be stupid.
thursday may 28th 2009 (fiji passage – day 11)
Landfall! This passage won’t cut us a break though. We sighted Fiji early this morning, but even at these latitudes the trade winds continue to ignore us. We motor sailed most of the day and found ourselves still 5 miles outside the pass as the sun sets. We need to make a difficult decision. Either stay out in deep water for the night and wait for the sun to come up before we attempt the pass, or take a chance and potentially have the anchor down in a sheltered cove taking hard earned pulls off tall glasses of scotch within the hour. We went down the list… No moon, shit. Decent charts, hooray! Questionable navigation markers, shit. Wide channel, hooray! In the end we decided to steer for the channel but reserve every right to abort if things begin to feel off. We assumed the positions that worked so well for our fictional entry into Omaha Cove 12 days prior; Micah on deck, Jaime at the nav station, me at the helm. Jaime fed virtual positions and markers up to the helm. Micah and I would match these up with the range markers, beacons, and depths that we were seeing outside.
Navula passage is about 2 miles long. It was wide, the range markers were deadly accurate, and the beacons were all present and accounted for. Things were adding up. It was a bit unsettling making a pitch black landfall in a country legendary for its boat bashing reefs and unreliable nav markers, but that’s what we were attempting.
We covered up every little bit of light from gauges and instruments. We blacked out the windows so that no light from the laptop Jaime was using to navigate could escape into the cockpit. With no ambient light our pupils slowly dilated, sharpening our night vision up to the point that even in the inky black moonless conditions we could squint out 70 or 80 yards of visibility. Half way through the pass the trade winds that we had been eluding us for the past week finally swept in providing an annoying 25 knot headwind just when we needed it the least. Thanks a lot! Undeterred and drawn on by thoughts of putting this bloody difficult passage to an end, consuming a substantial meal, inevitable inebriation and uninterrupted sleep, we pushed our way into Momi Bay.
We dropped our pick in 25 feet of water, not far from the flashing range markers that had guided us in. All of the imagined events we had recently been lusting over came true. We had arrived, the passage was over. We feasted on gourmet baked macaroni and cheese, and wallowed in our lack of motion. Glenlivet for the boys and Wolfblass for the girl. Spinning heads eventually sank into soft pillows. We slept like the damned.
friday may 29th 2009 (momi bay, fiji)
We woke up in paradise today. The water was warm and Momi Bay was smooth as glass. We swam around, jumped off the boat and generally just enjoyed not being on passage. We still needed to clear in though, and to do that we needed to move 20 miles up the coast to Lautoka. So after an early lunch we toweled off and readied up the boat for departure. When the time came I hit the starter and after a little ‘pop’ the whole boat went dead. No easy answers manifested themselves during my post-mortem. No breakers had tripped, and no fuses were blown. Mostly for lack of having any better ideas I stuck my head into the battery box and started pulling wires around. Then without any warning the lights came back on and the fans started whirring. For some unknown reason we had power again. With no good explanation for the interruption we weren’t doing any celebrating but at least we would be able to get to Lautoka, clear in and hopefully resolve this annoying problem.
‘Pop!’. Once again as soon as I hit the starter we lost power to the whole boat. After trying everything I did the first time without success I pulled the panel apart and individually checked and cleaned all the switches and connections. I tested for power at all of the hot spots and found it. Everything seemed to have power but nothing worked. Knowing very little about boat electrics (or any kind of electrics for that matter), I would just do the two or three things that I could think of, mop the sweat up, and start over again. No amount of cleaning, jiggling, rewiring, testing, or swearing would bring the boat back to life.
It was hot. A still water, blinding white sun, oppressive, tropical kind of hot. We had no power, therefore no fans. At one point I decided to see if I could hardwire the batteries directly to the panel. When I clamped a wire to the negative terminal on the battery bank everything suddenly came back to life. It was nothing more than a clamp attached to 6 feet of wire. It made no sense but when I took it off the post everything died. Put it back on and everything lit up. I took the clamp off and just wiggled the post around which seemed to isolate the problem. It still seems like a strange thing but after removing it, cleaning it, and tightening it back down everything worked fine. By this time it was too late to get to Lautoka so we just spent another night in Momi Bay.
saturday may 30th 2009 (lautoka, fiji)
We motored past the two guys fishing off of a Volkswagen sized chunk of Styrofoam and anchored in the dirty little commercial port of Lautoka. I went to shore with passports and boat papers to complete the entrance formalities. The Customs official there had me fill in the usual battery of forms and documents including entrance cards for Jaime and Micah. He didn’t seem to mind me answering all the questions on their behalf, but I wasn’t sure what to do about their signatures so I asked him. He looked at me like I had just asked him to stand on his head before responding simply ‘sign them’. So I did, and for some reason I actually used different styles of hand writing for each if them. Why? I have no idea. The guy collecting the forms was sitting 2 feet away across a desk watching me so it’s not like I was fooling anyone. Never-the-less Jaime received a loopy bubble like signature, whereas the Fijian officials will forever associate Micah with a sharp looking severe autograph.
After my masterful forgeries passed the severe scrutiny of this Fijian government representative I then had to bring his partner back to the boat to complete the process. We wandered down to the wharf where I had left our dinghy. It was gone but the line was still there, so I followed it. The dinghy had drifted underneath the wharf and was pinned there by the rising tide. Despite my enthusiastic efforts motivated by the thought of actually having to swim underneath the wharf, no amount of pulling or tugging would free it. The whole time the immigration guy stood there by the steps tapping his foot. There was no choice. Passing by the sign which had been posted for the sole purpose of reminding people to observe and heed signs, I handed him my shirt and trying not to think about the oil slick or define the smells I waded in. Using a breast stroke to clear the plastic bags away from my face as I progressed made my way between the slimy barnacle encrusted pilings. Once I got there the dinghy wasn’t difficult to free up. It didn’t take long to drag it back to the steps where the immigration guy just hopped in and perched himself on the seat without saying a word. I drug myself up and over the side, started the engine and then did my very best to get him as wet as possible on the way to our boat. A half an hour and about 75 Canadian dollars later we were all legalled up. After a shower and a change of clothes we hit the town.
sunday may 31st 2009 (lautoka, fiji)
After flopping down two giant bags of our stinking passage laundry on the concrete floor of a ground level warehouse we wandered around and started to get our bearings a little bit. Vibrant colors, a bustling market, and busy looking people. There seems to be much more activity here than what we have seen in our Pacific stops so far. This dusty little town is actually Fiji’s second largest city; I guess it’s just masquerading as a town. There’s a prominent Indo-Fijian community here. It would be hard not to notice the big white Mosque broadcasting Muslim prayers, vibrantly colored saris, and various miniaturized Hindu characters like Ganesh and Krishna for sale in shop windows. In the spirit of tolerance and understanding it seemed appropriate to keep multi denominational bellies. We ate curried goat, fried chicken and had a vegetarian pizza (at least we think it was spam).
Lautoka is also one of those places where feeding your family carries more meaning than observing a bunch of copyright laws. You could buy 5 of the latest Hollywood films on DVD and pick up a pair of ‘Oakey’ sunglasses all for less than 10 Fijian dollars, and that’s without negotiating. Even the Governator isn’t safe here, his image used to hawk Jumbo Sunny rotating TV antennas. Things are generally pretty cheap to begin with even before you factor in the favorable exchange rate (1 CAD dollar = 2 FJ dollars at the moment). Cab fare seems to be between 2 and 4 dollars. You can get a heap of pineapples for 2 dollars, and a pack of fish heads for 5 dollars. Jaime cleaned up at the market. She came back with bags and bags of fresh veggies and fruit for 17 dollars. Just stay away from the Kellogs cereal. Jaime and I saw a movie at the cinema (it was air conditioned) for less than half the price of a box of Nutri-Grain.
April 2009 New Zealand
Wednesday april 29th 2009 (auckland, new zealand)
Alas (or not so much alas) we are still alive but have clearly not been doing a good job of haunting you all electronically. It would be a big job to try and convince you that we’ve been too busy over the past couple of months to post a decent update because alas again; I’m having a hard time believing it myself.
We have as usual been crushing in a lot of activity. Following our last post our boat projects were put on hold to help out our friends on Kauhale Kai full time. The 100 foot mega yacht was hauled out at the marina beside us and in the midst of a mountain of refit that made our work on Slapdash look like child’s play.
Without any time off between, our good friends Jeff and Brenda arrived from Calgary and we happily began a whirlwind tour of the North and South Islands. We managed to see sights, penguins and other New Zealand wildlife on our way South to the Catlins before they had finally had enough of us and flew back.
Jaime and I managed to get back to Auckland just in time to pick up Micah, our third Slapdash crew. Micah and I grew up together, he even introduced Jaime and I. We are happy to have him here because a day after he arrived Slapdash was hauled out and we were living on dry land. Micah’s introduction to our life of easy leisure commenced with 10 days of really hard and dirty boat work. To say that it’s been a bit less than a life on the high seas full of the sunsets and umbrella drinks since he’s arrived would be an understatement. At this point he may be questioning the decision to quit his job and join us but since he’ll be with us for several more months there’s plenty of time left to make up for it. The boat-work was still unrelenting but much more bearable once we were floating happily in our slip back at Westhaven, and much more enjoyable with Micah around to lend a hand.
Jaime completed another trip around the Sun (I’m told that the ambiguity is necessary). An occasion that we gave suitable recognition to the very night before an enticing Kauhale Kai crew interrupted our flow once again. We seized upon a generous offer to join good friends once again and found ourselves helping them deliver the boat to New Caledonia. A short time later we learned first hand that big boats have the same kind of fun as us little guys when the oil pressure dropped on their port main engine (which is roughly the size of our collective slapdash living space) and began overheating. We returned to Opua in the Bay Of Islands for repairs and were underway once again in a couple of days. We arrived in New Caledonia with 36 hours to spare. It was just enough time for a few celebratory beers and a serious scrub and suds session for the boat before their guests arrived. We flew back to Auckland yesterday and commenced with our own repairs this morning which included a surprise estimate for 1800 NZ dollars to replace the heat exchanger on our beloved Westerbeke. We had the exchanger removed for cleaning and pressure testing just before we left for New Caledonia. Welcome back.
No rest for the weary. We need to sell the car, get our stuff out of storage, finish up our task list and get underway as soon as possible in an attempt to meet up with Jaime’s Dad and his girlfriend Pam in Fiji.
That pretty much covers the high points. It may be a poor excuse for detailed coverage of the past couple of months, but if pictures are indeed worth a thousand words then maybe these will get us back on equal terms. If not, just consider them proof of our existence.
30-Mar-2009 11:15, OLYMPUS IMAGING CORP. u1030SW,S1030SW , 5.0, 5.0mm, 0.004 sec, ISO 80 |
29-Mar-2009 18:18, OLYMPUS IMAGING CORP. u1030SW,S1030SW , 3.5, 5.0mm, 0.033 sec, ISO 500 |
28-Mar-2009 16:29, OLYMPUS IMAGING CORP. u1030SW,S1030SW , 4.1, 6.53mm, 0.005 sec, ISO 80 |
27-Mar-2009 09:43, OLYMPUS IMAGING CORP. u1030SW,S1030SW , 5.0, 5.0mm, 0.004 sec, ISO 80 |
25-Mar-2009 10:39, OLYMPUS IMAGING CORP. u1030SW,S1030SW , 5.6, 6.53mm, 0.003 sec, ISO 80 |
18-Mar-2009 18:55, OLYMPUS IMAGING CORP. u1030SW,S1030SW , 4.4, 8.89mm, 0.02 sec, ISO 100 |
18-Mar-2009 18:11, OLYMPUS IMAGING CORP. u1030SW,S1030SW , 3.5, 5.0mm, 0.013 sec, ISO 80 |
17-Mar-2009 14:58, OLYMPUS IMAGING CORP. u1030SW,S1030SW , 4.5, 5.0mm, 0.005 sec, ISO 80 |
17-Mar-2009 14:03, OLYMPUS IMAGING CORP. u1030SW,S1030SW , 3.5, 5.0mm, 0.003 sec, ISO 80 |
16-Mar-2009 18:42, OLYMPUS IMAGING CORP. u1030SW,S1030SW , 3.5, 5.0mm, 0.006 sec, ISO 80 |
16-Mar-2009 16:37, OLYMPUS IMAGING CORP. u1030SW,S1030SW , 4.5, 5.0mm, 0.003 sec, ISO 80 |
14-Mar-2009 18:17, OLYMPUS IMAGING CORP. u1030SW,S1030SW , 5.1, 18.2mm, 0.033 sec, ISO 200 |
13-Mar-2009 17:24, OLYMPUS IMAGING CORP. u1030SW,S1030SW , 6.3, 7.57mm, 0.003 sec, ISO 80 |
13-Mar-2009 15:59, OLYMPUS IMAGING CORP. u1030SW,S1030SW , 7.1, 16.25mm, 0.002 sec, ISO 80 |
13-Mar-2009 10:57, OLYMPUS IMAGING CORP. u1030SW,S1030SW , 3.5, 5.0mm, 0.033 sec, ISO 100 |
12-Mar-2009 13:22, OLYMPUS IMAGING CORP. u1030SW,S1030SW , 4.5, 13.18mm, 0.003 sec, ISO 80 |
10-Mar-2009 13:15, OLYMPUS IMAGING CORP. u1030SW,S1030SW , 5.6, 7.57mm, 0.005 sec, ISO 80 |
08-Mar-2009 21:58, OLYMPUS IMAGING CORP. u1030SW,S1030SW , 3.5, 5.0mm, 0.033 sec, ISO 100 |
February 2009 New Zealand
sunday february 1st 2009 (auckland, new zealand)
Here we are on the first day of the shortest month that’s notoriously difficult to spell correctly. A good enough day to end the dry spell and bring you up to speed. Some notable highlights which took place during our six week slaplog sojourn:
- Against all probable odds Jaime did not leave me. Thank you all for your support. She has returned from her foray into our frozen homeland. I suspect that this decision had more to do with the timing of her visit (which coincided with Canada’s recent decent into the next ice age) and less to do with my attempts to become the next low budget (and some would say off key) but real life version of Guitar Hero. In any case she is back on the boat randomly moving ‘household’ (boathold sounded funny) items to new locations on a daily basis. She claims that this is for the greater organizational good but I suspect that she is simply doing her best to expedite my decent into madness and in doing so save herself another long ocean passage with me; this time accompanied by my new guitar and hand-me-down harmonica
- The boat did not sink. We are both alive, and forays into self made acoustic music aside, are getting along famously.
- We are still in Auckland, and still floating happily in the Westhaven marina. I will spare you the details of our recent disputes with marina management regarding the length and beam of our boat (marinas decide how much to charge you based on these measurements) and state simply that we have been relocated to another slip. If we were a square peg, then this slip was a round hole. In other words we didn’t fit. Not for lack of trying either. Just check out the picture for proof of our efforts. So after spending time in 2 (and a half) slips over the past several weeks we are now happily tied stern-to on the K pier with a nice view of the Auckland tower from our cockpit. In fairness to the good people at the Westhaven marina these tribulations can just as easily be attributed to our own scrooge-like reluctance to pay for a 12 meter berth as they could be to any of their own rigidly enforced policies. I only bring the matter up to provide context for what we think is a pretty funny picture of us stuck half in and half out of a slip on the M pier.
- What are they calling it? Oh yeah, this little global economic meltdown thing. I use it in defense of our aforementioned Scrooge like reluctances. Yes, it’s taken a pound of flesh from the Slapdash crew as well. Jaime wasn’t quick enough on the camera to catch the facial expression which accompanied my recent gaze into our portfolio, so to complete the visual simply look into the mirror while passing a kidney stone then simultaneously pluck a nose hair. Much navel gazing and self pity followed our initial shock. We commiserated with friends, drown our sorrows, wept and gnashed our teeth. After shaking all that blubbery off, an in depth review of our financial status and realistic evaluation of our plans soon followed. Suddenly things were on the table and being discussed that we had never considered. Sell the boat? Sail home in a single shot? Take out large policies and fake our own deaths? All bets were off. Even some really shocking off-the-wall things were kicked around like get jobs or… put adverts on the website! Yeah, that bad. I’m making a long story short (and hopefully readable) but the end game is this; we think that we can do another season on our own steam. From there we’ll play it by ear and see what happens. I guess you could say that we sort of adopted the same strategy used to get this trip off the ground in the first place… Which is? I don’t know, f**k it all and just see what happens I guess. It’s worked so far.
04-Jan-2009 15:13, OLYMPUS IMAGING CORP. u1030SW,S1030SW , 5.0, 5.0mm, 0.003 sec, ISO 80 |
06-Jan-2009 12:41, OLYMPUS IMAGING CORP. u1030SW,S1030SW , 5.0, 5.0mm, 0.002 sec, ISO 80 |
16-Jan-2009 10:00, OLYMPUS IMAGING CORP. u1030SW,S1030SW , 3.5, 5.0mm, 0.033 sec, ISO 500 |
27-Jan-2009 11:50, OLYMPUS IMAGING CORP. u1030SW,S1030SW , 5.0, 5.0mm, 0.005 sec, ISO 80 |
In apparent contrast to the last paragraph we’ve also been enjoying our Kiwi time immensely. I hate to say the most cliché sounding thing you’ve ever heard but the people here are great. Take this for example; Jaime and Seth enter the video store and ask if it’s possible for a couple of non-resident boat living degenerates to rent movies. “Strictly speaking”, the helpful clerk replies, “no it is not”. So what does she do? Tells us to go ahead and pick out our movies – she will just rent them to us using her own personal account. I don’t know about you, but where we’re from that’s about as likely to happen as someone coming along and giving you their car. Oh wait, that happened too! I bought a car while Jaime was in Vancouver and told the seller that I wanted it right away. He was taking off for Christmas holidays for a couple of weeks though. The solution? “I’ll just bring it around the marina on our way out of town and we can sort out the details when I get back” he says. A couple other examples that come to mind include the girl I approached late at night on my way home for directions. I stupidly realized too late that given the circumstances (late, unlit parking lot etc) that I was as likely to get a face full of mace as I was to get any help. Instead of a kick to the groin she offered me a ride home. Dropped me off right at the boat. Then there was the guy who helped me tie the lines up when I first arrived. He came by the boat a week later, handed over a nice French red and said “we remembered that you said your girlfriend was in Vancouver for the holidays, here’s a bottle of wine from our family. Let us know if you need anything else”.
26-Jan-2009 18:47, OLYMPUS IMAGING CORP. u1030SW,S1030SW , 6.3, 11.76mm, 0.005 sec, ISO 80 |
25-Jan-2009 18:58, OLYMPUS IMAGING CORP. u1030SW,S1030SW , 5.0, 5.0mm, 0.004 sec, ISO 80 |
25-Jan-2009 18:39, OLYMPUS IMAGING CORP. u1030SW,S1030SW , 5.0, 5.0mm, 0.003 sec, ISO 80 |
25-Jan-2009 18:16, OLYMPUS IMAGING CORP. u1030SW,S1030SW , 5.0, 5.0mm, 0.003 sec, ISO 80 |
We have visited Waiheke island on a couple of occasions. During Jaime’s visit a number of local artists littered the hillside with their art. We traveled west to the coast and sampled Piha’s surf and black sand beaches with our buddy Julien. He put us up at his friend’s place which, much to my delight and no one else’s, had a drum set in the loft. I went on a walkabout on the recently formed (in geological terms) Rangitoto island. Many ribs, beers and stuffed mushroom caps have been consumed during barbeques on boats and houses alike. We sleep late, we read the newspaper, and try to enjoy as much of what living near to land has to offer. Jaime dresses like a Sherpa and dances like a maniac. I saved a baby bird with no tail feathers from a feral cat. We visited the maritime museum where our price of admission included a harbor tour on the 19th century open hulled steam driven tender named Puke.
18-Jan-2009 23:16, OLYMPUS IMAGING CORP. u1030SW,S1030SW , 3.5, 5.0mm, 0.033 sec, ISO 100 |
06-Jan-2009 11:17, OLYMPUS IMAGING CORP. u1030SW,S1030SW , 4.0, 13.18mm, 0.017 sec, ISO 100 |
12-Jan-2009 00:56, OLYMPUS IMAGING CORP. u1030SW,S1030SW , 3.5, 5.0mm, 0.033 sec, ISO 100 |
We’ve also formalized our list of boat projects. Lofty dreams such as a water maker, windlass and wind generator have gone by the wayside in order to coincide with our new anemic budget. The list is still shockingly long even with these budget cuts. To our surprise the catalog of items actually called for the use of font size 8 just to fit the excel document on one page. As such I will reluctantly conclude on this sunny afternoon, the first day of the shortest month that’s notoriously difficult to spell correctly in favor of attending to our grubby diesel engine.
23-Jan-2009 12:07, OLYMPUS IMAGING CORP. u1030SW,S1030SW , 3.5, 5.0mm, 0.033 sec, ISO 100 |
15-Jan-2009 14:58, OLYMPUS IMAGING CORP. u1030SW,S1030SW , 5.0, 5.0mm, 0.002 sec, ISO 80 |
18-Jan-2009 19:39, OLYMPUS IMAGING CORP. u1030SW,S1030SW , 3.5, 5.0mm, 0.033 sec, ISO 100 |
wednesday february 11th 2009 (auckland, new zealand)
We’ve spent nearly every day since that last post working on the list. The engine has been shampooed, scrubbed, scraped and is ready for paint. Jaime secured a storage locker. She has carted 3 car loads of stuff off the boat now, which makes working on these projects a lot easier. The starboard side fuel tank has been emptied, removed, cleaned and reinstalled. Our primary filter met a similar fate; removal, complete disassembly, thorough cleaning and a rebuild. Even the head has been the recipient of our undivided attention this past week, and not in the post Jose Cuervo or Dehli belly kind of way either. No, it was more of a tear everything out, clean, fix, and replace kind of attention – which for the record is equally painful and messy.
09-Feb-2009 16:42, OLYMPUS IMAGING CORP. u1030SW,S1030SW , 3.5, 5.0mm, 0.033 sec, ISO 100 |
09-Feb-2009 15:07, OLYMPUS IMAGING CORP. u1030SW,S1030SW , 3.5, 5.0mm, 0.017 sec, ISO 80 |
04-Feb-2009 16:38, OLYMPUS IMAGING CORP. u1030SW,S1030SW , 4.1, 6.53mm, 0.003 sec, ISO 80 |
04-Feb-2009 16:18, OLYMPUS IMAGING CORP. u1030SW,S1030SW , 5.0, 5.0mm, 0.008 sec, ISO 80 |
With the help of a garden hose Jaime and I have also managed to track down a couple of annoying leaks to their source and hope to be able to go to work with our trusty marine grade sealant and put an end to them soon. Only a boat owner could possibly understand how exciting this is. Leaks are terrible, the bane of a live-a-board’s existence. It’s hard to overstate the demoralizing effect of living in a leaky boat, and sooner or later every boat will develop one. After days of work and hard won successes it rained a bit this weekend. Instead of feeling the sense of accomplishment we thought that we deserved we just felt miserable sitting there watching this little pecker of a drip… drip… drip.
Sure, it’s easy to locate water that has made its way into your boat; a puddle gives it away every time. Once you have found the puddle you can easily wipe it up, pump it out, mop it up or just put a towel down. In fact, we’ve employed each of these strategies at some time or another with varying degrees of success. The inherent problem with each of these systems -however tempting they may be- is that in failing to locate and address the source of the leak you ensure the need to mop, wipe, sop and pump as long as you own your boat. Unless it never rains again. That could work, but so far it’s always rained again so we’ve decided to just go ahead and attempt to address the annoying leaks at their source. I’ll try to describe why this is easier said than done:
Once you have determined that you in fact have a leak (ie, found the puddle) you must endeavor to figure out how and where it entered your boat. Boats aren’t like houses; most of them are smaller, and as far as homes go, are shaped funny. So water enters a boat and then, as water tends to do, takes the path of least resistance. Due to the boats inherently funny shape, this path ends up resembling an exceedingly complicated game of chutes and ladders. After doing its best to throw you off (no leak wants to give away its source) the water will eventually pool into some distant and remote part of the boat nowhere near its entry point and once settled will begin taunting you. The only way to connect the gloating puddle to the source is by reverse engineering its intricate pilgrimage.
It won’t take you long to realize that the water has cunningly trickled it’s way along a series of panels, around bulkheads, through electronics, irremovable structural additions and other boat-y type things. In the interests of staying afloat (the boats primary function) many of these areas are sealed off and difficult to access. The leak knows this and will invariably use it to its advantage. After encountering these obstacles many would-be repairmen have turned to the towel or the mop in a self destructive never ending cycle of abuse. I know, because I was one. But not this time. We removed panels with gusto. Stereos and circuit boards were pulled apart. We employed mirrors and flashlights to expose tiny passageways and corridors. We simulated rain in order to replicate and test various theories, and in the end… we won. Well, almost. As it turns out, there was a surprise Hitchcock-esque ending waiting for us after all of this.
11-Feb-2009 11:26, OLYMPUS IMAGING CORP. u1030SW,S1030SW , 3.5, 5.0mm, 0.033 sec, ISO 100 |
11-Feb-2009 11:42, OLYMPUS IMAGING CORP. u1030SW,S1030SW , 3.5, 5.0mm, 0.033 sec, ISO 100 |
After hours of effort we were exhausted, bloody and bruised. The boat looked as though it had been disassembled by fanatical customs agents, but now that the entry point had been located, it would take only seconds to repair. A simple dab of silicone applied with the swipe of an ordinary index finger and it would all be over. We could rebuild and somehow try to get on with our lives. Jamie smiled as she reached out and handed me the silicone, and at that moment we both thought that that everything was going to be okay. I squeezed a little dab of silicone onto my ordinary index finger and paused, thinking how ironic it was that this little pin prick of a hole had caused so much trouble. That’s when it began to rain. Unable to apply sealant in the rain we settled down with a newspaper and checked the forecast. Apparently we can expect three more days of it. Drip… drip… drip.
December 2008 New Zealand
tuesday december 2nd 2008 (opua, new zealand)
Success! We spotted the Cape Wiwiki light at 2AM yesterday morning. A couple hours after that we were in the Bay Of Islands waiting for the sun to come up so that we could make our way safely into Opua harbor. While we were floating around out there waiting for a little bit of light to guide our way, another boat called us up on the VHF. They were about a mile away and waiting for the sunrise too, and like us they had just finished their passage from Tonga. The difference is that they left Tonga in their old vintage wooden mono-hull back on November 5th. So the same passage we had just completed in 8 days took them 25, three days longer than it took us to cross the Pacific. As we chatted they rattled off the laundry list of problems they had encountered including a damaged-beyond-use mast, bad weather, transmission and engine trouble. On two separate occasions they received aid in the form of diesel fuel and food from commercial vessels along the way. It was an impressive story and after hearing it we decided immediately that our trip was pretty good after all.
We pulled up alongside the quarantine dock at 7AM and after securing the boat went about getting things organized. Slapdash usually looks like a bomb went off inside after rough passages so restoring order to the cabin is usually one of our first priorities. It was a cold wet damp grey drizzling morning in Opua but with feet finally planted firmly on terra firma our spirits were high. We visited with the other 3 boats on the quarantine dock that morning and met the couple we had been chatting with out in the bay. The Customs, Immigration, and Quarantine officials came along at 9AM. An hour later we had lowered our quarantine flag and were trying to find a slip at the marina adjacent to the pier. Other catamarans were forced to stay out at anchor after their long passages due to a lack of berths available that could accommodate their wide beams. So it was under their covetous glances that we neatly slid Slapdash into a regular, made-for-mono-hull slip. Chalk one up for our Gemini’s 14 foot beam. Even so, it was a tight squeeze. We feathered her in with only 6 inches to spare on each side; just barely enough room to squeeze our fenders in. It’s only our second time in a marina since we left Florida but somewhere between having our engine conk out and bashing our brains beating to windward for 2 days straight, we promised to treat ourselves to the luxuries that only a marina can provide. Scalding hot steaming showers and the ability to get to shore without the use of our dinghy rate high on the luxury list, and we’ve been doing a lot of both over the past 24 hours.
02-Dec-2008 19:47, OLYMPUS IMAGING CORP. u1030SW,S1030SW , 5.1, 18.2mm, 0.003 sec, ISO 80 |
02-Dec-2008 08:27, OLYMPUS IMAGING CORP. u1030SW,S1030SW , 3.5, 5.0mm, 0.033 sec, ISO 200 |
01-Dec-2008 05:54, OLYMPUS IMAGING CORP. u1030SW,S1030SW , 4.1, 6.53mm, 0.025 sec, ISO 100 |
Of course no significant landfall would be complete without a serendipitous encounter with our friends from Blue Jay. There are literally hundreds and hundreds of boats throughout the dozens of anchorages in the Bay Of Islands. We haven’t seen a concentration of yachts like this since we left Florida, so it’s no small coincidence that Mark and Katie happened to be at anchor no more than a hundred yards off the side of the dock we were on. They were a week ahead of us and ready to head south, but delayed their departure by a day in order to have us over and spoil us rotten with an incredible meal accompanied by fine wine and champagne which came in handy for toasting chance encounters and safe passages.
Our immediate plans include drying out the boat, catching up on our sleep and getting fat by eating all of the food we’ve been fantasizing about. We will dedicate a few days to satisfy the aforementioned priorities before we making our way further South. Our stay in New Zealand will last 5 or 6 months due to the South Pacific cyclone season so we have a few big decisions to make regarding our immediate future.
Location is the first priority. We need to find a place for the boat that’s cheap, has easy access to marine services, and some good facilities for us like showers, internet and laundry. We will probably end up in either Whangarei, Auckland, or Tauranga; all of which are on the East coast of the North Island. Next order of business will be sorting out Jaime’s travel plans. She would like to go home for the holidays and maybe make a little money. The Canadian dollar is about 30% higher than the Kiwi so wages back home will go further, but airfare has gone way up too so we’re not sure yet how and if it will all work out. Another option we are considering is to apply for work permits here and put in a few months each to beef up our war chest. The sagging world economy has taken its toll on us too, and we would like to make enough short term cash to save us from having to sell off any investments at a big loss. We also need to buy a car, get third party insurance for Slapdash (you can’t stay at a marina in NZ without it) and get to work on all the boat projects we have lined up. Oh yeah, and explore New Zealand!
It’s amazing how quickly life’s mundane realities catch up with you as soon as you stop moving.
wednesday december 3rd 2008 (opua, new zealand)
Our insurance agent doesn’t take debit, or as they call it here EFTPOS (electronic fund transfer point of sale), so we needed to walk the 6 kms into Paihia to get some cash. It was actually quite a nice walk, it afforded some nice views of the bay, and there’s a bar at the half way point where you can get a burger and a beer for 6 bucks. It was so that we would have been happy to walk back as well, but for safety reasons we decided to hitchhike instead. The road between Opua and Paihia is a narrow two lane affair. It snakes around tight blind corners, leads up steep hills, has numerous ravines on either side and as I’ve already mentioned quite picturesque. When you add it all up the posted 50kph speed limit actually seems pretty generous. The Kiwis don’t think so and treat this stretch of road like a rally car course. Every car screamed past us with gears tearing, breaks smoking, and engine red lining. Many a time we were forced to take a blind leap off the side of the road into a ravine followed by a shower of rocks and debris, it was that or end our story as Kiwi road kill.
03-Dec-2008 11:47, OLYMPUS IMAGING CORP. u1030SW,S1030SW , 5.0, 5.0mm, 0.003 sec, ISO 80 |
03-Dec-2008 11:49, OLYMPUS IMAGING CORP. u1030SW,S1030SW , 6.3, 7.57mm, 0.005 sec, ISO 80 |
03-Dec-2008 16:44, OLYMPUS IMAGING CORP. u1030SW,S1030SW , 5.1, 18.2mm, 0.004 sec, ISO 80 |
Paihia hasn’t changed at all in the 10 years since my last visit. In 1998 I spent a month hitching my way around the islands and stopped for a couple of nights. It’s still a typical summer resort town with scores of cafes selling ice cream and specialty coffees, storybook-looking souvenir shops, and fanny-pack-wearing German tourists. The hostel I stayed at was still there, we stopped in for directions and I showed Jaime where I stayed.
After a few hours of walking around we got a ride back to Paihia and called it a day. We retired onto the slapdash with pizza and a six pack of Tui. Ah, the good life.
friday december 5th 2008 (urupukapuka, new zealand)
Apparently New Zealand let Dr. Suess name their islands up here, I just hope they weren’t paying by the syllable:
We are anchored in Urupukapuka Bay on the southeast side of Urupukapuka Island. You know, just south of Waewaetorea island and around Kapurarahurahu Point? In the morning we will pass Mahenotiti, Tawiriwiri, and Motuwheteke islands before we spot Rakaumangamanga hill and leave Mahenotapuku and Motukokako to starboard as we set a course towards the Hen and Chicken Islands.
04-Dec-2008 09:42, OLYMPUS IMAGING CORP. u1030SW,S1030SW , 4.0, 5.0mm, 0.003 sec, ISO 80 |
04-Dec-2008 14:11, OLYMPUS IMAGING CORP. u1030SW,S1030SW , 5.0, 5.0mm, 0.003 sec, ISO 80 |
04-Dec-2008 12:36, OLYMPUS IMAGING CORP. u1030SW,S1030SW , 5.0, 5.0mm, 0.003 sec, ISO 80 |
saturday december 6th 2008 (whangarei, new zealand)
We are nestled into our marina in Whangarei. After stops in Russell and good old Urupukapuka, we left the Bay of Islands yesterday and made the rainy passage south overnight. Whangarei (pronounced feng-array) is about 10 miles up a river from the ocean. The marina is so busy that they have us tied up alongside another boat. In fact every spot is stacked two boats deep. Now whenever we want to get to shore we have to crawl over the deck of another boat. It’s a little odd but our next-door neighbors seem nice, and we’re just happy to be secure and stationary with no reason to move the boat again in the near future.
So Jaime has booked her flights up and will be going home for the holidays next week. I’ll be staying with the boat apart from some time in Auckland for a potential house sitting gig. Today we’ll apply for work visas and take advantage of the nice sunny day to attempt plugging up a couple of our wearisome leaks.
05-Dec-2008 11:11, OLYMPUS IMAGING CORP. u1030SW,S1030SW , 5.0, 11.76mm, 0.003 sec, ISO 80 |
04-Dec-2008 19:34, OLYMPUS IMAGING CORP. u1030SW,S1030SW , 4.5, 5.0mm, 0.002 sec, ISO 80 |
05-Dec-2008 13:28, OLYMPUS IMAGING CORP. u1030SW,S1030SW , 5.6, 10.34mm, 0.005 sec, ISO 80 |
monday december 8th 2008 (whangerei, new zealand)
A chance encounter with our buddies off of God Speede led to a windfall. They are leaving the boat and heading back to the States to work for the season which means that they had to clean out the fridge. The loot we inherited included all of the four food groups; beer, sausage, Ramen noodles and cheese. I’m a happy guy. They also happen to be flying out on the same flight that Jaime’s booked on. They’ve rented a little van to move boat stuff into storage so I’ll drop them all off and then return the hooptie back to Fanga-Whangarei in the process saving them a 300 dollar drop-off fee. So it works out for everyone; Jaime’s transportation to Auckland is officially sorted, God Speede saves a few bucks and I’m set up with a bounty of meat products and fine malt beverage. Good plan Fred.
Fanga-Whangarei advertises their walking paths pretty heavily. The city counsel has obviously put a lot of work into the trails and paths around town so this morning Jaime and I decided to exercise our land legs a little and check one of them out. We felt like Hobbits coming back to the Shire. It was beautiful. A little river snakes its way through glades past forest and flowers. What really caught our attention though were the ducks, they are everywhere. There have been hundreds of ducks at every stop we’ve made in New Zealand so far. On the way into Whangarei we sailed through a flock of hundreds, they were just floating around in this big group a few miles off shore. This is all charming and probably paints a pretty wholesome picture of the place until you consider the inevitable. Just like the rest of their air borne cousins, ducks shit. Our decks have collected an international variety of bird shit from over 70 degrees of the earth’s latitude; blues, greens, and browns. Thanks to the swarms of Kiwi ducks we can now add green to the list.
tuesday december 9th 2008 (auckland, new zealand)
Jaime packed, and I filled up the propane bottles. They actually have a spot to fill propane beside a row of pumps at the gas station so filling our tanks has never been easier. Talking the station attendant into filling our beat up tanks was another matter. We bought them before we left so they are only a year old, but to work out a boat year for a propane tank you have to multiply by ten. Jeff (God Speede) and I convinced him that if we wanted to blow ourselves up that it’s our own business and the guy finally conceded. I’m pretty sure they are structurally sound (guess we’ll find out) but I’ll need to do something about that rust.
By 2PM we were ready to roll. It’s about 2 hours to Auckland and much like our first experience with NZ roads these ones were also narrow, windy and only 2 lanes but it’s a beautiful and scenic country. Not being dissected with huge noisy freeways probably helps to keep it that way.
Once in Auckland Jaime and I found a room at the Queens Street hostel. We got one of the last ones available because there’s a big concert in town by some singer who’s name I have no idea how to spell. It sounds like “highly minnow”.
We dropped our bags off and hit the streets. It felt great to be back in a big city after so long. We met up with Jeff, Fred and Ang for dinner. Auckland has these great little kiosk clusters where you can get pretty much any kind of Asian cuisine imaginable. The one we ate at had Korean, Indian, Vietnamese, Thai, and Japanese just to name a few. There were at least another dozen or so, and a bar in the middle of it all called Alley Cats. Somebody there had a good sense of humor.
Check out Auckland’s big sinister Santa. It’s over three stories tall and looks like it’s made out of paper-mache or something. It has a creepy face with wide set beady little eyes, a flat nose and bright red lips. The index finger on its huge right hand slowly wiggles back and forth which frankly, looked a little obscene to us.
10-Dec-2008 09:53, OLYMPUS IMAGING CORP. u1030SW,S1030SW , 4.5, 5.0mm, 0.002 sec, ISO 80 |
When we got back to the hostel we found an old guy in our bed with a hooker. In fairness we’re just assuming that she was a hooker because he was old and wrinkly and she was young and tanned but I’ll go ahead and continue referring to her as a hooker. Neither of them had luggage of any sort, and he also tried to hide her under a blanket which we feel lends some evidence to our assumption. Our room had obviously been double booked, but since this guy was likely paying by the hour he clearly didn’t have time to go and sort out another room. He had just moved our bags into the closet and got busy with his lady of easy leisure probably thinking that his hour would be up by the time we got back anyway. The funny thing is this whole time the girl just stayed there partially hidden under this tiny blanket. It was pulled it up over her head like an ostrich might try to hide, and she just laid there with her head covered and didn’t move or say anything. Awkward? Yeah. We worked this all out, grabbed our bags (he was wrapped in a towel) and headed down to the front desk.
The guy at the desk was devastated. We didn’t really care though, nothing was missing from our bags and as long as they had another room for us then no-harm-done. He fixed us up with a room and then invited us back down to the bar, our tab would be on the house. A funny story and an open bar tab. Good deal. We didn’t see old wrinkly or the hooker again, probably just as well.
wednesday december 10th 2008 (auckland, new zealand)
We were about to flick the lights off in our new hooker-free room last night when we realized that neither of us have and alarm clock. We searched through our bags to try and find anything with an alarm. Cell phone? Nope. Ipod? Nope. Watches? Nope. Jaime went down to see the guy at the desk who said that he might be going jogging in the morning and if he did he would get us up on the way out. Not all that reassuring when you have been guzzling free beers all night and have an international flight to catch early in the morning. Needless to say we didn’t sleep all that well. One of us would wake up at least every 20 minutes thinking that we had overslept. Fortunately -or unfortunately depending on how you look at it- the combination of a late night and an early morning meant that this didn’t have to go on for very long. We met up with the other travelers and headed for Auckland International.
A couple hours later I was all alone. Just me and creepy Santa. After a couple of days in the city I didn’t want to go back to Whangarei. It’s a sleepy little town with lots of boxy stores and a big industrial area. Before I left Auckland I checked out a couple of marinas. Westhaven was massive. With over 1500 boats parked here every marine supply store clamors for a spot next to the marina. That’s pretty good news if you don’t have a car and want to work on your boat. Two checks. It’s also right downtown Auckland, the location is unbeatable. Another check. I chatted with the ladies at the desk and they gave me a list of slips to look at. They were private, secure, and here’s the kicker; the same price as our spot in Whangarei. Sold. I booked a slip for Saturday and made the drive North with a brand new plan.
friday december 12th 2008 (urquharts bay, new zealand)
I had a big bachelors party for one last night. Cleaned out the fridge (by drinking all the beer), annoyed our neighbors by playing Social D and Anti Flag too loud, cooked up a couple of big steaks and buried them with onions and mushrooms. There are worse ways to spend your time, but partying by yourself and taking pictures of your food is actually every bit as lame as it sounds. Once I realized that, much to the delight of our neighbors I went to bed.
10-Dec-2008 20:16, OLYMPUS IMAGING CORP. u1030SW,S1030SW , 5.0, 5.0mm, 0.033 sec, ISO 100 |
When I got up today I couldn’t believe that there wasn’t a better party to account for the mess. What a dump. How could one guy do so much damage? I can’t believe Jaime has left me here to my own devices and vices. For the next two weeks I am only going to use one plate, one cup and one fork.
Enough screwing around. Time to put the brand new plan into action. I left at low tide and waved at all the mono hulls anchored outside the channel as I went by. They have to wait there with their deep draft keels for high tide to get in and out. Sucks to be them. As I mentioned before Whangarei is 10 miles away from the ocean. The goal for this afternoon was to get right to the mouth of the channel and find a spot to anchor where I could begin my first solo passage from bright and early.
The spot turned out to be Urquharts Bay. It was really beautiful and seemed especially private and peaceful after being wedged in with all those other boats, or maybe it’s just because Jaime isn’t here nagging me to pick up my socks. Kidding! Just want to see if she’s keeping up on the logs from Vancouver.
They have these huge speed boats in NZ. They cram about 25 tourists into an open bow while the boat screams around at about 300 miles an hour. People pay a hundred dollars or more each for the pleasure of getting soaked while trying not to swallow any bugs or drool on their neighbor while their cheeks flap in the wind. It looks like hell but I guess at least they get to enjoy the passing scenery which would have been reduced to a bouncing blur. Stick your head out of a car window in the rain to see how fun this would be.
12-Dec-2008 18:43, OLYMPUS IMAGING CORP. u1030SW,S1030SW , 3.5, 5.0mm, 0.008 sec, ISO 80 |
04-Dec-2008 16:00, OLYMPUS IMAGING CORP. u1030SW,S1030SW , 6.3, 18.2mm, 0.002 sec, ISO 80 |
saturday december 13th 2008 (auckland, new zealand)
My original program had me putting in a day, then anchoring overnight somewhere along the way and finishing the trip to Auckland on Sunday. Last night I couldn’t really sleep. The channel was well marked and the moon was full so I decided to just leave. After a cup of strong coffee I pulled up the anchor at about 2:30AM. A half an hour later I was on my way past the last channel marker and on my way South.
After you’ve sailed for a year with another person you inevitably fall into a routine. In this case I couldn’t just go through the routine because “the routine” involves Jaime. So I found myself running things through my head a lot and worrying that I would forget something. There’s a ton of little things to do before you leave and you get used to concentrating on your bits while the other person does theirs.
Also; retrieving your anchor, hoisting the main, going to the fuel dock, squeezing into a tight berth at a crowded marina, brewing a coffee and navigating your way through a channel at the same time are all things that we can accomplish quite neatly as a team. When you are by yourself you can’t just call for a hand. You really have to think things through so that you don’t all of a sudden find yourself needed in two places at once.
Jaime and have spent countless hours beating into 20 knot winds of wind. It’s an uncomfortable routine that we don’t like but it is routine. It didn’t feel very “routine” this morning though. It was dark, it was cold, the waves seemed bigger and noisier than ever and I found myself counting down the minutes to sunrise. The sun came up right on schedule at 6:12 and it was beautiful enough to fuel my optimism a little. It was shaping up to be a rough slog but I was still making good time. By this point I had covered enough distance to make Auckland before dark if I could keep the speed up.
13-Dec-2008 06:06, OLYMPUS IMAGING CORP. u1030SW,S1030SW , 7.1, 18.2mm, 0.002 sec, ISO 80 |
Conditions remained unchanged for a good part of the morning, but by 10AM I was close hauled and beating into 25 knot winds. The waves were steep and now constantly washing over the deck. After one particularly nasty bugger pushed the largest amount of water I have ever seen over our deck and into the cockpit I had had enough. Omaha Bay was only 8 miles West of my position and was far enough South that I could cover the rest of the distance during daylight hours tomorrow, hopefully in better conditions. After my turn West the wind was on the beam and with Slappy’s full head and main showing we were flying towards the bay at 11 knots. It didn’t take long for the shelter of the bay to take effect. The waves were reduced to a chop and the wind dropped by 5 or 6 knots. Still doing 10 knots now but without the discomfort of steep seas, this was just plain fun and I may have actually hooted at some point there. I decided to find an anchorage at the Southern side of the bay just to get a little further South and be in a good position to launch from in the morning. Actually, I didn’t want to admit it to myself at that point, but deep down I knew that it was because I wasn’t satisfied with throwing in the towel this early in the day.
Omaha Bay was apparently not named by Dr. Suess, and is about 5 miles across. This gave me some time to relax, have a sandwich, warm up, and second guess my decision to stop for the day. Selective amnesia kicked in and by the time I made it across the bay I was ready for round two. In the grand tradition of single handed sailors I also lost my mind at this point and began referring to the boat as a person. We talked it over and Slappy was game. A few minutes later we rounded Takatu Point and continued South.
I needed to put in a little westing to get to Auckland anyway, so the Omaha Bay excursion didn’t set me back much at all and after a few quick calculations I knew that Auckland was still within striking distance.
One thing about the weather that you can always count on is that it will change. I had been fighting to keep the sails full in variable winds for a couple of hours but by the time I made the Hauraki Gulf it was dead calm and the water slowly began it’s transformation into a sheet of glass. I dropped all sail and cranked up the Westerbeke. We maintained our average and by the time the ebb tide began to flood I could see the Auckland tower which was somewhat deceptive because at my current speed I was still 4 hours away. The time passed slowly but after the cold morning I was happy to just sit up on the deck and soak up the warmth while watching the tower get bigger. The sea lion fooling around in the wake nearby gave me something to talk to besides a boat.
13-Dec-2008 12:34, OLYMPUS IMAGING CORP. u1030SW,S1030SW , 5.1, 18.2mm, 0.006 sec, ISO 80 |
13-Dec-2008 16:42, OLYMPUS IMAGING CORP. u1030SW,S1030SW , 5.0, 5.0mm, 0.001 sec, ISO 80 |
I read somewhere that there’s a boat for every 7 people in New Zealand, and on this sunny summer Saturday afternoon it sure looks that way. I haven’t seen this many boats in one place since we left Miami. You also can tell that this is a country of die-hard sailors. Every single sailboat I saw had a full headsail and main up even though there wasn’t a breath of wind. They were just sitting there waiting for a puff, or maybe having a puff? I’m not sure which but I had already had quite enough wind for one day and just rumbled on past them with the Westerbeke cranked up to 2700 RPM’s. The engine ran smoothly until I decided to switch tanks. I haven’t used the starboard tank since that gooey hairball thing clogged everything up on our last passage, and I wanted to give it a try. Mistake. The engine died within 10 seconds of switching the tank over. Fortunately the clog must be in the line or tank itself because when I switched it back over to port the engine fired up right away, so apparently no funky blockage had made its way into the filters this time. Add one more job onto my task list, tank removal and fuel line cleaning? That should be a treat.
I made my way through the masses and once safe inside Westhaven there was no trouble finding our little slip amongst the hundreds. Marty the deckhand was there to take my lines. “Little slip” is not just a term of endearment. This one is even narrower than the one we squeezed into at Opua but with a bit of fiddling Slapdash was soon snuggled in and secure after a hard day of work.
13-Dec-2008 16:59, OLYMPUS IMAGING CORP. u1030SW,S1030SW , 6.3, 7.57mm, 0.003 sec, ISO 80 |
I celebrated the passage with some cold beers at the local yacht club. A couple of local salty-dawgs took me under their wing. When I was quick enough to actually pay for a beer they made sure that I was charged from the members-only price list. One of them was the commodore so I guess that helped. They gave me the low down on all the local gossip, the right places to go for boat work, and the best places to poach fish.
It’s hard to believe that this is the same day that I left Whangarei in. After a steaming hot Hollywood shower I hit the pillow and in the 7 seconds it took to lose consciousness I thought about all the single handed sailors we’ve met along the way. I don’t know how they do it.
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