A Tale of Two Oceans - 2006
Reprinted from the Tasmanian Yachtsman 2006/2007
The story thus far:
It's New Years Day 2006 and I am in Antibes in the south of France. I'm here to pick up a Dynamique 62 yacht for the Fisher family of Helsal fame and who are now living in Hobart. I arrived about three weeks ago and carried out an inspection of the yacht which was at that stage sitting on the hard in a little place just outside Marseilles called Port Saint Louis, commonly referred to by the locals as the a…hole of the world. Port Saint Louis is cold and barren and cops the wind from all over France as it funnels down through the Rhone valley. The boat inspection revealed a number of minor problems, mainly related to the condition of the yacht which has been languishing for the past year or so and has had little maintenance in the past few years.
However, it was pretty obvious that underneath the layers of neglect there was a magnificent yacht crying out to be re-floated. So, I headed back to Antibes where the broker, Yves Le Cos, is based and also where I intend to prepare the yacht for its passage to Australia. The deal had to be renegotiated with an adjustment to the price and about four days later we returned with every intention of putting her back in the water and sailing the 130 nautical miles to Antibes. There were a few more problems, pointed out by the surveyor we had commissioned to check over the boat.
By this time Alex (my 17 year old son) had flown in from Hobart and everyone was knocking off for Christmas, so, with a third offer on the table, Al and I headed off into the French Alps for a bit of skiing. Antibes, only two hours drive from the snow, is the most fantastic place even in the middle of winter, although it is a little cold at this time of the year. Fortunately the sun shines a lot of the time, managing to melt the ice on deck by mid morning. Antibes is a medieval village, retaining much of its ancient charm, full of wonderful little streets, many of which are too narrow for cars although this doesn't seem to stop the Frogs from driving up and down them.
The Frogs themselves are also mostly lovely people, although like everywhere you come across the occasional P…. that can spoil your day if you let him. So, as far as Antibes goes, I highly recommend it for a visit, the combination of antiquity, friendliness and the shear wealth of the rich here is a mind numbing combination. The super yachts are racked up by the hundred, literally! Multi million dollar boats are the norm rather than the exception.
But; I digress. Al and I headed up into the St Ettienne valley and the snow spending three wonder days alternating between getting up mountains on one or another of 17 operating ski tows, and getting down the mountain any way we could. Fortunately at the end of it all no bones were broken and Christmas day was spent on the piste as the frogs call the ski slopes and the après skiing was sent on the p….
So, back to Antibes and Yves who had by now managed to get our third and hopefully final offer on the boat accepted. We packed up the car with sailing gear, the boat's old skipper, Yves' dog (a bloody great big something or other) and drove the 250 kilometers to the boat for a third time, determined to put to sea come hell or high water. We spent most of the day getting the boat started and figuring out what worked (not much) and what didn't (most stuff). About 1700 that evening we actually cast off and motored the half mile to the local marina where we intended to spend the night before casting off for Antibes the next day.
A mate of mine, Karen Fraser, an ex resident of Antibes now living in Hobart had decided to spend a couple of weeks in France and flew into Marseilles joining the boat that night, the plan being for her to do the sail around to Antibes with us the next day. After some last minute mucking about, which included being taken on a high speed joy ride round the streets of Port St Louis by a mad local cop in search of some oil for the main engine, we finally disengaged ourselves from land and headed down the bay helped along by a 40 knot northerly, with a little staysail on and the engine ticking over, trundling along at about 9 knots, which was the speed we ended up averaging for the entire 130 mile trip around to Antibes.
This turned into the coldest night's sailing I have ever done. The temperature on the way to Port St Louis the previous day, according the car's thermometer, was minus six and since then it had snowed in Paris, so by my reckoning it was about minus 10 degrees with a 40-knot chill factor thrown in for good measure. Speaking of the wind, we reckon the breeze peaked at about 45 knots or so during the gusts. The standard 'on deck' gear was pants, thermals, two sets of wet weather gear and a grin frozen into place for the duration of the watch, which, sadly, had to be done at the wheel, as the auto-pilot was not yet in working order. It was so cold, the toothpaste froze in the tube.
The boat handled the conditions magnificently and with every mile that slipped under our keel I became more and more comfortable with the yacht and its integrity for the long passage to Australia. Rob had left it to me to make the call on whether or not we should proceed with the deal so it was good to feel how well the boat behaved at sea. She is going to do some charter work in Tassie as well as be the Fisher family yacht so it is doubly important that the yacht is both seaworthy and sea kindly.
We are now tied up in Antibes with a New Years day hangover slowly working its way out of my system and three or four weeks work in front of us to get the boat ready to cross a couple of oceans. We are coming home via the Panama Canal, Tahiti and a few other stops along the way, hoping to be back in Tassie by the end of April. Meanwhile, Merry Christmas and Happy New year everyone! Look forward to seeing you all in April 2006.
Cheers,
JB
Leaving Antibes
05/02/2006
Hi every one,
It’s the end of January and we are a few days from getting out of France. It is beginning to feel a little like ‘Leaving Las Vegas’ and not because of the alcohol consumption so much as French apathy to working to a deadline. I guess I shouldn't complain and they are certainly delightful, charming people, but it seems that French Government attitude towards taxation has driven all incentive out of the business community.
Standard response to any missed deadline or an outrageous price quoted for a product or service is simply a very Gallic shrug of the shoulders and a wave of the hands, accompanied by down turned lips and a very expressive “It is impossible!” On the very rare occasion that anything does happen according to plan, the mouth turns up, the shoulders reverse their usual shrug of non compliance, a huge smile creases the face and we get a delighted “Normally, it is perfect!” which is French English for anything and everything that goes well.
Truth be known, very little has been perfect but, hey, we are in the South of France and about to cast off on what should be a fascinating voyage home in a boat that is coming together beautifully and is feeling more and more like the magnificent cruiser she was built as.
A typical example of the frustrations we have faced was one company quoting us $3000 to pull the rig out of the boat and another one five miles away offering to do the same job for $800. This type of erratic business behavior, coupled with strange local customs, such as no one trading on Sundays, leaves us scratching our heads at how they ever made G7 status, but hey; what would a simple yachty know?
Rob Fisher flew in for 10 days to help get the boat ready, destroying a few sets of clothes degreasing the boat while he was here and generally putting things in order. His departure in a kerosene canary today was a sad loss. It wasn't all toil while he was in Antibes but there wasn’t much time for idling.
Rob managed to get out of Antibes without starting world war three, although it was touch and go for a minute or two. The neighbor downwind of us didn’t like the fiberglass dust emanating from a little upgrading job being done on Helsal 4 and decided to lob (or perhaps he was just returning) one of our used sanding disks at Rob. Fortunately he was a lousy shot and Rob’s attempt to teach him a few Australian words (get f_____) seemed to get lost in the translation, but it was all good fun and after all, the first shot (disk) was fired by the Frog.
So, the boat is now re-powered with new gel batteries and charger, (she has over 600 amperes of 24 volt battery power charged by either a 6.5 KVA generator or the main engine, a 120 horsepower Perkins, to run the various systems), all new electronics, and when the rig goes back in the boat on Wednesday, new standing rigging. She has been scrubbed back to the fiberglass and, if boats could speak, she would be starting to purr.
It would be remiss of me in the extreme not to mention the invaluable help and friendship extended us by a number of the locals, including a few expat Aussies, an Irishman , (Pete, not Paddy) and a salty old Canadian, Dale, who is, I suspect, just a little younger than me.
Nicholas Dulauroy, the surveyor, has been delightfully helpful, friendly, professional and long suffering extended his services well beyond the expected. Mat, a young Australian guy running the 25 meter luxury motor yacht next door, on the opposite side to the missile throwing Frog, has been a wealth of information and the good oil on how to avoid the pitfalls of Antibes tradesman. Irish Pete, for his advice and assistance with things navigational and computer oriented (which I most definitely am not). And Dale, the Canadian with salt water running in his veins, was a wealth of local knowledge and good contacts, even finding Laid Back Paul for us, Laid Back Paul is the Pommy electrician that finally gave us a good price and did a great job installing the new electrical system. And finally, Kathy the Pommy barmaid from Le Gaffe, the local pub, who I nearly but not quite, managed to shanghai for the trip to OZ. Thanks guys, love yas all.
Alex and I are being joined by my mate Jimmy McCormack on Wednesday for the first leg to Trinidad and 2 English girls have signed on for the trip across the Atlantic. Corrie has just completed a Clipper Round the World race and is keen to cross another ocean so she’s obviously nuts and should fit in very well, and Kate who is looking for a passage to Oz and wants to rack up a few more miles to attach to her Offshore Yacht Master’s ticket.
Its pouring with rain, blowing a gale, the temperature climbed slightly above zero today, but not much, and we’re about 2 weeks behind schedule, but “c’est la vie!” or whatever it is that the Frogs say. I’m starting to think about passage issues instead of boat issues which augers well for getting under way.
Tomorrow morning we are heading up to St Laurent du Var (about 6 miles up the coast) to slip the boat to install new rudder bearings, replace a few suspect skin fittings and put the rig back in. We’ll be testing the new autopilot computer and chart plotter in transit and making sure everything is ‘ship shape in Bristol fashion’ as the Poms would say. Then hopefully, we toss a little tucker on board and get on down the track to Gibraltar, where Kate is joining the boat, do the big shop for ‘crossing the pond’, jam a little more fuel on board and kick off into the Atlantic. (Oh, and hopefully we will have email access through the sat phone in transit.)
See you all in a few months
Cheers,
JB
The Med, Gibraltar and the Canaries
08/03/2006
Hi again All,
We finally got out of France and headed down to Majorca, intending to swing by the Spanish Island made famous in Oz as Skase’ys last retreat, although we had no intention of stopping there to kick over his remains. The breeze built and continued to build to about 30 knots with the occasional bullet coming through, and a very uncomfortable cross sea. This area of the Med is the Gulf De Lyon and is notorious for uncomfortable conditions. It is the part of the Med where that breeze from the Rhone Valley that I mentioned earlier ends up after its done a number on Port St Louis.. Then just as things started to ease up and get a little civilized we sprung a substantial leak around the propeller shaft; very disconcerting to say the least. This resulted in an immediate shut down of the engine and a fair amount of duct tape to stem the flow, (never leave home without your duct tape) and a 60 mile sail back to Majorca for repairs.
Now the Majorcans are generally a laid back bunch with a smile and a helping hand readily offered, but sadly they were taught how to charge by the French and the stop over took 11 days and quite a few bucks. The workmanship replacing the propeller bearing and repairing the skeg was excellent although 11 days unscheduled stop did cause some problems with our program.
We did take a little time to look around the island and sadly Corrie received a job offer back in pommie land that was too good to refuse. Kate hopped on a plane and flew in from Gibraltar, although I’m sure she raised an eye brow when she initially tried to find a bus to Majorca. So, with the schedule in tatters and the skeg and stuffing box repaired we finally got out of Majorca and headed down the Spanish coast. The first night out the forecast 25 knots turned into 50 knots testing our ability to reef a mainsail in a blow, and causing significant damage to the auto pilot.
Now while we were wandering along the Spanish coast the starboard main spreader shifted. This could quite easily have resulted in the rig falling over the side; potentially very upsetting. Fortunately we spotted the problem and relocated the spreader with a spare halyard and a strop before a little problem became a large one.
So, the stop in Gibraltar (after a couple of days hand steering the yacht, aided by a length of shock cord) meant that we enjoyed a few days drying things out and finishing off the French riggers rather less than brilliant job.
Now, it might sound a little like a tale of woe, but the reality is that we are sailing a yacht around the world and I have expected to have things fail when put under pressure for the first time in years. So, hopefully as I write this now sitting in the Canary Islands the boat has had all the systems operating for long enough to find out what is up to scratch and what needs to be replaced.
In the run from Gibraltar to the Canaries we have found a problem with the top rudder bearing. While the bearing had been replaced in Antibes the shaft itself had also worn. Thus while replacing the bearing solved the symptoms it hadn’t fixed the cause of the problem. So, on arriving here we were confronted with the issue of having to pull the rudder out of the boat. Well, as I have now had the boat slipped three times in two months I really didn’t want to go through the process again, and slept on the issue.
The next morning we decided that with a little ingenuity we would be able to drop the rudder out of the boat without needing to pull the boat out of the water, and have attached a photo to show how we managed to achieve this. The rudder itself weighs about 300 kilos and floats with about neutral buoyancy, so once we had it out of the boat the way to get it to the haul out area was simply to float it there, past a couple of mega yachts that were in the way.
Needless to say, the exercise generated a fair amount of interest and lots of fun was had by all in the process. Hopefully the rudder repairs will be completed by Tuesday and we should be bound for Trinidad on the easterly trade winds by the middle of the week. I can’t tell you anything much about Las Palmas, other than the fact that it is Carnival week and crews do strange things at carnival time, like staying out until dawn (or even later). Kate has decided to leave the boat. I think chronic seasickness may have been a significant factor in her thinking, so at this point we are three for the trip to Trinidad.
Bye for now.
JB
The Atlantic
30/03/2006 (Six days later)
Hi again guys,
We are now at latitude 20 degrees north longitude 33 west which is where we have been told to expect to pick up the Trade winds, about 900 miles south west of the Canaries. There is currently little breeze and a typical Atlantic swell which is long and low and rolling down from the north-west. Given that we are heading south west this means that the swell is on our beam and to put it politely, bloody uncomfortable, particularly for driving a computer.
We have been swimming off the back of the boat for the past few days, this giving us not only respite from the slowly increasing heat but also supplying a daily bath without using too much of our fresh water, just enough to wash off the salt.
Trinidad
05/04/2006
Hi again guys,
The Atlantic crossing was a great trip with following breezes from nothing to about 25 knots but mainly 8 to 15 knots from the east. It took us 17 days to cover 2900 miles which included three or four days motoring.
The highlights of the passage were a pod of pilot whales swimming with the boat, Jimmy received a visitor in the form of a flying fish coming through the saloon hatch in the middle of a night watch and the next night I was hit in the ribs by one of his mates (another flying fish that is); scared the living daylights out of me.
Trinidad’s crime rate makes Al Capone’s reign of terror look like kindergarten and as a result we were restricted largely to the compound we were tied up in. This is an area of Trinidad called Chagauramas that has half a dozen marinas and a hotel and also includes a number of yacht repair facilities. Trinidad is outside the hurricane belt and thus a number of people leave their boats there for the windy season. It is not, however a place I would recommend as a tourist destination.
While the scenery can be spectacular the level of racism against whites coupled with the violence leaves it a place best read about rather than visited. While we were there the murder toll went from under 100 to 118. Al and I were involved in an altercation with another car which started with the rear vision mirror of our hire car being clipped by another guy and nearly ended up in disaster. However we did a quick exit stage right and live to tell the tale, albeit somewhat reluctant to leave the compound again.
However, every cloud, as they say, and our benefits from Trinidad were twofold. We met a couple of people who have since become a part of the adventure. The first was Adam Lambert, an Australian yachtie, who was transiting through Trinidad skippering a 35 metre super yacht and I’ll tell you more about him later.
The other guy we met was a Canadian, Ralph Nelson, who is married to a Trini girl and lives on his yacht in the Chaguarmamas marina. Ralph ended up showing us around a few of the sights in Trinidad, including the inside of the local brothel. This was at the insistence of another guy we met, Hugo, who was also hanging around Trinidad looking for a deal to get into.
Now Hugo is from Scandinavia and is what is commonly referred to as a Scandahooligan! Suffice to say we fairly quickly figured this out and decided to put a little distance between us and Hugo. We also managed to get out of the brothel unscathed after just one beer with our chastity and our necks intact…but only just!
Just a little background info on the area. Colombia, just down the road from Trinidad, is the drugs capital of this part of the world and as such attracts all sorts of interesting people. There was a yacht which sailed into Trinidad from Colombia while we were there, on it’s way to Europe with another couple of ‘Scandahooligans’ on board. Now one might think “Well, what’s so strange about that?”
The point is, it is senseless to sail dead to windward from Colombia to Trinidad if you are bound for Europe, unless you are looking for the least chance of getting accosted by the law in transit and you also want to clear the Caribbean from a port other than Colombia; much more sensible to make for or one of the other more northerly, and civilized (read law abiding) ports such as St Martins. These guys were also mates of Hugo whom we suspect may have been orchestrating a few deals of the drug kind, using Trinidad as a base and yachts bound for Europe as a vehicle for delivery. So, sorry Hugo, the gang plank is up; no borders allowed, but it was interesting knowing you.
Anyway, the reason we called into Trinidad was to drop off Jim and pick up a new auto pilot ram as the old one, after a number of repairs finally died at sea a few days out of Trinidad, meaning we had to steer for the last few hundred miles, with the aid of the old faithful piece of shock cord tied to the wheel. This boat is so well balanced that on most points of sail in most breezes it was quite easy to set up self steering in this way. The ram finally arrived, a new, bigger and much better version of the old one and after another day or so in the lazarette doing the installation we were fairly close to getting out of Trinidad.
Just before we left I tried the Simrad chart plotter only to find it had failed. This caused me a little consternation as the chart plotter is my primary navigation aid and had been installed brand new in France two months previously. Much to our delight the Simrad US people were right on the ball and while they couldn’t get a replacement to us prior to our departure from Trinidad they guaranteed to have a new one waiting in Panama. This being arranged we packed up the boat, bought an extra 800 litres of fuel, stored in 44 gallon drums lashed to the deck, rigged a backup navigation system (one of the hand held GPSs plugged into one of the laptops on board, installed with c-maps) and set off for Panama. Ralph was now included in the crew with the promise of an airfare home from Panama or Tahiti, his final destination dependant on the good graces of his wife.
Cheers,
JB
Panama and into the Pacific
28/04/2006
Well, shell shocked is probably the best way to start this email. We left Panama a couple of days ago after having had the most amazing experience, but I guess to put things in order I’d best start where I left off last time. First of all the reason for the erratic nature of these newsletters is a combination of very difficult physical circumstances eg the heat, access to email facilities etc and the fact that there is always so much to do on the boat coupled with there being so much to see and experience if there is any time to spare. This passage is something which one would normally undertake over a one or more likely two year period, so to jam a ‘round the world’ trip into a little over four months and find time to talk about is logistically problematic, to say the east, but enough with the excuses.
So, after a week of shore based confinement in the Trinidad marina compound, coupled with a few days work installing the auto pilot ram, we were finally away and looking forward to a pleasant down wind sail to Panama, some twelve hundred odd miles to leeward. Sadly, or maybe happily (it could have happened in a worse place) , three hours out of Trinidad the spline on the gear box output shaft stripped itself, which in layman’s terms, means we were without a gear box, or any way of driving the boat other than to sail. Bugger!!
After some consideration and an assessment of the options we decided the best plan was to keep going, giving the Colombian coast a wide berth, some 70 to 100 miles, and make straight for Panama. (Just as an aside, one of the Caribbean cruising books comments that anyone who goes cruising in Colombia has a death wish, although many people dispute this) The result was that we made the passage to Panama in six and a half days, averaging 195 miles a day under sail. In comparative terms our Atlantic crossing average was 165 miles a day, so the current and the easy sailing in a steady 15 knot easterly showed us the reason that the Caribbean has such a good reputation with yachties. Needless to say, I am also becoming more and more enchanted by the sailing performance of Helsal 4.
Now having made the decision to continue, we were also faced with the dilemma of how to fix the gear box. After all of the previous hassles we have faced in Europe, particularly in France, we were not looking forward to trying to get the gear box fixed in Panama as it would necessarily require tradesmen. So, we adopted a two stage plan. The first was to try to source parts either from Australia or at least through Australia, keeping in mind that the next weekend was Easter and that I had another friend, Dave Behrens flying out from Sydney to join us, so accessing parts through Sydney using Dave as the courier may have been a possibility. The second stage of the plan was that we had to work out exactly what was wrong with the gearbox so we could order the parts ahead of arriving in Panama.
Both components of this plan turned up interesting results. The first was Robbie Fisher finding out that the Tasmanian agent for the gear box, a Hurth product, was Taylor Brothers, one of the better engineering works in Tasmania with Phil Taylor as our contact. This was a huge relief as we now had someone on side who we could relate to in Australian terms and who I also knew would make sure we got the right results.
Phil and I spent hours on the phone going back and forth till he finally tracked down the parts in Italy, through the Sydney based Australian distributor, and arranged to have a Panamanian agent get them in for us. To give you an indication of the problems we faced with this process, the sequence was more or less as follows:
Meanwhile; concurrently, the second stage of the plan;
Ralph and I decide we could pull the gear box out in transit to identify the parts, but sadly the hole we have to access the gear box through is only 40 centimeters wide and a metre down into the bilge, so a pigmy with anorexia would be handy, but unavailable.
We finally sacrificed one of the boat pillows using this as a cushion, to lie on top of the motor. Thus with legs braced outside the engine room, head down, butt up and thirty degrees of heat, the gear box was uninstalled over a couple of days, hauled out (sideways) of its black hole and then disassembled on the cabin sole. After having noted the parts required, an output shaft, coupling, shims and a few other bits and pieces, we felt that it might just be possible to put the box back together and actually make it work.
So, 20 stainless steel split pins were cut up and jammed into the spline, setting the coupling back into its original position and the whole thing sealed with a makeshift quarter inch thick rubber washer adding a little extra grab. Sitting back after having completed this little re-build and with ‘pleased as punch’ smiles on our faces we came to the realisation that it had to be reinstalled on the back of the motor. Not a job for the feint hearted, especially while rolling around under sail in 15 knots of breeze at sea. It’s also worth mentioning that while this was going on we are sailing a 62 foot yacht on a passage, three handed and in pirate infested waters, so serious watch keeping was required.
Anyway, enough with the histrionics. We lowered the gear box into place, suspended from a stainless steel tube which was in turn hung from a piece of wiring fed through a bolt hole in the deckhead, the net result being that the gear box was controlled pretty much like a puppet on a string, allowing us to adjust its angle, so that the gear box input shaft could be lined up with the back of the motor. After a little pushing and shoving and some calling on the help of the various Gods of the sea and a few other deities, the shaft slid home and was bolted into place.
A short test run and Ralph declared it capable of getting us all the way to Oz! My own reaction was slightly less positive, not being prepared to trust the repaired box going through the Panama Canal with all the incumbent fines and towage fees etc if we broke down in transit, but feeling pretty happy, none the less, that we had managed to pull off this rebuild at sea. In due course, we sailed in to San Cristobel, the Atlantic entrance to Panama and gently motored the last hundred yards into the marina under our own steam, smiles beaming off our faces at the gear box holding together and having saved the cost of a tow.
Now I’ll finish off the gear box story before going on with the Panama experience because it is worth noting in the context of all the work that a number of Australians put into helping in comparison to the treatment we received by other so called professionals. The Panamanian distributor, the Fishermen’s Holding Company, after demanding payment up front for the parts then arrived at the boat and tried to get the job to pull out the gear box, telling us that it was a very difficult job but that at considerable expense, they were capable of doing it. When we set them straight on this point and told them we just needed the parts installed in the gear box, as this required tools we didn’t have, they then promised us a quote and assured me it would not be much, i.e. a couple of hundred dollars.
In due course and with no quote in hand when they advised the installing the parts in the gear box would take two days and required all sorts of complicated equipment I jumped in the car (the car is another story I’ll get to shortly) and boofed it into the agent’s workshop, telling him I would be there in a few hours time. Low and behold, when we arrived the job was completed and all the bunkum they had carried on about the complexity of the job was exposed for what it was; crap!
However, in the end they still charged us $500 US for 2 hours work plus a couple of hours to deliver the box, so my advice to anyone from Australia going through Panama as well as my advice to Hurth, the gear box manufacturer, is to stay well away from the Fishermen’s Holding Company in Panama. In my opinion, they are thieves.
One final note on the gear box. Phil Taylor did a terrific job along with the Sydney distributor in facilitating the parts being delivered to Panama. These guys could show the rest of the world a thing or two about how to do the job properly. Thanks fellas.
San Cristobel & Panama City.
Having arrived in San Cristobel, the Atlantic entry port to Panama we contacted our shipping agent, Peter Stevens from Delfino Maritime who arranged for Roberto, a local guide/taxi driver/bodyguard to look after us. We engaged Roberto’s services for the following week. At a cost of $10 US per hour including his car we decided that this was a safer bet than driving ourselves around as we had done in Trinidad. Given that Roberto usually had a hand gun in his glove box and knew not only all the right people but was also on very good terms with all the wrong people and was guaranteed by our agent I felt fairly safe in his hands.
Without trying to overstate the dangers of Panama a couple of examples of the local scene are worthwhile telling. We had Roberto take us to a local restaurant the first night in after telling him we wanted to experience Panamanian food in an authentic local restaurant. He took us, naturally enough, to a friend’s place, but advised us on the way that when we pulled up outside we were to get out of the car and go straight inside without stopping. Once there we would be safe. He was going off to do another job and would be back later. While he was gone we were not to leave the restaurant under any circumstances. We followed his instructions to the letter, having a great meal and the best fish soup I’ve ever had, for a cost of about $5. The street kids swarmed around us both in the 3 meter dash from the car to the restaurant and back to the car afterwards. Robert told us later these kids carried guns and were part of a gang that ruled the streets. It gives the expression street kids a whole new perspective.
The second example is in the name of a suburb in Panama city. It English translation is “live through the night if you can.”
Robert became a good friend and I think after most of the clients he was used to, mixing with a couple of easy going Australians might have been a breath of fresh air for him. Through this guy we managed to see a lot more of the local culture in relative safety than we could possibly have seen any other way, and given that we had a fair amount of tooing and frowing to do, getting gear for the boat, he was a very worthwhile investment.
In the few weeks prior to our arrival 5 separate instances of yachties being attacked had been reported. Yet due to Robert’s presence we at no stage felt unsafe. Peter Stevens, our shipping agent also delivered great service, getting us through the canal with a pilot and just 24 hours notice from us as to when we would be ready to go with the repaired gear box, at a total cost of $1900 US including all fees and a pilot. This is in comparison to many of the other yachties trying to get through on the cheap being held up for weeks and paying up to $3000 to get through. So, if you are ever going to transit the Canal, contact Peter Stevens and he’ll look after you well. Tell him Bourkey sent you. Peter doesn’t advertise and word of mouth keeps him flat out and with no chance of retiring soon.
The rest of the week in San Cristobel, including a couple of drives to Panama City about an hour and a half away, was full on and we were joined by Dave Beherens in the middle of it all. Sadly Ralph’s family situation didn’t allow him to stay with us to Tahiti and following the transit of the canal he flew home to Trinidad.
I mentioned Adam Lambert earlier. Adam runs a thirty five meter super yacht for a Queensland guy and he turned up in Panama a few days after us waiting to do the transit as well. Now the transit requires four line handlers and Adam kindly took Al along as one of his, having arranged his transit a couple of days earlier than us, while we continued to work on the gear box, so Al managed to do two Canal transits, the first on a super yacht and the second on Helsal 4.
So, the transit itself. We cast off from the Panama yacht club about 1830 on Thursday night and collected our pilot from the pick up station a couple of hours later. We then moved into the first lock about 2 miles down the track. There was a ship in front of us and a 40 foot yacht rafted up to each side of us before we entered the lock. One of these was skippered by a guy from Allonah on Bruny Island in Southern Tasmania. Small world!
So, with the two yachts tied to us we motored into the lock behind the ship, me with a big smile on my face at these two big fenders now attached to Helsal 4. The gates closed behind us and the lock, about 1000 meters long and 30 metres wide, filled with water lifting us some 15 odd meters. We had secured a line to each side of the lock, both for and aft, off my new outriggers, and were held in place by these as the water rose. In this way we transitted three locks before finally anchoring at the lakes about midnight. The GPS read 41 meters above sea level, probably a one off for Helsal 4.
The next morning a new pilot joined us for the rest of the trip, which included a 20 mile lake crossing, through channels that ran over the top of what had once been the railway track through the area before being flooded to create the canal.
Then three locks to get back down to sea level and a slight altercation with the pilot, who wanted me to steam out of the last lock at full revs with the other two boats still attached while he tried concurrently to get the springs removed from between the boats. Well, in spite of the fact that he had done this “200 times” he wasn’t doing it to Helsal while I was skippering the boat and the result was that he relinquished command and sat in a huff for the last few miles of the passage. Tough, Pal!
Panama city was just an overnight stop in a very expensive new marina ‘Flemingos’ for a fuel up and a last night out with our friends off the superyacht. Since then we have been traveling to the Galapagos which is now about 8 miles away and requiring my attention so adios dear friends (or whatever the term is in Spanish) I’ll try to email this from the Galapagos and send the next note from Tahiti or somewhere closer to home.
Cheers,
JB
PS We were ‘attacked’ by pirates yesterday, and fended them off with the offer of a packet of cigarettes; in reality, local opportunistic fishermen in an open dinghy with a high powered outboard on the back about 200 miles from land, although they were pretty persistent . Go figure!
PPS Half an hour later we were buzzed by a helicopter gunship with no markings on it. We talked to a guy with a Yankee accent on the VHF and while he was very polite he wouldn’t identify their nationality other than to say they were military, doing patrols in the area We discussed the ‘pirates’ and I suspect he knew a little more than he was letting on.
PPPS We crossed the line at 0600 this morning and are now not only in our own ocean (the Pacific) but also in our own hemisphere!!!! YES!
C ya.
JB
Hi gang,
This letter comes from the deep Pacific. And it doesn’t really get much deeper. We left the Galapagos about five or six days ago and we are now 1300 miles from South America, 900 miles from the Galapagos and a little less than three thousand miles from Tahiti. I have been further from land at different times but given that we are looking at another 18 days before we expect to see anyone again it is a fairly isolated place to be, certainly psychologically. So, the plan is to play everything safe and make sure we don’t damage either boat or people because there is no back up down here, just us. Oh, Easter Island is somewhere a long way south of us as well.
We docked at Academy bay on Santa Cruz Island, the main centre of the Galapagos Islands. After a five minute meeting with our shipping agent Ricardo, conducted on a street corner, entailing a hand over of ship’s papers, passports and agreement on charges and fees, we were free to roam for the next 10 days. This was the only customs and immigration bureaucracy we had to deal with. There has been some discussion about differing fees on the islands so here is the current position. We paid $220 US for the entry visa, another $35 odd in port charges, based on the gross tonnage of the boat, 27 tonnes, and $80 US for the agent. This gave us access to Santa Cruz and another of the main islands, Isabella. We would have been required to hire guides and pay a lot more to cruise and or go ashore on the other islands, but as we only had a couple of days we contented ourselves with this one stop over.
The island has about 2000 inhabitants, principally of Ecuadorian extract, with a very few ex-pats thrown in and a very refreshing lack of animosity (particularly after Trinidad and Panama) towards visiting yachties of European descent. The atmosphere is that of a South American village where the locals make their living out of selling trinkets and food to the visiting cruise ship passengers. Taxis cost $1 to any where, which is of course very cheap (keeping in mind that anywhere is only about a mile or so away at best any how).
The trinkets were a combination of the standard Chinese made copies of turtles, tortoises, iguanas etc but interspersed with genuine South American rugs, clothing and so on. This is in comparison to the ‘free zone’ we visited in San Cristobel in Panama which was a duty free area about four of five city blocks in size, located in a walled off section of the town. The zone was pretty well exclusively for cruise ship passengers, who were required to show passports and after considerable time spent in queues, fill out endless forms detailing their purchases etc. Robert our driver’s solution to short circuit this procedure was a $5 note tucked into the front page of one of our passports handed to the security guys for inspection on entry. Robert suggested that we see if we could spot the security guy palm the note as he checked the passport. Needless to say it was a pretty slick manoeuvre. The San Cristobel free zone was extremely cheap for some products. I tried to buy a dozen Hang Ten tee shirts for $5 US each but the store had a stock take underway and nothing would convince them to part with the goods. Weird aye. But, I digress.
Santa Cruz has a quite well developed, albeit rustic, tourist industry, although we contented ourselves with a free tour of the Charles Darwin Institute and a wander round the village precinct, bumping into the odd iguana, a plethora of bird life and a few giant tortoises, turtles and other local fauna that on the whole either paid us little attention or seemed content at least to share their space with us. (see the latest photos http://au.pg.photos.yahoo.com/ph/oceanyachtsman/my_photos) The turtle was spotted from our Zodiac dinghy, along with a number of other local aquatic fauna, including a few seals.
Our time on the island was only a couple of days and I would love to return and spend some weeks really exploring the place. However, this trip allowed only a cursory leaf through the local delights and included a few seafood meals, some interaction with the locals and a lengthy and slow refuelling and rewatering with 40 and 60 litre drums of fuel and water being ferried out to the yacht in a water taxi. This job, spread over two days, ended up taking a considerable amount of time as we were taking on board about 1000 litres of diesel for our next passage. Sadly, some of the diesel was dirty although we managed to avoid the worst of this, having been forewarned and thus forearmed in Panama. We bought some fine gauze mesh and a funnel in Panama and used this to filter the fuel into the tank, thus hopefully saving some wear and tear on our main filters. We also have a number of water bleeding mechanisms in the fuel system so we should be okay. (I‘ve since had to change one of our generator fuel filters which was chocker block full of crap, so we didn’t come away entirely unscathed.)
The drinking water comes from a desalination plant on the island and tastes drinkable, so we pumped it straight in our main tanks against the advice in some of the cruising guides. Unfortunately, water has progressively worsened and we are now drinking bottled water. It appears the guides were right.
(I’ve just been interrupted to go and fillet another fish hauled in over the back of the sundeck, just a little dorado, which we seem to catch at a rate of about one each day or so. While they taste okay, either sushimied or fried, we are getting a little choosy now and have our culinary hearts set on a tuna.)
Some days later
It’s now 10 days since we left the Galapagos and I can list the notable events since we cast off on one hand. We had a seabird land on the sundeck one evening and after offering him a beer (see photos) we struck up a bit of a conversation and decided to let him stay for a while. Sometime later I found he’d ill treated our kind hospitality by crapping all over the sun deck and, to add insult to injury, he had a go at me when I tried to clean it off with a bucket of water. Needless to say, the bucket quickly became a weapon of ill intent, and the bird was last seen shaking his head in disbelief, floating off in the distance in the sure knowledge that a seabird is no match for a grumpy yacht skipper wielding a water bucket.
An item high on our list of priorities has been to get the anchor winch working again. We decided to draw up a wiring diagram in an effort to work out why the winch had ceased to operate half way through hauling the stern anchor we had set in the bay in Santa Cruz. After a couple of hours of trouble shooting it eventuated that a 60 amp fuse hidden down behind the circuit board had blown and with no spares on board we would be left without any easy means of anchor retrieval when we get to our next stop, at this stage planned to be the northern end of the Tuamotu Archipelago a little east of Tahiti, famous for the Muraroa atoll nuclear testing by the French in the last decade or so. After little doctoring with a small nut and bolt the damaged fuse is now operational and we have power to the winch again, at least enough, I hope, to keep us out of trouble until Papeete.
In one other catastrophe we have lost the two fishing lures which have held us in such good stead across the Atlantic Ocean and the Caribbean. Nothing a reworked split pin can’t fix, I’ve decided. So with the largest of our spare split pins sharpened with the grinder then teased into shape with a pair of pliers and wrapped in some red plastic shopping bag and a little insulation tape I am now waiting to find out if I’ve missed my calling in life and perhaps should have been a master lure maker! Somehow, (and still waiting for a bite two days later) I suspect I’d best not give up my day job.
Finally, we spotted a ship today, a car carrier heading northwest from South America; our first sighting of civilisation in ten days. We had a short chat to him on the VHF as he cut across our stern, bound for Korea.
So, here we are, now flying a spinnaker and no mainsail in 6 to 8 knots of breeze and making about 5 knots of boat speed. It’s a weird rig, and as I’ve mentioned to Dave, if anyone had told me before we cast off from Antibes that I’d be flying this rig configuration on an ocean delivery I’d have laughed. However, as we proved in the Atlantic, in less than 10 knots of wind on the quarter it is just about the only way to keep the boat moving without wearing out the sails through the constant popping caused by the boat role. This is because, with no main up, there is no blanket effect on the kite from the mainsail allowing the spinnaker to work most efficiently, which in turn dampens the role on the boat.
Ocean sailing is very different to the coastal sailing most of us are used to, the psychology of long passages being quite unlike any other sailing experience. First there is a routine; we rarely get more than five hours sleep in one hit and it is usually less than that, so the body takes a while to pick up a rhythm that doesn’t seem natural, getting the day’s sleep quotient in two or three stints instead of one. Then there is the fact that we a long way from anywhere or any back up. It suddenly puts Dave’s cracked ribs (caused in a minor fall a few days into the passage) or my loose filling in a different light. Not much we can do about either except to be very careful not to aggravate the damage further. You also try to be careful about each other’s space and their privacy.
This boat has three major assets, the people on board, and offending any of the three has the potential to cause significant damage, not only to the quality of the trip but also to the safety of the boat. It’s not the easiest task at times, particularly given the filial sparks that fly as sons mature into manhood and fathers grudgingly give ground. Still, as they say in the classics… “If it doesn't kill you…” (not that I need any more character thanks.)
Cooking also becomes a challenge. None of us are adepts in the galley and as the fresh vegetables available in the Galapagos were less than mouth-watering we are now down to canned and frozen food, so meals such as chicken mornay, flavoured with pineapple in ‘sweet n zesty’ mustard challenge stir fried canned muck for culinary supremacy.
However the backgammon championship continues (four three to the old man at this stage, although Al has stopped taking my advice and is now beginning to gain on me. Bugger!) as do the ongoing discussions about which novel is worth reading next, and on another level, what plans we are all making for the future, the meaning of life and other light hearted discussions. Meanwhile, the miles gently flow by and the Pacific yields warm sunny days with gentle south easterly breezes as we log 150 to 200 mile days bound for French Polynesia and our next adventure, and the nights make for picture book sailing with the spinnaker sucking us along a silver pathway towards a moon that promises to be full in a few nights time.
These nocturnal meanderings have been disturbed by the occasional late night raucous laughter brought on by the crew’s intermittent attempts to rid the yacht of a case of Myers Jamaican dark rum in the usual way, before Robbie joins the boat in Noumea. Rob has suggested that Jamaican rum couldn't possibly match Bundaburg for taste and drinking enjoyment and Dave, being the gentleman and scholar that he is, has volunteered to lead the charge in ridding the boat of this West Indian curse. Whilst I can’t condone the consumption of alcohol on board it would be churlish of me in the extreme to allow the crew to suffer the results of the dark Jamaican curse without attempting to share the burden. (Dave has informed me since the night in question that he did not once physically touch the rum bottle and that all intake was brought about at the insistent and overly generous hand of his skipper. As my own recollection of the evening is vague I bow to his superior memory.)
One other interesting observation before I leave the Galapagos Islands; our gps position as shown on the chart plotter when we were at anchor in the bay in Santa Cruz was over 350 metres or .2 of a nautical mile from our location according to the chart. Another Australian yacht in the bay at the time also showed this anomaly with his navigation equipment. While this is undoubtedly a chart error rather than a gps error it certainly supports reports that charts in the Pacific are unreliable when used with a gps. Food for thought as we head into an ocean that is home to more coral reefs and islands than any other in the world.
A brief stop in the Marquises
Its now the 21st of May and we have just had a few days in Hiva Oa, the main island in the Southern Marquises. Sadly our passage making deteriorated along with the wind. The first week out of the Galapagos we sailed 1300 miles, the second week 1000 and the last four days has been full time motoring, the 3000 odd miles to the Marquises taking 18 days in total. The last four days saw the end of our fuel and thus a diversion to the Marquises became a requirement. The guide books don’t write up Hiva Oa all that well as an anchorage or a place to get provisions and fuel etc, and unfortunately they were right in this instance.
The village on Hiva Oa is situated in a bay on the southern side of the island, exposed to the swell generated by the trade winds. There is an inner bay behind a 60 meter long breakwater which is subject to swell and overcrowding by cruising yachts and an outer bay which has more space and correspondingly more swell. Being the largest vessel in the bay pretty well guaranteed that we were going to be relegated to anchor outside which was fine, as Helsal 4 sits well in the water with a minimum of fuss, but refueling proved to be a bureaucratic and logistical pain in the proverbial. Duty free fuel was available subject to having clearance papers filled in, then processed by our shipping agent in Papeete, and in turn faxed back to the fuel depot. This was pretty relevant as the price differential was over $500 AUD for the 1000 litres of fuel we needed. The gendarmerie or local police doubled as the immigration office, but only on Monday Wednesday and Friday mornings. Naturally we arrived just after midday on the Wednesday, thus were stuck with a two day wait.
This was complicated by the fact that the fuel berth was a mere six feet wide and subject to quite a strong surge, complicated by each side of the dock being armed with rather large, jagged and quite yacht unfriendly looking boulders. Thus the trick was to reverse Helsal into the berth, dropping the anchor about thirty meters out and getting a couple of stern lines ashore; all this in a fairly significant cross breeze. Not much fun, particularly when having completed the manoeuvre (known as Mediterranean berthing, because that’s the way they do it in the Med) we were told the papers hadn't arrived and we couldn't have the fuel duty free. I rather grumpily moved out into the bay and re-anchored while Dave and Al went off to track down the documentation in the local town.
While all this was going on I had made a prior arrangement with a local French diver to change our feathering Max Prop over for a fixed blade cruising propeller and this job was carried out with the aid of a bucket held under the prop to catch all the bits. Eric, the diver (or ploungeure as they say in French) did a terrific job, not losing a single part to the deep; a not inconsiderable feat as anyone who has disassembled a max prop under water will attest to.
So, with the documentation eventually sorted out we again backed into the fuel dock, after waiting patiently for a local motor boat that had slotted in in front of us as we were completing our turn for the final approach. Finally, walking up the ramp to the fuel shop, I was advised that I had to come back at 2pm as the fuel depot closed at noon for lunch. Here was a lesson in island time. It was only 11.45 and I wasn’t in any mood to leave the boat surging within a few feet of damaging its rudder while the locals had their siesta. Strangely, offers to pay extra were refused but the woman finally succumbed to my pleas and we cast off from the Marquises about 12.30, a tonne of fuel heavier.
The Marquises consist of volcanic islands which are quite spectacular as the photo gallery attests, the almost vertical hills blanketed in rich vegetation interspersed with raw, jagged cliff faces that look like a base jumper’s dream. The local village life would possibly have been enchanting had we not been on a schedule to get to Papeete and sadly Hiva Oa is the wrong place for a man on a mission. My 16 year old daughter Tess is joining Helsal in Papeete (770 miles from Hiva Oa) and we are racing against time to get there before she arrives. This will require an average boat speed in excess of 8 knots for the passage, achievable but only with a fair wind. The 15 knot south easterly we are currently enjoying has us on track with 450 miles and two and a half days to go, but its going to be a close call.
See you soon,
JB
Hello Ha or what ever it is they say here in Tahiti. (Actually it’s Bonjour. It’s a French colony) We are in the centre of Papeete and tied up to a major highway full of four door utilities with hi tech fibreglass canoes with outriggers lashed down on roof racks. They tell me that if you have this rig in Tahiti you are the king. There seem to be plenty of them cruising past so maybe the royal family has lots of rellies. In any event there sure are a lot of cars here and they all drive past us every day.
But, to where I left off last time. We had a few days’ sailing and a strict schedule to get to Tahiti if we were to meet Tess when she arrived. Sadly the gear box failed again, a clutch problem this time, just outside of the Marquises, and I suspect that perhaps we should have replaced the gear box in Panama instead of doing the repair job we did then. However, twenty twenty hindsight can leave a slightly bitter taste so I’ll move right along.
In the last couple of days we made some pretty good average mileages running into some spectacular rain storms along the way. These introduced a few weird and wonderful meteorological phenomena. We would be sailing along in a twenty knot easterly at nine to nine and a half knots and then get overtaken by a rain storm so thick I would take a shower on deck. After twenty minutes or so the rain would drop out, the breeze would go up in the air and then we would then get hit by ten knot westerlies, blowing from the direction that the rain storm had just gone. Absolutely weird, although I guess in reality this was caused by a void behind the fast moving squall.
Ten or fifteen minutes later we would be in fresh easterlies again and other than having our average boat speed mucked up, both boat and crew would be very clean from the wash and none the worse for wear. Our approach to Papeete was from the north east, around the top of the main island of Tahiti with about a ten mile run down the northwest coast to Papeete. This became a bit of a concern as we were approaching the north coast in the twilight and would be making our port entry in darkness, two hours after sunset, without a motor and in a very fresh easterly breeze.
With a mountainous volcanic island like Tahiti, the breeze naturally bent around the top of the island and freshened so that we ended up running down an unknown coast after dark in 25 to 30 northerly looking for the leads for the port entry through a gap in the reef about 100 meters wide, all this using electronic charts which I had previously assessed as being inaccurate in this part of the Pacific in relation to their GPS positioning. (See the Galapagos story)
Slightly nerve racking, particularly given that if we missed the entrance it would mean a hard beat back to windward for a second approach, and that we were right on time, with no margin for error, to meet Tess with both her and us having an ETA of 8 pm, leaving no time for mucking around. Fortunately the entrance was well marked and the charts, while being out by about 50 meters, were close enough to get us into the harbour.
So, after running down the coast at eight to ten knots for the last two miles, about 200 meters off the break water, waiting for the entrance to open up, the leads finally came into line and we did a fairly tightly executed exit stage left, sailing through the reef into Papeete under full main with no headsail up, then beating back up into the main harbour area in flat water with about 25 knots of breeze on the nose. Again, Helsal 4 showed her true sailing ability pointing high into the wind and with plenty of steerage as she slowed to about three knots and we coasted into the yacht anchorage.
Dave ran out the anchor and Al simultaneously dropped the main as we came to a stop 35 meters off the wharf. As we lay back on our anchor with the moored yachts tied to the wharf Mediterranean style (anchor out and stern to the dock) on our starboard beam, a very accommodating young guy rowed out in a dinghy to take our stern line. We used this to winch our bum into the dock, ran a few extra mooring lines ashore and the job was done, just as Tess turned up in a taxi. There you go. The best laid plans of mice and men occasionally come to fruition, although not without a sigh of relief and few well earned beers at the end of it all.
So, life in Tahiti, the gear box first of all. I had contacted Phil Taylor, back in Tassie, again, to find out who the local agent for Hurth gear boxes was, while also arranging for our Papeete shipping agent to organise a mechanic to come to work on the gear box the next day. With the box stripped down and the offending parts identified we contacted the local Hurth agent only to be told by him that he had no idea that he was the Hurth agent!
At this juncture it became obvious that it would be quicker and safer to source the parts through Australia and so we were faced with the same Hurth bureaucratic bunkum that had occurred in Panama. They would not send the parts direct to Tahiti for the Australian agent, rather, having to send them to Sydney and then forward them on from there. This has resulted in a two week turn around time (so far) and caused huge problems, completely destroying my delivery schedule, already in tatters after the last Hurth trauma in Panama.
Papeete itself is a drop off/pick up point for people holidaying around Tahiti and the surrounding islands of Boa Bora, Moorea and the Tuamotu archipelago. Papeete has developed the quaint French habits of long lunch hours, public holidays to die for (if you don’t want anything done) and boy do they know how to charge! Well, on this last point, naturally they are good at charging, the French taught them. Way back in the first letter I made a comment about the French tax system and one morning last week, what looked suspiciously like a protest march against taxation paraded past our back door; surprise, surprise.
Yet they are a pleasant well natured people, mainly Polynesian with a smattering of French and Chinese thrown in. The local histories tell stories of cannibalism up until western civilisation kicked in a few hundred years ago and looking at the size of some of the locals they are still being well fed on something or other. Apparently some racism does exist but we haven’t really been exposed to this. The days have been made up of boat maintenance, changing filters, repairing pumps, cleaning bilges and the hull and so on, and the occasional swim at a local beach.
The Australian super yacht, Keri Lee mentioned in previous letters, turned up a day or so after we arrived and Al has put in a couple of days polishing stainless steel for them. He then did a few days’ work on a French catamaran which is apparently the largest sailing cat in the world. My own life here has consisted of a few interesting stories one of which the kids have dubbed
‘The Crazy French Bastard’
When Hurve the mechanic went off with the gear box, in order to identify the catalogue numbers for the parts he needed, he contacted a local Frenchman who owns a sister ship to Helsal 4. Apparently this guy had the appropriate Hurth parts manual. The next thing I know, this rather large, round, jovial, enthusiastic Frenchman turned up at Helsal 4, armed with a briefcase full of Dynamique 62 information, a tape measure, a camera and no English whatsoever. Oh, he did bring Michelle, a French mate of his, who knew how to say ‘hi’ and ‘goodbye’ in English. Terrific!
So, after two or three hours of machinegun French I ascertained that he wanted to give me all the information he had gleaned about the design over the past ten years as well as the grand tour of his own nearly renovated boat, the renovation of which has also being going on for the past ten years. In addition to this he had taken 42 colour glossy photographs of just about everything that opened and shut on board and given me a severe ear ache in the process.
Early one morning a few days later he arrived back at Helsal 4 , dragging us out of bed and pouring us into his four wheel drive for a tour of his Dynamique 62, some ten minutes drive away. The next two hour inspection included a French litany of everything that was good and bad about the boat, the design, the designer, the builder, with probably a few home truths on Tahiti thrown in as well. Of course I didn’t have the foggiest idea what any of his thoughts, ideas, summations and ponderings were, because my French vocab extends to about three words. But with neither of us wishing to appear ungrateful or stupid, lots of nodding of heads, smiling and studious intelligent sounding uhmming and ahhing went on, with the occasional word that seemed to make sense to both of us being jumped on with some amount of glee by all parties.
“Whew, he was definitely hard work.” I ruminated to Tess a few days later as we were on our way to a hardware store in search of a part for a bilge pump, when I was nearly totalled by a ‘crazy French bastard’ driving his 4 wheel drive up over the curb in what Tess thought at the time was a serious and deliberate attempt to run me down. But the ‘crazy French bastard’ turned out to be none other the Daniel of the Dynamique, full of more documents, samples and a fascination for what we were doing wandering along the road in the industrial zone of Papeete. Somewhat reluctantly I showed him the bearing we were trying to replace and that was the last of our leisurely morning walk thrown out the window.
Daniel packed us into his 4 wheel drive and haired off into the denizens of the industrial zone, eventually pulling up at a workshop full of Frogs. Half an hour of gesticulating, nudging, winking, some hammering of the offending part and lots of hand shakes and we were off again, this time across town, through a traffic jam. (every one in Tahiti has at least one car) and into an SKF warehouse, to finally locate the bearing we were looking for.
Then after a polite refusal to have lunch with him at the local French naval base which I was told would go on until 4 o’clock (this was translated for us by a 20 stone Tahitian guy who joined in the discussion about the bearing while we were in the SKF warehouse. All dialogue in Tahiti seems to turn into a group discussion if there are more than two people in the room)
Daniel finally dropped us back to the boat with a promise of another visit soon. That day has now arrived and he is currently sitting in the cock pit, surrounded by more documents with photocopies for me, smoking cigarettes, drinking our beer and happily playing with a measuring tape. At some point along the way I think he may have offered me a job on his boat when he launches it but I really am not at all sure about this. I do know that he is going to visit me when he comes to Australia, but I have no idea when this is might be. I just hope I’m out of the country at the time, crazy French bastard!
Speaking of people turning up, I think I mentioned in a previous letter, the Australian guy we met in the Galapagos who was so starved of fellow Aussies to talk to that when he latched on to us he let go with such a tirade about every aspect of his trip that after an hour I was suffering a severe case of the ‘let me out of here, nows’, hopefully without offending the guy to much. He spotted me the next day, as I waited impatiently for the laundry lady to open after lunch, (she finally turned up two hours after her advertised opening time) and picked up where he left off the day before, without missing a beat. After fifteen or so minutes of this, with my ‘last night ashore’ hangover throbbing away in concert with the heat haze, the noise finally got the better of me and I fled while he stopped to draw breath.
Sadly, he has just arrived in Papeete and is half a dozen boats down from me, although he hasn’t spotted us yet. So, I’m keeping my head down, in the somewhat forlorn hope that we can get out of town unscathed. God, imagine how much catching up he’ll have to do after 40 days at sea. (He’s on a really slow boat)
I guess there should be something in here about the local goings on but apart from black sand beaches and a one day drive around the island, which included a stop at Teahupoo, (pronounced chofoo) a beach on the south side of the island that Al tells me is a surfing Mecca with some of the biggest waves in the world, we haven’t really seen a hell of a lot. I think if you are into resorts and so on Tahiti would be okay and there are some terrific little bays around the island.
There was a firestick tossing competition in an amphitheatre just along from us last night which was quite good fun. And certainly some of the gunk holes and larger anchorages we drove past looked like they could do with some exploring if we had any cruising time available on the boat. But, it’s a delivery and so we work and repair and push on. I think I’ll definitely try to get back here to cruise the Tuamotus and some of the other more remote locations in French Polynesia. I do know I’ll be well stocked before we come coz Tahiti is bloody expensive. You can’t even buy duty free booze because the French Government say you might stop and drink it in an anchorage before you leave the country. Would we do something like that?
Gear box update (20th of June 06)
The parts arrived last week and still didn’t fix the problem, so we have bitten the bullet and have bought a new box from NZ. It arrived yesterday and the mechanics are currently trying to stuff it into a space the size of a pigmy’s bolt hole in the engine room. This has cost us another week and a half and the way things are going I could be naturalised by the time we manage to get out of here.
So, I’ll sign off now and send another letter from wherever we end up next, hopefully some way down the track. The passage from the Galapagos to the Marquises was about 3000 miles and took 18 days and the leg from there down to Tahiti another 800 miles and 4 and a half days. The boat continues to sail like a witch and we now hope to be home in 4 weeks. I anticipate we will be swinging by Tonga for a fuel top up and after that either Noumea or direct to Sydney depending on the weather forecast.
Cheers,
JB
25th June 06
Hi gang,
Well we finally managed to get out of Tahiti. The initial plan was for a four day stop over and it turned into four weeks. There was a real sense of déjà vu about the whole exercise; Antibes revisited. When the gear box parts finally arrived from Italy via Australia, we found that the gear box still wouldn’t perform and finally deciding to bite the bullet, we sourced a new gear box in NZ. This was a bigger, better, hydraulic gear box, designed for motors up to twice the size of our 120 horsepower Perkins, but with the same overall measurements, except for one.
This gear box turned out to be about 10 centimetres wider than the old box, which you will remember was a fairly critical fit in the hole it was slotted into behind the motor. Without dwelling on the point, when the French mechanic shook his head and claimed that there was no way he could get it into the hole, I simply grabbed a saw and began cutting. We had been in ‘France in the Pacific’ long enough and nothing as insignificant as a hole was going to stop me from leaving now. When the mechanic finally recovered from the shock of seeing the captain taking to the engine room with a saw he joined in with will and 10 minutes later the hole and the gear box were a perfect match. The next job was to bolt the gear box into place on the back of the engine.
Now I don’t know what it is about the French, perhaps they just have a great love for nice unassuming Aussies and don’t want to see them leave their fair shores, but this Frog, after trying unsuccessfully to bolt the gear box on to the back of the motor for about two hours shrugged his shoulders in typical Gallic acceptance of the impossibility of achieving the difficult and indicated that he couldn't unite the gear box with the engine.
Gently moving him to one side, I showed him how we do things like this when we are at sea. I suspect it was the calling on the appropriate deities one more time, or it may have been the tone, force and descriptive language with which they were summoned. Either way, the gear box slotted into place with a minimum of bad behaviour on its part and the only collateral damage was a slight ringing in the Frog’s ears. A couple of hours later we test ran the new system and finally declared the departure date to be the next day, Thursday the 21st of June. Our period of incarceration in Tahiti was finally at an end!
Now leaving Tahiti was a bitter sweet experience for Al and I. Getting out of ‘France in the Pacific’ held no remorse for us but the friendships that developed with our compatriots on the Keri Lee made casting off a sad day. KL’s Aussie captain Adam and his Kiwi first mate Jillie had, along with the rest of their crew, extended a huge amount of hospitality and friendship to us, making our stay in Papeete a memorable and special time. Adam gave Al plenty of work polishing stainless steel and Tess spent a morning cleaning the ship’s shotguns while she was in Papeete (Tess eventually had to fly back home, missing the sail to Tonga and Noumea, because of our delayed schedule).
Late night discussions on the nature of going to sea, motivating crew and other related topics which were brewed up by enquiring minds and oiled with cold beers have left us with many a fond memory. Every so often, for no particular reason, something delightful happens and the developing friendship with Adam and Jillie is testament to this. Thanks guys, the next one’s on me.
The forecast when we cast off was for 15 knot easterlies all the way to Tonga, our next port of call, which will principally be a fuel stop and maybe a night out away from the boat, and a swim in the Pacific. However, yesterday’s easterly turned into a 35 knot northwester followed by a softer, rainy south westerly change. The glass (slang for barometer), or in our case barograph, has accompanied the weather with some of the weirdest gyrations I've seen at sea.
After dropping about 4 points in two hours it then spiked and dropped 8 points in 5 minutes and an hour later did the same thing again, this time spiking 9 points. I suspected Al of playing games with me the first time but, twice in an hour made it conclusive; strange weather patterns in the western Pacific indeed. Meanwhile, the main is staying double reefed, the heads’l furled, the motor ticking over, the boat strapped down and bullet proof until the glass stops misbehaving! Perhaps I've been living in Tasmania for too long but this sort of unstable barometric pressure is enough to make my sphincter twitch.
The gear box continues to perform according to expectations and the boat systems are operating smoothly. Al is slowly becoming a fine seaman and Karl, a Frenchman, our third crew for this leg of the trip, (I told you the Frogs are hard to get away from) surfaces from his bunk to do a watch, before disappearing back into his cave. Al thinks Karl has even beaten his record for sleeping. Crossing an ocean as a first time sailing experience is probably not for the faint hearted but, what the hell. Poor old Karl is learning that a ‘technicolour yawn’ is not an Australian movie title.
28th of June
Well it’s a couple of days further into this leg of the adventure and sadly our resident Frog has decided it’s all too much. Karl has opted to jump ship and hop on the first available kerosene canary (plane) out of Tonga when we get there. This should be in two days time. We have 340 miles to go and are doing a little over 7 knots in a 15 knot easterly, with the motor ticking over and the heads’l rolled most of the way out. Sadly, the main is wrapped around the boom with a torn luff; just another little job to be done when we stop. I am actually pretty happy with the way it has held together thus far, given that the sails were condemned before we left France and we have managed to extract over ten thousand miles out of them since then, with only minimal sticky back and stitching along the way.
I am a touch concerned about the forecast. Bob from BOM is talking about 40 knot north westerlies on Friday in the area we are currently in but I am hoping we’ll be far enough west of this by then that we avoid the developing low he is talking about. We are in better condition than the guy I spoke to on the VHF last night. He was in a 30 footer with two storm heads’ls up and getting blown north west at six knots, unable to sleep and extremely concerned when I passed on Bob’s prediction. He must have finally dropped off because I couldn’t raise him on the radio this morning. But it doesn’t sound like he’s having much fun.
A few days later
Well, our concerns about the weather proved to be well placed. The easterly peaked at 50 knots before going into the north at 35 knots, then round to the west at 30 knots. The swell followed along behind resulting in a God awful sea and turning this leg into the worst passage of the entire voyage. We motored the last 15 hours to Tonga at an average speed of about 3 knots crashing through every other wave. Unfortunately 50 miles can be a very long way when it’s blowing from the wrong direction.
Tonga
Tonga has proven to be a highlight. The scenery is delightful, not unlike the D’entrecastreaux Channel, with a bit of heat and a few palm trees thrown in. The natives are charming and fortunately still amateurs at ripping you off. The customs officer, after enquiring as to what we drank on board and receiving the response that we were down to a few bottles of wine, promptly advised me that he and his friends from Immigration and Quarantine quite liked wine… this, along with the 20 Tongan dollar fee, the formula for which was $10 for the government and $10 for him, was the extent of the corruption we were exposed to. I suspect we could have avoided these erroneous fees if we had kicked up a fuss, but what the hell. Still, it heralds in a loss of innocence and sets the time frame for cruising to destinations that enjoy the untouched culture of places like Tonga on the notice board.
The Moorings charter company is operating a fairly significant facility in Va Vau and seem to be doing pretty well. They have 23 boats under charter here and are busy building further infrastructure.
We only had a couple of days in Tonga to refuel, clean and dry out the boat, stock up on some limited fresh vegies and enjoy the local Tongan hospitality. The first day in we were greeted with an invitation to enjoy a Tongan feast that night. Sadly the feast turned into a bit of deep fried chicken and a few other bits and pieces of largely indescribable and pretty much inedible food eaten while sitting on the floor in this guy’s cottage, with about 20 of the extended family looking on.
At the end of the ‘feast’ some guava was brewed up and sculled out of a wooden bowl by each of the dozen poor souls that had been conned into coming to dinner. All and sundry would shout out the tribal ceremonial toast ‘Unfartu’, and clap as the bowl was consumed. ‘Unfartu’ was obviously a call on the Tongan God of wind, the toast being designed to help the passage of the dinner on its way through our systems, because there sure was plenty of wind around as a result of that meal! But, you’ve gotta admire the guy’s entrepreneurial flare, even if his delivery was a little lacking.
The crew off Blythe Spirit, an Australian catamaran, were also guests at the ‘feast’ that night, and the skipper, Neville and his guys ended up joining us on board Helsal 4 for rums the next night. Neville had sailed from Sydney, around the top of Australia, through the Indian Ocean, around the bottom of South Africa and up to Panama, to finally head home through the Pacific. His trip has taken about twelve months and it sounds like a great extended cruise plan.
We spent our last night in Tonga anchored in an idyllic setting in a little bay; about 3 miles from the capital of Neiafu. The bay was very reminiscent of Barnes Bay in Tassie, with both Al and I commenting on the similarities. The next morning we tuned the rig, which needed some tweaking up after the storm coming into Tonga, checked over the hull, finished lashing everything down and cast off.
So, now we a day out of Tonga and bound for Noumea, dare I say, another but fortunately the last outpost of French ‘civilisation’ that I will have to suffer before getting home. Robbie and a mate of his ‘ JD’ are joining us there for the leg to Australia. With just Al and myself on board I am hoping for a really boring passage, and the forecast thus far is supporting this. We have about nine hundred miles to go to Noumea and light south easterlies predicted, so here’s hoping they hold. You don’t want too much excitement sailing short handed on a 62 footer, so this leg will be sailed pretty conservatively and hopefully in benign conditions.
Noumea on the horizon
Its now 0300 on Monday the 9th of July and Noumea is a mere fifty miles to the west of us. We should be making our landfall just after dawn and hope to be tying up around lunch time. The breeze has been generally pretty kind to us with light to moderate winds out of the eastern sector for most of the passage. Average daily runs have been around 170 to 180 miles and other than a couple of delightful sashimi meals landed via our new improved fishing line monitoring system (a line connecting the ship’s bell to the fishing line) life has been delightfully boring and unencumbered by catastrophes, minor or otherwise.
So, I’ll try and get this newsletter off while we are in Noumea and look forward to seeing every one soon. Australia is now only 7 days away and we should be tying up at the CYC in Rushcutters Bay in Sydney next Sunday for a day or so before the final leg to Hobart.
Cheers,
JB
PS: For my Sydneysider mates, give me a call on 0147 143 279 (satellite phone) or 0400 190 155 (mobile) to confirm when we will be in town if you want to come and have a beer.
Wednesday 12th of July 2006
Hi Guys,
Well, we are now on the final leg to Oz, next stop Sydney before a dash across
the Strait and finally, home. Funny as it seems, although this adventure has
taken us to some of the most exotic places in the world and the myriad of
experiences throughout the journey have been both wonderful and unforgettable,
home looms large on my horizon as a desirable destination.
We cast off from Noumea yesterday afternoon after the usual bureaucratic tooings
and frowings, clearing in through customs, immigration and quarantine then
clearing out again 20 hours later. Refuel, hose the salt off the deck, top up
the water tanks, patch up the mainsail one more time, tie down a spreader that
dropped a few inches on the last leg into Noumea, tweak up the rig a touch so it
doesn’t happen again; all the little things that only get noticed if you don’t
do them. Robbie Fisher and a mate of his, John Davis (JD), arrived in Noumea an
hour or so before us and with everyone setting to with a will, we managed to
cast off in less than a day after arriving.
When I mentioned to Rob that we were looking forward to them turning up he
laughed as he suggested that no one ever looked forward to the two of them
arriving anywhere together, and I soon found out why. Within five minutes of
stepping on they had kicked off with the ‘Sledging Championships of the World’
and nothing and no one was sacred. So, being a little partial to the odd bit of
Tom foolery (or is that Rob foolery or perhaps JD foolery) myself, the next few
days turned into quite an entertaining time for all, although Helsal 4 was no
place for the meek and mild during the passage to Oz. Fortunately their
yachting skills exceeded their capacity to be complimentary and thus at least
the boat was safe even if its occupants were in a constant state of mirthful
literary battle.
So, having not been in Noumea for long enough to form an impression, other than
to say it seemed cleaner and a little more sophisticated than many of the places
we have visited along the way, I haven’t really formed an opinion on the place
itself. It looked worthy of more attention than our cursory glance. Mind you,
take your groceries etc with you, they charge like the French, surprise,
surprise. But, yep they do it with a smile on their dials; nice people, at
least on the surface, for sure.
We are currently motor-sailing into a light south easterly in flat water with
the expectation of a freshening southerly breeze high on the agenda. Thus, we
are currently holding well into the south, with a possible landfall of Lord Howe
Island before we turn right for the run into Sydney, in a few days time.
Friday night
It’s about 2230 and I’ve just come on watch. We are doing 2 hours on and 6 hours
off on this leg of the journey; sheer luxury as they say in the classics, or was
that Monty Python? Whatever, it makes for an easy time of the watch-keeping
roster.
Sadly it’s been a rolly polly ride the last few days. We have had 30 knots of
breeze on the nose and a huge swell and a big lumpy cross-sea on top of it. A
couple of fronts passed through just to the south of us and judging by the size
of the waves they generated I’m glad we weren’t down there at the time.
Robbie is suffering a little from a combination of the flu and some diesel fumes
and JD, an ex 18 foot skiff sailor while also a little off colour, is enjoying
life on the Tasman Sea in Helsal 4. The diesel fumes don’t help. For some
strange reason when they built this boat the bilge pump outlet and the engine
exhausts were located alongside each other on the starboard quarter, about a
foot above the waterline. An upside down scoop or cover was then screwed over
the top of them. The result is that every time the hull lays over to starboard,
if the engine is running an air lock is formed and the exhaust fumes are forced
into the bilge via the bilge pump hose, naturally enough following the path of
least resistance. While the bilge pump hose does have a non-return valve it is
not 100 percent efficient and there is a constant insidious flow of diesel fumes
weeping up through the cabin sole into the saloon. The scoop’s days are numbered!
Much to my delight we have finally landed a tuna on this leg of the trip. My
fishing line ship’s bell system has been the butt of many a joke and those of
little faith have finally been made to eat their fish. The sushi doesn’t get
much fresher than this. We were in the process of re-pocketing a batten on the
mainsail when the bell went off and operations were temporarily suspended for a
dash to the sun deck to haul in what proved to be the biggest catch of the
voyage. A quick blade down each side of the backbone and two tuna fillets were
in the fridge.
The weather hasn’t improved with us finally copping a forecast off the NSW coast
for 40 knots on the nose. Discretion has overcome valour and we have decided to
make Newcastle our clearing in port for Australia while we wait for the worst of
it to blow through. Al has decided to go to uni starting in second semester
which has just started so he is going to jump off here and JD has to get back to
the office. It’s been a very slow passage taking six and a half days to travel
1050 miles and while this has been a little frustrating the joke cracking and
sledging that has gone on with Rob and JD, mates since their school days, has
made life a bit of fun along the way.
It’s very sad to say good bye to Al before we get the boat the whole way home,
but this is Australia and we have to get our next adventures underway. He has
completed a passage of 13,000 miles and has been an integral and irreplaceable
part of the team.
Newcastle is a major shipping port on the east coast and now also boasts a new
marina that caters pretty well for cruising yachts. It is setting up a super
yacht industry with more and more facilities being developed all the time. The
port entry is pretty straight forward other than dodging ships. We have just
entered at 0300 with a ship in company. The ship had a pilot flown aboard in a
helicopter with the whole operation being discussed over the VHF for our
entertainment. The ship then proceeded to overtake us as we made our final
approach, although we have managed not to get stuck in its teeth on the way through.
Now you really know you are home when the guy a few boats down from you in the
marina is not only an acquaintance but also someone you’ve been corresponding
with. Jeremy Firth and his good lady Penny, who are north bound in Rosinante
had, like us, ducked in to get out of the nasty big waves and as one would
expect we ended up sharing a rough red and a yarn while we waited out the blow
and dried out the boat. Firthy is the editor of the Tasmanian Yachtsman and is
going to run an editorialised version of these newsletters over a few issues of
the Yachtsman in the coming months.
On to Sydney
The next day Robbie and I headed south in an extremely unpleasant and very lumpy
sea in the left overs of the storm producing a 25 knot southerly breeze, which
of course was right on the nose. There were a couple of tugs sitting at the
entrance to Newcastle as we pulled out and Robbie mentioned the expression on
the tugboat Captain’s face as we sailed out of Newcastle Harbour was less than
encouraging. However, we have a schedule to keep and so off to sea we go.
10 hours later and Sydney Heads is our landfall, with a 2100 arrival time. It’s
been a squally rainy and basically bloody awful day’s sail and I am wondering
why I’m not following Firthy north instead of sailing further south into a
Tasmanian winter. But, Sydney has its consolations and being tied up at the CYC
marina with friends of both Robbie and mine coming down to welcome us home with
the odd tot of Bundy we soon managed to forget the cold and the rain.
Dave Behrens who had sailed the Eastern Pacific leg on Helsal 4 came down to the
CYC to dine with us that night and it was terrific to catch up with him and
exchange stories about the boat and the adventure. Dave is planning a round
Pacific cruise soon so with a little luck I may be sending you a new set of
stories in the next year or so from his beautifully appointed Hylas 54.
Sydney to Hobart
It’s now 0100 on Monday the 24th of July and my last night at sea. Tasmania, or
more specifically Bicheno, is 20 miles west of us, Tasman Island is 100 miles
south and we expect to be tied up at the RYCT tomorrow night, having completed
the journey from Antibes in France in five and a half months plus a couple of
months preparation thrown in for good measure. While we have been in transit
the standard comment when talking to Robbie along the way has been that there
are only so many Sydney to Hobarts left to go, the 630 mile passage being a
fairly standard measure for a couple of old Sydney Hobart salts like us.
(Robbie has done 13 and I’m currently on 11)
Now however, there is not even one Sydney Hobart left before we get home and
it’s a little emotional thinking I’ll be sleeping in my own bed tomorrow night.
Helsal 4 has been home for over half a year and has carried Al and me well over
half way around the world in that time.
We cast off from Sydney on Friday after a huge session at the CYC on Thursday
which kicked off at midday and ran for twelve hours straight. This included
drinks and talk with some long term friends and acquaintances at the CYC
including Dick Bearman, Don Mickleborough, Bob Ross and a bunch of other Sydney
Hobart cronies whose stories get larger as the years and the bundy slowly age us
all.
The Sydney joggle we stepped out into was not particularly conducive to smooth
sailing with the cold front that had come through two days before leaving that
nasty slop we refer to as the Sydney joggle. It was bad enough to role the ice
out of your bundy and coke. Rob has had a couple of his mates from Hobart join
the boat and at one stage we were not sure if Danny and Mark would survive the
experience. Fortunately they found their sea legs in time to enjoy the roast
beef I cooked for dinner tonight, although I think that bleeding the tuna that
came aboard yesterday might have set Danny’s recovery back a little. (The tuna
didn’t like it much either. It is going to be lunch today; sushied seafood.)
Bass Strait was as calm as I have seen it in over 40 crossings, with our passage
coinciding with a huge high pressure system that has moved in from the west as
we motor sailed down the NSW coast. This has been part of the plan and while
getting waylaid at the CYC was part of the down side of waiting for the weather
it has definitely been the right call for a Strait crossing. I really didn’t
want to be coming across Bass Strait mid winter in a blow after all the miles
we’ve done in Helsal 4.
As this will be the last newsletter I’m going to be sending I’d like to thank
every one for their comments and correspondence over the last six months. Since
leaving Australia Al and I have made landfalls in 10 different countries, met
hundreds of people from all manner of cultural and ethnic backgrounds, made a
number of new friends, seen some sights we will never see again, (and maybe one
or two we never want to see again), and had a number of once in a lifetime
experiences. We have sailed 13000 miles, crossed two oceans and three seas,
sailed through two winters, crossed the Greenwich meridian, the International
Dateline and the equator.
We’ve done a single passage of over 3800 miles (from the Galapagos Islands to
the Marquises), battled our way through a number of storms with winds peaking at
over 50 knots or 100 kilometres and hour where the only backup has been each
other, the other crew and the boat itself.
So, the highlights That’s easy. The camaraderie and friendships we have had
with the people that have joined the boat, particularly Jim, Dave, Ralph, JD and
Robbie who made sailing long miles a joy and helped turn problems into
challenges and opportunities to have some fun. Thanks guys, it’s been terrific.
It's New Years Day 2006 and I am in Antibes in the south of France. I'm here to pick up a Dynamique 62 yacht for the Fisher family of Helsal fame and who are now living in Hobart. I arrived about three weeks ago and carried out an inspection of the yacht which was at that stage sitting on the hard in a little place just outside Marseilles called Port Saint Louis, commonly referred to by the locals as the a…hole of the world. Port Saint Louis is cold and barren and cops the wind from all over France as it funnels down through the Rhone valley. The boat inspection revealed a number of minor problems, mainly related to the condition of the yacht which has been languishing for the past year or so and has had little maintenance in the past few years.
However, it was pretty obvious that underneath the layers of neglect there was a magnificent yacht crying out to be re-floated. So, I headed back to Antibes where the broker, Yves Le Cos, is based and also where I intend to prepare the yacht for its passage to Australia. The deal had to be renegotiated with an adjustment to the price and about four days later we returned with every intention of putting her back in the water and sailing the 130 nautical miles to Antibes. There were a few more problems, pointed out by the surveyor we had commissioned to check over the boat.
By this time Alex (my 17 year old son) had flown in from Hobart and everyone was knocking off for Christmas, so, with a third offer on the table, Al and I headed off into the French Alps for a bit of skiing. Antibes, only two hours drive from the snow, is the most fantastic place even in the middle of winter, although it is a little cold at this time of the year. Fortunately the sun shines a lot of the time, managing to melt the ice on deck by mid morning. Antibes is a medieval village, retaining much of its ancient charm, full of wonderful little streets, many of which are too narrow for cars although this doesn't seem to stop the Frogs from driving up and down them.
The Frogs themselves are also mostly lovely people, although like everywhere you come across the occasional P…. that can spoil your day if you let him. So, as far as Antibes goes, I highly recommend it for a visit, the combination of antiquity, friendliness and the shear wealth of the rich here is a mind numbing combination. The super yachts are racked up by the hundred, literally! Multi million dollar boats are the norm rather than the exception.
But; I digress. Al and I headed up into the St Ettienne valley and the snow spending three wonder days alternating between getting up mountains on one or another of 17 operating ski tows, and getting down the mountain any way we could. Fortunately at the end of it all no bones were broken and Christmas day was spent on the piste as the frogs call the ski slopes and the après skiing was sent on the p….
So, back to Antibes and Yves who had by now managed to get our third and hopefully final offer on the boat accepted. We packed up the car with sailing gear, the boat's old skipper, Yves' dog (a bloody great big something or other) and drove the 250 kilometers to the boat for a third time, determined to put to sea come hell or high water. We spent most of the day getting the boat started and figuring out what worked (not much) and what didn't (most stuff). About 1700 that evening we actually cast off and motored the half mile to the local marina where we intended to spend the night before casting off for Antibes the next day.
A mate of mine, Karen Fraser, an ex resident of Antibes now living in Hobart had decided to spend a couple of weeks in France and flew into Marseilles joining the boat that night, the plan being for her to do the sail around to Antibes with us the next day. After some last minute mucking about, which included being taken on a high speed joy ride round the streets of Port St Louis by a mad local cop in search of some oil for the main engine, we finally disengaged ourselves from land and headed down the bay helped along by a 40 knot northerly, with a little staysail on and the engine ticking over, trundling along at about 9 knots, which was the speed we ended up averaging for the entire 130 mile trip around to Antibes.
This turned into the coldest night's sailing I have ever done. The temperature on the way to Port St Louis the previous day, according the car's thermometer, was minus six and since then it had snowed in Paris, so by my reckoning it was about minus 10 degrees with a 40-knot chill factor thrown in for good measure. Speaking of the wind, we reckon the breeze peaked at about 45 knots or so during the gusts. The standard 'on deck' gear was pants, thermals, two sets of wet weather gear and a grin frozen into place for the duration of the watch, which, sadly, had to be done at the wheel, as the auto-pilot was not yet in working order. It was so cold, the toothpaste froze in the tube.
The boat handled the conditions magnificently and with every mile that slipped under our keel I became more and more comfortable with the yacht and its integrity for the long passage to Australia. Rob had left it to me to make the call on whether or not we should proceed with the deal so it was good to feel how well the boat behaved at sea. She is going to do some charter work in Tassie as well as be the Fisher family yacht so it is doubly important that the yacht is both seaworthy and sea kindly.
We are now tied up in Antibes with a New Years day hangover slowly working its way out of my system and three or four weeks work in front of us to get the boat ready to cross a couple of oceans. We are coming home via the Panama Canal, Tahiti and a few other stops along the way, hoping to be back in Tassie by the end of April. Meanwhile, Merry Christmas and Happy New year everyone! Look forward to seeing you all in April 2006.
Cheers,
JB
Leaving Antibes
05/02/2006
Hi every one,
It’s the end of January and we are a few days from getting out of France. It is beginning to feel a little like ‘Leaving Las Vegas’ and not because of the alcohol consumption so much as French apathy to working to a deadline. I guess I shouldn't complain and they are certainly delightful, charming people, but it seems that French Government attitude towards taxation has driven all incentive out of the business community.
Standard response to any missed deadline or an outrageous price quoted for a product or service is simply a very Gallic shrug of the shoulders and a wave of the hands, accompanied by down turned lips and a very expressive “It is impossible!” On the very rare occasion that anything does happen according to plan, the mouth turns up, the shoulders reverse their usual shrug of non compliance, a huge smile creases the face and we get a delighted “Normally, it is perfect!” which is French English for anything and everything that goes well.
Truth be known, very little has been perfect but, hey, we are in the South of France and about to cast off on what should be a fascinating voyage home in a boat that is coming together beautifully and is feeling more and more like the magnificent cruiser she was built as.
A typical example of the frustrations we have faced was one company quoting us $3000 to pull the rig out of the boat and another one five miles away offering to do the same job for $800. This type of erratic business behavior, coupled with strange local customs, such as no one trading on Sundays, leaves us scratching our heads at how they ever made G7 status, but hey; what would a simple yachty know?
Rob Fisher flew in for 10 days to help get the boat ready, destroying a few sets of clothes degreasing the boat while he was here and generally putting things in order. His departure in a kerosene canary today was a sad loss. It wasn't all toil while he was in Antibes but there wasn’t much time for idling.
Rob managed to get out of Antibes without starting world war three, although it was touch and go for a minute or two. The neighbor downwind of us didn’t like the fiberglass dust emanating from a little upgrading job being done on Helsal 4 and decided to lob (or perhaps he was just returning) one of our used sanding disks at Rob. Fortunately he was a lousy shot and Rob’s attempt to teach him a few Australian words (get f_____) seemed to get lost in the translation, but it was all good fun and after all, the first shot (disk) was fired by the Frog.
So, the boat is now re-powered with new gel batteries and charger, (she has over 600 amperes of 24 volt battery power charged by either a 6.5 KVA generator or the main engine, a 120 horsepower Perkins, to run the various systems), all new electronics, and when the rig goes back in the boat on Wednesday, new standing rigging. She has been scrubbed back to the fiberglass and, if boats could speak, she would be starting to purr.
It would be remiss of me in the extreme not to mention the invaluable help and friendship extended us by a number of the locals, including a few expat Aussies, an Irishman , (Pete, not Paddy) and a salty old Canadian, Dale, who is, I suspect, just a little younger than me.
Nicholas Dulauroy, the surveyor, has been delightfully helpful, friendly, professional and long suffering extended his services well beyond the expected. Mat, a young Australian guy running the 25 meter luxury motor yacht next door, on the opposite side to the missile throwing Frog, has been a wealth of information and the good oil on how to avoid the pitfalls of Antibes tradesman. Irish Pete, for his advice and assistance with things navigational and computer oriented (which I most definitely am not). And Dale, the Canadian with salt water running in his veins, was a wealth of local knowledge and good contacts, even finding Laid Back Paul for us, Laid Back Paul is the Pommy electrician that finally gave us a good price and did a great job installing the new electrical system. And finally, Kathy the Pommy barmaid from Le Gaffe, the local pub, who I nearly but not quite, managed to shanghai for the trip to OZ. Thanks guys, love yas all.
Alex and I are being joined by my mate Jimmy McCormack on Wednesday for the first leg to Trinidad and 2 English girls have signed on for the trip across the Atlantic. Corrie has just completed a Clipper Round the World race and is keen to cross another ocean so she’s obviously nuts and should fit in very well, and Kate who is looking for a passage to Oz and wants to rack up a few more miles to attach to her Offshore Yacht Master’s ticket.
Its pouring with rain, blowing a gale, the temperature climbed slightly above zero today, but not much, and we’re about 2 weeks behind schedule, but “c’est la vie!” or whatever it is that the Frogs say. I’m starting to think about passage issues instead of boat issues which augers well for getting under way.
Tomorrow morning we are heading up to St Laurent du Var (about 6 miles up the coast) to slip the boat to install new rudder bearings, replace a few suspect skin fittings and put the rig back in. We’ll be testing the new autopilot computer and chart plotter in transit and making sure everything is ‘ship shape in Bristol fashion’ as the Poms would say. Then hopefully, we toss a little tucker on board and get on down the track to Gibraltar, where Kate is joining the boat, do the big shop for ‘crossing the pond’, jam a little more fuel on board and kick off into the Atlantic. (Oh, and hopefully we will have email access through the sat phone in transit.)
See you all in a few months
Cheers,
JB
The Med, Gibraltar and the Canaries
08/03/2006
Hi again All,
We finally got out of France and headed down to Majorca, intending to swing by the Spanish Island made famous in Oz as Skase’ys last retreat, although we had no intention of stopping there to kick over his remains. The breeze built and continued to build to about 30 knots with the occasional bullet coming through, and a very uncomfortable cross sea. This area of the Med is the Gulf De Lyon and is notorious for uncomfortable conditions. It is the part of the Med where that breeze from the Rhone Valley that I mentioned earlier ends up after its done a number on Port St Louis.. Then just as things started to ease up and get a little civilized we sprung a substantial leak around the propeller shaft; very disconcerting to say the least. This resulted in an immediate shut down of the engine and a fair amount of duct tape to stem the flow, (never leave home without your duct tape) and a 60 mile sail back to Majorca for repairs.
Now the Majorcans are generally a laid back bunch with a smile and a helping hand readily offered, but sadly they were taught how to charge by the French and the stop over took 11 days and quite a few bucks. The workmanship replacing the propeller bearing and repairing the skeg was excellent although 11 days unscheduled stop did cause some problems with our program.
We did take a little time to look around the island and sadly Corrie received a job offer back in pommie land that was too good to refuse. Kate hopped on a plane and flew in from Gibraltar, although I’m sure she raised an eye brow when she initially tried to find a bus to Majorca. So, with the schedule in tatters and the skeg and stuffing box repaired we finally got out of Majorca and headed down the Spanish coast. The first night out the forecast 25 knots turned into 50 knots testing our ability to reef a mainsail in a blow, and causing significant damage to the auto pilot.
Now while we were wandering along the Spanish coast the starboard main spreader shifted. This could quite easily have resulted in the rig falling over the side; potentially very upsetting. Fortunately we spotted the problem and relocated the spreader with a spare halyard and a strop before a little problem became a large one.
So, the stop in Gibraltar (after a couple of days hand steering the yacht, aided by a length of shock cord) meant that we enjoyed a few days drying things out and finishing off the French riggers rather less than brilliant job.
Now, it might sound a little like a tale of woe, but the reality is that we are sailing a yacht around the world and I have expected to have things fail when put under pressure for the first time in years. So, hopefully as I write this now sitting in the Canary Islands the boat has had all the systems operating for long enough to find out what is up to scratch and what needs to be replaced.
In the run from Gibraltar to the Canaries we have found a problem with the top rudder bearing. While the bearing had been replaced in Antibes the shaft itself had also worn. Thus while replacing the bearing solved the symptoms it hadn’t fixed the cause of the problem. So, on arriving here we were confronted with the issue of having to pull the rudder out of the boat. Well, as I have now had the boat slipped three times in two months I really didn’t want to go through the process again, and slept on the issue.
The next morning we decided that with a little ingenuity we would be able to drop the rudder out of the boat without needing to pull the boat out of the water, and have attached a photo to show how we managed to achieve this. The rudder itself weighs about 300 kilos and floats with about neutral buoyancy, so once we had it out of the boat the way to get it to the haul out area was simply to float it there, past a couple of mega yachts that were in the way.
Needless to say, the exercise generated a fair amount of interest and lots of fun was had by all in the process. Hopefully the rudder repairs will be completed by Tuesday and we should be bound for Trinidad on the easterly trade winds by the middle of the week. I can’t tell you anything much about Las Palmas, other than the fact that it is Carnival week and crews do strange things at carnival time, like staying out until dawn (or even later). Kate has decided to leave the boat. I think chronic seasickness may have been a significant factor in her thinking, so at this point we are three for the trip to Trinidad.
Bye for now.
JB
The Atlantic
30/03/2006 (Six days later)
Hi again guys,
We are now at latitude 20 degrees north longitude 33 west which is where we have been told to expect to pick up the Trade winds, about 900 miles south west of the Canaries. There is currently little breeze and a typical Atlantic swell which is long and low and rolling down from the north-west. Given that we are heading south west this means that the swell is on our beam and to put it politely, bloody uncomfortable, particularly for driving a computer.
We have been swimming off the back of the boat for the past few days, this giving us not only respite from the slowly increasing heat but also supplying a daily bath without using too much of our fresh water, just enough to wash off the salt.
Trinidad
05/04/2006
Hi again guys,
The Atlantic crossing was a great trip with following breezes from nothing to about 25 knots but mainly 8 to 15 knots from the east. It took us 17 days to cover 2900 miles which included three or four days motoring.
The highlights of the passage were a pod of pilot whales swimming with the boat, Jimmy received a visitor in the form of a flying fish coming through the saloon hatch in the middle of a night watch and the next night I was hit in the ribs by one of his mates (another flying fish that is); scared the living daylights out of me.
Trinidad’s crime rate makes Al Capone’s reign of terror look like kindergarten and as a result we were restricted largely to the compound we were tied up in. This is an area of Trinidad called Chagauramas that has half a dozen marinas and a hotel and also includes a number of yacht repair facilities. Trinidad is outside the hurricane belt and thus a number of people leave their boats there for the windy season. It is not, however a place I would recommend as a tourist destination.
While the scenery can be spectacular the level of racism against whites coupled with the violence leaves it a place best read about rather than visited. While we were there the murder toll went from under 100 to 118. Al and I were involved in an altercation with another car which started with the rear vision mirror of our hire car being clipped by another guy and nearly ended up in disaster. However we did a quick exit stage right and live to tell the tale, albeit somewhat reluctant to leave the compound again.
However, every cloud, as they say, and our benefits from Trinidad were twofold. We met a couple of people who have since become a part of the adventure. The first was Adam Lambert, an Australian yachtie, who was transiting through Trinidad skippering a 35 metre super yacht and I’ll tell you more about him later.
The other guy we met was a Canadian, Ralph Nelson, who is married to a Trini girl and lives on his yacht in the Chaguarmamas marina. Ralph ended up showing us around a few of the sights in Trinidad, including the inside of the local brothel. This was at the insistence of another guy we met, Hugo, who was also hanging around Trinidad looking for a deal to get into.
Now Hugo is from Scandinavia and is what is commonly referred to as a Scandahooligan! Suffice to say we fairly quickly figured this out and decided to put a little distance between us and Hugo. We also managed to get out of the brothel unscathed after just one beer with our chastity and our necks intact…but only just!
Just a little background info on the area. Colombia, just down the road from Trinidad, is the drugs capital of this part of the world and as such attracts all sorts of interesting people. There was a yacht which sailed into Trinidad from Colombia while we were there, on it’s way to Europe with another couple of ‘Scandahooligans’ on board. Now one might think “Well, what’s so strange about that?”
The point is, it is senseless to sail dead to windward from Colombia to Trinidad if you are bound for Europe, unless you are looking for the least chance of getting accosted by the law in transit and you also want to clear the Caribbean from a port other than Colombia; much more sensible to make for or one of the other more northerly, and civilized (read law abiding) ports such as St Martins. These guys were also mates of Hugo whom we suspect may have been orchestrating a few deals of the drug kind, using Trinidad as a base and yachts bound for Europe as a vehicle for delivery. So, sorry Hugo, the gang plank is up; no borders allowed, but it was interesting knowing you.
Anyway, the reason we called into Trinidad was to drop off Jim and pick up a new auto pilot ram as the old one, after a number of repairs finally died at sea a few days out of Trinidad, meaning we had to steer for the last few hundred miles, with the aid of the old faithful piece of shock cord tied to the wheel. This boat is so well balanced that on most points of sail in most breezes it was quite easy to set up self steering in this way. The ram finally arrived, a new, bigger and much better version of the old one and after another day or so in the lazarette doing the installation we were fairly close to getting out of Trinidad.
Just before we left I tried the Simrad chart plotter only to find it had failed. This caused me a little consternation as the chart plotter is my primary navigation aid and had been installed brand new in France two months previously. Much to our delight the Simrad US people were right on the ball and while they couldn’t get a replacement to us prior to our departure from Trinidad they guaranteed to have a new one waiting in Panama. This being arranged we packed up the boat, bought an extra 800 litres of fuel, stored in 44 gallon drums lashed to the deck, rigged a backup navigation system (one of the hand held GPSs plugged into one of the laptops on board, installed with c-maps) and set off for Panama. Ralph was now included in the crew with the promise of an airfare home from Panama or Tahiti, his final destination dependant on the good graces of his wife.
Cheers,
JB
Panama and into the Pacific
28/04/2006
Well, shell shocked is probably the best way to start this email. We left Panama a couple of days ago after having had the most amazing experience, but I guess to put things in order I’d best start where I left off last time. First of all the reason for the erratic nature of these newsletters is a combination of very difficult physical circumstances eg the heat, access to email facilities etc and the fact that there is always so much to do on the boat coupled with there being so much to see and experience if there is any time to spare. This passage is something which one would normally undertake over a one or more likely two year period, so to jam a ‘round the world’ trip into a little over four months and find time to talk about is logistically problematic, to say the east, but enough with the excuses.
So, after a week of shore based confinement in the Trinidad marina compound, coupled with a few days work installing the auto pilot ram, we were finally away and looking forward to a pleasant down wind sail to Panama, some twelve hundred odd miles to leeward. Sadly, or maybe happily (it could have happened in a worse place) , three hours out of Trinidad the spline on the gear box output shaft stripped itself, which in layman’s terms, means we were without a gear box, or any way of driving the boat other than to sail. Bugger!!
After some consideration and an assessment of the options we decided the best plan was to keep going, giving the Colombian coast a wide berth, some 70 to 100 miles, and make straight for Panama. (Just as an aside, one of the Caribbean cruising books comments that anyone who goes cruising in Colombia has a death wish, although many people dispute this) The result was that we made the passage to Panama in six and a half days, averaging 195 miles a day under sail. In comparative terms our Atlantic crossing average was 165 miles a day, so the current and the easy sailing in a steady 15 knot easterly showed us the reason that the Caribbean has such a good reputation with yachties. Needless to say, I am also becoming more and more enchanted by the sailing performance of Helsal 4.
Now having made the decision to continue, we were also faced with the dilemma of how to fix the gear box. After all of the previous hassles we have faced in Europe, particularly in France, we were not looking forward to trying to get the gear box fixed in Panama as it would necessarily require tradesmen. So, we adopted a two stage plan. The first was to try to source parts either from Australia or at least through Australia, keeping in mind that the next weekend was Easter and that I had another friend, Dave Behrens flying out from Sydney to join us, so accessing parts through Sydney using Dave as the courier may have been a possibility. The second stage of the plan was that we had to work out exactly what was wrong with the gearbox so we could order the parts ahead of arriving in Panama.
Both components of this plan turned up interesting results. The first was Robbie Fisher finding out that the Tasmanian agent for the gear box, a Hurth product, was Taylor Brothers, one of the better engineering works in Tasmania with Phil Taylor as our contact. This was a huge relief as we now had someone on side who we could relate to in Australian terms and who I also knew would make sure we got the right results.
Phil and I spent hours on the phone going back and forth till he finally tracked down the parts in Italy, through the Sydney based Australian distributor, and arranged to have a Panamanian agent get them in for us. To give you an indication of the problems we faced with this process, the sequence was more or less as follows:
- What parts do we require?
- Where are they?
- After a search around the country, not in Australia.
- The gear box model is no longer being made.
- Can we have the drawings and Phil will manufacture the parts.
- No!
- The parts are suddenly available in Italy.
- Can they send them straight to Panama?
- No, because under company agency agreements (or company policy) they will not supply parts to one country for another country. Keep in mind they first pushed pretty hard to sell us another gear box.
- Find a distributor in Panama.
- Arrange prepayment because the distributor won’t order the parts until he has been paid.
- Arrange freight (almost as much as the cost of the parts.
- Get the parts delivered to our shipping agent in Panama otherwise customs will hold them up for weeks.
- Have the parts installed.
Meanwhile; concurrently, the second stage of the plan;
Ralph and I decide we could pull the gear box out in transit to identify the parts, but sadly the hole we have to access the gear box through is only 40 centimeters wide and a metre down into the bilge, so a pigmy with anorexia would be handy, but unavailable.
We finally sacrificed one of the boat pillows using this as a cushion, to lie on top of the motor. Thus with legs braced outside the engine room, head down, butt up and thirty degrees of heat, the gear box was uninstalled over a couple of days, hauled out (sideways) of its black hole and then disassembled on the cabin sole. After having noted the parts required, an output shaft, coupling, shims and a few other bits and pieces, we felt that it might just be possible to put the box back together and actually make it work.
So, 20 stainless steel split pins were cut up and jammed into the spline, setting the coupling back into its original position and the whole thing sealed with a makeshift quarter inch thick rubber washer adding a little extra grab. Sitting back after having completed this little re-build and with ‘pleased as punch’ smiles on our faces we came to the realisation that it had to be reinstalled on the back of the motor. Not a job for the feint hearted, especially while rolling around under sail in 15 knots of breeze at sea. It’s also worth mentioning that while this was going on we are sailing a 62 foot yacht on a passage, three handed and in pirate infested waters, so serious watch keeping was required.
Anyway, enough with the histrionics. We lowered the gear box into place, suspended from a stainless steel tube which was in turn hung from a piece of wiring fed through a bolt hole in the deckhead, the net result being that the gear box was controlled pretty much like a puppet on a string, allowing us to adjust its angle, so that the gear box input shaft could be lined up with the back of the motor. After a little pushing and shoving and some calling on the help of the various Gods of the sea and a few other deities, the shaft slid home and was bolted into place.
A short test run and Ralph declared it capable of getting us all the way to Oz! My own reaction was slightly less positive, not being prepared to trust the repaired box going through the Panama Canal with all the incumbent fines and towage fees etc if we broke down in transit, but feeling pretty happy, none the less, that we had managed to pull off this rebuild at sea. In due course, we sailed in to San Cristobel, the Atlantic entrance to Panama and gently motored the last hundred yards into the marina under our own steam, smiles beaming off our faces at the gear box holding together and having saved the cost of a tow.
Now I’ll finish off the gear box story before going on with the Panama experience because it is worth noting in the context of all the work that a number of Australians put into helping in comparison to the treatment we received by other so called professionals. The Panamanian distributor, the Fishermen’s Holding Company, after demanding payment up front for the parts then arrived at the boat and tried to get the job to pull out the gear box, telling us that it was a very difficult job but that at considerable expense, they were capable of doing it. When we set them straight on this point and told them we just needed the parts installed in the gear box, as this required tools we didn’t have, they then promised us a quote and assured me it would not be much, i.e. a couple of hundred dollars.
In due course and with no quote in hand when they advised the installing the parts in the gear box would take two days and required all sorts of complicated equipment I jumped in the car (the car is another story I’ll get to shortly) and boofed it into the agent’s workshop, telling him I would be there in a few hours time. Low and behold, when we arrived the job was completed and all the bunkum they had carried on about the complexity of the job was exposed for what it was; crap!
However, in the end they still charged us $500 US for 2 hours work plus a couple of hours to deliver the box, so my advice to anyone from Australia going through Panama as well as my advice to Hurth, the gear box manufacturer, is to stay well away from the Fishermen’s Holding Company in Panama. In my opinion, they are thieves.
One final note on the gear box. Phil Taylor did a terrific job along with the Sydney distributor in facilitating the parts being delivered to Panama. These guys could show the rest of the world a thing or two about how to do the job properly. Thanks fellas.
San Cristobel & Panama City.
Having arrived in San Cristobel, the Atlantic entry port to Panama we contacted our shipping agent, Peter Stevens from Delfino Maritime who arranged for Roberto, a local guide/taxi driver/bodyguard to look after us. We engaged Roberto’s services for the following week. At a cost of $10 US per hour including his car we decided that this was a safer bet than driving ourselves around as we had done in Trinidad. Given that Roberto usually had a hand gun in his glove box and knew not only all the right people but was also on very good terms with all the wrong people and was guaranteed by our agent I felt fairly safe in his hands.
Without trying to overstate the dangers of Panama a couple of examples of the local scene are worthwhile telling. We had Roberto take us to a local restaurant the first night in after telling him we wanted to experience Panamanian food in an authentic local restaurant. He took us, naturally enough, to a friend’s place, but advised us on the way that when we pulled up outside we were to get out of the car and go straight inside without stopping. Once there we would be safe. He was going off to do another job and would be back later. While he was gone we were not to leave the restaurant under any circumstances. We followed his instructions to the letter, having a great meal and the best fish soup I’ve ever had, for a cost of about $5. The street kids swarmed around us both in the 3 meter dash from the car to the restaurant and back to the car afterwards. Robert told us later these kids carried guns and were part of a gang that ruled the streets. It gives the expression street kids a whole new perspective.
The second example is in the name of a suburb in Panama city. It English translation is “live through the night if you can.”
Robert became a good friend and I think after most of the clients he was used to, mixing with a couple of easy going Australians might have been a breath of fresh air for him. Through this guy we managed to see a lot more of the local culture in relative safety than we could possibly have seen any other way, and given that we had a fair amount of tooing and frowing to do, getting gear for the boat, he was a very worthwhile investment.
In the few weeks prior to our arrival 5 separate instances of yachties being attacked had been reported. Yet due to Robert’s presence we at no stage felt unsafe. Peter Stevens, our shipping agent also delivered great service, getting us through the canal with a pilot and just 24 hours notice from us as to when we would be ready to go with the repaired gear box, at a total cost of $1900 US including all fees and a pilot. This is in comparison to many of the other yachties trying to get through on the cheap being held up for weeks and paying up to $3000 to get through. So, if you are ever going to transit the Canal, contact Peter Stevens and he’ll look after you well. Tell him Bourkey sent you. Peter doesn’t advertise and word of mouth keeps him flat out and with no chance of retiring soon.
The rest of the week in San Cristobel, including a couple of drives to Panama City about an hour and a half away, was full on and we were joined by Dave Beherens in the middle of it all. Sadly Ralph’s family situation didn’t allow him to stay with us to Tahiti and following the transit of the canal he flew home to Trinidad.
I mentioned Adam Lambert earlier. Adam runs a thirty five meter super yacht for a Queensland guy and he turned up in Panama a few days after us waiting to do the transit as well. Now the transit requires four line handlers and Adam kindly took Al along as one of his, having arranged his transit a couple of days earlier than us, while we continued to work on the gear box, so Al managed to do two Canal transits, the first on a super yacht and the second on Helsal 4.
So, the transit itself. We cast off from the Panama yacht club about 1830 on Thursday night and collected our pilot from the pick up station a couple of hours later. We then moved into the first lock about 2 miles down the track. There was a ship in front of us and a 40 foot yacht rafted up to each side of us before we entered the lock. One of these was skippered by a guy from Allonah on Bruny Island in Southern Tasmania. Small world!
So, with the two yachts tied to us we motored into the lock behind the ship, me with a big smile on my face at these two big fenders now attached to Helsal 4. The gates closed behind us and the lock, about 1000 meters long and 30 metres wide, filled with water lifting us some 15 odd meters. We had secured a line to each side of the lock, both for and aft, off my new outriggers, and were held in place by these as the water rose. In this way we transitted three locks before finally anchoring at the lakes about midnight. The GPS read 41 meters above sea level, probably a one off for Helsal 4.
The next morning a new pilot joined us for the rest of the trip, which included a 20 mile lake crossing, through channels that ran over the top of what had once been the railway track through the area before being flooded to create the canal.
Then three locks to get back down to sea level and a slight altercation with the pilot, who wanted me to steam out of the last lock at full revs with the other two boats still attached while he tried concurrently to get the springs removed from between the boats. Well, in spite of the fact that he had done this “200 times” he wasn’t doing it to Helsal while I was skippering the boat and the result was that he relinquished command and sat in a huff for the last few miles of the passage. Tough, Pal!
Panama city was just an overnight stop in a very expensive new marina ‘Flemingos’ for a fuel up and a last night out with our friends off the superyacht. Since then we have been traveling to the Galapagos which is now about 8 miles away and requiring my attention so adios dear friends (or whatever the term is in Spanish) I’ll try to email this from the Galapagos and send the next note from Tahiti or somewhere closer to home.
Cheers,
JB
PS We were ‘attacked’ by pirates yesterday, and fended them off with the offer of a packet of cigarettes; in reality, local opportunistic fishermen in an open dinghy with a high powered outboard on the back about 200 miles from land, although they were pretty persistent . Go figure!
PPS Half an hour later we were buzzed by a helicopter gunship with no markings on it. We talked to a guy with a Yankee accent on the VHF and while he was very polite he wouldn’t identify their nationality other than to say they were military, doing patrols in the area We discussed the ‘pirates’ and I suspect he knew a little more than he was letting on.
PPPS We crossed the line at 0600 this morning and are now not only in our own ocean (the Pacific) but also in our own hemisphere!!!! YES!
C ya.
JB
Hi gang,
This letter comes from the deep Pacific. And it doesn’t really get much deeper. We left the Galapagos about five or six days ago and we are now 1300 miles from South America, 900 miles from the Galapagos and a little less than three thousand miles from Tahiti. I have been further from land at different times but given that we are looking at another 18 days before we expect to see anyone again it is a fairly isolated place to be, certainly psychologically. So, the plan is to play everything safe and make sure we don’t damage either boat or people because there is no back up down here, just us. Oh, Easter Island is somewhere a long way south of us as well.
We docked at Academy bay on Santa Cruz Island, the main centre of the Galapagos Islands. After a five minute meeting with our shipping agent Ricardo, conducted on a street corner, entailing a hand over of ship’s papers, passports and agreement on charges and fees, we were free to roam for the next 10 days. This was the only customs and immigration bureaucracy we had to deal with. There has been some discussion about differing fees on the islands so here is the current position. We paid $220 US for the entry visa, another $35 odd in port charges, based on the gross tonnage of the boat, 27 tonnes, and $80 US for the agent. This gave us access to Santa Cruz and another of the main islands, Isabella. We would have been required to hire guides and pay a lot more to cruise and or go ashore on the other islands, but as we only had a couple of days we contented ourselves with this one stop over.
The island has about 2000 inhabitants, principally of Ecuadorian extract, with a very few ex-pats thrown in and a very refreshing lack of animosity (particularly after Trinidad and Panama) towards visiting yachties of European descent. The atmosphere is that of a South American village where the locals make their living out of selling trinkets and food to the visiting cruise ship passengers. Taxis cost $1 to any where, which is of course very cheap (keeping in mind that anywhere is only about a mile or so away at best any how).
The trinkets were a combination of the standard Chinese made copies of turtles, tortoises, iguanas etc but interspersed with genuine South American rugs, clothing and so on. This is in comparison to the ‘free zone’ we visited in San Cristobel in Panama which was a duty free area about four of five city blocks in size, located in a walled off section of the town. The zone was pretty well exclusively for cruise ship passengers, who were required to show passports and after considerable time spent in queues, fill out endless forms detailing their purchases etc. Robert our driver’s solution to short circuit this procedure was a $5 note tucked into the front page of one of our passports handed to the security guys for inspection on entry. Robert suggested that we see if we could spot the security guy palm the note as he checked the passport. Needless to say it was a pretty slick manoeuvre. The San Cristobel free zone was extremely cheap for some products. I tried to buy a dozen Hang Ten tee shirts for $5 US each but the store had a stock take underway and nothing would convince them to part with the goods. Weird aye. But, I digress.
Santa Cruz has a quite well developed, albeit rustic, tourist industry, although we contented ourselves with a free tour of the Charles Darwin Institute and a wander round the village precinct, bumping into the odd iguana, a plethora of bird life and a few giant tortoises, turtles and other local fauna that on the whole either paid us little attention or seemed content at least to share their space with us. (see the latest photos http://au.pg.photos.yahoo.com/ph/oceanyachtsman/my_photos) The turtle was spotted from our Zodiac dinghy, along with a number of other local aquatic fauna, including a few seals.
Our time on the island was only a couple of days and I would love to return and spend some weeks really exploring the place. However, this trip allowed only a cursory leaf through the local delights and included a few seafood meals, some interaction with the locals and a lengthy and slow refuelling and rewatering with 40 and 60 litre drums of fuel and water being ferried out to the yacht in a water taxi. This job, spread over two days, ended up taking a considerable amount of time as we were taking on board about 1000 litres of diesel for our next passage. Sadly, some of the diesel was dirty although we managed to avoid the worst of this, having been forewarned and thus forearmed in Panama. We bought some fine gauze mesh and a funnel in Panama and used this to filter the fuel into the tank, thus hopefully saving some wear and tear on our main filters. We also have a number of water bleeding mechanisms in the fuel system so we should be okay. (I‘ve since had to change one of our generator fuel filters which was chocker block full of crap, so we didn’t come away entirely unscathed.)
The drinking water comes from a desalination plant on the island and tastes drinkable, so we pumped it straight in our main tanks against the advice in some of the cruising guides. Unfortunately, water has progressively worsened and we are now drinking bottled water. It appears the guides were right.
(I’ve just been interrupted to go and fillet another fish hauled in over the back of the sundeck, just a little dorado, which we seem to catch at a rate of about one each day or so. While they taste okay, either sushimied or fried, we are getting a little choosy now and have our culinary hearts set on a tuna.)
Some days later
It’s now 10 days since we left the Galapagos and I can list the notable events since we cast off on one hand. We had a seabird land on the sundeck one evening and after offering him a beer (see photos) we struck up a bit of a conversation and decided to let him stay for a while. Sometime later I found he’d ill treated our kind hospitality by crapping all over the sun deck and, to add insult to injury, he had a go at me when I tried to clean it off with a bucket of water. Needless to say, the bucket quickly became a weapon of ill intent, and the bird was last seen shaking his head in disbelief, floating off in the distance in the sure knowledge that a seabird is no match for a grumpy yacht skipper wielding a water bucket.
An item high on our list of priorities has been to get the anchor winch working again. We decided to draw up a wiring diagram in an effort to work out why the winch had ceased to operate half way through hauling the stern anchor we had set in the bay in Santa Cruz. After a couple of hours of trouble shooting it eventuated that a 60 amp fuse hidden down behind the circuit board had blown and with no spares on board we would be left without any easy means of anchor retrieval when we get to our next stop, at this stage planned to be the northern end of the Tuamotu Archipelago a little east of Tahiti, famous for the Muraroa atoll nuclear testing by the French in the last decade or so. After little doctoring with a small nut and bolt the damaged fuse is now operational and we have power to the winch again, at least enough, I hope, to keep us out of trouble until Papeete.
In one other catastrophe we have lost the two fishing lures which have held us in such good stead across the Atlantic Ocean and the Caribbean. Nothing a reworked split pin can’t fix, I’ve decided. So with the largest of our spare split pins sharpened with the grinder then teased into shape with a pair of pliers and wrapped in some red plastic shopping bag and a little insulation tape I am now waiting to find out if I’ve missed my calling in life and perhaps should have been a master lure maker! Somehow, (and still waiting for a bite two days later) I suspect I’d best not give up my day job.
Finally, we spotted a ship today, a car carrier heading northwest from South America; our first sighting of civilisation in ten days. We had a short chat to him on the VHF as he cut across our stern, bound for Korea.
So, here we are, now flying a spinnaker and no mainsail in 6 to 8 knots of breeze and making about 5 knots of boat speed. It’s a weird rig, and as I’ve mentioned to Dave, if anyone had told me before we cast off from Antibes that I’d be flying this rig configuration on an ocean delivery I’d have laughed. However, as we proved in the Atlantic, in less than 10 knots of wind on the quarter it is just about the only way to keep the boat moving without wearing out the sails through the constant popping caused by the boat role. This is because, with no main up, there is no blanket effect on the kite from the mainsail allowing the spinnaker to work most efficiently, which in turn dampens the role on the boat.
Ocean sailing is very different to the coastal sailing most of us are used to, the psychology of long passages being quite unlike any other sailing experience. First there is a routine; we rarely get more than five hours sleep in one hit and it is usually less than that, so the body takes a while to pick up a rhythm that doesn’t seem natural, getting the day’s sleep quotient in two or three stints instead of one. Then there is the fact that we a long way from anywhere or any back up. It suddenly puts Dave’s cracked ribs (caused in a minor fall a few days into the passage) or my loose filling in a different light. Not much we can do about either except to be very careful not to aggravate the damage further. You also try to be careful about each other’s space and their privacy.
This boat has three major assets, the people on board, and offending any of the three has the potential to cause significant damage, not only to the quality of the trip but also to the safety of the boat. It’s not the easiest task at times, particularly given the filial sparks that fly as sons mature into manhood and fathers grudgingly give ground. Still, as they say in the classics… “If it doesn't kill you…” (not that I need any more character thanks.)
Cooking also becomes a challenge. None of us are adepts in the galley and as the fresh vegetables available in the Galapagos were less than mouth-watering we are now down to canned and frozen food, so meals such as chicken mornay, flavoured with pineapple in ‘sweet n zesty’ mustard challenge stir fried canned muck for culinary supremacy.
However the backgammon championship continues (four three to the old man at this stage, although Al has stopped taking my advice and is now beginning to gain on me. Bugger!) as do the ongoing discussions about which novel is worth reading next, and on another level, what plans we are all making for the future, the meaning of life and other light hearted discussions. Meanwhile, the miles gently flow by and the Pacific yields warm sunny days with gentle south easterly breezes as we log 150 to 200 mile days bound for French Polynesia and our next adventure, and the nights make for picture book sailing with the spinnaker sucking us along a silver pathway towards a moon that promises to be full in a few nights time.
These nocturnal meanderings have been disturbed by the occasional late night raucous laughter brought on by the crew’s intermittent attempts to rid the yacht of a case of Myers Jamaican dark rum in the usual way, before Robbie joins the boat in Noumea. Rob has suggested that Jamaican rum couldn't possibly match Bundaburg for taste and drinking enjoyment and Dave, being the gentleman and scholar that he is, has volunteered to lead the charge in ridding the boat of this West Indian curse. Whilst I can’t condone the consumption of alcohol on board it would be churlish of me in the extreme to allow the crew to suffer the results of the dark Jamaican curse without attempting to share the burden. (Dave has informed me since the night in question that he did not once physically touch the rum bottle and that all intake was brought about at the insistent and overly generous hand of his skipper. As my own recollection of the evening is vague I bow to his superior memory.)
One other interesting observation before I leave the Galapagos Islands; our gps position as shown on the chart plotter when we were at anchor in the bay in Santa Cruz was over 350 metres or .2 of a nautical mile from our location according to the chart. Another Australian yacht in the bay at the time also showed this anomaly with his navigation equipment. While this is undoubtedly a chart error rather than a gps error it certainly supports reports that charts in the Pacific are unreliable when used with a gps. Food for thought as we head into an ocean that is home to more coral reefs and islands than any other in the world.
A brief stop in the Marquises
Its now the 21st of May and we have just had a few days in Hiva Oa, the main island in the Southern Marquises. Sadly our passage making deteriorated along with the wind. The first week out of the Galapagos we sailed 1300 miles, the second week 1000 and the last four days has been full time motoring, the 3000 odd miles to the Marquises taking 18 days in total. The last four days saw the end of our fuel and thus a diversion to the Marquises became a requirement. The guide books don’t write up Hiva Oa all that well as an anchorage or a place to get provisions and fuel etc, and unfortunately they were right in this instance.
The village on Hiva Oa is situated in a bay on the southern side of the island, exposed to the swell generated by the trade winds. There is an inner bay behind a 60 meter long breakwater which is subject to swell and overcrowding by cruising yachts and an outer bay which has more space and correspondingly more swell. Being the largest vessel in the bay pretty well guaranteed that we were going to be relegated to anchor outside which was fine, as Helsal 4 sits well in the water with a minimum of fuss, but refueling proved to be a bureaucratic and logistical pain in the proverbial. Duty free fuel was available subject to having clearance papers filled in, then processed by our shipping agent in Papeete, and in turn faxed back to the fuel depot. This was pretty relevant as the price differential was over $500 AUD for the 1000 litres of fuel we needed. The gendarmerie or local police doubled as the immigration office, but only on Monday Wednesday and Friday mornings. Naturally we arrived just after midday on the Wednesday, thus were stuck with a two day wait.
This was complicated by the fact that the fuel berth was a mere six feet wide and subject to quite a strong surge, complicated by each side of the dock being armed with rather large, jagged and quite yacht unfriendly looking boulders. Thus the trick was to reverse Helsal into the berth, dropping the anchor about thirty meters out and getting a couple of stern lines ashore; all this in a fairly significant cross breeze. Not much fun, particularly when having completed the manoeuvre (known as Mediterranean berthing, because that’s the way they do it in the Med) we were told the papers hadn't arrived and we couldn't have the fuel duty free. I rather grumpily moved out into the bay and re-anchored while Dave and Al went off to track down the documentation in the local town.
While all this was going on I had made a prior arrangement with a local French diver to change our feathering Max Prop over for a fixed blade cruising propeller and this job was carried out with the aid of a bucket held under the prop to catch all the bits. Eric, the diver (or ploungeure as they say in French) did a terrific job, not losing a single part to the deep; a not inconsiderable feat as anyone who has disassembled a max prop under water will attest to.
So, with the documentation eventually sorted out we again backed into the fuel dock, after waiting patiently for a local motor boat that had slotted in in front of us as we were completing our turn for the final approach. Finally, walking up the ramp to the fuel shop, I was advised that I had to come back at 2pm as the fuel depot closed at noon for lunch. Here was a lesson in island time. It was only 11.45 and I wasn’t in any mood to leave the boat surging within a few feet of damaging its rudder while the locals had their siesta. Strangely, offers to pay extra were refused but the woman finally succumbed to my pleas and we cast off from the Marquises about 12.30, a tonne of fuel heavier.
The Marquises consist of volcanic islands which are quite spectacular as the photo gallery attests, the almost vertical hills blanketed in rich vegetation interspersed with raw, jagged cliff faces that look like a base jumper’s dream. The local village life would possibly have been enchanting had we not been on a schedule to get to Papeete and sadly Hiva Oa is the wrong place for a man on a mission. My 16 year old daughter Tess is joining Helsal in Papeete (770 miles from Hiva Oa) and we are racing against time to get there before she arrives. This will require an average boat speed in excess of 8 knots for the passage, achievable but only with a fair wind. The 15 knot south easterly we are currently enjoying has us on track with 450 miles and two and a half days to go, but its going to be a close call.
See you soon,
JB
Hello Ha or what ever it is they say here in Tahiti. (Actually it’s Bonjour. It’s a French colony) We are in the centre of Papeete and tied up to a major highway full of four door utilities with hi tech fibreglass canoes with outriggers lashed down on roof racks. They tell me that if you have this rig in Tahiti you are the king. There seem to be plenty of them cruising past so maybe the royal family has lots of rellies. In any event there sure are a lot of cars here and they all drive past us every day.
But, to where I left off last time. We had a few days’ sailing and a strict schedule to get to Tahiti if we were to meet Tess when she arrived. Sadly the gear box failed again, a clutch problem this time, just outside of the Marquises, and I suspect that perhaps we should have replaced the gear box in Panama instead of doing the repair job we did then. However, twenty twenty hindsight can leave a slightly bitter taste so I’ll move right along.
In the last couple of days we made some pretty good average mileages running into some spectacular rain storms along the way. These introduced a few weird and wonderful meteorological phenomena. We would be sailing along in a twenty knot easterly at nine to nine and a half knots and then get overtaken by a rain storm so thick I would take a shower on deck. After twenty minutes or so the rain would drop out, the breeze would go up in the air and then we would then get hit by ten knot westerlies, blowing from the direction that the rain storm had just gone. Absolutely weird, although I guess in reality this was caused by a void behind the fast moving squall.
Ten or fifteen minutes later we would be in fresh easterlies again and other than having our average boat speed mucked up, both boat and crew would be very clean from the wash and none the worse for wear. Our approach to Papeete was from the north east, around the top of the main island of Tahiti with about a ten mile run down the northwest coast to Papeete. This became a bit of a concern as we were approaching the north coast in the twilight and would be making our port entry in darkness, two hours after sunset, without a motor and in a very fresh easterly breeze.
With a mountainous volcanic island like Tahiti, the breeze naturally bent around the top of the island and freshened so that we ended up running down an unknown coast after dark in 25 to 30 northerly looking for the leads for the port entry through a gap in the reef about 100 meters wide, all this using electronic charts which I had previously assessed as being inaccurate in this part of the Pacific in relation to their GPS positioning. (See the Galapagos story)
Slightly nerve racking, particularly given that if we missed the entrance it would mean a hard beat back to windward for a second approach, and that we were right on time, with no margin for error, to meet Tess with both her and us having an ETA of 8 pm, leaving no time for mucking around. Fortunately the entrance was well marked and the charts, while being out by about 50 meters, were close enough to get us into the harbour.
So, after running down the coast at eight to ten knots for the last two miles, about 200 meters off the break water, waiting for the entrance to open up, the leads finally came into line and we did a fairly tightly executed exit stage left, sailing through the reef into Papeete under full main with no headsail up, then beating back up into the main harbour area in flat water with about 25 knots of breeze on the nose. Again, Helsal 4 showed her true sailing ability pointing high into the wind and with plenty of steerage as she slowed to about three knots and we coasted into the yacht anchorage.
Dave ran out the anchor and Al simultaneously dropped the main as we came to a stop 35 meters off the wharf. As we lay back on our anchor with the moored yachts tied to the wharf Mediterranean style (anchor out and stern to the dock) on our starboard beam, a very accommodating young guy rowed out in a dinghy to take our stern line. We used this to winch our bum into the dock, ran a few extra mooring lines ashore and the job was done, just as Tess turned up in a taxi. There you go. The best laid plans of mice and men occasionally come to fruition, although not without a sigh of relief and few well earned beers at the end of it all.
So, life in Tahiti, the gear box first of all. I had contacted Phil Taylor, back in Tassie, again, to find out who the local agent for Hurth gear boxes was, while also arranging for our Papeete shipping agent to organise a mechanic to come to work on the gear box the next day. With the box stripped down and the offending parts identified we contacted the local Hurth agent only to be told by him that he had no idea that he was the Hurth agent!
At this juncture it became obvious that it would be quicker and safer to source the parts through Australia and so we were faced with the same Hurth bureaucratic bunkum that had occurred in Panama. They would not send the parts direct to Tahiti for the Australian agent, rather, having to send them to Sydney and then forward them on from there. This has resulted in a two week turn around time (so far) and caused huge problems, completely destroying my delivery schedule, already in tatters after the last Hurth trauma in Panama.
Papeete itself is a drop off/pick up point for people holidaying around Tahiti and the surrounding islands of Boa Bora, Moorea and the Tuamotu archipelago. Papeete has developed the quaint French habits of long lunch hours, public holidays to die for (if you don’t want anything done) and boy do they know how to charge! Well, on this last point, naturally they are good at charging, the French taught them. Way back in the first letter I made a comment about the French tax system and one morning last week, what looked suspiciously like a protest march against taxation paraded past our back door; surprise, surprise.
Yet they are a pleasant well natured people, mainly Polynesian with a smattering of French and Chinese thrown in. The local histories tell stories of cannibalism up until western civilisation kicked in a few hundred years ago and looking at the size of some of the locals they are still being well fed on something or other. Apparently some racism does exist but we haven’t really been exposed to this. The days have been made up of boat maintenance, changing filters, repairing pumps, cleaning bilges and the hull and so on, and the occasional swim at a local beach.
The Australian super yacht, Keri Lee mentioned in previous letters, turned up a day or so after we arrived and Al has put in a couple of days polishing stainless steel for them. He then did a few days’ work on a French catamaran which is apparently the largest sailing cat in the world. My own life here has consisted of a few interesting stories one of which the kids have dubbed
‘The Crazy French Bastard’
When Hurve the mechanic went off with the gear box, in order to identify the catalogue numbers for the parts he needed, he contacted a local Frenchman who owns a sister ship to Helsal 4. Apparently this guy had the appropriate Hurth parts manual. The next thing I know, this rather large, round, jovial, enthusiastic Frenchman turned up at Helsal 4, armed with a briefcase full of Dynamique 62 information, a tape measure, a camera and no English whatsoever. Oh, he did bring Michelle, a French mate of his, who knew how to say ‘hi’ and ‘goodbye’ in English. Terrific!
So, after two or three hours of machinegun French I ascertained that he wanted to give me all the information he had gleaned about the design over the past ten years as well as the grand tour of his own nearly renovated boat, the renovation of which has also being going on for the past ten years. In addition to this he had taken 42 colour glossy photographs of just about everything that opened and shut on board and given me a severe ear ache in the process.
Early one morning a few days later he arrived back at Helsal 4 , dragging us out of bed and pouring us into his four wheel drive for a tour of his Dynamique 62, some ten minutes drive away. The next two hour inspection included a French litany of everything that was good and bad about the boat, the design, the designer, the builder, with probably a few home truths on Tahiti thrown in as well. Of course I didn’t have the foggiest idea what any of his thoughts, ideas, summations and ponderings were, because my French vocab extends to about three words. But with neither of us wishing to appear ungrateful or stupid, lots of nodding of heads, smiling and studious intelligent sounding uhmming and ahhing went on, with the occasional word that seemed to make sense to both of us being jumped on with some amount of glee by all parties.
“Whew, he was definitely hard work.” I ruminated to Tess a few days later as we were on our way to a hardware store in search of a part for a bilge pump, when I was nearly totalled by a ‘crazy French bastard’ driving his 4 wheel drive up over the curb in what Tess thought at the time was a serious and deliberate attempt to run me down. But the ‘crazy French bastard’ turned out to be none other the Daniel of the Dynamique, full of more documents, samples and a fascination for what we were doing wandering along the road in the industrial zone of Papeete. Somewhat reluctantly I showed him the bearing we were trying to replace and that was the last of our leisurely morning walk thrown out the window.
Daniel packed us into his 4 wheel drive and haired off into the denizens of the industrial zone, eventually pulling up at a workshop full of Frogs. Half an hour of gesticulating, nudging, winking, some hammering of the offending part and lots of hand shakes and we were off again, this time across town, through a traffic jam. (every one in Tahiti has at least one car) and into an SKF warehouse, to finally locate the bearing we were looking for.
Then after a polite refusal to have lunch with him at the local French naval base which I was told would go on until 4 o’clock (this was translated for us by a 20 stone Tahitian guy who joined in the discussion about the bearing while we were in the SKF warehouse. All dialogue in Tahiti seems to turn into a group discussion if there are more than two people in the room)
Daniel finally dropped us back to the boat with a promise of another visit soon. That day has now arrived and he is currently sitting in the cock pit, surrounded by more documents with photocopies for me, smoking cigarettes, drinking our beer and happily playing with a measuring tape. At some point along the way I think he may have offered me a job on his boat when he launches it but I really am not at all sure about this. I do know that he is going to visit me when he comes to Australia, but I have no idea when this is might be. I just hope I’m out of the country at the time, crazy French bastard!
Speaking of people turning up, I think I mentioned in a previous letter, the Australian guy we met in the Galapagos who was so starved of fellow Aussies to talk to that when he latched on to us he let go with such a tirade about every aspect of his trip that after an hour I was suffering a severe case of the ‘let me out of here, nows’, hopefully without offending the guy to much. He spotted me the next day, as I waited impatiently for the laundry lady to open after lunch, (she finally turned up two hours after her advertised opening time) and picked up where he left off the day before, without missing a beat. After fifteen or so minutes of this, with my ‘last night ashore’ hangover throbbing away in concert with the heat haze, the noise finally got the better of me and I fled while he stopped to draw breath.
Sadly, he has just arrived in Papeete and is half a dozen boats down from me, although he hasn’t spotted us yet. So, I’m keeping my head down, in the somewhat forlorn hope that we can get out of town unscathed. God, imagine how much catching up he’ll have to do after 40 days at sea. (He’s on a really slow boat)
I guess there should be something in here about the local goings on but apart from black sand beaches and a one day drive around the island, which included a stop at Teahupoo, (pronounced chofoo) a beach on the south side of the island that Al tells me is a surfing Mecca with some of the biggest waves in the world, we haven’t really seen a hell of a lot. I think if you are into resorts and so on Tahiti would be okay and there are some terrific little bays around the island.
There was a firestick tossing competition in an amphitheatre just along from us last night which was quite good fun. And certainly some of the gunk holes and larger anchorages we drove past looked like they could do with some exploring if we had any cruising time available on the boat. But, it’s a delivery and so we work and repair and push on. I think I’ll definitely try to get back here to cruise the Tuamotus and some of the other more remote locations in French Polynesia. I do know I’ll be well stocked before we come coz Tahiti is bloody expensive. You can’t even buy duty free booze because the French Government say you might stop and drink it in an anchorage before you leave the country. Would we do something like that?
Gear box update (20th of June 06)
The parts arrived last week and still didn’t fix the problem, so we have bitten the bullet and have bought a new box from NZ. It arrived yesterday and the mechanics are currently trying to stuff it into a space the size of a pigmy’s bolt hole in the engine room. This has cost us another week and a half and the way things are going I could be naturalised by the time we manage to get out of here.
So, I’ll sign off now and send another letter from wherever we end up next, hopefully some way down the track. The passage from the Galapagos to the Marquises was about 3000 miles and took 18 days and the leg from there down to Tahiti another 800 miles and 4 and a half days. The boat continues to sail like a witch and we now hope to be home in 4 weeks. I anticipate we will be swinging by Tonga for a fuel top up and after that either Noumea or direct to Sydney depending on the weather forecast.
Cheers,
JB
25th June 06
Hi gang,
Well we finally managed to get out of Tahiti. The initial plan was for a four day stop over and it turned into four weeks. There was a real sense of déjà vu about the whole exercise; Antibes revisited. When the gear box parts finally arrived from Italy via Australia, we found that the gear box still wouldn’t perform and finally deciding to bite the bullet, we sourced a new gear box in NZ. This was a bigger, better, hydraulic gear box, designed for motors up to twice the size of our 120 horsepower Perkins, but with the same overall measurements, except for one.
This gear box turned out to be about 10 centimetres wider than the old box, which you will remember was a fairly critical fit in the hole it was slotted into behind the motor. Without dwelling on the point, when the French mechanic shook his head and claimed that there was no way he could get it into the hole, I simply grabbed a saw and began cutting. We had been in ‘France in the Pacific’ long enough and nothing as insignificant as a hole was going to stop me from leaving now. When the mechanic finally recovered from the shock of seeing the captain taking to the engine room with a saw he joined in with will and 10 minutes later the hole and the gear box were a perfect match. The next job was to bolt the gear box into place on the back of the engine.
Now I don’t know what it is about the French, perhaps they just have a great love for nice unassuming Aussies and don’t want to see them leave their fair shores, but this Frog, after trying unsuccessfully to bolt the gear box on to the back of the motor for about two hours shrugged his shoulders in typical Gallic acceptance of the impossibility of achieving the difficult and indicated that he couldn't unite the gear box with the engine.
Gently moving him to one side, I showed him how we do things like this when we are at sea. I suspect it was the calling on the appropriate deities one more time, or it may have been the tone, force and descriptive language with which they were summoned. Either way, the gear box slotted into place with a minimum of bad behaviour on its part and the only collateral damage was a slight ringing in the Frog’s ears. A couple of hours later we test ran the new system and finally declared the departure date to be the next day, Thursday the 21st of June. Our period of incarceration in Tahiti was finally at an end!
Now leaving Tahiti was a bitter sweet experience for Al and I. Getting out of ‘France in the Pacific’ held no remorse for us but the friendships that developed with our compatriots on the Keri Lee made casting off a sad day. KL’s Aussie captain Adam and his Kiwi first mate Jillie had, along with the rest of their crew, extended a huge amount of hospitality and friendship to us, making our stay in Papeete a memorable and special time. Adam gave Al plenty of work polishing stainless steel and Tess spent a morning cleaning the ship’s shotguns while she was in Papeete (Tess eventually had to fly back home, missing the sail to Tonga and Noumea, because of our delayed schedule).
Late night discussions on the nature of going to sea, motivating crew and other related topics which were brewed up by enquiring minds and oiled with cold beers have left us with many a fond memory. Every so often, for no particular reason, something delightful happens and the developing friendship with Adam and Jillie is testament to this. Thanks guys, the next one’s on me.
The forecast when we cast off was for 15 knot easterlies all the way to Tonga, our next port of call, which will principally be a fuel stop and maybe a night out away from the boat, and a swim in the Pacific. However, yesterday’s easterly turned into a 35 knot northwester followed by a softer, rainy south westerly change. The glass (slang for barometer), or in our case barograph, has accompanied the weather with some of the weirdest gyrations I've seen at sea.
After dropping about 4 points in two hours it then spiked and dropped 8 points in 5 minutes and an hour later did the same thing again, this time spiking 9 points. I suspected Al of playing games with me the first time but, twice in an hour made it conclusive; strange weather patterns in the western Pacific indeed. Meanwhile, the main is staying double reefed, the heads’l furled, the motor ticking over, the boat strapped down and bullet proof until the glass stops misbehaving! Perhaps I've been living in Tasmania for too long but this sort of unstable barometric pressure is enough to make my sphincter twitch.
The gear box continues to perform according to expectations and the boat systems are operating smoothly. Al is slowly becoming a fine seaman and Karl, a Frenchman, our third crew for this leg of the trip, (I told you the Frogs are hard to get away from) surfaces from his bunk to do a watch, before disappearing back into his cave. Al thinks Karl has even beaten his record for sleeping. Crossing an ocean as a first time sailing experience is probably not for the faint hearted but, what the hell. Poor old Karl is learning that a ‘technicolour yawn’ is not an Australian movie title.
28th of June
Well it’s a couple of days further into this leg of the adventure and sadly our resident Frog has decided it’s all too much. Karl has opted to jump ship and hop on the first available kerosene canary (plane) out of Tonga when we get there. This should be in two days time. We have 340 miles to go and are doing a little over 7 knots in a 15 knot easterly, with the motor ticking over and the heads’l rolled most of the way out. Sadly, the main is wrapped around the boom with a torn luff; just another little job to be done when we stop. I am actually pretty happy with the way it has held together thus far, given that the sails were condemned before we left France and we have managed to extract over ten thousand miles out of them since then, with only minimal sticky back and stitching along the way.
I am a touch concerned about the forecast. Bob from BOM is talking about 40 knot north westerlies on Friday in the area we are currently in but I am hoping we’ll be far enough west of this by then that we avoid the developing low he is talking about. We are in better condition than the guy I spoke to on the VHF last night. He was in a 30 footer with two storm heads’ls up and getting blown north west at six knots, unable to sleep and extremely concerned when I passed on Bob’s prediction. He must have finally dropped off because I couldn’t raise him on the radio this morning. But it doesn’t sound like he’s having much fun.
A few days later
Well, our concerns about the weather proved to be well placed. The easterly peaked at 50 knots before going into the north at 35 knots, then round to the west at 30 knots. The swell followed along behind resulting in a God awful sea and turning this leg into the worst passage of the entire voyage. We motored the last 15 hours to Tonga at an average speed of about 3 knots crashing through every other wave. Unfortunately 50 miles can be a very long way when it’s blowing from the wrong direction.
Tonga
Tonga has proven to be a highlight. The scenery is delightful, not unlike the D’entrecastreaux Channel, with a bit of heat and a few palm trees thrown in. The natives are charming and fortunately still amateurs at ripping you off. The customs officer, after enquiring as to what we drank on board and receiving the response that we were down to a few bottles of wine, promptly advised me that he and his friends from Immigration and Quarantine quite liked wine… this, along with the 20 Tongan dollar fee, the formula for which was $10 for the government and $10 for him, was the extent of the corruption we were exposed to. I suspect we could have avoided these erroneous fees if we had kicked up a fuss, but what the hell. Still, it heralds in a loss of innocence and sets the time frame for cruising to destinations that enjoy the untouched culture of places like Tonga on the notice board.
The Moorings charter company is operating a fairly significant facility in Va Vau and seem to be doing pretty well. They have 23 boats under charter here and are busy building further infrastructure.
We only had a couple of days in Tonga to refuel, clean and dry out the boat, stock up on some limited fresh vegies and enjoy the local Tongan hospitality. The first day in we were greeted with an invitation to enjoy a Tongan feast that night. Sadly the feast turned into a bit of deep fried chicken and a few other bits and pieces of largely indescribable and pretty much inedible food eaten while sitting on the floor in this guy’s cottage, with about 20 of the extended family looking on.
At the end of the ‘feast’ some guava was brewed up and sculled out of a wooden bowl by each of the dozen poor souls that had been conned into coming to dinner. All and sundry would shout out the tribal ceremonial toast ‘Unfartu’, and clap as the bowl was consumed. ‘Unfartu’ was obviously a call on the Tongan God of wind, the toast being designed to help the passage of the dinner on its way through our systems, because there sure was plenty of wind around as a result of that meal! But, you’ve gotta admire the guy’s entrepreneurial flare, even if his delivery was a little lacking.
The crew off Blythe Spirit, an Australian catamaran, were also guests at the ‘feast’ that night, and the skipper, Neville and his guys ended up joining us on board Helsal 4 for rums the next night. Neville had sailed from Sydney, around the top of Australia, through the Indian Ocean, around the bottom of South Africa and up to Panama, to finally head home through the Pacific. His trip has taken about twelve months and it sounds like a great extended cruise plan.
We spent our last night in Tonga anchored in an idyllic setting in a little bay; about 3 miles from the capital of Neiafu. The bay was very reminiscent of Barnes Bay in Tassie, with both Al and I commenting on the similarities. The next morning we tuned the rig, which needed some tweaking up after the storm coming into Tonga, checked over the hull, finished lashing everything down and cast off.
So, now we a day out of Tonga and bound for Noumea, dare I say, another but fortunately the last outpost of French ‘civilisation’ that I will have to suffer before getting home. Robbie and a mate of his ‘ JD’ are joining us there for the leg to Australia. With just Al and myself on board I am hoping for a really boring passage, and the forecast thus far is supporting this. We have about nine hundred miles to go to Noumea and light south easterlies predicted, so here’s hoping they hold. You don’t want too much excitement sailing short handed on a 62 footer, so this leg will be sailed pretty conservatively and hopefully in benign conditions.
Noumea on the horizon
Its now 0300 on Monday the 9th of July and Noumea is a mere fifty miles to the west of us. We should be making our landfall just after dawn and hope to be tying up around lunch time. The breeze has been generally pretty kind to us with light to moderate winds out of the eastern sector for most of the passage. Average daily runs have been around 170 to 180 miles and other than a couple of delightful sashimi meals landed via our new improved fishing line monitoring system (a line connecting the ship’s bell to the fishing line) life has been delightfully boring and unencumbered by catastrophes, minor or otherwise.
So, I’ll try and get this newsletter off while we are in Noumea and look forward to seeing every one soon. Australia is now only 7 days away and we should be tying up at the CYC in Rushcutters Bay in Sydney next Sunday for a day or so before the final leg to Hobart.
Cheers,
JB
PS: For my Sydneysider mates, give me a call on 0147 143 279 (satellite phone) or 0400 190 155 (mobile) to confirm when we will be in town if you want to come and have a beer.
Wednesday 12th of July 2006
Hi Guys,
Well, we are now on the final leg to Oz, next stop Sydney before a dash across
the Strait and finally, home. Funny as it seems, although this adventure has
taken us to some of the most exotic places in the world and the myriad of
experiences throughout the journey have been both wonderful and unforgettable,
home looms large on my horizon as a desirable destination.
We cast off from Noumea yesterday afternoon after the usual bureaucratic tooings
and frowings, clearing in through customs, immigration and quarantine then
clearing out again 20 hours later. Refuel, hose the salt off the deck, top up
the water tanks, patch up the mainsail one more time, tie down a spreader that
dropped a few inches on the last leg into Noumea, tweak up the rig a touch so it
doesn’t happen again; all the little things that only get noticed if you don’t
do them. Robbie Fisher and a mate of his, John Davis (JD), arrived in Noumea an
hour or so before us and with everyone setting to with a will, we managed to
cast off in less than a day after arriving.
When I mentioned to Rob that we were looking forward to them turning up he
laughed as he suggested that no one ever looked forward to the two of them
arriving anywhere together, and I soon found out why. Within five minutes of
stepping on they had kicked off with the ‘Sledging Championships of the World’
and nothing and no one was sacred. So, being a little partial to the odd bit of
Tom foolery (or is that Rob foolery or perhaps JD foolery) myself, the next few
days turned into quite an entertaining time for all, although Helsal 4 was no
place for the meek and mild during the passage to Oz. Fortunately their
yachting skills exceeded their capacity to be complimentary and thus at least
the boat was safe even if its occupants were in a constant state of mirthful
literary battle.
So, having not been in Noumea for long enough to form an impression, other than
to say it seemed cleaner and a little more sophisticated than many of the places
we have visited along the way, I haven’t really formed an opinion on the place
itself. It looked worthy of more attention than our cursory glance. Mind you,
take your groceries etc with you, they charge like the French, surprise,
surprise. But, yep they do it with a smile on their dials; nice people, at
least on the surface, for sure.
We are currently motor-sailing into a light south easterly in flat water with
the expectation of a freshening southerly breeze high on the agenda. Thus, we
are currently holding well into the south, with a possible landfall of Lord Howe
Island before we turn right for the run into Sydney, in a few days time.
Friday night
It’s about 2230 and I’ve just come on watch. We are doing 2 hours on and 6 hours
off on this leg of the journey; sheer luxury as they say in the classics, or was
that Monty Python? Whatever, it makes for an easy time of the watch-keeping
roster.
Sadly it’s been a rolly polly ride the last few days. We have had 30 knots of
breeze on the nose and a huge swell and a big lumpy cross-sea on top of it. A
couple of fronts passed through just to the south of us and judging by the size
of the waves they generated I’m glad we weren’t down there at the time.
Robbie is suffering a little from a combination of the flu and some diesel fumes
and JD, an ex 18 foot skiff sailor while also a little off colour, is enjoying
life on the Tasman Sea in Helsal 4. The diesel fumes don’t help. For some
strange reason when they built this boat the bilge pump outlet and the engine
exhausts were located alongside each other on the starboard quarter, about a
foot above the waterline. An upside down scoop or cover was then screwed over
the top of them. The result is that every time the hull lays over to starboard,
if the engine is running an air lock is formed and the exhaust fumes are forced
into the bilge via the bilge pump hose, naturally enough following the path of
least resistance. While the bilge pump hose does have a non-return valve it is
not 100 percent efficient and there is a constant insidious flow of diesel fumes
weeping up through the cabin sole into the saloon. The scoop’s days are numbered!
Much to my delight we have finally landed a tuna on this leg of the trip. My
fishing line ship’s bell system has been the butt of many a joke and those of
little faith have finally been made to eat their fish. The sushi doesn’t get
much fresher than this. We were in the process of re-pocketing a batten on the
mainsail when the bell went off and operations were temporarily suspended for a
dash to the sun deck to haul in what proved to be the biggest catch of the
voyage. A quick blade down each side of the backbone and two tuna fillets were
in the fridge.
The weather hasn’t improved with us finally copping a forecast off the NSW coast
for 40 knots on the nose. Discretion has overcome valour and we have decided to
make Newcastle our clearing in port for Australia while we wait for the worst of
it to blow through. Al has decided to go to uni starting in second semester
which has just started so he is going to jump off here and JD has to get back to
the office. It’s been a very slow passage taking six and a half days to travel
1050 miles and while this has been a little frustrating the joke cracking and
sledging that has gone on with Rob and JD, mates since their school days, has
made life a bit of fun along the way.
It’s very sad to say good bye to Al before we get the boat the whole way home,
but this is Australia and we have to get our next adventures underway. He has
completed a passage of 13,000 miles and has been an integral and irreplaceable
part of the team.
Newcastle is a major shipping port on the east coast and now also boasts a new
marina that caters pretty well for cruising yachts. It is setting up a super
yacht industry with more and more facilities being developed all the time. The
port entry is pretty straight forward other than dodging ships. We have just
entered at 0300 with a ship in company. The ship had a pilot flown aboard in a
helicopter with the whole operation being discussed over the VHF for our
entertainment. The ship then proceeded to overtake us as we made our final
approach, although we have managed not to get stuck in its teeth on the way through.
Now you really know you are home when the guy a few boats down from you in the
marina is not only an acquaintance but also someone you’ve been corresponding
with. Jeremy Firth and his good lady Penny, who are north bound in Rosinante
had, like us, ducked in to get out of the nasty big waves and as one would
expect we ended up sharing a rough red and a yarn while we waited out the blow
and dried out the boat. Firthy is the editor of the Tasmanian Yachtsman and is
going to run an editorialised version of these newsletters over a few issues of
the Yachtsman in the coming months.
On to Sydney
The next day Robbie and I headed south in an extremely unpleasant and very lumpy
sea in the left overs of the storm producing a 25 knot southerly breeze, which
of course was right on the nose. There were a couple of tugs sitting at the
entrance to Newcastle as we pulled out and Robbie mentioned the expression on
the tugboat Captain’s face as we sailed out of Newcastle Harbour was less than
encouraging. However, we have a schedule to keep and so off to sea we go.
10 hours later and Sydney Heads is our landfall, with a 2100 arrival time. It’s
been a squally rainy and basically bloody awful day’s sail and I am wondering
why I’m not following Firthy north instead of sailing further south into a
Tasmanian winter. But, Sydney has its consolations and being tied up at the CYC
marina with friends of both Robbie and mine coming down to welcome us home with
the odd tot of Bundy we soon managed to forget the cold and the rain.
Dave Behrens who had sailed the Eastern Pacific leg on Helsal 4 came down to the
CYC to dine with us that night and it was terrific to catch up with him and
exchange stories about the boat and the adventure. Dave is planning a round
Pacific cruise soon so with a little luck I may be sending you a new set of
stories in the next year or so from his beautifully appointed Hylas 54.
Sydney to Hobart
It’s now 0100 on Monday the 24th of July and my last night at sea. Tasmania, or
more specifically Bicheno, is 20 miles west of us, Tasman Island is 100 miles
south and we expect to be tied up at the RYCT tomorrow night, having completed
the journey from Antibes in France in five and a half months plus a couple of
months preparation thrown in for good measure. While we have been in transit
the standard comment when talking to Robbie along the way has been that there
are only so many Sydney to Hobarts left to go, the 630 mile passage being a
fairly standard measure for a couple of old Sydney Hobart salts like us.
(Robbie has done 13 and I’m currently on 11)
Now however, there is not even one Sydney Hobart left before we get home and
it’s a little emotional thinking I’ll be sleeping in my own bed tomorrow night.
Helsal 4 has been home for over half a year and has carried Al and me well over
half way around the world in that time.
We cast off from Sydney on Friday after a huge session at the CYC on Thursday
which kicked off at midday and ran for twelve hours straight. This included
drinks and talk with some long term friends and acquaintances at the CYC
including Dick Bearman, Don Mickleborough, Bob Ross and a bunch of other Sydney
Hobart cronies whose stories get larger as the years and the bundy slowly age us
all.
The Sydney joggle we stepped out into was not particularly conducive to smooth
sailing with the cold front that had come through two days before leaving that
nasty slop we refer to as the Sydney joggle. It was bad enough to role the ice
out of your bundy and coke. Rob has had a couple of his mates from Hobart join
the boat and at one stage we were not sure if Danny and Mark would survive the
experience. Fortunately they found their sea legs in time to enjoy the roast
beef I cooked for dinner tonight, although I think that bleeding the tuna that
came aboard yesterday might have set Danny’s recovery back a little. (The tuna
didn’t like it much either. It is going to be lunch today; sushied seafood.)
Bass Strait was as calm as I have seen it in over 40 crossings, with our passage
coinciding with a huge high pressure system that has moved in from the west as
we motor sailed down the NSW coast. This has been part of the plan and while
getting waylaid at the CYC was part of the down side of waiting for the weather
it has definitely been the right call for a Strait crossing. I really didn’t
want to be coming across Bass Strait mid winter in a blow after all the miles
we’ve done in Helsal 4.
As this will be the last newsletter I’m going to be sending I’d like to thank
every one for their comments and correspondence over the last six months. Since
leaving Australia Al and I have made landfalls in 10 different countries, met
hundreds of people from all manner of cultural and ethnic backgrounds, made a
number of new friends, seen some sights we will never see again, (and maybe one
or two we never want to see again), and had a number of once in a lifetime
experiences. We have sailed 13000 miles, crossed two oceans and three seas,
sailed through two winters, crossed the Greenwich meridian, the International
Dateline and the equator.
We’ve done a single passage of over 3800 miles (from the Galapagos Islands to
the Marquises), battled our way through a number of storms with winds peaking at
over 50 knots or 100 kilometres and hour where the only backup has been each
other, the other crew and the boat itself.
So, the highlights That’s easy. The camaraderie and friendships we have had
with the people that have joined the boat, particularly Jim, Dave, Ralph, JD and
Robbie who made sailing long miles a joy and helped turn problems into
challenges and opportunities to have some fun. Thanks guys, it’s been terrific.
