Opua: walked; the perfect crew member

        I walked into Pahia yesterday, which was a fine day sandwiched between two fronts.  Overcast and drizzle again today. 

        I had previously only climbed the Opua hill once since my return and wasn’t sure that I would be able to climb all three of the hills on the way to Pahia without stopping.  The tide was too high for me to go my favored way along the water’s edge around the third hill.  I did manage successfully to huff and puff my way without taking a break.

        At the top of the Opua hill, the road to Pahia was blocked off and a road worker was turning cars away.  I continued on and only a few cars passed me, perhaps local residents.  Most of the time I walked in lovely silence broken only by sounds of insects and my own footsteps.

        On the last hill before Pahia I discovered the reason for the closure.  A power pole had come down dropping wires across the road.  A crew were working on repairs.

        At the bottom of the hill was another barricade preventing cars from going north and it dawned on me that I was stuck.  The Marina Cafe and an ATM in the marina laundry room have reduced the need to go into Pahia, but I intended to buy more at the grocery and liquor stores than I could carry far and to taxi back, which wasn’t going to happen until the road reopened.

        After a leisurely lunch at the Flight Deck, a second floor cafe overlooking the bay, I shopped and carried my bags along to the road block.  I asked the worker there when the road would reopen and he said he didn’t know.

        I settled into the lobby of a nearby hotel and read on my iPhone number 17 of the Aubrey/Maturin novels, THE COMMODORE, getting up every chapter to check if the road was open.  I was beginning to think that I was going to have to take a room and spend the night, when finally the barricade came down.  I called a taxi and got back to GANNET just in time to watch the sunset behind Opua.

        I brought my Apple Watch with me, though I don’t wear it all the time.

        I did on the walk to Pahia.  The distance from Opua to the center of Pahia measured 3.8 miles/6.1 kilometers.  The climb up Opua Hill is .6 of a mile/1 kilometer.  The other two hills are equally steep, but only half the distance, .3mile/.5 kilometer each.

        I took the above photo along the way.  I believe they are known as Toe Toe feathers, pronounced toey-toey.  If you are a New Zealander and I’m wrong, please correct me.
        Mark has written that the pronunciation is closer to toy-toy.  I thank him.

------  

        A few boats have cleared in during the past week.  A catamaran is on the ‘Q’ dock now.  At this time of year I assume they have come from Australia.

        One was a big trawler type yacht.  70’ or 80’ long.

        As soon as it cleared, it moved to the fuel dock where it stayed a long, long time.  Hours.  

        I would not be surprised if the fuel bill was greater than the amount I paid for GANNET.

———

        From Chris in South Africa comes a link to a blog by a couple who cruised the Magellan Strait which gives added reason, were any needed, why I don’t want to.  I thank him.

        You will know that I don’t consider them Cape Horners.

———

        From Jeff comes a link about Inky, an escaped octopus.  I thank him.

        Inky might be the perfect crew.  I’ll take him if he wants to go to Australia.  There are often times I wish I had an extra arm and he has eight.  I don’t know how much octopuses sleep, but he could hand arm steer forever.

Opua: not a gale; The Strait revisited

        We have a gale warning, but not a gale.  Rain has ended in mid-afternoon and, although the sky is still mostly cloudy, I have hopes of sitting on deck, or at least standing in the companionway, while listening to music after I post this.

        The photo is not from this morning, when rain was falling steadily, but yesterday, a moment of unexpected beauty when I first stuck my head above deck.

———

        My comments yesterday about why I prefer to try to sail around Cape Horn rather than go through the Strait of Magellan or Panama caused two readers to suggest that I portage GANNET across Central America in Nicaragua or Guatemala.  One provided a link to a piece about a man who does this.  Ingenious and enterprising, but not for me.  Portages are only honorable if you carry or pull the boat yourself.  If my only purpose was to get back to the West Coast, I could do so by sailing to Florida and having GANNET trucked across.  For that matter if my only purpose was to get back to the West Coast, I never would have left.  But that isn’t sailing, nor is it the point of this exercise.

        I only mention alternatives because I have been around Cape Horn twice and spent more than a year south of 40°S and I have experienced storms down there in which I know I could not sail GANNET to windward.  

        Another reader, Bill, wrote that he sought information about Magellan Strait and found at Wikipedia:  On the Atlantic side, the Strait is characterized by semidiurnal macrotides with mean and spring tide ranges of 7.1 and 9.0 meters respectively.

        He continued:  “Almost like sailing in the Bristol Channel, then.”  His home waters.

        Indeed.  

        That still has me smiling.

        I have only experienced such tides in northern Australia, where they range to 8 meters/26’.  Perhaps even more.  Where they are constricted, as around Cape York and in the Torres Straits, they result in very strong currents.

        Bill also found an excellent, detailed professional guide to the Strait.

        One hazard Joshua Slocum did not have to worry about was a couple of thousand ships a year sharing the Strait with him.
         Sea room.  Give me sea room.

Opua: seats and straits and solo and hill and poems and rain

        Next month I will have owned GANNET for five years.  I am embarrassed that it has taken me this long to discover the perfect place to sit on deck.  Again last evening I placed the Sport-a-Seat just in front of the vertical tiller.  With the two Megaboom speakers at the forward end of the cockpit the sound is exceptional, and the view forward over GANNET’s vast deck unparalleled.  In mitigation, the location was not perfect until I replaced the traveler bridge with the pod which serves as an unintended foot rest.

        This is only an in harbor location.

        At sea I would be sitting on the lowered tiller,   uncomfortable and inefficient.

———

        Recently two sailors have written suggesting that I sail through the Strait of Magellan. 

        There are four ways around and through the Americas:  south of Cape Horn; the Strait of Magellan; the Panama Canal; the Northwest Passage.

        I’ve gone around the Horn twice and through Panama three times.

        I strongly do not want to take GANNET though Panama.
        I would have to rent or borrow a different outboard.  There is no room on board for four line handlers and an advisor.  No place for them to sleep.  No way for me to feed them.  And, without being too gross, no real head.  GANNET’s PortaPottie would not suffice.  There is no privacy.  And I don’t wish to share a bucket.

        Beyond that, I dislike losing my freedom in Panama where your boat and life are in the control of others for two days.  Longer if you count the waiting before transit.

        I feel so strongly about this that this voyage may end up not being my sixth circumnavigation, but a delivery from the west coast of the United States to the east coast the long way.  

        It is possible I might change my mind.

        I have considered passing through the Strait of Magellan.  Slocum did it in an engineless boat that sailed less well than GANNET.  But I like sea room and would rather take GANNET around Cape Horn if I can.

        The Strait is just over three hundred nautical miles.  It’s negatives are huge tides and currents at the Atlantic entrance, deep anchorages, dodging shipping, constant lee shores, and fierce williwaw winds.

        I’ve even considered the Northwest Passage.  But that is a thousand miles long, even colder, and with more things to bump into.

———

        Not unrelated, a sailor asked if a circumnavigation made via the Panama Canal is really solo when others have to be on board for the transit.

        My opinion is that it is.  One gains no longitude from the transit which is less than forty miles long.  I have called my fifth circumnavigation solo, and I believe that GUINNESS has recognized as solo circumnavigations made via the canal.

        However I don’t feel strongly about this.

        I am known as a solo sailor, but Jill sailed parts of my second, third and fourth circumnavigations with me, and Carol part of the fourth as well.  Had women not been a part of my life, I probably would have sailed around the world a dozen or more times.  And my life would have been much the poorer.

        If enough of you want to express your opinion, I’ll report the results.

———

        Light rain during the night ended this morning and I was able to row ashore and walk up the Opua Hill for the first time since I returned.  It was pleasingly easy.

        With an overcast sky, the light was muted, but I took some photographs anyway.

        The photo above is of the sign at the top of the hill where the road down to Opua branches off the main north/south highway, which is itself only two lanes.

        All photos were taken with a telephoto lens which compresses depth of field.

        In the one of GANNET taken from the shore, Pine Tree Island in the background seems much closer than it is.

———

        I replaced the spinnaker halyard the other day.  

        I’ve oiled the interior wood and the flag staff.

        I’ve been trying to polish metal today, but every time I go on deck it starts to rain again.

Not a breath of wind.

I doubt I’ll be able to enjoy my new deck location this evening.

———

        I’ve added two pieces to the poems page.

        One is the words from the last entry that occurred to me a few evenings ago.

        The other is something I’ve worked on for decades and never got right.  

         I’m not sure either is a poem and may upon reflection remove them. But they are there now.

Opua: I know

        I know these trees.

        I know these hills.

        I know this water.

        I know this sky.

        I know this light.

        I will carry them with me.

———

        This is among the best of times:  these days before I return to sea, when all is done but those things necessarily left until just before departure, and I sit on the gentle sloop and enjoy the quiet before the storms.

        I don’t actually expect many storms this year, except on the approach to South Africa, which is like New Zealand in that you can have a gale any time.

        ‘He holds the world in his mind.’

        A line I’m sure you all recognize.  And I do hold the world in my mind.  At least a lot of it.  

        I know the way from New Zealand to South Africa.  

        Bundaberg will be new to me and Port Richards, if I enter South Africa there, but the rest I know, and because I do I am considering making the passage from Darwin directly to South Africa.  

        If you are sailing around the world and have not stopped at Cocos, you should.  The anchorage behind an uninhabited islet is beautiful; but during the week I was there in 2008 on THE HAWKE OF TUONELA the wind blew too hard most days for me to row ashore.  People live on some of the other atolls around the lagoon, but there is little in the way of supplies.  I may pass Cocos.

        I read that Port Louis in Mauritius has changed since I was there more than three decades ago.  I may go in.  That decision will be made at sea, depending on how GANNET and I are as we reach that side of the Indian Ocean.

        Darwin to Port Richards or Durban is almost 6,000 miles, approaching the 6408 we sailed crossing the Pacific Ocean.  I’m thinking about it.

        The course for the year is an arc, but not a symmetrical one.

        We are starting at 35° South.  If we are near Cape Town by the end of the year we’ll be on almost the same latitude.  But in between we will have quickly gone up to just above 11° South at Cape York and then made a long gradual curve back down.  Durban is 30° South.  Port Richards 29° South. 

        I have ambitions for the year.  On past crossings of the Indian Ocean I have experienced strong trade winds.  GANNET’s best day’s run so far is 156 miles.  If the tiller pilots can handle conditions, I expect to blow that away.  And the best week run of 1003 miles as well.

———

        Steady rain kept me in the Great Cabin all yesterday.  

        The rain ended during the night and today was lovely.

        Sitting on deck the hour before sunset I found a new location.  With the tiller upright I can place the Sport-a-Seat just in front of it and sit there, facing forward, using the pod as a foot rest.

        I am so looking forward to being at sea on the new and improved GANNET.  The reconfigured cockpit and pod are the greatest change.  But the side decks are clearer.  I have a wind instrument.  The new G2 and top down furler.  The Pelagic tiller pilot.  And a carbon fiber tiller.  This last for me is an affectation, but it is right for GANNET and very, very smooth under hand.  I like it.

———

        Two nights last week were cool, around 52°F/11°C.  I was cold in my lightweight sleeping bag and changed into the heavier one.  I found myself thinking about the real cold off Cape Horn.  It is easy to consider these things from a distance and in comfort.  

        A couple of friends happened to have emailed me recently asking about cabin heaters.  I’ve  had them on some boats, but they create more problems than they solve.  

        There is certainly no room for one on GANNET.
        So I told myself:  buy yourself another base layer, old man, and suck it up.

Opua: farewell to Pine Tree Island; no next; bad math

        Rain today pattering and beating on the deck.  Beating now at noon. 

I didn’t go ashore yesterday and would like to today.  Perhaps it will ease later.

Yesterday was mostly overcast and completely calm.  I wiped down the area forward of the main bulk head with Exit Mold.  There wasn’t a lot of mold, but some on the overhead and the sides of the hull.  I did a few other minor boat chores.  And I rowed around Pine Tree Island.

The story, which I have told here before, is that early last century a local man planted seven pine trees on the island, one for each of his children.  He and the children are long gone, and for many years the roots of the pine trees are all that has held the island together.

Since I last rowed the half mile to Pine Tree, three big holes have developed in its base.  I think the island will soon spit in two.  Once divided, it will fall.  Water and time are inexorable.

Several boats that have been rotting on moorings, still are.  And the wreck of a former trading vessel on the shore is now a pile of rubble no longer recognizable as having once been a ship.

That side of the harbor, though not far away, is a different world, quieter than here by the marina where boats come and go frequently.

I had planned to walk up the Opua Hill today.  That is not going to happen.

I’d also like to sail and anchor off Roberton Island and off Russell again, but west and south winds are forecast for the coming week and both anchorages are exposed to those directions.

———

Another sailor who lives not far away and writes for CRUISING WORLD was asked to come up and get some photos of me and GANNET under sail.  He and his wife have made voyages of their own.  Some of you would recognize his name.

As they were leaving I said, “I’ll look forward to reading whatever you write next.”

Hurriedly he said, “Oh, I’m not writing anything about you, just sending the photographs.”

I said, “I didn’t mean about me, but about whatever you do next.”

A vague reply.

It was only after they had driven away and I was walking back to the dinghy dock that I realized I had just assumed that sailors always have a next voyage in mind and, though considerably younger than I, they don’t.

Someday I won’t either.

———

A reader sent me a link to an interview with a sailor about my age who is planning a non-stop Southern Ocean circumnavigation in a 10’/3 meter boat.  There has already been a lot of publicity about this which has yet to happen.

I have three observations.

The sailor is quoted as saying the voyage will be 30,000 miles long.  This is impossible in the Southern Ocean unless he bizarrely sails back and forth north and south like the teeth of a saw.

A degree of longitude is 60 nautical miles at the Equator and increasingly less as you move toward the poles.

60 times 360 is 21600 nautical miles, the circumference of the world at the Equator.

At 40° a degree of longitude is only 46.1 miles, times 360 equals 16596 nautical miles.

At 45° the numbers are 42.5 nautical miles and 15300.

At 50° 38.7 and 13932.

At 55° 34.5 and 12420.

To pass south of the mainland of Australia you have to go below 40°S.  To clear Tasmania 44°S.  New Zealand 48°.  And Cape Horn 56°.

The only way a Southern Ocean circumnavigation can come close to being 30,000 miles long is if you go around twice.

He also says it will take him 600 to 800 days.

This is excruciatingly slow.

The current in the Southern Ocean flows west to east.  Throw anything in the Southern Ocean and if it stays afloat it will eventually circumnavigate, probably I expect in 600 to 800 days.

If the man completes his circumnavigation it will be an achievement, but it won’t be sailing.  He will have been flotsam.

I have great affection for small boats, but only if they sail well.  CHIDIOCK TICHBORNE did and GANNET does.  Superlatively.

One last observation.
       He states he likes to read and plans to carry 100 kilos of books on his tiny egg.  For my fellow Americans that is 220 pounds.  Someone needs to give the man a Kindle.

Opua: a short, happy poem

        

                                               The list

                                       does not exist

The list is the eternal boat owner’s to do and buy list. 
        For only the second or third time ever, there is nothing on mine.  Once was here in New Zealand when on my 50th birthday we were preparing RESURGAM for a passage around Cape Horn to Uruguay.  A second time might have been before I left San Diego in GANNET, but I’m not certain about that.  And this morning.  As I touched the screen on my iPhone Wunderlist app next to ‘Jordan drogue’ and it disappeared from view, terns on the nearby marina breakwater dock broke into the ‘Hallelujah Chorus’.

The last item was to inspect the Jordan drogue.

It was a good thing I did because when I pulled the drogue and its bridle onto deck, I found that the shackle used to connect the weight at the end that goes in the water first was frozen.  I managed to free it, but it took a while here on a mooring on a calm morning and would have taken considerably longer in a storm at sea.

I had been planning to use the spare anchor as the weight, which needs to be about 15 pounds/7 kilos for GANNET’s drogue, but have ordered two meters of 12 mm anchor chain instead.  When it arrives next week, I will shackle it in place and then it won’t matter if the shackle freezes.

I had thought I could shackle the two arms of the bridle to the massive connection plates before leaving port and then attach the drogue when needed.  But I can’t.  The bridle connects to the drogue by loops spliced into the ends of the arms and the drogue line and have to be passed through themselves.  The only way would be to have everything assembled in advance and carry the drogue on deck from the beginning of a passage.  GANNET does not have room for that.

Leaning over the stern and screwing pins into the massive shackles in conditions requiring the drogue will be challenging, but I expect that I will have nothing better to do at the time.  I did take the precaution of ordering two more shackles so I have spares if I drop a pin in the ocean.

That’s it.

I am unlisted.

Momentarily.

———

The photo has nothing to do with the above.  It was taken a week ago at the start of the last Wednesday evening race of the season.

        It is an iPhone panorama which accounts for the distortions.  Observe the starboard lifeline and the upper edge of the open foredeck hatch.  But still I like it.

Opua: meals for the rest of the year; heavy breathing; Chay Blyth?

        Actually part of next year, too.

My order of freeze dry meals from Backcountry Cuisine arrived in the four boxes.  I couldn’t fit them all in the dinghy and had to make two trips.

At halftime during the NCAA basketball championship game I listened to on Internet radio, I opened the boxes and stacked identical meals which resulted in this. 

If you have been reading this journal for a while, you may remember a similar photo taken in San Diego two years ago.

After the great game was over, I went out and packed the meals into double trash bags.
        Reading the details on the packages I learned that the Outdoor Gourmet meals really are two servings of more than 400 calories each.  In planning I had counted them only as one meal and now find I have 70 more than expected.  This, along with about thirty meals still on board from the U.S., which I mixed into the bags for variety, resulted in my ending up with nine bags of 32 or 33 meals each.  Considering that I eat ashore from time to time, I’m good to South Africa and beyond.

I did not do exact calculations, but the average cost per meal is about $4.00 U.S.

The next step was to clear off the starboard pipe berth and slither aft.  All nine bags are now stowed in GANNET’s stern.

I ate one half of an Outdoor Gourmet Coq au Vin last night for dinner.  I poured all the dry ingredients into the big measuring cup, divided them in two, returned half to the pouch for another day, and poured boiling water into the cup, from which I ate.  It did not taste like Coq au Vin.  Nor did I expect it to.  But it was unusual for a freeze dry meal and good.  I’ll try a different Gourmet tonight.

———

Loud breathing just outside GANNET’s hull woke me in the middle of the night.  Then a rush of motion enough to rock the little boat.  I sat up and stuck my head out the forward hatch.  Dolphin were playing or hunting all around us.  There are many dolphin in the main part of the bay, but I have never before seen them in Opua.

———

As I was rowing ashore yesterday, a a man in a dinghy with outboard began following.  When he came alongside, he, called, “Chay Blyth?”

I said, “No.”

Disappointment on his face.

Thinking I understood the cause, I said, “Webb Chiles.”  And then, being a mega-narcissist, naturally I added, “Even better.”  Sorry, Sir Chay.  I did say it with a smile.

The man slapped himself on the forehead and said, “That’s who I meant.”

We chatted as we continued to the dinghy dock.

———

My reference in a recent post to my last few days here caused some confusion.  GANNET and I are ready to depart, all but a final grocery and liquor store run and filling jerry cans with water.  But I do not intend to sail before the last week of this month at the earliest.  I love being here and wish to savor these days, knowing that when I leave this time I may never return.

———

Two readers asked if the top-down furler furls all the way down from top to bottom.  It does not.  When you pull on the continuous furling line, it begins furling down from the head.  When it has furled about ⅓ of the way from the head to the clew, it also begins furling up from the tack.  The furling meets nicely at the clew.  All, at least in extremely light conditions, as easy as pulling up a window shade.

While ProFurl advises against leaving the furled sail in place while beating to windward, under certain conditions the furler and sail could be raised at mooring or dock, ready to be used.

———

When I first bought my MegaBoom speakers, I noted that they have outstanding stereo sound when paired, but that the process of pairing them was unreliable.  Ultimate Ears, the manufacturer, provided a software update a while ago.  Since then pairing, which can be done with the free app or manually by pushing buttons on the speakers, has been 100% reliable.

       When I bought the MegaBooms, they were water proof, but the smaller Booms were not.  UE has recently come out with the Boom 2, which is waterproof and costs $100 US less per speaker than the MegaBoom.  I’m not going to change, but that is what I would buy if I were buying now.

Opua: a few more days

        I don’t need to take a step to be outside.  Only lean forward, grab the companionway hatch opening and pull myself up.

I do.

An hour ago I was standing there, sipping gin and listening to flamenco music, but I’ve been below to heat and eat freeze dry beef stroganoff.

I stand now, the upper half of my body outside. 

        I love the immediacy of experience on GANNET.

The sun has already set behind the Opua hill.

A light, cool breeze touches my face.  

Ripples lap against the dinghy.

Silver reflections on the water.

A tern screeches like a rusty gate.

I have only a few more days here.

Opua: furled

        I have been here a month and accomplished all I planned to.  Little remains except provisioning and reconfiguring the interior from harbor to passage mode, and visiting Roberton Island and climbing

up to the lookout for a last time.  I still do not expect to leave until near the end of the month.

        After dense early morning fog burned off this morning had the right conditions to sort out the ProFurl Spinex top-down furler.  At least I hoped so.  Flat calm with just enough wind on the beam to keep the asymmetrical from collapsing before it could be furled.  However, a sudden gust might have resulted in a fiasco.

        That didn’t happen.

        Sail and furler went up, sail flying.  GANNET did not take off like a startled deer.  I moved across the cockpit from spinnaker halyard to furling line—all of one step on GANNET.  Sail furled smoothly and completely, top first as it is supposed to.  I unfurled and refurled a couple of times with satisfaction, then lowered the furled sail to the deck.

        My first impression is that top down furlers are a significant improvement over early gennaker furlers such as the Facnor I have been using.

        Sail on furler takes up much less room that the unfurled sail and furler.  They went into the sail bag easily, starting at the head and making loops to the tack furling drum.

        I am very much looking forward to using it at sea.

        I still have the old, fuller cut asymmetrical on the Facnor furling gear, and still have a vision of setting them both wing and wing on a passage if conditions are right.

———

        The most recent front did not live up to its billing.

        We had a little rain Friday night and little wind.  The sky began to clear early Saturday afternoon and I was able to sit on deck, listening to music, with a sunset plastic of wine.

        Last evening was lovely.  

        To have a slight change in view I sat at the aft end of the cockpit, just in front of the tiller which was vertical.  New Zealand has just gone off summer time, so the sun was lower than it had been at 6 p.m.  The so called Golden Hour after sunrise and before sunset.

———

        Another neighbor with helicopter.

       

Obviously helicopters are the new nautical fashion accessory.

        I’m thinking of getting one for GANNET.  I’ve worked out the landing platform, though it somewhat ruins GANNET’s fine lines, but can’t figure out what to do with the pilot.  Maybe he can live in the helicopter.

Opua: we get mail

        I just received the following, sent by ‘mk.By@i.Cloud.com.’  

        I don’t know who or what ‘Mk.By.’ is.  A copy was sent to info@aurinco.com.

This person has been brought to my attention, and typical of the emergence of gratuitous bullying by the "irresponsible", it falls to engineers to stand up and spread the word to all from industry professionals to truth-telling anarchists. Innovative risk-taking manufacturers should not be extorted into babysitting idiots trained by box stores.

Chiles declares pride in being beastly as "achievement" - dehydrating women, words, and marine assets in a boiling pot of alcoholic mega-narcissism, playing chicken with himself to funeral music. There is more in an hour of a kid's joy on an Optimist than the lot of this man's self-destructions. Certainly ignore his >50% Laphroaig cerebral-infarctions.

Your latest panels are brilliant, and connection science offers manufacturers like us real versatility. Thank you for delivering sailing to the future.

        My reply:

This is called an ad hominem argument.

Do you dispute that 3 of 6 panels failed?  Do you consider this an acceptable rate of failure? 

Dehydrating women?