s/v Grace -- Our Adventure

05 May 2009

BITS and BITES

We continue to live, as one person recently said to us, “Like second class citizens” in a modest and partially self-sufficient way aboard our floating home s/v GRACE. While we are somewhat shielded from global and local events, we still have many of the same concerns and responsibilities as those who are land-based: We are still parents, children, tax payers and so forth. Our isolation, at times, makes all these roles a bit more difficult, but we do our best.

Whangarei, NZ:

We both really enjoy New Zealand. It is simply a gorgeous country with really hardworking, nice people -- whose values we both embrace. We have added a few new expressions to our vocabulary – like “rattle your dags” (hurry up -- it refers to sheep behinds) and “flash” (elegant or fancy), and

yet we have not adopted the habit of walking around town, including going into grocery stores or restaurants bare-foot.

The whole town of Whangarei, where we

have spent most of the southern hemisphere summer, makes cruisers feel extremely welcome. If you need a part, store clerks will help you; even they need to send you to a competitor for the best deal. If you need to get from one section of the town to another, “sweet as”, someone from behind the counter will pop out to their car and give you a ride.

Last week,

Whangarei hosted a “goodbye” dinner for visiting yachtsmen, and we were all sent off with a heartfelt traditional Maori blessing for good weather and pleasant seas. As one of the organizers told us when we thanked him for the meal, “We know what you will face out there when you leave New Zealand, many of us are mariners too, and we want you to know that we will be sending you out safely”.

Working on the Boat:

We have been up to our eyebrows in boat projects of various sorts for the past two-plus months. During six weeks of that time, we lived aboard Grace in a working boatyard, in the water, with people painting their boats right next to us, or machine sanding them at all hours of the day. With only our aft berth and head to ourselves --about 45 square feet (about 4 square meters), ‘togetherness’ was certainly the

operative theme. The main cabin was a workshop, and the forward cabin and head were for storage of all the books, papers, ropes, lines, wires, safety gear, sails, etc. The 7:30am to 4:00pm sound of grinding metal, the smell of fiberglass resin or diesel, the sight of dust, dirt and metal shavings, all conspired to keep us from relaxing too much.

Yet, it was a generally good experience. Believe it or not.

We had the shroud chain plates (the three on each side) replaced. This was THE major project of the season – taking much more

time to accomplish than originally planned because nothing at all on a boat is symmetrical or straight – including the port and starboard sides of our GRACE. We had the new chain plates fabricated of 316 stainless steel, opened up the old ones from the inside of our main cabin, cut-off the tops and bolted the new ones through the old. The objective is to have a secure rig. We don’t want to lose our mast while at sea. These new

fittings should help keep the mast where it belongs. In the process, we also had filled/re-glassed the tops of our bulwarks in-the-

way of the chain plates to eliminate some troublesome leaks. It is 'joyful' to think about the fun of replacing the two backstay chain plates next year.

A partial listing of some of the other work done will provide a sense of the scope of this year’s refit: inspected, adjusted, re-built or replaced various parts of our diesel engine, including several bits related to the exhaust system; had all of the deck canvas (dodger, fly [Bimini] sail covers, etc.)

re-stitched and GRACE’s sail wardrobe

checked-over and repaired/tuned-up where necessary; sanded and re-varnished most of the on-deck teak, cleaned the rust off the “stainless” steel, made up and swaged-on new lifelines; tore-down, inspected and partially rebuilt the two toilets on-board; blasted all the paint off the steering pedestal as the paint was showing massive signs of electrolysis (it looks much better now); replaced some of the running rigging; added a few new rope clutches; had made new companionway screens, etc., etc.

We also went on a large-scale deck-leak search-and-repair mission. We knew that we had two fairly minor deck leaks prior to heading south for New Zealand last November. That passage made us aware that we had a somewhat greater problem

when we discovered a steady stream of water running towards our electrical panel while at sea. The final straw came in early March when, having just returned from the Auckland boat show at night, we found about a gallon of water in our sleeping berth. After a few weeks of trial-and-error leak detection, we seem to have corrected all of the problems (we have been dry now through several days of heavy rains).

Occasional Complications:

Of course, refits and repairs in a boat are always subject to a huge domino effect. For example, in the process of removing old, non-functioning stereo speakers from behind two forward bulkheads, we found that moving these big magnets had a notable effect on the compass. We were forced to put back the speakers and will have to carry them around until we find a compass adjustor and can swing the compass for accuracy after removing the speakers.

Just about the time that the chain plates were done, our refrigeration, which was original to the boat (almost 30 years old) decided to give up the ghost for good. We consider ourselves very lucky that this happened here in NZ -- at the dock -- rather than in some hot, distant anchorage with no supplies or services. We now have a new

compressor and evaporator plate, and hopefully a much more efficient system to keep food safely. Wouldn’t you know it, just at the time of the broken fridge one of the woodworkers at the marina came by with some beautiful “NZ snapper” which he had caught fishing from his

kayak. We happily accepted and made it that night – it is a supremely delicious fish.

The interesting thing about all the above is that s/v GRACE left the U.S. two years ago having just completed a very extensive re-fit. The wear-and-tear of long distance cruising (combined with the fact that GRACE is 28 years old) is significant, leading to the (accurate) adage that cruising is

just “working on the boat in exotic locations”.

During our time in Whangarei, we got to know a group of exceptional Kiwi craftsmen, both young and old. All were just incredibly able to make things work. The Kiwi “can do”

attitude is quite refreshing. While we had to scrape the bottom of the cruising kitty to pay for the work that was done, we feel as if we got very high quality work for a fair price. With fingers crossed, we should be done with major cash outlays for the time being.

Friends and Food:

We were treated to a typical Kiwi Sunday Roast dinner by crusing friends who live in Whangarei. It felt like a bit of home to us, being surrounded by friends we have met along the way.

Easter was a quiet day. Somehow, the Easter bunny found a way to hide some eggs aboard, and then came by in the guise of a Swedish female single-handed sailor, Liza, who brought us each a chocolate Easter

egg. Kazu-san, a single-handed Japanese sailor shared his delicious local honey-soaked lemons.

For fun, we did take a Saturday off to attend a local school’s class in cheese

making. No, Geoff has not suddenly decided to find his “inner chef”, but he does like to EAT food, so he thought it would be fun to learn a bit about how to make use of the product of the NZ dairy industry.

Despite the excessive amount of “hands on and in” the milk, we did both learn how to

make mozzarella, cheddar, and even parmesan-like cheeses. Unless we find a way to tether a cow or goat to the aft rail, we won’t be making any on this voyage, as cheese needs fresh milk (within 12 hours of milking) to be made properly.

They say that smell is one of the strongest memories humans have. In Sally’s case, she was transported decades and thousands of miles back to Colombia and her youth when

we were presented with a gift of a bag of feijoas. Lance, the brilliant young “bloke” who effectively lived aboard during his work on the chain plates, brought them by s/v GRACE along with a jar of honey that

had been gathered on his family farm. Friendships are formed based on unexpected things. Lance’s quiet professionalism and sense of humor have certainly endeared him to us. The feijoas and honey

didn’t hurt either. Sally is happily at work finding ways to use, eat and preserve this precious fruit and nectar (Geoff likes the cupcakes best).

What’s Next?:

Our visas are almost up and we are about ready to head off again to go north, probably to New Caledonia and then on to Vanuatu.

We hope to get a weather window (if the rains would ever stop – it is worse than the Pacific Northwest here these days) and do a short sea trial, taking the boat back up to Opua, NZ where we will await passage weather and clear out of the country.

NEW: Passage to Tahiti (our thoughts)

GEOFF's COMMENTS:

Jimmy Cornell characterizes the passage from Auckland to Tahiti as a “tough windward passage” and that just about sums-up our experience. We departed Auckland with a not particularly good long-term forecast featuring squally weather and easterlies for the first few days. The forecast showed no improvement over the next ten days so we decided to make a dash for it as delaying seemed to offer no advantage. Our intention was to use the easterlies to work our way down to about 38/39 South and then to make most of our easting in that latitude. This turned out to be a very slow strategy with the boat close reaching at 55/60 degrees apparent at 5 knots or less with a lumpy sea about half the time (it would have helped to have a drifter or a Code 0). There were no Westerlies any where in sight for the first week and the whole thing was pretty tedious. We changed our strategy at around 38 South when, about a week out, we saw that we would experience a strong gale (40+ knots) in about a week’s time. Instead of staying South we

headed due North on a reasonably fast beam reach to a point where we planned to heave-to for a short while at roughly the NE corner of the low which was moving from the NW to the SE. We did so and waited about 20 hours until the easterlies backed into the North and we had a sailing breeze which we used for four days to make much of our easting. This set the basic pattern for the balance of the passage during which we played dodge-em with two more lows getting just

NE of them and completing our easting by riding the northerlies as the lows passed to the SouthWest of us. We had a rough beam reach in a final Easterly (28 to 40 knots) to make our Tahiti landfall.

Was the strategy we adopted appropriate for the passage? Well, given the weather we experienced (lots of Easterlies) I’d have to say yes, it was. However, it was very, very slow, wet and rough. It turns out that delaying our departure for a week would have given us more in the way of reaching conditions and a much faster ride East in about 38 South. Unfortunately, the latter was not clear from the forecasts we had available before leaving Auckland and was only evident after our landfall and conversations with another yacht that departed Auckland a week after we did.

The lesson for me is an old one reemphasized - other things being equal, a fast, comfortable passage is likely to depend more upon having a good departure window than a good routing strategy once at sea. The latter can make an indifferent window better at the margin, but likely won’t yield the sort of experience most of us want while on passage. While the weather forecast just prior to our departure didn’t show much improvement the following week, the weather was

in fact better than the forecast would have had us believe and would have given us a much nicer trip had we delayed and taken a chance that the forecast would prove less than fully accurate. Next time, and given the uncertainties of weather forecasting, I’d consider postponing the departure for another week or two even if there were no great improvement in the weather showing during that time. There’s a reasonable chance that the forecast will be wrong, in a good way, and that the resulting passage will be improved by the wait.

SALLY's PERSPECTIVE:

I, too, had read Jimmy Cornell’s overview of the trip from Auckland to French Polynesia. Although I have sailed thousands of blue water miles by now, I am also smart enough to know that this was NOT a passage I particularly wanted to make. I do not respond well to cold weather and was very happy when my husband found two friends to make the trip with him. It also gave me the opportunity to take care of other critical non-sailing obligations. Unfortunately, in sailing, as in life, things often change at the last minute. With 5 days to go before the planned departure date one of the friends had a family crisis and could not go. In such a short time, it was not reasonable or nor would it be sensible to just “find” a stranger to make the passage, so I offered to go after all. In many ways it was the easiest for my husband, as I had already done all the provisioning, know the boat well, manage the log and communications, and am a competent watch stander. In this

lifestyle, one must be flexible about everything. It is a trait sometimes acquired

under duress. We were lucky that the third man aboard had a great attitude and was cheerful and gentlemanly thoughout the trip. While the weather out of Auckland was not perfect, I had no expectation that it would be anyway. We were able to see quite a few gorgeous albatross flying around as we left NZ waters — they seemed to play with us as we marched up and down the waves. We were also treated to a grouping of some hundreds or even more dolphins swimming in unison away from our boat, like a newly released train of commuters.

As the conditions deteriorated, the skipper assured us that all was under control and that the boat was never at risk, but he did not fully appreciate how debilitating and violent the noise and motions aboard could be to others. I have been in situations aboard before where the boat goes screaming into the black pitch of night without any idea whatsoever if there is anything or anyone in the water ahead of you. Luckily in the Southern Ocean, there was not a soul within a

thousand miles. Often with triple-reefed main and little else, we galloped over mountainous waves. When off watch, I would try to ‘rest’ in my sea berth, but would hear and feel the force of the water crashing against the hull — only a few inches of fiberglass between me and the seas, or the fuel gurgling around in the tank underneath me. There was no way to drown out the noise. The starboard gunnel seemed to spend much time submerged, with water rushing past port lights. At some point, I made my peace with the world, and decided that if this was “it” then

at least I would have lived a life of adventure. You get into a mental “zone” where you just wake up, throw your foul weather gear on, go on watch, keep turning your head like an owl to look in all directions, try to think of relaxing or nice things instead of the angry ocean throwing up waves from all sides around you. You check your watch every 10 minutes to see if time is up yet, belt out every song you know how to sing, and almost get elated when your watch is finally over and you can strip off all the gear and climb into your berth again for a short attempt at

sleep. You stop thinking, you barely eat or drink, and you turn into an automaton, just doing what is required to keep afloat, to keep moving ahead and to keep alive. Only the very basic things needed can be done: watch, sleep, occasionally drink water, and even less often, eat. But then, unexpectedly, the weather changes. Your next night watch turns into a magical voyage amidst a night filled with more stars than sky. The waves formed by your boat as it slides through the water, erupt like champagne bubbles dyed with bio-lumisescence. There is the kind of peace and tranquility and heart-stopping beauty such that you cannot believe how

lucky you are to be there. There are more colours of blue in the deep ocean than one can possibly imagine. You start to forget about your sodden outer and inner wear. You begin to laugh when an unexpected wave splashes everyone who is in the cockpit. You start to get a little bit insane.

In retrospect, I still wish I did not make this particular trip. I know I get “bragging rights”, and I should be proud of that. It tested my mettle, my strength, my ability to sustain bruises and broken digits, my usual cheerfulness as well as my marriage. Yes, we got to Tahiti safely. But I would much rather have made this particular trip by plane.

First Passage to New Zealand

According to Sally:
We left Fiji, were sweltering in the heat, drenched in sweat. No wind for the first two days. Then, too much wind – gales on and off for 5 days in a row. Boat is wet wet wet. Standing is impossible without holding on with both hands as boat heels at 15 degrees and likes to roll up to 30 degrees. Winds on our nose. Waves of up to 4 meters pounding on GRACE as we try to head into them. Current trying its best to send us back to Fiji. By the end of the 9th day I was wondering what it would be like to stand up straight without holding on to anything. This was not an easy passage, but far from the worst we have had. Daily radio check-ins with s/v Sabbatical and s/v Bear made it almost fun.
According to Geoff:
As passages to New Zealand go, ours was slow and uneventful. Thirty hours of motoring in calms before a SSE wind filled-in with about a 2 meter sea. South to SSE winds held for the balance of the passage with gales at times and seas of up to 4 meters on occasion. Given the nasty weather for which this passage is famous, not bad at all. The worst thing about this trip was that we had to slow the boat to minimize pounding. So, this was the slowest passage we have yet made with GRACE taking nine days to travel about 1,100 nautical miles. For us, a fast passage is just about an essential. The day-to-day routine while offshore is not exciting and pushing the boat along at a good clip keeps things a bit more interesting while reducing passage time.

Our friend/enemy: THE WEATHER

Trip Scheduling:
For those not familiar with sailing, you can’t just decide to go someplace and then point the boat in the right direction and “go”; you have to pay close attention on a daily basis to the weather. (Which is only available via single sideband radio – and not necessarily whenever you want it). We left San Diego right at the end of the hurricane season, to avoid really rough weather on our way down the Baja Peninsula. Now, we cannot leave Mexico to go West until late March due to the risk of Tropical Cyclones in the South Pacific and the need to await the building of the South West Trade winds. While our current intention is to head West, please keep in mind that our plans may change at any step of the way. Sailors say their travel plans are “written in sand at low tide”.

You might want to know...

The parts of cruising on a sailboat that you DO want other people to see/hear:
*You really can do without most “stuff”!
*There is a majesty in the world that you miss if you move too quickly.
*There are parts of the world where wildlife is really wild and those who live on the edge are really heroes.
*We are not necessarily at the top of the food chain.
*Your profession doesn’t matter one iota while living on a boat.
*People are nice, no matter where you go.
*It is pretty easy to get along with each other all day every day.
*No matter how much you’d like to think you can control her, Mother Nature is really the one in charge.
*Almost any food tastes good on a boat.
*It is not as easy to find wireless sites or internet café’s as one might imagine.
*There is no sleep as sweet as what you get on a securely-set anchor.

You might NOT want to know...

The parts of cruising on a sailboat that you DON'T want other people to see/hear:

*How awkward it is to pee in a toilet that keeps moving underneath you, and how many times you have to pump to empty the bowl.(either 10 or 37 depending…)
*How contorted and limber one must be to actually make up the sheets in a berth.
*The skinned knuckles, and severe, very colorful bruising and lacerations which occur all-too-regularly, and which resemble the results of domestic violence.
*That a black hole exists in the bilge creating a magnetic attraction for specialized small bolts, screws and small tools.
*How much one conifer starts to look like another conifer in the Pacific NW.
*How you start to find it amusing when you discover that your drinking water seems to have little living creatures in it, and you still drink it.
*That maybe a sailboat is not the best venue to begin to learn and practice how to play the viola.
*That sometimes you actually really prefer to rely on the GPS rather than your dead-reckoning.
*How very un-appealing it is to wear seven layers of polar fleece and long underwear every single day.
*How much dog hair, despite all our best efforts, finds its way into the food.
*How much you look forward to a glass of wine or scotch at the end of a long day of sailing when the anchor is finally set.

s/v Grace -- Our Adventure

05 May 2009

WHERE IS GRACE NOW? (note that format is dd/mm/yr)

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NEW: Passage to Tahiti (our thoughts)

How to read our "blog"

First Passage to New Zealand

Pacific Crossing Musings

Our friend/enemy: THE WEATHER

You might want to know...

You might NOT want to know...

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