The Logbook

Hawaii to Home

And so our 2016 – 2019 South Pacific travels came to an end during the early morning hours of August 29th, 2019, in Port Townsend Bay, in Washington State. We unceremoniously put the transmission into neutral and drifted with the tide. We did not shut the engine off even though we had earlier been concerned about being low on fuel. It no longer mattered.

There wasn’t much to say. We were cold and exhausted. Completely drained, there was no more adrenaline to go on. Trying to anchor near shore and wait for daylight seemed like too much work—and too risky. We’d already had enough fun for the day. The only thing lifting our spirits was the fact we had made it here at all. Few people understand how close we came to losing the boat and everything we carried on board.

Maybe two hours earlier, a young-sounding voice had hailed us on the VHF radio, saying she was United States Coast Guard, and asking if we had arrived at Port Townsend yet. We had not, we said, but expected to before sunrise. The Coast Guard had been requesting periodic status reports via our Garmin InReach for a week. This was the first time they had called us by voice on the VHF. For the past 500 miles of open ocean and another 100 or so of protected inland sea, we had been steering the boat by controlling the tension on two ropes. These lines, on either side of the cockpit, ran over the side and back to the rudder where they were tied to the Sayes’ Rig tiller arm which we had had reconstructed last February, and had taken back to Fiji with us. Pulling on either side of that tiller arm was the only viable means we had of controlling the direction of the boat. Even then, it was a clumsy and imprecise process, often requiring a coordinated effort from both of us to affect even a small change in direction. One of us would let out line on one side while the other pulled it in on the other. Once the turn was made, the process was reversed to return the rudder to neutral. It didn’t always go so smoothly, and in big swells, it was mostly an exercise in frustration.

For years, we had looked at a big sailing adventure to the South Pacific as kind of a culmination of a lifetime of varied experiences. It seemed like we would have opportunities to draw on just about every past interest we had (and a whole lot of interesting new things to learn) and put them all to use during a sailing trip of this magnitude. And, after successfully reaching our “stretch goal” of spending time in New Zealand, the final leg home from Hawaii would be the victory lap of perfect sailing conditions around the top of the stationary “North Pacific High” of gentle summer winds and seas that would take us north from Hawaii and then east, all the way to the entrance of the strait of Juan de Fuca, which lies between British Columbia, Canada and Washington State. That was the expectation of how this would be wrapped up.

The problem however, was that for at least the second year in a row the summer high-pressure ridge appeared more imaginary than stationary. Still, the passage started out with high hopes. Our pleasant stay in Hawaii had taken a little longer than planned, but we weren’t really complaining (key word being Pleasant). The blown-out jib had been repaired, Costco runs had been made, and two successful trips to the Honolulu West Marine store had lightened us of plenty of cash. We even stocked up on cheap paperbacks from Walmart. The trade winds filled in nicely with a steady 20 knots, gusts to 30, and were forecast to continue for at least several days.

The winds did cause a slight problem while we were still in the marina: we could get our jib onto the deck, but couldn’t raise and furl it. The wind was too strong with respect to the direction we sat in the slip. The other problem would be getting out of the slip if a 30 knot gust hit at the wrong moment while trying to back out. We spent a lot of time watching the action of the gusts on the movement of the boat in the slip, and timing how often the gusts occurred and how long they lasted. We noticed that right around sunset, and just before sunrise, they seemed to calm some, but otherwise it was constant all day and night. The marina allowed us to stay until evening if we wanted to. So at sunset on July 17th, we chose our moment and backed out of the slip without major incident. So far, so good.

Once we got out and around the point and into the channel to head north, we thought we’d be in the lee of Oahu. Maybe we were, but the wind was still a steady 20 knots. We’d already loaded all the sail slides into the Reef-Rite furler so raising the jib was just a matter of cranking up the halyard while the boat motored into the wind. When the jib was up, we took off like a rocket. We were doing 7 knots on the jib alone. All indications (and, perhaps, wishful thinking) were that this would be a quick and easy trip home.

For the next several days we experienced some rough seas, but not too bad. We experimented with the jib and staysail, sometimes furling the jib either partially or totally. On day number 8, we finally raised the mizzen sail. We were going a little slower now, which the mizzen helped to offset, but not a bad speed at all. By day 9, everything was about as laid back as it gets. It seemed we didn’t need to change a thing. In fact, we hardly even needed to do anything. The boat just kept sailing by itself. The air temperature was a little warm, but comfortable. We took turns sleeping, watching the stars, reading, listening to music. I finished the fourth book and started looking around at some of the books Robyn had left behind to see if I could stomach reading any of them, many being what I would call teen girl fiction, or whatever. We decided we had crossed the halfway point, and celebrated.

By the start of the third week we ran out of wind. Those excellent trade winds, and maybe whatever the winds are called that came after them, had just up and quit. Our friend Joe, from our Baja buddy boat, Slainte, had been keeping in contact with us from home and became our weather router, checking various internet sites to supplant what little weather data we could get ourselves. By July 31st, we decided that the stationary North Pacific High was nowhere near forming as expected. Even worse, the weather had become cool, cloudy, damp and depressing; we had fog, even. We went for days without seeing the sun at all. The weather put a damper on more than our spirits. Without a steady 24-hour wind to spin our wind turbine generator, or all that bright sunshine on the solar panels, we consumed more electrical energy than we generated. We would need to burn diesel to recharge the batteries. Since the center fuel tank was left empty because of the rust, we only had half our usual fuel capacity. We motored through a dead air patch for eleven hours, using it as an opportunity to recharge the batteries, but still had only found a light wind.

On day number 20, we ran into a strong thunderstorm. Unlike the many tropical convergence zone squalls we sailed through closer to the equator, this one was different. It didn’t follow the same pattern and was more stressful just because of that. It was an unknown. Lightning seemed to be close all around us. By the time it had passed, one of the three GPS units we use was having difficulty. It showed our speed over the ground as being impossibly high and erratic. This particular GPS feeds our SSB radio and Pactor modem with our position and time of day, which is used to help determine distance and radio propagation to the nearest Sail Mail stations. Fortunately, after turning it off and allowing it to re-boot, it seemed to work normally again. That one lightning storm was the only one we experienced between Hawaii and home.

When the GRIB files from the SSB, and the spot weather forecasts from the InReach, both predicted areas of wind ranging from the low 30’s up to the 40’s and even into the 50 knot range, we consulted Joe to help us find a way to avoid them. We ended up going in different directions only to decide a day or two later that we needed to go back the other way. The forecasts seemed to change daily. We tried to get weather fax’s from the Point Reyes, CA transmitter for more detail, but had trouble receiving them. We eventually learned the station was experiencing technical difficulties. We could not move fast enough to get around the predicted winds. We ended up choosing to sail into rough seas in order to get ahead of what was supposed to be an even rougher area with stronger wind coming later. We wondered if a seasonal weather window was closing, and rather than trapping us at home, this time we would be left on the outside and unable to get back in.

The winds hit us exactly when and where predicted, starting in the middle of the night. Oddly, I could hear them coming across the water before they reached us several seconds later. At first, it was refreshing to once again be moving at full speed over relatively smooth seas. But over the following 24 hours, the winds increased, and continued. The waves grew to substantial (and impressive) size. Steering was difficult. We went into a kind of storm-survival mode. We made a decision to continue trying to sail and make progress rather than heave-to or take more defensive action, not that there was a lot we could do anyway. We were back on track toward home, even if the actual speed over the ground was much reduced due to the large seas. We had been through worse before, after all.

We convinced ourselves that the wind was abating. We saw fewer high gusts and the waves appeared to be getting smaller. But as soon as we would convince ourselves we were almost through the wind field, it would increase again. I had gone below to try to get fresh GRIB files to see how close we were to the predicted calm zone that was supposed to follow right after the wind, when Julie yelled down that we had lost steering. I heard her, but of course asked what she meant. She said that it felt like maybe a cable had come off. The steering wheel turns a sprocket, over which is a chain—like a bicycle chain—which moves as the wheel is turned. Attached to either end of the chain are steel cables which run over several pulleys, down through the deck and back to a quadrant attached to the rudder post. Turning the wheel moves these cables which turns the rudder. Over time, they can loosen up, or conceivably pull out of the fittings at the end. Convinced this was the problem, we looked for the lose cable, but found the steering system to all be in order. Turning the wheel turned the rudder post but not the rudder itself. Therefore, the failure must be internal to the actual rudder. We were out of control, 500 miles off the Washington coast.

The wind was definitely calming down now. The sun had set and it was dark. We felt that the Coast Guard should be made aware of our situation but we weren’t completely ready to ask for assistance. I knew that once the Coast Guard was contacted and the situation explained, we’d likely have two options. They might divert a commercial ship to our location to standby, or they might want to evacuate us, likely scuttling Mysticeti. Since we were well out of VHF radio range, I wasn’t sure which SSB frequency to use to try to contact them, or if a helicopter could even make the 1,000 mile round trip.

We drifted all night. The compass showed we were pointing south and the GPS showed our speed at up to 2 knots. We were going in the wrong direction, getting farther away, back in the direction we had come. It was a rough night, trying to deal with all the ramifications, possible outcomes and make an appropriate decision. So many tough decisions.

In the morning we realized something unexpected. We were actually drifting backwards! Although pointing southwest, we were moving northeast, toward our destination. While I had spent the night unable to not think about losing the boat, Julie had been working on ideas. We tried putting in the vane for the Sayes’ Rig since it takes control of the rudder directly, but that didn’t seem to work for some reason. Although, the Sayes’ tiller arm bolted to the rudder made it possible to drop two lines through the opening at the end, grab them with the boat hook, and tie them off so we could pull the rudder from either side. We ran the lines to the port and starboard jib winches. With the staysail and mizzen, and our jury-rigged rudder control, we managed to turn the boat around and head off in the right direction.

In the meantime, Joe had done what we had been reluctant to do: contact the Coast Guard and describe our situation. Working with them, we established a direct communication channel using our InReach. We could now text directly back and forth with the Coast Guard. They asked plenty of questions, including the amount of fuel we had, our fuel burn rate and our cruising speed. We asked about our options once we reached the straits and the town of Neah Bay, just inside Cape Flattery. We knew we wouldn’t be able to maneuver into the fuel dock there with our current steering arrangement. The Coast Guard reported that they had contacted a Canadian research vessel in our area who could supply us with some diesel if we needed it right away. Another decision. Transferring fuel from them to us in ocean swells seemed risky. We opted to go with the wind we currently had and head toward the strait as directly as possible, dealing with fuel if the need came up later. The weather looked good to get close to shore without unnecessary delay.

We watched the miles remaining to Neah Bay tick downward. 365, 360, 355… We cheered each significant step closer that we still had some steering ability. Eventually, some dark shapes on the horizon, which could go either way as being clouds or land, solidified. On day 42 since leaving Ko Olina Marina on the island of Oahu, at 4:00 PM local time on Tuesday, August 27th, on a clear and cloudless typical Pacific Northwest late summer afternoon, 62 nautical miles due west of Cape Flattery, we declared that land was in sight! The dark shapes on the horizon were mountains on Vancouver Island, at least one of which had a large snow patch clearly visible through binoculars. The next morning we were close enough that the cell phone pinged a Canadian cell tower. We could start making phone calls to arrange where we would go and what would happen next. We still had plenty of fuel remaining to motor all the way in.

Ideally, we wanted to be hauled out immediately at the Port Townsend Boat Haven yard, but the marina office said they were booked up out two weeks. They promised to find a space to tie to if we could call them after they opened at 8:00 in the morning. Vessel Assist could tow us in to whatever dock the marina indicated. We needed to call them three hours before we wanted them. But it didn’t take long to decide that at 3 AM, cold, tired and drifting, we were in actual distress and needed them immediately. This thing wasn’t over quite yet. We still had work to do with the tow lines, etc. But the light at the end of the tunnel was definitely brightening. Joe said he was coming to help tie us up.

We met Joe at the Port Townsend fuel dock, where Vessel Assist had taken us. By the time we arrived, it was about 8 AM and the marina was opening anyway. We left the boat and went to breakfast with Joe. While at breakfast we learned that a scheduled haulout had been canceled and the time slot was available to us. Vessel Assist was called back, and by the time we paid for our meal the boat had been moved from the fuel dock to the haulout pier. Our presence had not been required. Everything was pretty much a groggy blur anyway. Once the boat was clear of the water, the problem with the rudder was plainly evident. It was broken just behind the rudder post, nearly all the way through. We had been extremely lucky it happened so close to home, and had held together the rest of the way in.

Although not in the way we expected, our once-in-a-lifetime ultimate sailing dream trip of more than 15,000 nautical miles has completed. Right back where it had started from. We will never forget all those people we met along the way, especially those who educated and helped us, entertained us, and proved to us that although the Earth is big, the world truly is small; and the help and understanding provided by our friends, family and neighbors, including our flexible and understanding mail carrier, and especially Joe and Cathy from s/v Slainte who we trustingly followed out into the ocean on our first day; and the Vessel Assist crew who gave up sleep to come to our aid and take control to get us into the marina; and the US Coast Guard, who kept a watchful eye on us from the time they learned we were in trouble until we were safe and secure. As one of life’s great adventures, it all could not be beat.

See Dad, I told you I was going to sail to Tahiti someday.

– –

One of many waterfalls we visited in Samoa
Another waterfall in Samoa
Nearly perfect sailing coming out of Hawaii
A slightly less than perfect sailing day
An interestingly textured sky
Cloud appears to be burning from within
We are definitely not in the tropics anymore
Sunrise approaching Strait of Juan de Fuca. Vancouver Island, Canada on the left. Cape Flattery, USA on the right
Broken rudder with jury-rig control line attached

Samoa to Hawaii

I remember a trip years ago where I was flying to somewhere in Asia. My job at the time occasionally sent me in that direction. Near the beginning of this particular flight the captain came on the speaker and described the route we would be taking. When he got to the part where he talked about the expected weather along the way he said, “Well, on a trip of this length we would expect to fly over several different weather systems.” That trip was more than twenty years ago. I don’t remember the exact destination but I still remember the announcement. In fact, it entered my thoughts several times during our 35 day, 2,500 mile passage between the islands of Upolu, Samoa and Oahu, Hawaii. “On a trip of this length.”

At thirty-five days, this was the longest non-stop passage we’ve done yet, but not the farthest in distance. Mexico to Nuku Hiva was probably a few hundred miles farther but also a few days shorter. That passage was downwind. This passage was more upwind. The prevailing wind, especially north of the equator, being generally from the northeast, and the direction of Oahu from Upolu being to the northeast, meant that for the entire trip we had to sail pointing as high into the wind as the boat was capable, while still maintaining an adequate speed. The entire trip was a battle to stay as close to the rhumb line between Apia Harbor and Ko Olina Marina as we could. But still, it somehow always seemed to be just out of reach to the east. Even so, this passage had many days of some of the nicest, most enjoyable, relaxed and lazy sailing I think I’ve ever experienced. Just the two of us, utterly alone in our own private bubble, moving quietly and smoothly across the face of the earth.

As a kid sailing with my dad on Sunday afternoons on the lake, he used to always remind me to “Head up in the puffs,” and, “Fall off before you luff.” That advice was never more true as on this passage. It was easiest and fastest to sail off the wind a little, going north, but that wasn’t taking us where we needed to go. We needed to take advantage of every opportunity the wind provided to keep moving east, keeping the distance between us and the rhumb line as short as possible, or we might end up too far west of Hawaii. We had already clawed our way directly upwind between Fiji and Samoa and didn’t want to do it again as we neared Hawaii. With much patience and determination, Julie experimented with the sails and a locked-down, fixed rudder angle slightly off the wind until finally achieving a balance where the boat pretty much sailed itself. Like magic, when the wind picked up or shifted direction slightly, the boat would follow and point up. When it pointed too high, it would slow and fall off, maintaining the balance. The boat was maintaining a fairly tight course and it seemed we were mostly just along for the ride.

However, it could be a bit of a wild ride at times. We experienced countless lightning storms—always a little unsettling when on a boat in the middle of ocean—and plenty of sudden squalls, especially at night when we couldn’t see them coming. One minute we’d be smoothly sailing along under a zillion stars, and the next we’re heeled over to thirty degrees with the wind shrieking at thirty knots and heavy rain pounding us. Usually lasting only a few minutes, the squalls would then move along and everything would quickly return to normal.

Then came a squall that was different. Somewhere a little north of the equator, sometime around two AM, it hit us just as all the other squalls had, except that the wind speed didn’t top out around thirty knots but continued right on up to the high forties, even the low fifties. Had we ever even seen gusts this high before? The boat didn’t immediately heel to thirty degrees, but went right to forty or forty-five degrees. Off-watch and asleep on the low side of the cockpit, the ocean was suddenly inches away, flowing down the side deck and splashing onto my makeshift bed. It was a rude awakening. But the real difference with this super-squall was in how long it lasted. It didn’t calm down and move along after a few minutes. Instead, it showed no sign of letting up, even forty-five minutes later. Its full fury lasted almost on hour.

The jib, the sail at the front of the boat attached between the top of the mast and the far end of the bowsprit, has become our workhorse the last few years. It can be fully (or partially) deployed and furled back up again without ever leaving the cockpit. Sailing downwind, it pulls the boat right along all by itself, and even upwind it works well enough, especially if we employ the mizzen as well. The main sail is the most versatile sail but it is difficult and labor intensive to raise and lower, especially with just the two of us, and especially in higher winds and rough seas. It could turn dangerous in a hurry in a sudden fifty-knot squall. With last year’s total loss of the jib and furler off New Zealand still fresh in our minds, we were obviously worried. When the super-squall did not abate within a few minutes as expected, we turned our attention to reefing the jib, or even furling it in entirely. I checked with a flashlight and could see that the jib was still there, and the metallic reflection of light off the furler indicated that it was also still intact. The furling line was already set up on the winch so all we had to do was crank it in after giving the loaded jib sheet some slack. But when I went to slacken the sheet I discovered that it was totally slack already. The sheet is simply the line that holds the jib in against the force of the wind, kind of like a kite string, and having no air pressure on it at all was obviously not a good sign.

It didn’t really surprise me that the line might’ve chafed through and broken. It, and the lazy sheet (running on the opposite side of the boat and not being used on the current tack) had tangled a few days prior and the lazy sheet had somehow tied itself into a knot around the active sheet. With the knot unreachable about twenty feet above the deck, we had decided to just keep using it as it was since we’d likely stay on the same tack all the way to Hawaii. Except that wasn’t the problem. Closer inspection with the flashlight showed that we hadn’t a clew. Really. The lower rear corner of the sail, the part where both sheets attach, the clew, was completely missing! It had ripped entirely off of the rest of the sail and the jib was strung out in the wind, wildly waving like some big banner which we had no control over. That’s when I got the brilliant if somewhat misguided idea to furl up the sail anyway. I mean, we had to get it rolled up or the wind would just shred it. Sails are costly and time consuming to build. But then, realizing that with no sheets attached to pull on and unfurl it, we worried about how we would ever get it unfurled again. It turned out we needn’t have worried about that. Morning light showed that the wind had taken care of that for us. The sail was strung out like a banner again. It was clearly obvious that we needed to get it down safely onto the deck if we wanted any chance at all to repair it in Hawaii.

We formulated a plan and then Julie, being much more adventurous with these sort of things than I, grabbed a handful of sail ties and webbing straps, clipped herself onto the jack lines, and set out on an expedition to the far reaches of the pointy end of the boat. I couldn’t hear exactly what she was yelling about, but I assumed it was something about what a great plan it was that we’d devised. It looked like fun out there, riding the wild gyrations of the bowsprit, but she did manage to get the sail down and secured to the deck. The fortunate design innovation of the New Zealand “Reef-Rite” furler made this so much safer than it would’ve been with our old furler (seriously), as the sail simply lowers on slides in a track rather than coming completely off the furler, no longer attached to the boat at all. The jib, at more than fifty-two feet long, is our longest sail and is unwieldy enough even on a calm day on flat ground. After that little adventure was over, and with our favorite workhorse sail now useless, we had to use all three of our remaining sails—main, mizzen and staysail—to experiment once again before achieving nearly the same self-sailing balance and a mostly acceptable speed. I was sure we were going to be late for our target arrival of sometime during the week of the Fourth of July.

As the days went by, and the farther away we moved from the equator, the more the climate seemed to change. The days became longer. The humidity dropped and there was a new coolness in the air at night. The squalls became noticeably fewer and weaker. I, for one, became increasingly bored. I read the same book twice, after reading two others in between. With June being the start of the North Pacific hurricane season we thought that maybe we should keep an eye on the weather off the coast of southern Mexico, and when we finally did look, it was a bit of a shock to see tropical storm Alvin possibly heading our way. We worried about it for a couple days, then it fizzled out. With that, and the pleasant sailing conditions we were experiencing, we allowed ourselves to become complacent.

By the time we were about 200 miles south of Oahu and starting to fantasize about what we wanted to do first when we got there, the wind all but died completely. We eked out another fifty miles or so by just sort of ghosting along before realizing that we might be within range of picking up the Hawaii NOAA weather radio broadcast on the VHF. Sure enough, we could. It was scratchy and cut in and out, but we could hear something about hurricane preparations. We heard enough to realize that they were talking about a specific hurricane. What?! So I screwed around with the SSB until finally receiving enough detail to realize that hurricane Barbara, fully developed and at category 4, was located about halfway between Mexico and Hawaii and moving in our direction. Yikes! How did we miss this? And more importantly, what do we do about it now?

We had 150 miles left to go to Oahu. We had zero wind and none predicted for at least the next three days. We had already burned about sixty gallons of diesel out of what had been close to a normal load of 200. We had twenty more gallons in jerry cans on deck. We had about seventy-five gallons of contaminated fuel in our center tank that we didn’t want to even try to use. We calculated that if we started right away we could probably power at six knots for twenty-four hours and make it at least most of the way to Oahu before the storm caught up to us. By this time they were already expecting the hurricane would downgrade to a tropical storm, then dissipate all together before hitting Hawaii. But our best bet was to head for the marina as quickly as possible. We started the engine and motored our way along the remainder of the rhumb line course.

So, why the contaminated fuel? Having put up with a clogged fuel line every time we’ve run off the center tank since before leaving Mexico in 2017, and subsequently having to unclog the line each time by blowing it out with a bicycle pump, then bleeding air out of the entire fuel system, followed by performing a battery-draining, engine-sputtering, re-start ritual—not to mention the question of why we are always replacing so many gunked up fuel filters—we’ve finally grown tired of the entire process and have accepted the inevitable fact that our center tank is likely going the way of so many Westsail 42 fuel tanks after thirty or forty years of use. It’s rusting through, and it is rust particles in the fuel that are clogging the fuel line and the filters. Our boat, like so many before it, will need to have the floor ripped up and cabinets disassembled and removed to get at the tanks in order to remove and replace them. There, I said it out loud. Until then, we need to figure out how to get the roughly seventy-five remaining gallons out of the center tank before it finds a hole and ends up in the bilge which is the last place we’d want that much fuel to be sloshing around or getting accidentally pumped overboard like so much bilge water.

Making really good time over the incredibly smooth seas (calm before the storm?), we arrived at the marina late in the day on the 4th of July. We had been able to make contact by cell phone once we were within range and assigned a slip number over the phone, but our actual arrival was after-hours. We were confined to the boat on the honor system until a bio-security inspection could be done the next day. A Customs officer could not make it to the boat (unofficial four-day holiday weekend?) and asked us to come see them in Honolulu on Monday. The bio-security officer showed up as scheduled on Friday, sealed our trash and confiscated our contraband food, declaring us purged. It wasn’t until she asked us how long we intended to stay that it hit me. I felt like saying, “Forever.” We are citizens here. We need no visa with an expiration date. We need no clearance to our next destination. There is no time limit on exempting our boat from import duties. The rest of the way home is domestic travel. In that sense at least, we are already home. This, in fact, was confirmed on Monday when we drove a rental car into downtown Honolulu, first dropping off our clewless sail at the sailmaker, and then visiting the Customs office in the middle of the container port. After filling out the required myriad numbered forms so typical of the US Government, we asked if there was anything we would need to do after we arrived on the mainland. The answer was, “Nope, you’re home.”

July 11th: Today we had our fuel “polished. The fuel in the center tank was pumped out and run through filters to remove the accumulation of rust particles, as well as some water and algae. Then the fuel was redistributed to the side tanks and the center tank will no longer be used until the day comes when it can be replaced. Until then, we still have to make it across the ocean with only half our normal fuel supply. Hopefully the atmosphere will settle down soon into a more normal summer pattern.

Thirty-five days of this…
…in order to get to this. There are worse places we could be.

Below is a fax image received through the SSB radio. I missed the beginning of the transmission so it didn’t synchronize properly. We were about 150 miles south of Oahu at the time. It is the first confirmation that trouble could be heading our way. Really a mood changer.

Below is part of an email sent over SSB from SailDocs giving a weather discussion for the eastern Pacific. Describes Barbara as category 4 under SPECIAL FEATURES. Fun stuff.

Back in the Western Hemisphere

We knew it was time to leave Fiji when members of the marina staff began to gather along the rim of the basin in front of our boat with guitars in hand. It was time for the goodbye song. Once they sang, we did not get off the boat again until we were all checked in to Samoa, two weeks later.

A few days earlier we had cruised over to Musket Cove. We made it to shore this time, which we had not last year. We joined the yacht club (about $10) so we would be able to show off our lifetime membership cards (can’t think of another reason), and had a couple nice meals and cold drinks on the deck of the cafe. It was there that Jan, our new crew member, announced that she had a medical concern that she wanted to see a doctor about before we went out to sea. Jan had been added to our crew list before we left home in March. It was the fact that she would be leaving Fiji with us that allowed her to travel in to Fiji on a one-way plane ticket. In the eyes of the government, we couldn’t leave the country without her leaving the country, too. But her Fijian doctor would not clear her for extended time at sea without further testing to resolve the medical issue. No one knew how long that might take, or what the end result might be. With that new wrinkle, it got complicated in a hurry. Immigration was already involved, and we wouldn’t be allowed to leave until there was a course of action. We had a few days of flexibility overall, but the windows to get home are relatively narrow considering the distance. We really could not afford to lose another year. Some hard decisions were made quickly, Jan flew home, presumably to see a doctor in the US, and we were allowed to leave only after the customs officer verified with the airport that she had actually boarded the plane. They have their rules. Clearing all this up became one more colossal distraction from prepping the boat and ourselves. Just what you don’t want when you’re in final countdown mode. And there had already been more than enough other distractions already.

Looking at a map, the shortest and easiest way to get to Samoa would appear to be by staying within the Fiji reef system and going between the main islands to Savusavu before checking out there. From there, we could approach Samoa from more of a southerly direction with more favorable winds. But, once checked out of Fiji, you are given a limited time to clear Fijian waters, and you are not supposed to touch land again. We did not think we could clear Fijian waters from Savusavu during daylight, and due to the number of rocks and reefs we’d be finding our way around, we didn’t want to get stuck after dark, either before or after we got to Savusavu. So we chose a more direct route out, leaving the reef the same way we came in, near Momi Bay. This reef pass is lighted and marked for night use. Unfortunately, it would require us to then turn north and go almost completely around and over the north side of Fiji to assume a route to Samoa.

As evidence of how flustered and on edge we’d become with the external distractions, as we approached the pass we noticed a patrol-type vessel approaching rapidly behind us. It appeared to have flashing or flickering lights on top. I watched it for a while, then my curiosity got to me and I grabbed the binoculars. Not only did it have flashing lights, but they were red and blue. It caught up to us as we were in the middle of the pass. Then they hit the siren. Now what? It was still behind us on the center line of the pass, but had already started to pull around to overtake us. It said POLICE on the side of the hull in big, block letters. Inside its cabin I could see several people standing in the window. All of them were waving with big arm movements. My heart skipped a few beats, and I certainly felt guilty of doing something majorly wrong, but they continued on by. They exited the pass ahead of us, then turned south. We turned north. Maybe it was just the overall friendly nature of everyone. Maybe the siren was just to alert us that they were overtaking. Maybe it was just my expectations after everything we’ve dealt with the last few months.

It wasn’t pretty and it wasn’t easy, but we did finally make it to Samoa. I say finally, because we tended to believe that it would be a relatively short shakedown cruise to check everything out while getting some easting in for a better angle on the trade winds before turning north to Hawaii. How hard could it be? A better question might be, How many things can go wrong in one passage? Going from Vuda Marina to Apia Marina ended up taking two full weeks, and It felt like it took a whole lot longer. Almost every day, some little worn out overtaxed piece of something broke or caused us problems. We had hoped we might get to Samoa in a week, but after about day ten, it really gets frustrating to realize, once again, that you won’t be spotting Samoa today, either. The problem was the wind direction was right on the nose, much higher than forecast (20 to 25, gusts over 30, rather than 12 to 15) and the seas were bigger than expected. We ran the engine a lot more than we’d planned. And even with that, found it hard to power directly into the wind and seas. We hove-to twice. Once, because we just couldn’t make headway worth the amount of fuel we were burning, and another time to wait for daylight before trying to enter Apia Harbor.

The procedure for Apia Harbor is supposed to be to call Harbor Control before entering. We tried multiple times, stating at more than an hour out, but nobody answered. We tried to call the marina, but again nobody answered. We came into the harbor anyway and anchored in the designated small craft anchorage, then called the marina on the cell phone. The cell phone was successful and we were told to come to the marina, but to keep trying to raise the harbormaster and ask them to alert Customs. We called them on the radio from apparently right outside their office. Not only did they answer this time, but they said they saw us, too. The marina helped us get tied up, but we’d have to wait until we were cleared before we could get off the boat. No problem.

It didn’t take long for the officials to show up, but then there was the almost-crew medical issue again. The Samoan health inspector was concerned about the unknown medical condition that caused her to be removed from our crew list, and suggested we might have to be quarantined in case it was contagious and we’d been exposed to it. But since it took us two weeks at sea to get from Fiji to Samoa, we had effectively already quarantined ourselves.

There aren’t many other boats here, but just like everywhere else we’ve been, the few people we’ve met have been outstanding in their friendliness and helpfulness. From our taxi driver, Tai, who even took us on a four hour tour of the island (no, I did not actually stay fully awake the entire time), to the folks on the boat already here when we arrived, Sao Nicolau, everyone has been going out of their way to offer help. She’s a physician, and he’s a German physicist who worked at Lawrence Livermore in California. They bought their boat in Portugal. If it wasn’t for the help of Wolfgang and the very long hose on his drill-powered transfer pump, and Tai making so many runs to the gas station with our combined load of jerry jugs in his trunk, we might still be working on refilling the diesel we burned trying to get here (there’s no fuel dock). I’d seen those little drill pumps before and always dismissed them as something I really didn’t need, but now that I know you can empty a jerry jug in about four minutes, from all the way across on the other side of the boat, without even lifting the jug off the dock or from where it’s stored on deck, it is the latest must-have on my shopping list.

Before we started this South Pacific trip in 2016, we did what we could to prepare for things that might happen. We put a lot of effort into anticipating troubles caused by being remote landlords, maintaining bank account access, paying bills, staying in communication with family, etc. No matter the preparation, and no matter how many levels of spares, backups and redundancies you try to build in, things never happen as expected. And some things you just can’t prepare for. Once again, soon after we arrived we learned of another death in the family. Kind of takes the wind out of the sails, so to speak. We’re on our way home, at least. Next planned stop is Oahu around the first week in July.

Back in the Water

To be honest, I’ve been trying to do another blog post for about the last three weeks. I start them, even finish them, but then can’t seen to find a time when the internet connection is good enough for long enough without interruption to actually upload everything. Then we are onto something else. Besides, this part of the journey is different than the previous couple of years. Then, like people going for a walk in the woods and wanting to go a little farther to see what’s up ahead; to maybe find that storied hidden glen they’d heard so much about, only to get there, see it, and then discover that the woods have grown dark behind them when they turn around to head home in time for dinner. Well, we sailed our own boat across a big chunk of latitude until the sun was in the north and the moon was upside down. We made it to New Zealand, saw it, did it, even bought a few T-shirts. But now we gotta get back home to mow the lawn and finish painting the house. That means that this part of our trip is for an entirely different purpose. It’s all about sailing back home. It’s all about moving an old boat from Point A to Point B. Sure, we did give a thought or two about selling the boat. But hey, what’s the fun in that? We got ourselves this far into the woods, we’re going to get ourselves back out.

It hasn’t been easy so far. This is the tail end (we hope) of the wet and hot season in Fiji. Being from Seattle, those seem like opposite weather concepts, but here the heat and humidity literally takes your breath away. We both had some first-hand experience with that. On the Thursday before Easter, we had two—or three if you count the taxi driver—groups of hired help doing physical labor for us. A couple guys washed, waxed and polished the upper hull—so easy while just about everything below the waterline is in a pit (actually, more like a trench), no ladders required. We had another group emptying our rented storage unit and loading everything into the back of a taxi. Then the taxi drove it all to the boat, and the guys unloaded everything and put it up on the deck. The distance was only a few hundred meters, but it sure beat lugging it all by hand like we did last year (right, Robyn?). Besides, all the rain had turned the road into pretty much a gooey, slippery mess. In addition to the hired help, Bill from the boat Ballena (Martin’s dad) had offered to help us with a few of the projects, such as getting the self-steering system back together, reinstalling the wind generator on the mizzen mast, and best of all, helping us fix a problem that has plagued us since the beginning of our trip: a liquid (okay, sewage) leak in our marine head. Marine Sanitation & Supply in Seattle had supplied us with a few parts and several suggestions, but Bill did the really hard physical heavy hitting. Literally, pounding with the biggest, heaviest hammer we could borrow from the guys in the boatyard workshop. In the middle of this productive and successful day, Julie was the first to have trouble. Suddenly unable to continue working, lying flat on her back and feeling sick, she asked for water and then started dumping it on herself. A little later it was my turn. It hit suddenly. I could not catch my breath. I was breathing hard, way too hard, but it was almost like I was getting no oxygen. I needed to sit down, but we were in the middle of something, and questions needed answers. The hard breathing continued and still I couldn’t catch my breath. This was not normal. I had never felt like this before. It went on and on, and I actually got a little worried that I was going to pass out and keel over. I had never felt like that before, either. We all called it a day, cooled off and went to the marina restaurant for lunch and cold drinks.

Finally, the day came. After the travel lift spun its wheels in the soft ground, only getting traction after enough shovel fulls of gravel, old tires and chunks of wood were thrown in front of its wheels, all 26 tons of Mysticeti was lifted from the pit and moved to the water’s edge where it was put up on stands beneath swaying palm trees in full view of the South Pacific sunset so that more hired help could put on another coat of bottom paint (plus a little extra leftover donated by our new friends on Crazy Love) while we bolted on the last remaining missing replacement piece of our Saye’s Rig self-steering: the broken off and sunk tiller arm. Not knowing the dimensions and bend angles of the stainless steel tiller arm that had been custom fitted during the original installation in the early eighties, all we had to work with was a few key measurements and whatever photographs we had taken over the years that just happened to show the original tiller arm. From that, we spent much of last January with a computer making a scaled drawing that, to the best that we could know, closely matched the dimensions and bend angles of the original. Then we gave it to Tim at Meridian Stainless, in Port Townsend, WA. We picked up his finished creation a few days before we flew back to Fiji. We haven’t had a chance to try it out yet, but it fit the rudder perfectly without any tweaking or screwing around.

We have a plan to sail back home. Of course, we had a plan last year too. But a few things will be different this time. For one, we got rid of the SPOT tracker. It had given us something to do: push a button twice a day. But it didn’t have enough satellite coverage away from land, and it would only keep our positions for six days. We never really knew if it was working or not. We plan to stick with the Farkwar map, if it still recognizes us. We won’t spend as much time around land as we did before, so we won’t have as much internet access, and we’ll rely on SSB Sailmail, and a new Garmin InReach. We plan to sail (or power, since it’s likely upwind) from Fiji to Apia, Samoa. We hope to only stay there just about long enough to refuel, refill the water tanks, and provision for the long haul. From Samoa it is hopefully a direct shot to Hawaii, with a potential stop along the way if necessary. We already have a marina reservation on Oahu, so we have to be there. And after Hawaii, we should be home in early August. Another new thing this year is we have a third crew. Her name is Jan, she came to us after spending time in Central America.

So, we’re out of the pit and back in the water. Still working to prepare the boat, we’ll be in the marina for a few more days. Then we’ll sail around a bit to test things out before checking out of Fiji and heading toward Samoa.

Original tiller arm bolted to upper edge of rudder, 2011
New Tiller Arm, 2019


Back in Fiji

Does this thing still work?

After being home for one of the strangest spans of eight months I can remember, full of surprises both pleasant and not, where things happened, but not always in the way we would’ve expected; where so much of what had been familiar became some kind of bizarre topsy-turvy world where true was false and fake was real; where, at one of the lowest lows, we discussed selling the boat right where it was in the pit; we have, instead, returned to the heat and humidity of Fiji. It’s time to get the boat and deliver it home.

We arrived on a crowded, cramped, eleven hour night flight from San Francisco to Nadi. Other than being painfully uncomfortable for both of us (A few days earlier Julie had fallen through a rotten porch and banged up her leg–which already had a bad hip), I realized during the night that for all the years Julie and I have been married, and all the places we’ve been to together, we can probably count on the fingers of one hand the number of times we’ve actually sat next to each other on the same airplane. It was a rarity to be seatmates. Once on the ground, we breezed through Immigration with the help of a “Facilitation Letter” from the Vuda marina, signed and stamped by officialdom, explaining why we were traveling with no return ticket. Don’t leave your boat and go home without one.

We brought along at least 300 pounds of luggage spread over seven separate bags. With virtually zero sleep during the previous 48 hours of final preparation and travel, the first thing I did in Fiji was forget to pick up one of those seven bags at the baggage claim. I pulled it off the carousel, but then apparently left it behind on the floor as we moved on to the next stop in the carnival fun-house that is arriving by air in a foreign country: Customs. The letter from Vuda was again very useful at clearing our way without having to pay import duties on the more expensive items we brought along with us, such as the custom-made replacement for the critical piece of our self-steering system that broke off and is somewhere on the bottom of the Pacific offshore of New Zealand.

The bag I had forgotten to pick up was full of odd-looking metal parts: a carburetor for an outboard motor; a hefty, solid-bronze pump shaft; various stainless-steel and aluminum parts including axle hubs designed for robots (don’t ask), and lots of things with wires and circuit boards. I would imagine that to an x-ray machine or Customs officer (all bags are x-rayed in Fiji Customs), none of these things look like normal tourist items for a beach holiday. It wasn’t until more than an hour later, while we were sitting at an airport coffee shop trying to wake up from not sleeping, that I realized this particular bag was not with the others stacked on the cart next to us. Slightly panicked, I could not remember seeing it since it came off the carousel.

I could only imagine what might’ve happened had this been a US airport. You know, “unattended suspicious package,” terminal evacuation, remote-controlled bomb-sniffing x-ray vision robot, police barricades, sirens, flashing lights, news helicopters, etc. Fortunately, this is Fiji. It was a relatively painless process to be escorted back into the secure area, claim my missing bag, which had already been taken to a separate room, and go through Customs with it again. Good to know that there are people in the world who still see the simplest explanation as the most likely to be true.

So, momentarily awake, or so it seemed, we were ready for our next mistake. Since it was still early morning, we asked our taxi driver to take us through the nearby Denarau Island area because we wanted to see where a certain marine store was located before going back the other way to Vuda. I would guess that only when not thinking clearly following 48 hours of sleep deprivation, would one decide that being driven around aimlessly by a taxi driver was a good idea. I fought hard to keep my eyes open. I think I mostly did, but not sure how much I actually saw. I remember stopping at a very impressive, intricately-colored temple (or was it a dream?) where our driver asked if we wanted to take a picture or tour the inside. But I don’t know if we ever saw the store we were looking for. I guess it could’ve been worse. We had agreed to a set price before we left the airport.

Once back at the marina, we were greeted and welcomed back like old friends. Someone asked if our daughter was with us this time. We said she was home finishing her first year of college. Martin, the ten-year-old, multi-lingual child-of-the-world that we continually ran into last year, first in Nuku Hiva, then all along the way to New Zealand, is a year older now. He recognized us and said, “You’re back!” Obviously, many of the other boats we sailed with last year have long since moved on by now, but there is still enough familiarity here that we feel like nothing much has changed. Even our boat is exactly the same as how we left it.

We had hired Ritesh Kumar, of Krishna Yacht Services, to mind our boat while we were gone. He monitored the batteries, aired the interior, placed dehumidifiers in the cabin, washed the deck and periodically ran the engine while we were gone. He also took photos every month or so, which he emailed to us. He’s an engine guy, knows his stuff, and we can’t say enough good things about him.

Unfortunately, while we were gone the boat didn’t get any younger, fix itself of the things that were broken, or magically make more space inside. I guess we need to get to work on all of that. That is, maybe as soon as we sit a little longer in the cooling afternoon breeze. And have another beer. After all, some acclimatization is in order since we made a pretty sudden change from a colder than normal Seattle winter.

Home Again

Posted by John

We arrived home with a bit of apprehension. In a rental car we had just picked up, Robyn and I drove up the road to our house cautiously, not sure how we’d feel. Neither of us had been home for two years. Our house sitters had been living in the house since we moved onto the boat in June, 2016. Driving up to the house felt familiar and, in some ways, like we’d never left, but also, oddly, like it was someone else’s home and we were intruding. As we pulled up the driveway we were greeted by a playful dog, and immediately noticed a few changes: the greenhouse; parking space for more cars; a larger chicken enclosure. Things that weren’t ours.

We wanted to go inside, but then again, we didn’t. I had been thinking about our house occasionally for the last few months. It had taken us five years of working weekends to build it. I wasn’t ready to go inside and have my memory of it altered by reality just yet.

We made face-to-face contact with Jeremy in the driveway. They were still in the process of moving out, and still looking for a more permanent place to live, but planned to be out of our house by dark. At least they knew we were back. That should be good enough until Julie got home with the bags. Robyn and I got back in the car and drove away again. Baby steps.

After flying from Fiji to Hawaii, and then Honolulu to Seattle, arriving late in the evening, we had spent the first night back in Seattle at an airport hotel. In the morning, Julie stayed with all of our bags at the hotel and waited for a prearranged ride home late in the afternoon. We knew that everything and all of us would not fit in the small car, so Robyn and I took the light rail to downtown Seattle, then walked onto the Washington State Ferry to Bainbridge, then took a Kitsap Transit bus to Poulsbo, and then walked a mile to the rental car office.

On the light rail from the airport, the woman sitting next to us noticed the little backpack I was carrying. It was a handout from the Baja Ha-Ha, with the rally logo printed on it. The woman asked if we had done the Ha-Ha. I said we were just getting home, even though we had actually done it two years before. We explained how our boat was stuck in Fiji, but our original plan had been to sail home through Tahiti and Hawaii. She said it was a tough year to sail from Hawaii, and pulled out her smart phone and brought up Windy.com, showing headwinds between Hawaii and Seattle. She pointed out a tight patch of high wind and low pressure near Mexico, and predicted that it could turn into something nasty. It later became hurricane Hector, heading toward Hawaii. We had never met this woman before, yet the conversation seemed everyday normal as if even random public transit riders maintain immediate access to ocean weather predictions and understand the sailing routes from Hawaii.

On our last day in Fiji I had awakened to the delayed realization that it really was our final day. We still had to pack and finish preparing the boat. In addition to the few bags we had that we could use as travel luggage, Terrapin had previously given us a large duffle bag that they no longer needed, and Julie made three more duffle bags from old sail material given to us by Mezzaluna, and some leftover Sunbrella material from our other projects. Handles were made out of bright yellow webbing. One thing for sure, our bags would be easy to spot at the airport baggage claim.

Our taxi driver was eager to get us to the airport, but we were ready early enough that he was willing to wait while we had a last lunch with Mezzaluna and Enough. By the time the Sunday afternoon live music would be starting, we couldn’t stay any longer. Suddenly, it seemed strange to even contemplate being home soon. We helped the driver load our bags.

Now back at our house on Monday evening, there wasn’t much there. It was mostly empty. It took a while to remember which switch turned on which lights. There were so many of them. We went out to the store and bought a new coffee maker and a package of coffee. Then we bought new pillows and three new blankets. We drove home again, exhausted by this point, and spent the night sleeping on three couches. Other than the dining room table, they were the only real furniture still in the house.

After carefully setting up our bank accounts, mail handling, bill paying and credit cards before we left on the boat (it had actually taken more than a year to get all the bugs worked out), now everything was once again all screwed up. We had been locked out of some accounts, having unwittingly triggered anti-fraud measures on accounts that had been working fine up until recently. It took more than a week just to reactivate our home phone number. We had to find a car. We had to find kitchen utensils, plates, cups; we had to buy more clothes, needing fewer T-shirts and shorts, and more pants and socks(!). Every day we find surprises that we had packed away in storage and forgotten, but also wonder if, maybe, we actually got rid of some of the things we’ve been looking for but haven’t yet found. Things had been pretty hectic just before we moved onto the boat two years ago.

We have a lengthening list of maintenance tasks around the house, from a dishwasher that doesn’t work right, to several burned out lights, to a vacuum cleaner that won’t suck, to a riding mower that does. We’ve been told that it couldn’t be started the whole time we were gone. We brought home boat parts and measurements, sketches and ideas for several projects and repairs. We have to make contact again with the marina and find out what happened to our highly recommended “boat minder” we arranged with to take care of the boat. We need to find insurance that will actually cover the boat while it’s in the pit during the cyclone season, since our current carrier informed us the day before we left Fiji that they wouldn’t be able to. We have to remember that we need to once again carry around a bunch of keys, and try not to lock ourselves out of the house. Plus, we have a kid to get off to school, and need to plan for more time away from home next year.

So, with that, we’ll get on with life for the next several months. We may make occasional blog posts through the winter if there is something appropriate to mention. Otherwise, we go back to Fiji in March. I’m sure there will be something to write about then.

In the meantime, here’s how we last remember our boat.

We removed the sails and cockpit canvas and put them into a rented storage compartment, along with several other items.

We tied down everything left on deck. Our boat minder said he’d take off the solar panels and put them inside if necessary. At this point, we just hope for the best.

Hey, Would You Look at the Time

Posted by John

I’ve read more than once that going cruising means working on your boat in exotic places. I’ve also read that if you go cruising, you will, sooner or later, run aground. More recently, I’ve been told that you never really say goodbye to the other cruisers you meet along the way because you’ll keep running into them again and again further down the road. Now, after two years of being a cruiser, I can see the truth in these sentiments.

It seems like we’ve certainly done our share of boat work, but, so far at least, we haven’t run aground. However, there is something somehow disturbing about seeing your boat sitting on the grass like some tossed aside pool toy. Could this count as our grounding?

The idea of the pit is that boats shouldn’t fall over—as boats up on stands sometimes do during cyclones—and start a domino effect with other boats in the yard. We saw a boatyard in Mexico where that had happened. Many of the boats were still there, lying on their sides, on top of each other. It was troubling to see.

On the other hand, the boat on the left above really did run aground on a reef in Musket Cove. That’s why it’s pointing in a different direction than the other anchored boats, and its bow is sightly out of the water. It was floated free on the next high tide. Lucky for them, their inevitable grounding is now behind them, and they didn’t appear to suffer any serious damage. That was not the case for others. We heard the drama unfold on the radio on three different occasions as boats went aground and their crews were rescued. The first happened early in our trip, when a fishing boat ended up on the beach on the wrong side of the jetty at Westport, on the Washington coast. We don’t know the ultimate fate of that first boat, but the other two were cruising sailboats, and were destroyed. One happened in Mexico during the Baja Ha-Ha rally, and the other in French Polynesia. All three happened at night.

From day one we’ve been frustrated with breakage, finding replacements for things and having to make repairs. The first thing to go was part of a latch on the forward hatch. We drilled out a rivet and put in a screw to fix it. By the time we got to San Diego the list was up to thirty-five items that had failed, broken or had accidentally gone overboard. We stopped adding to the list. It was just extra work to keep it up. But if we had, the list would be hundreds of items long by now and include everything from badly corroded, crumbling metal parts on supposedly “marine grade” products, to multiple repairs on each sail, including the complete replacement of one. We even had to replace our dinghy. It seems that just as we repair one problem, a new one turns up. Even our bottom paint failed. The Vuda boatyard manager had the local representative for the paint company come out and look at our boat. We’ve heard from others who also used the same paint and collected a ton of barnacles in a short time. It shouldn’t happen like that. High cost bottom paint is for preventing barnacles in the first place. It’s supposed to last longer than four months.

After two years in Mexico and the South Pacific, we’re not sure what an exotic place to work on the boat would be anymore. But Vuda Point seems like it would qualify. Plus it’s scenic, and feels less industrial than most. There’s even a picnic spot with a gas barbecue and a great view of the sunset.

Of course, if you don’t want to do all the work yourself, you can always hire a crew of “casuals.” For us, that would really be exotic.

As much fun as our nice little cottage with the backyard clothesline was, we had to move out (someone else had pre-booked it). But we moved into the twice-as-big apartment instead. That’s it, the whole upper floor of the brown building on the left.

The deck on the apartment is big, sits above the open air restaurant with its live music on Fridays and Sundays, and overlooks the boat traffic in and out of the marina.

And here comes Jeff and Katy on Mezzaluna, back in from a sea trial. They’ve been working for weeks, including three travel lift round-trips, trying to solve problems with their propeller shaft, motor mounts and transmission. One thing leads to another. They finally have it down to some minor remaining vibration. Katy is on the bow talking with Ingmar from the Swedish boat Hakuna Matata, who we ran into a number of times in French Polynesia, and who has some professional experience with vibration problems in a former working life.

When we first arrived here, we shared a taxi into town with Jeff. We noticed curious train-like rails along the road. They were too small for a real train, and looked like something you’d see in an amusement park. Jeff said they were for the sugar cane train.

Having seen the small rails, when he said sugar cane I immediately thought of “sugar plum,” or maybe “candy cane,” and imagined Santa Claus hanging out of a tiny locomotive pulling tiny train cars. I had to see one of these for myself.

The locomotives are bigger than I imagined. The operator fits completely inside and doesn’t hang out at all. Still, they’re pretty small. The tracks all lead to the sugar cane processing plant in Lautoka.

We hadn’t expected to run into Mezzaluna here, and they hadn’t planned to be here. They came because they suddenly needed repairs. Windrose never planned to still be here, expecting instead to be in Vanuatu by now. They’ve been waiting for repair parts for their engine. They loaned us their water hose and a cart. We gave them some of our food stores. Me Too was here, but is headed for the Marshall Islands where they plan to leave their boat next year while they go home and hike the Pacific Crest Trail from the Mexican border to the Canadian border. They left early in the morning. Jill saw me sitting on the apartment deck and shouted, “Hey Mysticeti, get on Facebook.” Terrapin sold their boat and are leaving it here for the new owners to pick up next year. It’s hard to give up your boat, it becomes so much of your identity. Sky Blue Eyes dropped in for a couple days to pick up a new propeller for their dinghy outboard, and then stayed for pizza night. Elysium, another Westsail 42 which we had met previously, had been involved in an accident in Suva harbor and came here for repairs. We’re going home with a long list of things to figure out before we come back next year. For one thing, we need to find a new third crew member. Robyn has been formally removed from our official crew list.

Such is cruising.

No one ever really says goodbye.

Next up: ”Oh hey, you’re back. How was your trip?”

Fiji

Posted by John

We stayed in the Vuda Point Marina for a week. With no finger piers between boats for access, we learned to time climbing on and off with the tide. We climbed on and off from the bowsprit. There’s a hefty tidal range, so waiting for a mid-tide was the easiest, but not always convenient. For most of the week we waited for our cruising permit. Why ours took so long we don’t really know. It was supposed to come to the marina office by email, but the internet in Fiji has been messed up intermittently since we got here. We finally received one directly from the customs people when they came to check-in more boats on Monday. The permit is required to move the boat around within Fiji waters.

Once we were finally popped free from our spot in the marina, we took the boat around the corner to Saweni Bay. It doesn’t have the amenities of the marina, but it doesn’t cost anything, either. It also has a nice beach. We got together with several other boats we’ve met over the last two years: Me Too; Windrose; Terrapin; Mezzaluna; Enough and Spill the Wine. Plus a few others we hadn’t met yet, including one whose blog we’d been reading before we left home. We all took our dinghies to the beach, built a bonfire, and had a Fourth of July barbecue, organized by Clay from Me Too. We shot off sky rockets while singing The Star Spangled Banner. Robyn finds it somewhat ironic that, so far, her two most memorable Fourth of July events have been outside of the USA.

We wanted to visit Musket Cove, a resort on an island about fifteen miles away but within the Fiji reef system and, therefore, lacking any ocean swell. We heard that the whole place was jugged up with boats participating in the ARC Round the World Rally so we waited a few more days until they departed for their next destination. Although Windrose had reserved two spots in the little med-moor marina, we decided to anchor out rather than deal with another difficult-to-access-the-boat situation. Unfortunately, we had to anchor too far out, with too much fast boat traffic and choppy water to row all three of us all the way in. Our outboard needs a new carburetor, apparently because it sat unused on the deck in New Zealand for too long, and by the time we tried to clean out the carburetor, the screws were frozen in place. So we watched resort guests arrive and leave by seaplane, helicopter and ferry boat, and we rowed around the shallow reef towing a snorkeling Robyn behind. It was actually a very nice place to spend our last night on the boat.

After two nights anchored in Musket Cove, we returned to Vuda Marina, arriving ahead of the scheduled time of our haulout and placement in the cyclone pit. We tied to the buoy in the center of the circular marina and waited. When they appeared to be ready, we started the engine and got all set to release the mooring when they gave the signal. But then they towed a big, heavy, wood-hulled ketch over to the lift, and took it out instead. It broke the travel lift. We weren’t going anywhere for a while. They let us stay tied to the buoy.

We moved off the boat anyway, hitching a ride to shore with a marina employee and spending the night in one of the marina’s little guest cottages as we had planned. It’s kind of our halfway house, I guess, as we ease back into a life on shore.

That was Tuesday. It took until Thursday until they were ready to haul us out. We were taken back out to the boat—still in the center of the marina—around 7:30 in the morning. We backed into the travel lift. A diver dove beneath the boat to place the slings in the proper position, then tied them together underwater, as well as above the water, and after lifting us a few feet out of the water, they placed even more horizontal strapping to keep the sling from slipping up the sloping keel. Compare this to the yard in Opua, where we were asked to put little stickers on the hull to show where we wanted the slings placed.

We still have a lot to do here in the next couple of weeks to secure everything before finally leaving for home, but the boat is now stuck in a hole in the ground, and we are no longer living on it. Although, I’m pretty sure something will try to move in and make a home while we’re gone. This is the tropics, after all.

There’s a lot to be said for flat water, sometimes. From the left, Mezzaluna, Terrapin and Bear, in Saweni Bay.

Me Too, ready for the Fourth of July

Fourth of July, 2018 Saweni Beach, Fiji (Terrapin photo)

Windrose in Saweni Bay

Our new (used) chartplotter, installed as a New Zealand project, guiding us back to Vuda from Musket Cove

We were disappointed to find thousands of barnacles after just putting on more than $1,000 worth of bottom paint in February. The couple hours of scraping labor, and the pressure washer blasting off so much expensive paint, was not easy to take.

Dropping it in the pit

Our little cottage, with hot and cold running water (usually) and air conditioning

Last Ocean Passage (For a While)

Posted by John

So we left New Zealand wrapped up in multiple layers of fleece, hats and gloves. We had decided we would leave when the weather looked right. We were not alone in our thinking. There were several other boats also looking for an opening.

We had been comparing weather notes almost daily with Anna Caroline, a boat from The Netherlands, that was moored just a few slips away. We were all looking at the weather models for a good five days out, and especially for agreement between the European and American versions. Not only were the outputs quite different between the two, but they would seem to change daily. Our Dutch friends told us more than once that they would be leaving in the morning, only to stop by later to say that they weren’t. It was like that for a few days: go, no go; up and down; not sure if maybe some seasonal weather window had closed. We even checked in with the local Customs officer to make sure our questionable immigration status wouldn’t cause a problem when it was time to go. He assured us that it “looked like” we had done all the right things. But also, we knew, he was Customs, not Immigration.

Then a window appeared to open. We decided to leave the next day, on a Monday. Anna Caroline said they were going to leave on Tuesday. They came back later to say they had decided to leave on Monday as well. The next day they departed for New Caledonia, and we left for Fiji.

Trying to take advantage of the southerly winds between a departing low pressure system and the next approaching high following it, the first night was on the rough side. The wind itself wasn’t too bad, but the swells from the passing storm were quite uncomfortable.

If something bad is going to happen, invariably it will be when it’s rough, and in the middle of the night. We had a randomly beeping alarm of unknown origin. It is my opinion that alarm manufacturers must all use the same tiny electronic beepers made by the same Chinese company. They all sound alike. We finally found the aft cabin carbon monoxide detector, with expired batteries, to be the source of the annoying beeps. A fresh set of double A’s silenced it.

We had a couple of squally days with lightning, rain showers and shifting winds before developing a new problem of a very different nature: almost dead calm. We started the engine and motored continuously for what seemed like days and days. Stuck in a high pressure system, we burned all but our most essential of fuel reserves. We droned on and on inside of a big blue bubble encompassing all we could see. We were on an ocean treadmill. Going, but perhaps going nowhere, it seemed. The GPS told us we were moving, but we could see no difference in scenery from day to day. At night, however, the Milky Way was spectacular, startling in its unexpected brightness.

Finally, satisfied that we were far enough north to not be bothered by the storm now affecting New Zealand, we shut off the engine and sailed, albeit slowly, across the Tropic of Capricorn. The hats, gloves and multiple layers had all come off by now, the sun rose sooner and set later, and the days turned into a frustration of, “Are we there yet?”

However, all was not carefree. Still a little gun-shy from our last outing, we noticed new creaks and noises in the boat. We had a nagging question as to why the wheel had to be turned forty-five degrees to the left in order for the boat to steer straight. And although the engine itself seemed normal, we had a new, definite vibration somewhere in the prop shaft or transmission. We can’t help but think that we have an old boat, and we’ve beat it up pretty good over the last two years. It’s frustrating when every day seems to bring a new problem or concern, and easy to dwell on them during endless hours of darkness, at night, in the middle ocean.

After 1,050 nautical miles, we entered Naula Pass and into the calm water behind the reef. We anchored in Momi Bay, on the Fijian island of Viti Levu. It was Saturday night, nearly two weeks after leaving New Zealand. On Monday morning, at the very first lightening of the sky, we raised the anchor and motored the 15 miles to Vuda Point to begin the day-long process of getting through Bio-Security, Customs, Health and Immigration before being squeezed into the odd (by our standards), circular marina.

Entrance channel to Vuda Marina

Musical greeting before setting foot on Fiji

Arriving boats waiting at the Customs dock

The tightest fit of any marina–ever

Outta Here (Maybe)

Posted by John

Forty-one degrees Fahrenheit. That’s more than cold enough to see your own breath. That’s what the outside temperature was when I got up this morning. What’s almost as bad is that the sun doesn’t come up until 7:30. It’s a lot like December at home, except that it’s June. We run the engine for a while every couple days to charge the batteries. The sun is so low in the sky we’re not getting enough solar power.

We received a text from Me Too saying they’d made it to Fiji and that it was hot there. We’re jealous, and wish we were there too. Our consolation prize is that we were invited to join the “Leftovers Yacht Club.” It’s for those, of course, who are still here.

As thrilled as we are to be able to sit on the couch and cozy up to the wood stove in the Opua Cruising Club, drink beer and share stories with the other left-behinds, we think we’re ready to sail to Fiji. At least we hope we’re ready. We’re certainly ready to get it over with and try to regain some confidence.

Rob, the rigger at Northland Spars and Rigging who we’ve been working with, is a pretty amazing guy. To go up the mast he doesn’t mess around with being winched up, or hauling himself up with a ratcheting block. He just takes off his shoes and climbs up the rigging barefoot. Sure, he’s belayed from below, but he essentially climbs and pulls his way up the shrouds, finding toe holds on whatever he can.

The new furler is a local product, designed and built in Kerikeri, which is the next biggest town down the road past Paihia, which has the closest gas station to Opua. Being so close, it should be easy to get spare parts in the future… Oh, wait. I guess we don’t actually live here. Anyway, the furler looks pretty good to us right now. It has a ratchet to hold the load, which should make reefing during strong wind easier. It appears to be a more modern improvement over what we had.

Roger, from the North Sails loft down at the other end of the marina, made us a new custom jib from scratch. Since we didn’t have the old sail anymore, and never had gotten a good photo of it, it was a little hard to describe what we were looking for. We didn’t know any of the dimensions. The new sail design was sketched out on a pad of paper right on the dock next to the boat. Final measurements were taken after the furler was in place. Roger showed up with the sail the next day after the furler received its final tweak and said, “I got it to you when I said I would, right?” That he did.

The missing steering parts were the first to arrive, shipped from California and arranged by Kevin, the local rep for the Saye’s Rig self-steering system. If it was just the $600 bronze casting that had fallen off, we’d be all set with the new one. But because the “tiller arm” broke off, and the replacement has to be custom fitted, welded and bolted to the rudder, and the rudder is underwater, we plan to work on that in Fiji. We might just get the critical measurements and then take the parts home to the stainless guy we’ve worked with before in Port Townsend. It won’t be fun to hand steer all the way to Fiji, but we’ve done worse.

We’re still discovering things we no longer have because they were apparently washed overboard. We also noticed last week that several of the screws holding the wind generator to the mast were either missing or very loose. I had checked them the day before we left, for the first time since we installed it last year, and they were still completely tight. The fact that they had become so loose, and started falling out, is kind of disturbing.

When putting on the new jib we discovered that we have no sheets (the controlling ropes) for it, remembering that they had been still attached to the old one. Then we discovered that the block that guides the jib sheet into the winch had shattered and been destroyed. Besides the AIS antenna on top of the mizzen mast being bent at an awkward angle, the emergency strobe that was up there appears to be just a stub of its former self. What might yet be left to discover is a little unsettling.

The result of this experience is that we’ve learned a lot, including what weather that we probably should avoid looks like. We’ve been forced to change our plans. Our simple two-year tour, already delayed by a year before it even started, is now stretched out for at least another year before we can finally sail the boat back into the Straits of Juan de Fuca.

We are going home at the end of July. We already have the plane tickets. For two of us they are round-trip. Robyn will be having new adventures at school. She can’t wait to get there, and the rest of us can’t wait to get back into our house, and all the comfort and security that comes with that.

We’re taking the forestay fitting from the top of the mast, with the broken strands of steel cable still in it, home with us. Brion Toss, the rigger in Port Townsend who worked on our boat in 2015 before we left, wants to see it. We leave for Fiji as soon as the approaching weather front clears out. That looks like it should be before June 8th.

Maybe we’re a little nervous, but we also can’t wait.

New furler showed up late in the afternoon and was immediately installed

New furler

All complete