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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 whether I was going to have the chance to stand up soon, or would I 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.
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.
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