How to use the blog

Want to check where we are and what we have been doing recently? In brief? Read the blog below called SAILING LOG. The other stories are about specific incidents or thoughts.




Monday, December 27, 2010

START OF THE 2010 SYDNEY - HOBART YACHT RACE



Moonraker (crewed by Dean, Ken, Mary and me) is one of the little dots  top right of screen, very close to stream of traffic.
 We were in the anchor zone in Obelisk Bay with 100 boats stampeding past, all trying to keep up with the super-maxies(centre screen). Horns tooting, crews shouting, wakes tossing us around, and boats often skilfully swerving to miss us.  We stood our ground, having no other choice!  But wow, what fun.  Exhilarating experience.  (Still from video on official Syd-Hobart race site)


Thursday, December 23, 2010

OFFER TO ALL NIECES AND NEPHEWS

Congratulations!  You have been selected!
You have been selected to be crew-in-residence on a LUXURY yacht for one week. The yacht and its tender are stationed off a tropical Coral Sea island where gently breezes waft, crystal blue seas sparkle, pirates plunder and fish jump onto your line.  You could be a working member of the crew, responsible for tacking, gybing, raising and lowering sails, operating a tender, reading a nautical map and much, much more. 
The first part of your nautical kit is on its way to you now.  
Call us to discuss where and when you want to take up this opportunity.
Moonraker Yacht Tours
+61 402 115 005

When replying, quote Campaign FAMILY; Offer closes September 2011; Conditions apply; Airfares not included; Parental permission required.

Monday, December 13, 2010

TEN TIPS FOR SURVIVAL AT SEA

Derek tells a good yarn.  He and his wife Anthea are veteran cruisers from the lovely boat Sukanuk which shared a finger with Moonraker at Cammeray.  Derek confided that he comes from a stormy coastline in Wales where sailors use a special sign to foretell if it is safe to sail.  Essentially, a candle is lit, and placed on the bow of a boat intending to put to sea.   If it stays alight this is a bad sign: there is not enough wind to put out to sea.  If it blows out this is a bad sign too: there is too much wind to go out. (Survival Tip No. 1: Don’t sail.)
For experienced sailors this is a very funny joke. It cuts to the heart of the fact that they love sailing, and that they fear sailing too.  Hence the near-religious interest in the yachty community in safety and survival.
Each sailor has his or her own tips for safety, some learned the hard way from times they cheated death or sinking. The coronial inquiries arising from the modern ocean racing disasters like the Fastnet of 1979 and the Sydney to Hobart races of 1993 and 1998 are the source of many others. My favourite cautionary tale comes from the Sydney to Hobart 98 and is about the two men who survived the cyclonic winds and mountainous seas in a small life raft, unlike their colleagues from the other life raft from the same vessel. The raft floor was badly holed, but they were well prepared and the manufacturer’s repair kit was to hand. They quickly scanned the instructions.  (Survival Tip No. 2: Always carry a spare set of reading glasses). The first instruction was; “place the holed area in a warm, dry environment before affixing the patch. The glue won’t hold if it is wet”.  (Survival Tip No. 3:  Breathe. Don’t panic.)
Dean and I completed a two day ‘official’ course on safety and survival at sea recently and loved it.  Amongst other things we found out that our expensive buoyancy vests were not set up correctly and mine nearly drowned me on its first outing. (Safety Tip No 4: Don’t float upside down.) 
The life raft drills were great fun, reminiscent of childhood frolics in an old inner tube. However, the main thing we learned is that we never, ever, ever want to be dependent on a life raft. Too small.  Too flimsy. (Survival Tip No. 5: Don’t sink.) 
The second thing we learned was that it is almost impossible to haul yourself into a life raft while wearing all your survival gear. (Survival Tip No. 6: if you must sink, pack a rugby player or two with the life raft to haul you in.) 
The most disconcerting part of the course for us dealt with crew overboard (COB) procedures which outline for a skipper what each crew member should do in the emergency. For example Crew Member 1 to maintain watch and point to the person in the water; Crew Member 2 to deploy the COB retrieval equipment; Crew Member 3 to ready the winch or other hoist mechanism; Crew Member 4 to act as radio operator to call in a pan-pan.  And so on. And so on.
“What do you do,” I asked, “if there is only one person left on the boat after the COB incident”?  A reasonable question since we and many others sail two-up.    Our experienced, cheerful, resourceful instructor responded with a slight hesitation and a shifty look.  “Always wear a PLB (personal location beacon). A helicopter could find you. Try to avoid sharks.” Survival tip No 7: Don’t fall overboard unless you leave at least 8 sober, competent people on board, they know you are in the water, there is no wind or wave action and they want you back.
Most sailors are also alive to the risk of hitting floating or semi submerged items, like a reef, another vessel, a lost shipping container, a snoozing whale or a basking sunfish.  The goal is to have the person on watch to spot the said object before they hit it. Sailors are very alert when going through shipping lanes, but few claim they have ever seen a floating shipping container. Many fear hitting a big whale.  From all accounts the whale suffers terribly too, and can cry piteously. What’s a broken rudder compared to a broken back?  It can be some comfort to know that any whale you hit was already dead, but that has its down-side too. Safety Tip No. 8: Always sail upwind of a dead whale if it has been dead for some time.
Whales are one thing, but yachtie folklore has it that giant sunfish are something else again. Some say that a sleeping sunfish is a handy device invoked by ambitious racing skippers who sacrifice weight and strength of keel or rudder to generate speed. Safety Tip No. 9: Remember that the probability of hitting a sleeping sunfish while racing rises proportionately with the excess on your insurance policy and the above-specification stress you place on keel and rudder.
Anyway, survival course over, Dean and I started the Moonraker safety audit.  It was pretty daunting. There is no end to the magical, beautiful, ingenious, arcane, desirable and mostly dispensable things you can buy to feel safe.  In the end, however, it is clear that safety depends as much on attitude, common sense, practice and experience as much as it does the depth of your pocket.  We did supplement Moonraker’s already extensive equipment list with a few items, including a couple of $12 strobe lights to affix to our life jackets and a vacuum flasks for hot soup when it is rough. But we decided not to upgrade our perfectly functional expensive auto-helm system so we can auto-tack and thus hold our heads up in the yacht club bar, or to buy a satellite system, since our existing mobiles, computers, VHF and HF work OK where we are going.
Safety Tip No. 10: Be obsessive, systematic and thorough, and use only the best and latest equipment to cover every single aspect of safety you and anyone else can think of.  Amongst other benefits, this means you will have neither the time nor the money to sail, and you will be perfectly safe.

Sunday, November 28, 2010

THINGS I HATE ABOUT CRUISING

1.   The Mawson effect
When the wind gets to about 20 knots, it whines and whistles through the rigging.  Even if it is a warm, sunny day and we are tied up at a nice safe marina on inland waters, a vague unease overtakes me and I feel as if I might actually be in Mawson’s hut.  As Moonraker herself won’t get out of bed for less than 20 knots and she is cruises at 35 knots, this makes me an irrational wimp.
2.   The cuts, bruises and abrasions
I look like a battered wife, and to be fair and non-sexist about this, Dean looks like a battered husband. The main culprits are:
·         winches: why are they strategically placed in the middle of the cockpit entry and therefore magnets to backs and hips when the boat is bouncy?
·         lockers and tables in the saloon and other cabins : too close together to get past without extreme slinkiness, causing damage to shins, thighs and hips
·         cleats: designed to capture and hold fingers
·         sheets, halyards and docking ropes: designed to tear off fingernails and strips of skin
·         the sun and wind: designed to wrinkle the skin if not burn it off all together, or encourage skin growths that are best unsightly and at worst fatal
·         psychological trauma… numbers 3 to 5 see below

3.   The first commandment of cruising
The first commandment of cruising is that something will break on a cruising yacht every two weeks if you are not sailing and every two days if you are.  This creates nervous anticipation, which in turn generate trauma. What will go next?  This week we were sailing, so we got two breakages: the hot water system sprang a spectacular leak onto the engine, and the reinforcement on the genoa near the stays frayed.  Not so scary. 
But next week it might be the mast or the engine?

4.   No brakes
Moonraker is hard to drive in close quarters and at slow speed. She is very responsive to wind, and her bow will waltz off to leeward in company with any little breeze if given the chance. Conversely, she has a fairly full keel, which means that she is slow to turn and the devil to back. When she does deign to move backwards in response to much revving of the engine, she is unpredictable, acting like a skittish colt with the classic keel-boat prop-walk to port.  Paradoxically, the keel is as responsive to tides and currents as it is unresponsive to the engine. The keel acts like a giant sail to the tidal winds.  Any current will either take Moonraker’s stern off in the direction of the current, OR sometimes the keel will start sailing into the current. Go figure.  A 1 knot current has the same power and effect on the keel that that a force 4 wind has on the bow, but the keel won’t necessarily signal what direction it will go.
 And she has no brakes. We don’t (apparently) approve of bow thrusters.  After all, they can break and don’t encourage good seamanship.    Further, Moonraker weighs in at 15 tonnes.  It is not an option to use arms or legs to fend off an upcoming pylon, boat or pontoon, unless you are happy to lose the limb.  Pulling and tugging on ropes has its limits too unless you are a sumo wrestler.  Moonraker tends to win tugs-of-war.
If you actually want to go to somewhere in particular, the only option is to keep going fast to maintain steerage, and point in a direction (unknowable) that allows the particular tides, currents and wind (and don’t forget waves) on that day to do their thing in concert with the keel, bow, motor or sails. So the ‘routine’ entry and exit of our pen at the marina is fraught, especially when the there is a full tidal effect pushing the keel, a 25 knot wind abeam taking the bow, an engine pleasing its self, a pen about 3 feet wider than the boat, and the front of the pen 1 foot from where we need to stop the boat.  Precisely.
The head
I have a superb sense of smell.  I hate bad wine and marine toilets. Our marine toilet is not unusually complex. It has a bowl, two macerators, a holding tank and good knows how many inlet and outlet valves, pumps and hoses.  It uses salt water to flush. Salt water is actually a rich organic soup of living creatures, most of which can’t be seen by the human eye. When the creatures get sucked into the complex bowels of a marine toilet, they partner with bacteria in the system and soon (within as little as 6 hours if conditions are warm, dark and comfortable) we have a noxious brew of foul odours and forbidding colours. This calls for a complex ritual that involves incantations, magic brews, flushings, a particular cocktail of bleach and vinegar applied to the head, plus a further restorative mix of ethanol plus flavours applied to the owner of the head.
Suburban plumbing has its strengths.
Authors Note: Don’t get me wrong.  There are heaps of things I love about crusing too.  As soon as I can remember what they are I’ll write about them.

THE DAVID CASSON CURRICULUM

Dean and I have lived our lives in and around schools and universities. Maybe this is why Dean is determined that sailing be primarily a learning experience for us.  It is certainly not enough just to enjoy ourselves.  In fact, enjoying ourselves is not mandatory and is perhaps even unproductive.  Learning stuff is the main game.
OMG! as Natalie and Heather would say. 
Our days are a dizzy whirl of class schedules, training sessions, practice routines, revision and assessment.  We are certified and trained to the point of exhaustion. Yesterday was devoted to attaining a deep understanding of the first law of boat motoring: viz caste off the mooring ropes before you motor away.  We got the theory bits right but, as all educators know, the theory practice gap can be large (and in this case embarrassing).
In our thirst for skills and knowhow, David Casson, Moonraker’s previous owner, has been a teacher, guide and mentor.
I suspect that he found us difficult and demanding pupils. For a start, we were starting a fair way back and I fear we might be in the low-aptitude stream. Also, I am probably still the annoying goody-two-shoes I was in primary school and Dean has remained the rebellious, argumentative student who wants to know more than anyone has the patience to cover.  How? Why? When? Where? Who?  And do you have references for that? Has an appropriately historical perspective been applied?
When we first met David, he had no difficulty in establishing the respect that every teacher needs in front of the class. We were in awe of his mysterious knowledge, his broad skills and his distinctive approach to life. He is a complete yachty from tip to toe. He and Moonraker have been on astonishing adventures together over the last 13 years.  He has had her hove-to in 65 knot storms, comfortably (he says). He has had her sail up Kimberley creeks on flood tides where she perched on her keel miles inland, in the middle of the red desert.  He has anchored all over Sydney harbour, up the Clarence River to Grafton and off many a tropical paradise.
David was Moonraker’s third owner, and he is insistent that Moonraker is the result of the combined efforts of all owners. He has been careful to make sure we understand our responsibilities as we join the select group of Moonraker owners.
Truth be known, early practical lessons from David were fairly discouraging for us as the scope of the required learning became evident. The most challenging of the practical units for me were Jammed Windlass 10, Water Pouring into the Bilge 10, Wine Spillage on the Carpet 10, and Managing Head Odour 20.  Both Dean and I had to re-sit most units, as one of the key assessment criteria we consistently failed was how not to get into the pickle that required the skills in the first place.  I found, for instance that I have a tenacious commitment to jamming the windlass. Dean likes a challenge so his favourite units were Bar Crossing 10 (no breaking waves) and Bar Crossing 20 (breaking waves). He appeared to show aptitude, but I noted that the teacher leapt to take over from time to time on the practical bits.
David kept encouraging and reassuring us: it’s all easy, David says, if you know how.
Like all good teachers, David’s teaching goes well beyond the practical.  He was also keen to teach us the correct attitude to life and how it should be lived. It’s hard to sum up and it was as foreign to us as the inner workings of a windlass.
One thread has to do with self-sufficiency. David’s lore (or rather my interpretation of it) goes something like this:
·         Every problem has a simple solution and a range of hard ones. Always pick the simple solution. (This bewildered Dean and me at first. We had always understood that a dialectical, all-encompassing analysis is superior. )
·         Don’t get someone else to do it if you can do it yourself.   (WHAT? Are you joking?)
·         If you employ a professional, learn from them, but first make sure they know what they are doing.  A certificate doesn’t always ensure competence. (Well, he’s right there!)
·         Don’t get strangers to do things for you.  They might stuff it up and mates are better anyway. (Has he met our mates?)
·         Because humans are ingenious and entrepreneurial, there is a product or service on the market for everything conceivable, and someone who will sell it to you. Check to make sure there isn’t a simpler and cheaper way to go. (This sounds like the end of capitalism as we know it….  OK.  Why not?)
·         Equally, if there is a product that is simple, inexpensive and it works, buy it.  In fact buy two or three, as it will break one day and odds are it will be out of production by then. (Now he’s talking, except for the bits about simple and inexpensive. I should have bought three of those automatic tea makers.)
Another curriculum thread has to do with good seamanship. Everything, David asserts, must be ship-shape and Bristol fashion.  I thought this sounded like a universal good, until I learned that it is actually code for making sure everyone is exhausted at the end of the day. Stainless steel should be shiny.  Sails should be set nicely. Clears should be clear.  Metal should be rust free.  Paint should be kept up to the mark. Engines should be maintained. Bilges should be dry. Make sure everything is securely stowed in lockers. Coil ropes correctly.
He is also somewhat sceptical about all those modern gadgets that make life comfortable. While insistent that we fully understand how to use modern technology he was equally insistent that we never rely on it. GPS and plotters are OK but, always know where you are on the chart.  Bow thrusters on small boats (less than 50 tonnes) are really just aids for the lazy or unskilled.  Wear safety jackets (unless your parents named you David).  Know your bilge pumps but keep a bucket handy.
Another dominant thread in David’s teachings is to maintain a healthy dose of scepticism about officialdom. He appears to think that the government is not always there to help you! In fact, seeing things from David’s perspective is enough to make you into an anarchist, really. Government will, for instance, insist that you keep buying flares and throwing away perfectly good ones, even though ‘out of date’ flares still work. So, keep some in-date ones to show them if they inspect but don’t throw out the old ones.  They might come in handy. Government will insist on regular expensive, heavily regulated testing on your life raft, even though it has never been used and has been well looked after. So, don’t worry too much about the specifics of testing dates. Government will demand that only a licenced gas person (i.e. expensive specialist) be allowed to fiddle with your gas fittings. Really that takes the cake since the only reason you need the gas guy in the first place that the government regulated into obsolescence your favourite style of gas regulator and the hoses on your BBQ. Lesson: don’t sell you boat too often, and so the officials have no excuse to check.
David also teaches a strong sense of community responsibility, is very safety conscious and is a practising greeny if not a political one. Dean and I felt much more a home with this part of the syllabus. Obey speed limits. Don’t tip rubbish into the ocean. Leave it how you left it.  Help your fellow yachty where you can.  Use biodegradable products. Obey the rules of the sea. Thank God for weather forecasters. Keep the seas healthy. A surprising one was ‘Don’t bother Marine Rescue services unless you absolutely can’t help yourself’.  I originally thought the various rescue services were the marine equivalent of the RAC: there to help you any time one of your husbands is not available and you lock your keys in the car.  Apparently not.  They are best thought of as the triple-0 service.  Damn.
We began this adventure as a couple of in-experienced urbanites. Unkind people might say that we were members of the chattering classes who had never before raised a spanner with intent to fix.  But, thanks to David, we now have a new range of skills (elementary level) and responsibilities (degree level) and the opportunity to develop new perspectives on life.  
The course assessment is still to come. We will ultimately be marked against David Casson's standards of how well we look after Moonraker, the quality of our seamanship and our success in adapting to the yachty life and all that that entails.  
Thank you David.

Friday, November 12, 2010

FIRST OFFICIAL GUEST

We were excited.  Four weeks after boarding the boat we were about host a friend from our pre-sailing life.  Bravely, he planned to join us on the final day of our first passage as we sailed through the Sydney Harbour Heads. I imagined sails set, wind in our hair and champagne glasses clinking. Fair winds were forecast, 15-20 knot north-easterlies, exactly in Moonraker’s sweet-spot. 

Our friend (let me call him Dearest First Guest, or DFG for short) got himself to Pittwater the night before the sail. We picked him up from the Palm Beach Jetty in our little tender and rowed him to the yacht. We knew that the hole in the inflatable dingy was far too small to sink it on that short trip, so we were cautiously unconcerned about his welfare at that point. So far, so good.

A stylish dinner was in order for that evening to set the tone for dining on board Moonraker. However, the chef was ragged from the day’s sail and the whiz-bang eutectic fridge had not started working. We had to make do with heated supermarket pies with steamed veg, plus (quel horreur) tomato sauce from a bottle. It wasn’t all bad, of course, as the sunset came up trumps, Broken Bay is beautiful on a calm clear evening and DFG supplied a grateful crew with champagne and hazelnut encrusted chocolate.

Next morning, DFG was up early, ostensibly admiring the sunrise.  Later, we realised the wide berth in the saloon had only seemed to be the delux sleeping option for him. He is quite tall and not very wide, and would have been better in the forward v-berth. Further, we now know that a pin must be inserted to secure the saloon berth.  By early morning the structure had collapsed. DFG was awake and pretending that he is always up early flexing his back to remove kinks.  Nice sunrise indeed.

Undaunted, we breakfasted on Dean’s customised premium muesli (some culinary standards never drop) and looked forward to a brisk passage to Sydney.

What a crushing disappointment. The forecast winds did not arrive.  The breeze was 3-5 knots for most of the way, condemning the 15-tonne Moonraker to motoring on glassy seas.  The mainsail was up, but only to stabilise the roll and wallow in the two-meter quartering swell. The poor excuse for a wind only had enough puff to blow the diesel fumes over the stern into the cockpit.

DGF found a convenient perch on the push-pit seat and chatted politely to anyone who passed by. He was very pale and occasionally leaned over the stern to lose the pie and sauce, the champagne, the hazelnut chocolate and the premium muesli.

Perhaps in sympathy for him, the genoa snagged itself on a renegade screw that had eased from furler sheath.  So, even when the breeze freshened close to the Sydney Heads, using the genoa was not an option.

Nothing daunted, on approach, the motor was turned off. We were determined to SAIL through the Heads. Who cares that we had up only one (reefed) sail? Who cares that the genoa looked pathetic half-wrapped around the furler? Did the shoulder-straining weather helm really matter? Sydney Heads is really something, especially on a Saturday.  By then, even the memory of the pies had dimmed. DFG might have retained nothing in his stomach but he helped us retain a sense of occasion as we sailed into the most beautiful harbour in the world, on our yacht at the end of our first passage. 

I hope he comes again. We have promised to do better.

Wednesday, October 27, 2010

ALERT BUT NOT ALARMED?

The noise was quite insistent, and very disturbing.  It sounded like kindling burning, or a camp fire crackling.  In the quiet of the night on our mooring in the Clarence River, it was very unwelcome. 

Lying in bed, I skimmed through alternate explanations. Top of mind was a short in the electrical wiring with its attendant fire hazard and power failure. Or, perhaps some sort of chemical reaction on board?  Or a weird engine going past? 

Alert and alarmed, I morphed into Sherlock Holmes mode. The noise was very diffuse and pervasive. It was really loud in the engine room, and in the head, moderate in all other cabins. It disappeared on deck. During my futile midnight search, it occurred to me that the sound was reminiscent of the noise you hear when scuba diving on a reef where crayfish are present.  In the end, that night, I decided that it was crabs roosting on the hull (I was tired) and went back to bed. Elementary my dear Watson.

Next day, I hit the net. Thank God for Google.  What I found is that yachties from all over the world have been alert and seriously alarmed when first they meet this noise.  Many report practically dismantling their yachts on the hunt for the noise that is described variously as frying bacon, crackling, or rice bubble pop. Most, like me have been intent on assessing whether the noise is vessel threatening, a risk to life or limb, or just the normal massive drain to the pocket. 

Various theories about the noise have been put forward. My favourites are that cockroaches or mice plagues have infested the boat, that the anti-foul has got active and is noisily eating slime, that electrolysis is devouring the hull, or, more likely, all of these simultaneously. The consensus explanation is that the tiny shrimp krill are snapping their jaws as they eat and the yacht hull acts as a huge transponder, magnifying the sound.  If it is these tiny shrimp, they are most likely eating the marine growth that accretes to the hull.  So yachties can until further notice consider it a comforting sound, much like campers do the crackle of a camp fire.

But stay alert.  Be alarmed. It’s good for you.

I want a fridge magnet.

DEATH ON THE HIGH SEAS

It was distressing to see so many of them dead. They were afloat, but their usually perky heads hung under water; their bodies twisted and shapeless.  Their soft, chocolate-brown feathers which normally made them look quite cuddly were dull and sodden. 

Shearwaters (or mutton birds) are more finely built than seagulls and much more appealing. Their wing shape is sharply aero dynamic, and they glide over the waves, gracefully skimming the roughest water inches from the surface.  Are they really slip streaming our yacht, or is that just mutton-birdly curiosity?  They frequently settle on the water, popping their head under the surface for a look, and taking off again.  Every October, they arrive on our SE coast at the tail-end of their massive 32,000km round trip from Australia to Russia via NZ and Japan, then back again via Alaska, the west coat of North America and a Pacific crossing.  Marvellous.

What disaster could have killed so many?  Feral fishermen taking pot shots? Poisonous food?  An algal bloom? A bio- or chemo-hazard accident? 

A call to Michelle at the Ballina Seabird Rescue Organisation provided the answer. They were dying of exhaustion and starvation. Official theory blames the wild weather being experienced across eastern Australia this spring.  The unseasonal storms were just too much for the tiny shearwaters. A similar phenomenon was noted 5 years ago.

So, sadly, fewer Shearwaters will be returning to their habitual nests this year, and their life-long partners will need to re-partner to lay their eggs in November before they head off again in April to repeat their risky passage. 

Monday, October 18, 2010

THE DRUG BUST

We were up on the hard stand, antifouling.  Moonraker was propped in a steel cradle, balanced on her keel, feeling queenly. We were fully overall-ed, masked and gloved, paying homage to the queen with barnacle scrapers and paint brushes.

Then, to the astonishment and delight of all in the marina, Australia’s biggest drug bust (according to Channel 9) dramatically unfolded.

The actual drug boat, a nice Beneteau, had tied up feet away from us just hours before.  The police had to pass almost under Moonraker to get through, and aboard her, 12 feet up in the air, we had pole position. 

There were literally dozens of federal and local police, customs and homeland security folk swarming the fingers, many with thick flack jackets and huge automatic, weird-shaped  machine guns. There were three police boats blocking the harbour, one a Darth Vader affair: black, fast, big and inflatable  with chunky men on board. A huge van and lots of four wheel drives disgorged wave upon wave of armed personnel. Disappointingly, there was no helicopter or submarine.

The really scary guns (carried by what looked like a rugby team) were camouflage-coloured, but they stood out like elephants, especially as the rugby players were initially kneeling down, taking careful sight and aiming the guns at people across the water, while their colleagues shouted instructions at the people they were aiming at.
Very CSI.  I noticed that the riflemen had a medical person trailing them so I think they were serious.

The official bustle went on for two days. Around the marina, it will be a point of analysis for weeks if not years. People earned brownie points for being the first with tidbits of news.  Dean got a scoop by being driven by the taxi driver who actually knew the taxi driver who has given the perpetrators a lift.  Wow! TV news covered it a day or so later and we (the marina collective) were all riveted by the 30 second grab.

I am now confirmed in my view that we should decriminalize the drugs to get criminals out of it. But, I guess it would disappoint our law enforcement team, who appeared to be very professional and very expensive.  And quite enjoying themselves, as were we.

Tuesday, October 5, 2010

I WOULDN'T GO WITHOUT IT Provisioning for our first passage

There was a TV advertisement a few years ago in which a young woman declared winningly to camera that she wouldn’t go anywhere without her Mum… Mum deodorant that is.

Well, if you are a cruising sailer, your Mum is pretty well the only thing you can go without.

For our first passage, my naïve idea of ‘supplying’ our boat was to make sure we have plenty of water, wine, food and sunburn cream. 

Forget the wine for a moment.  Let’s start with the supply category ‘spares’. This covers spares for every moving and non -moving part of the boat.  There are probably hundreds of ’spares’ required, ranging from ropes and halyards of multiply sizes and grades, anchors, impellers for each pump, extra pumps themselves, various belts and bits for various engines, pipes and hoses for every inlet and outlet valve ever thought off, bits and pieces for generators, radios, tanks and cooking appliances.  Spare for this; spares for that; spares for the other.  Mountains of them.

In addition to cataloguing and storing the spares themselves (storeman position available) there is enough work for a part time librarian to accession and maintain all the literature.  There are mounds of manuals for everything on board.  Mainly they are helpful for establishing the maintenance schedule so that theoretically you don’t need the spares.  But, they come in handy when repairing items on the run (i.e. daily). For someone for whom constructing an Ikea bookshelf was a challenge, the instructions for replacing the impeller in the macerator pump was a doozy.  Practical guides and manuals aside, for the theoretically-minded, there is the extra cache of volumes to ensure that you can not only do it, you can realise why. (Why Does a Diesel Engine Work?  Theory of Rope Splicing for Dummies; The Whys and Wherefores of Waves; Understanding the Electromagnetic Spectrum for Yachties etc )


Then, just as you think you are on top of spares adn maintenance, you have to check that you have a veritable Bunning’s Warehouse of the tools vital to a sailor’s life. I realise now that I had a very Pollyanna view of ‘sailing tools’ before I got on board.  I had a very nice set of navigation instruments, a shackle spanner and some terrific sailing gloves.  Little did I realise that more important to me would be, inter alia, a set of huge bolt cutters (to cut away the mast when it falls?), grease gun, angle grinder, soldering iron, huge numbers of imperial and metric spanners, Allen keys, vices, clamps, jig, fret and hack saws, hammers and mallets, sewing equipment, vacuum pumps, screw drivers (various), compressors (four?) and generators. I had optimistically thought that the presence of a number of hairdryers on board was a sign of the elegant life, until I realised that they are actually used to heat flexible piping before deploying onto their fittings.

In addition to standard tools that anyone would recognise, there are a range of bent, twisted, welded, cut and generally surreal implements that have been customised by the indomitable David Casson to suit this particular yacht and its unique nooks and crannies.  The engine mountings awkward to access?  Here is our customised spanner handle that makes it easy.  Stern gland in a devilishly unreachable place to check?  Here is a fabulous customised spanner that you can use with your eyes closed?  Head blocked up? Here is a fully customised flexible set of micro tongs with a remote spring control that can get tiny bits of loo paper from inside the pipe without disassembly.

But wait, there is more. There are solvents, cleaners, polishes, bleaches, glues, detergents, paints, greases, oils, conditioners, buffers, tapes and a myriad of other consumable gunk needed to clean, etch, prime, degrease, polish, seal  or otherwise finish the job. Plus the disposable gloves, overalls and masks for the operator. In my youth I used to campaign against the nuclear subs that berthed in our bay, fearing that they might sink and cause an environmental mess.  Your average small sailing vessel might not have nuclear power (at least I haven’t found any on our yacht yet) but it has enough chemicals on board to rival a Bopal factory. 

And here was me thinking that tee tree oil, eucalyptus oil, vinegar and vanilla were all we needed. 

Then of course, because of all the gunk, all the tools, all the sparks, flames, moving parts, and because boats move around and can sink and people can get ill or injured, there are  the safety and environment procedures to be learned, safety and environmental regulations to be complied with, and safety equipment to be checked and stored.   Our 44-foot sailing boat is chock-a-block with alarms, safety devices, mandatory licences, registrations and compliance certificates.  There is a pile of safety equipment you literally cannot jump over: life raft, PFDs, flairs, radios, radar, depth sounder, EPIRBs, hand-held radios, GPS, danbouy, life rings, safety harnesses, fire blankets, fire extinguishers, first aid kits. There are environmental protection procedures for dealing with hazardous waste including holding tanks for bio waste. 

Our mentor in these matters (my favourite person David) said that he nearly had a safety-induced accident when there was a fire in the engine hold.  A piece of paper had blow onto a hot pipe and ignited. He  opened the engine hold,  gently blew out the flame, stepped back and nearly broke his leg on the mound of fire extinguishes and fire blankets that his partner had instantly deployed behind him, as per approved procedures.

So, back to supplying the vessel for our first trip:  I think we forgot the wine.  

ARCANERY Living the illiterate life

I was really worried that we made a bad gaff the other day.   As we walked up to our broker on a finger, we overheard him snorting in derision at the silly bugger who ‘two-packed his wood’.

Being paranoid, I immediately assumed that we were guilty.  Had we inadvertedly two packed our wood?   Further, was that dangerous or just stupid? 

As it turns out, the story was about a fellow who bought an old wooden boat and put the wrong paint on it.  The very inflexible two -pack paint cracks as the wooden boat flexes.  I know that wasn’t us, as our boat is fibreglass.  (Phew)

But it made me think about the stew of illiteracy we have been boiling in lately. Do you think it is possible that mariners’ use of language has the highest density of arcanery in the English speaking world?  I can’t immediately think of other fields in which there is a richer source of very particular language use. Other than the law, of course. 

At one level, marine language is no different from any other specialist field in that it has lots of nouns and verbs unfamiliar to land-lubbers that describe things or concepts that do not exist on land.  ‘Sloop’, ‘yawl’ and ‘schooner’ might be synonyms for yachts to the uninitiated but there is a world of difference to anyone who knows. Most landlubbers don’t have to heave-to and are not often at risk of broaching.  We struggle to learn the litany of foreign words about yacht design and maintenance, communications, sailing technique, diesel engine operation, navigation, weather, moods of the ocean, rules of the road, and so on. 

Even the smallest of areas of knowledge have vast volumes of weird words. We are currently grappling with knots, and we have a set of small encyclopaedias of knowledge devoted to them: what they are called, their component parts, how tie them, what to tie them with and to what particular purpose you would use them for. (Q: What kind of knot would you use to secure the fender to the rail? A: Half hitch with quick release.  Now do it.)

Old words and phrases get new power. We are literally learning the ropes. I am worried that my beloved I-phone will be scuppered and sink without a trace.  We are sailing too close to the wind so we better take another tack. I am fearful of falling overboard or being cast adrift, or up a creek or elsewhere without a paddle. WE are waiting for a good time and tide to leave this port, but THEY await no man.

That twinge of self consciousness from sounding like a pirate in a b-grade movie is almost gone.  I now comfortable sit on thwarts and look for things abeam or abaft.
We have almost got past the stage of diving for our boating glossaries and springing snap quizzes on each other. We can now tell our clew from our leech, our rhumb line from our rum supply and our spring lines from our brest lines, our forward from our forehead and our pulpit from our pushpit. But remind me again what the hell is the name of that thin line of paint stencilled just above the waterline?

Ahhrrr.

IS THIS A GOOD IDEA?

Day 1: 19th September 2010
My stomach did a lurch and I felt suddenly nauseous. Not seasickness or at least not the traditional type as I was in the CYC bar at the time.  It was just the realisation that effective today, I am technically homeless, with no fixed address.  The trendy apartment has been relinquished and all the furniture has been stored. The family trinkets are in a safe deposit box, the 35 year old potted Kentia palm has been fostered (thanks Dianna) and all mail has been redirected to a PO Box.

Members of my family tell me I am over-reacting (again!). They know I can get myself theatrically worked up about anything.  But I am not exactly complaining, or even looking for sympathy.  I am not penniless, disadvantaged or deserving of charity.  On the contrary, I am decidedly middle class and moderately prosperous. I have chosen to go on what I am broadcasting as ‘the adventure of a lifetime’: 18months sailing around Australia on a yacht. 

But it is weird. No house, just a little yacht. (How will that feel in a storm?)  No car, as our jaunty little yacht is not blessed with either helipad or garage. No job, except a little bit of work running our publishing company via the internet.  No TV.  (Actually, that’s a lie: we will have a TV, CD and DVD on board.)  We will be cut off from the world. (And that’s a lie too: our communications gear includes an HF radio, several VHF radios, a27mh radio, , radar, several EPIRBs, one Telstra and one Optus 3 g account, all run by three computers, with two mobile phones).

Natalie, quick of wit and fast of lip quipped that I was holding up her search for a luxury apartment to lease in Perth with her new man, as “it looks dodgy to have a next of kin with no fixed address”.    

A huge loss is access to Surry Hills restaurants, galleries, cinemas and trendy throb just outside the door.  Cunningly, to acclimatise to this privation, we have booked a berth in a Sydney Harbour marina for the first three months while we get our sea legs and work out which of our friends is prepared to do champagne on the aft deck at sunset. We aim to follow the fleet out of the heads in the Sydney Hobart yachts this year, and take in the traditional Sydney New year’s celebrations a l’eau. My theory is that you really need to work up to desert islands and shouldn’t dive into the slow lane too quickly.

But, back to the nervous nausea.

Could it be that I harbour doubts about my nautical resilience, especially in relation to living with my significant other. Can we live cheek by jowl on a small boat for 18 months? A hint: this is the same couple who had separate apartments in one of our homes so that we didn’t have to interact during the daylight hours with the occasional exception of coffee at 11am on special days

I might also be suffering from a delayed reaction to packing up all our worldly stuff and cramming it into two containers.  All that much loved (I thought) furniture and effects looked decidedly insignificant and unimportant as it was man-handled into a rusty container.   

Is this a good idea? Well.  Only time will tell.