Tawodi Sailing Adventures

Two nights ago the moon sat like a Mona Lisa smile in a sky shot through with starlight and we were motoring. Three days ago our spinnaker pulled us along in good seas and gentle breeze.  Four nights ago a low pressure system carried a squall over our boat and spat 50 knot winds through our rig. Ten days ago we were trying to imagine what warm might feel like.

And last night we had dinner at a fish fry on Pitcairn Island, the boat anchored in blue water, the air semi-tropical and us wandering about sweating our way through the ups and downs of the Island.

Our last port of call before home and, hopefully, the beginning of a warm fast ride up the Pacific.

How much we look forward to complaining of the heat.

Until then we have a couple of days to dry ourselves out, explore this bit of rock and get Tawodi set for her last ride on this world journey.

We’ve managed to post a few photos thanks to the generosity of Dave- VP6DB.

33.08 S 135.43 W 600 miles south of Pitcairn Island
Back-story- that musty inevitability of explaining how we arrived here, the point at which the starboard aft lower shroud keeps catching the eye. It’s a good ocular hook, sitting there, lashed off to the starboard toe-rail. A body can hardly get past the window without a double take and then a moment of remembrance.
Back in the slithering, wet torment of crossing the South Indian Ocean our boom vang snapped off the mast. One of a veritable plethora of fantastic occurrences offered up by that particular body of water. Losing that luxury item, as the Captain calls it, left our boom brake working harder than originally intended. It was the kind of moment where the safari elephant gives up its ghost leaving an unsuspecting donkey to carry the entire load. All the force once borne by our boom vang unloaded itself onto the back of the boom brake, our poor little donkey.

Our poor donkey, the boom brake, anchors itself to the boat through a high tech line spliced around the toggle of the starboard aft lower shrouds’ turnbuckle.

Are we all enjoying the back-story-tedious though it may be, are we all beginning to see where this is going? Can we all picture the forces and loads, once equitably distributed, now working against one line and one toggle?
Two nights ago, loping along close-hauled in 30 knots of wind, we heard the vastly bad sound of a mechanical failure. Call it a gunshot, an explosion, a bang- the final rapture before disaster- it’s the kind of sound that turns the Captain into a jet-propelled fix-it man and gets me off the toilet kind of quickly.

The force of the extra load on our boom brake, on its piece of high tech line, had pulled and pulled and pulled and twisted until it pulled and twisted the shroud toggle into two pieces. Snap and there went the aft shroud, swinging free and easy in the big breeze.
This fine moment, kneeling on the side deck, wind shouting at us, holding onto vice grips, watching the shadows from the Captain’s headlamp scurry away into the fathomless darkness of the Pacific Ocean, watching him tension a piece of our standing rigging against a line lashed to the toe-rail- this high romantic flash of round the world yachting was the parting gift granted us by the roaring forties.
That tiny calamity aside we find ourselves far enough north to feel safe in bidding farewell to the world south of forty. Goodbye to that bowl of water.

The Royal Albatross no longer visits us. Those behemoths need to stay where the world conspires to be big enough to carry the wing span. Sad to lose sight of those lines of sinew and feather but there’s no grief in witnessing water and air temperatures climb above 60 degrees Fahrenheit. One of these days we’ll be down to a single layer of clothing and then it’s only a short journey to naked sailing.

And, finally, under the ‘That’s just Brilliant’ category aboard Tawodi, the Captain, whittling away a few moments of thought over our leaking deck hatches, hacked his way from thinking of o-rings to considering how great it would be to have some kind of rubber cordage to honing the point down to bicycle inner-tubes. Now, shoved up under hatch lips and inflated, bicycle inner-tubes mark the line between ’sort of water tight’ to ‘mostly water tight’.

Yes, necessity really is the Mother of invention, which only begs the question of who’s the father.
And one final note- a very Happy Birthday to Agnes, the Captain’s Momma. We surely hope she’s enjoying family, life, good food and lots of laughter on her special day.

44.19 S 142.10 W 1300 miles southwest of Pitcairn
Third reefed main, staysail, no jib, clawing our way close to the wind.

Sounds familiar, doesn’t it? Seems like we’ve been clawing our way forward for so long that, by now, we ought to have lost most or our fingernails. But there’s a change- the not so subtle shift from port tack to starboard. Now we’re being thrown into the stove rather than away from it.

In fairness to the facts we did spend 24 hours blissfully sailing on a beam reach in 18 knots of wind, slip sliding away on a sunshine and lollipops sea. That’s gone now, bullied off the playground as it were, and we’re back to the familiar arrangement of our life’s furniture; wet and falling to the floor.
We formulate plans, lines of attack with the furtive hope of avoiding the low pressure system spinning like an insane dervish just north of us.

The Captain, maneuvering through our daily climatological review, points at weather files blinkering their way across the computer screen- (For the curious these pictures come to us, like all of our emails, through our Airmail program via the HF radio. They’re called ‘Grib’ files, for gridded binary, and are so far removed from the blurred mess of old school weather fax as to not even be comparable. Anyone who’s spent time trying to decipher the dead sea scroll quality of one of those would find a Grib file almost incomprehensibly beautiful and clear.)
The Captain points and scrolls.

“We’re here now and this is twelve hours from now and a 24 hour jump.”

I glance at the positions he’s talking about, I glance while keeping a wary eye on the pattering advance of insane chicken tracks marching across the top of the screen.

“And here’s two days out and then here you can see there’s a break so we’ll position ourselves to just slip through right there.”

There’s a wedge of calm between one set of insane chicken tracks and another set- our wedge of hope between two low pressure systems.

I nod and squint and say a little quiet prayer for us followed by a very loud prayer for the continuing health of our electric autopilot.
After all, what week aboard this boat would be worth it’s mettle if something didn’t happen, something like having the waterblade of our wind-vane sheer off. Last December somewhere close to this latitude in this very same ocean our original waterblade fell off. This time, rather than leave it to chance, the ocean came right on up and bit the thing off.

“Well the Pacific’s a big girl. She needs to have her snacks.”

The Captain, after resigning himself to the loss, stated as much. As if the Pacific were your fat third cousin Marjorie who just can’t help herself when it comes to second helping of that wonderful pecan pie. She’s still such a nice girl.

So that leaves us with ourselves or the electric autopilot doing most of the steering, the electric autopilot that can chow down on electrons like a diabetic in a donut shop. When we’re close to the wind we can lash the tiller so that Tawodi rounds up and falls off just enough to stay on course but that’s only when we’re close to the wind, the wind velocity is consistent, the sea-state isn’t playing toss-across with us and most importantly to those who might be challenged like me, the sails are trimmed properly. That’s right, just because things might look pretty doesn’t mean they’re in the right place. Sail trim’s not like pillow placement aesthetics. Who knew?
We plow on, watching our state of charge ebb like the national economy, listening to the autopilot churns its way through course changes and we keep our fingers crossed; fingers, toes and whatever else we can find, that all things will hold well together for the next 4862 or so miles we have to cross to find our way home.

46.44 S 158.05 W 1890 miles west of Pitcairn Island.
Chewing gum, one tapered wooden plug and two kinds of sponges.

Wednesday at 3 am, I am crouching on the floor contemplating the merits of our sponges. One, the standard, wash up the dishes rectangle does better in the cave under the nav station. The other; pink, a bit too thin but with a broader face, like a bit of sponge paper, does a bang-up job soaking up water off the diamond-patterned floor.

Fascinating stuff, our sponges.
Strange as it is I am focusing my intellectual force on sponge values because earlier I’d made the mistake of noting, with an almost mathematical precision, exactly how mind-numbing the task at hand was. In darkness, sponging water off the floor while a Holy war between climate and ocean raged outside, it dawned on me, with a singularity of mental acumen, that there was no skill here, not even a demand of extraordinary focus. I understood,with an embarrassing lucidity, why one might send a monkey to space, perhaps a not very bright monkey at that.
At 4 am, sponge values assessed and thoughts on how one might get a stand-in monkey for certain points in life put aside, I evolved from two sponges and a bowl to two sponges, a bowl and Rover. Rover’s a diaphragm bilge pump with 30 feet of hose attached to his sucker snout. He can lap up water anywhere inside the boat.

Shining with brilliance, I realized that Rover could be doing most of the hard work. He could stick his nose down into the watery abyss under the nav station and when not drowning in that filthy pond he could suck up the water I’d sponged off the floor and drained into a bowl. I had me a monkey.

It was a heavenly moment. No more stand up, sit down, fight, fight, fight trying to get a bowl full of water off the floor and safely to the sink.
Of course you’re wondering about the chewing gum and the tapered wooden plug.

Along with water on the floor and all the other charms of going to weather in 45 knots of wind- those charms being:

1- The nerve stripping, filling rattling, way too loud activity of pounding, as if the boat were banging her head into a wall.

2- The constant shift of everything- a migration of belongings; cookies, pillows, sweaters, magazines, forgotten utensils, going to the floor-to the center- going to the apparent defacto disaster meeting spot.

3- The need for three point bracing where often the only free limb left is a leg. Lacking prehensile toes and extraordinary flexibility making hot chocolate with a leg is downright tough.

4- Having to hold oneself down on the toilet not just to keep oneself there but to keep what’s in the bowl in the bowl.

5- Cooking. There’s not enough time to deliver the analogous explanation. Suffice it to say the activity is an anguish of knives, fire and food.

6- And finally the sink.

Occasionally a large wave picks the boat up and drops it, creating enough hydraulic pressure to cause water to shoot up out the sink drain like our own version of Old-Faithful. I have suggested up-lighting in the sink to give the sudden, spouting water-surge a sort of ‘magic fountain’ look. For that idea, the Captain’s only ever stared at me blankly.

Gallons of water come out, hang momentarily and then, as gravity would demand, fall onto the starboard settee. That is until the Captain, after one last sopping, shoved a tapered wooden plug into the drain.

Lose a functioning sink, gain a dry seating area.
As for the chewing gum. Out in the cockpit there’s a stainless box that covers the hydraulic ram and drive motor for the autopilot- it covers that and the gaping hole cut out of the lazarette to accommodate said ram and drive motor. At the bottom interior corners of that box there are little holes, drain holes to keep water from pooling up on the cockpit seat.

Drain holes that drain right into that gaping hole that drains right into the lazarette that drains, after a brief moment in our impoverished bilge, right onto our floor. The Captain, tired of the sponge, dump and suck of keeping the water out, chewed up a piece of Peppermint Trident, went outside and put that gum to good use.

Lose a drain hole gain a dry floor.
Skill intensive, technologically demanding- never mind the nerves of steel stuff- this heavy weather sailing is for a different breed. Certified water removal specialists endorsed to use wooden appendages and saliva actuated building strategies.

A different breed or, perhaps a different species.

So it goes living the life of romance on the sea. Tomorrow we may get to bathe.

46.38 S 159.33 W 1944 West of Pitcairn

What a crappy night. There’s no other way to describe these evenings spent going round robin in the cabin with a bowl and a sponge. 45 knot winds on the nose and an ocean coming after us like an insane butcher.

Swilling water, flying boxes of crackers, smacked elbows and skulls, and, sadly, an H.F. Radio that’s having difficulty working reliably.

And that’s the item that makes the evening extra special in its crappiness.
The HF radio is our only means of mass communication. These posts go through it and are pasted on the website by the Captain’s brother, Robert (thank you Robert) Our position is updated via a Ham Radio Net. Without the radio we essentially have no communication with the outside world and though a satellite phone had been on our shopping list, our finances just couldn’t stretch far enough to make it happen. We, much as the Captain hates to say it, put all our communications eggs in this one basket and the basket’s having trouble.

The long, short and in between of it all is a warning.

Be aware that our radio may refuse to suffer any longer within this world. If it gives up it’s little electronic ghost we are left silent.

No more posts, no more position reports.

And with that much said it’s most important to know that even if the radio no longer works the boat and its crew are doing just fine. No worries, just silence.

Hopefully all things will hold together and the warnings and reassurances will prove to be unnecessary.

46.15 S 162.40 W 2000 miles west of Pitcairn
The idea of westerly wind.

We’ve been considering that idea for over a week now. Around the bottom of this world that’s the place the wind is supposed to come from. There are charts replete with arrows indicating as much, convincing, very official looking charts, but since leaving New Zealand west wind has yet to be more than an idea.

Funny but we’re down here, south of 46, because of that idea.

Two days ago, clawing our way into 40 knot north east winds I had one eye on the floor, half an eye on the wind while the remaining half an eyeball busily navel gazed around a few choice daydreams, at least one of those involved west wind, the rest seemed to involve a level housing arrangement, a hot shower and a certain amount of ease in getting dressed.

Sitting on the floor, legs braced against either side of the bulkhead that divides navigation station from starboard side settee, I sipped at a coffee cup half full of red wine. One eye watching water pool into the low side of the floor, gauging how much time I could dither away with the wine before returning to sponge duty.

It was late or early depending on perspective; red cabin lights and the occasional mocking peek of the moon through a haze of clouds gave the cabin its mood lighting. I studied on the boots that had stopped being waterproof after Cape Horn, as if that was enough for them, the foul weather pants stained with oil, coffee and other bits I didn’t care to think about and scratched at my head where something that once was hair had seemingly congealed into a ponytail. A sip of wine, a glance at the puddles of water and I wondered just how much less sexy I might become.

Shouldering our way against wind, shoving our way against water we went up and dropped like a blunt hatchet against concrete. The sound of bow and water meeting and not really seeming to compromise- a catastrophe of noise wrestling with a surreal shifting of gravitational pull forward of the main cabin while aft, gravity insisted on everything and everyone coming down to the starboard side.

On port tack, down to a triple reefed mainsail and a staysail there was little sail handling left to do as the breeze poked its way towards 45 knots. Instead, with the ocean flowing over us with a janitorial fervor of someone using buckets of water to get a bit of garbage out of the way, we were left with bilge water handling; quality time on the floor with a sponge and a bowl and, in my case, a cup of wine.

In the morning the Captain opined that at least I didn’t have to go outside to do anything during the night.

Right, especially since the outside was so obligingly coming in.

Later that afternoon a large portion of the wind ran past on its way to other social engagements. Though what remained continued to leave us feeling like a salmon swimming upstream, a river flowing at 15 knots is a far friendlier thing than one raging past at 45.

It’s been a couple of days of weather one might plausibly call OK. Sure the wind’s still heading the wrong way and it’s not precisely balmy down here in the Autumnal season but the floor’s mostly dry and that is a blessing. But then the Captain has a penchant for studying on weather charts, hunched over in front of the computer his finger stabbing at keys as he scrolls through the hours of information filling the screen.

Do you want to see the weather picture?

Is it good?

Well…. there’s breeze.

The Captain can promise a future filled with wet floors, 30 degree angles of heel, huge amounts of wind, obscenely loud water and still make it sound pretty much fine.

At least we won’t have to motor.

At least.

And so it seems that tomorrow night will likely find us back on the floor contemplating shifting puddles of water, hunching up against the hammer blow of every wave and raising a glass of wine to the blessing that’s to be found.

At least we won’t be motoring.

45.09 S 174.10 W 2486 miles west of Pitcairn Island
Light air. Sailing in it poses as much difficulty as sailing in flesh-jiggling storms. It lacks the cataclysmic edge lurking in every 40 plus knot breeze but makes up for a deficiency of that panty-wetting fear factor by simply being petulant.

There’s no other word for it.

In a 24-hour period the wind shifted from the nose to the rear, from 12 knots to 2 to 8. Sails in, sails out. The Main, up at full hoist, blocked the jib. The Main came down. Wind tiptoed forward then died. The engine came on, the jib got furled. Wind whispered a promise. Out came the jib then, no, the wind, that bastard, had lied. In came the jib. Wind puttered around the stern, huffed a bit and everything went up, fabric grasping at any flutter of air. The engine went off. The jib flailed itself against the mast like a penitent monk Engine on, jib back in.

And then repeat.

In late evening under a fog addled moon we managed both sails but it was a trick of keeping them full. Swinging them from side to side as the wind tangoed about our rear end. The dance of jibing; clomping forward to release the main’s preventer- a line strung from boom-end to bow, clomping back and centering the boom, driving through, easing off the main, shoveling the jib over and then clomping forward again and restringing the preventer.

And then wait. And then the wind shifts. And then repeat.

Hair kept getting into my mouth. I needed to pee, my hands were raw, the Captain wasn’t getting any sleep and I had a lump forming on my head from ducking too late to get under the dodger. Through it all I was remembering the original Sales Brochure for the 1964 Pearson Triton 28 I once owned.

The brochure had a colorful drawing of the penultimate wife, mother and apparent sailing partner as imagined in 1960. She stood smiling up beatifically through the companionway, standing next to the square of sink that dubiously called itself the ‘galley’ on that little vessel. She wore the equivalent of what Miss Moneypenny might wear if she were to go yachting with James Bond, the Sean Connery Bond, of course; a perfect little sailor’s outfit replete with kerchief and an anchor embroidered on the pocket of her immaculate white blouse.

Her hair promised to feel perfectly natural to the touch while never moving and she offered up a plate of canapés and toothpick skewered wieners with hands that ended in the smooth arc of well-manicured nails, her smile framed by the curve of cherry red lips.

In short the kind of woman that would go after a velociraptor with a fly-swatter and never need to stop smiling or chatting.

Spitting the hair out of my mouth I thought about that woman. A study on the state of my fingernails left me wondering how she managed. Drugs, drink or both?

The brochure offered this Lady of the Yacht her choice of upholstery and highlighted all the comforts necessary to the fairer sex: a toilet, an icebox and a sink. All that and the fun and relaxation of sailing on a vessel easily handled by the man in her life.

I was still pondering the obscenity of that marketing creation late this afternoon, still wondering over how anyone might believe in that woman’s outfit, hands or even just her angelic smile, still spitting hair out of my mouth- such is the hell of long hair on a sailboat. And then I looked around.

Showers of light fell through a puff of clouds, silver gray and then pink. The fading day reflected off ocean swells, a world of colors that bent, folded and collapsed, an iridescent flow rippling, falling forward into itself. The silhouette of Albatross teased the cloud-addled sky, falling, floating over the skin of water and then climbing. And then the day began to fade, the sky turning itself into orange and blue hues that seemed to pull themselves from a painting formed between the mind of Dr Suess and the hand of Rembrandt. I smiled. I believe it was an angelic smile, perhaps it was even beatific.

I still can’t see how most of the Lady of the Yacht could exist even in the most hopeful of brains but the smile, every now and then between the turmoil of light air followed by too much air, there’s a space for that smile. A lovely wafer of light, color and life offered up by this Ocean.

45.30 S 179.17 W 2700 miles west of Pitcairn
It was 4:09 pm when Today became Tomorrow and Yesterday became Today, that’s the way of the world at 180 degrees of longitude. A different international dateline floats out there- a politically drawn construct, but once a body gets far enough from society the only thing that matters is one’s coordinates in relation to Greenwich; Time’s ground zero.

The Captain had the opportunity to report our moment of time-travel on the Pacific Seafarer’s radio net- those folks who track the voyages of ocean going fools like us. The roll call tops out around 20 boats right now. Listening to the reports flutter out of the radio it’s difficult not to notice that about nineteen of those boats are north of 35 degrees south while just one is south of 45 degrees south.

That would be us.
This marching to the beat of a different drummer didn’t feel so strange back in December when we were the only boat on their list. We felt special back then, hard not to when you’re It on a roll-call of one. Now as the reported latitudes and longitudes whisper their way out our radio speaker and the destinations of other boats come with sing-song vowel intense names whose utterance promise warm beaches and great tumblers full of tropical drinks, the syncopation of our different little drum sounds like it’s tapping its heart out in an empty auditorium.

Chit chat among the other boats and net operators runs along the lines of fishing stories, great places to dive, admonishments to enjoy the scenery. For us, we get warned about the massive low-pressure systems in front and behind. For us, though swarms of albatross and petrels all but shout about the fishy richness of our surroundings, there’s no way on God’s blue-green earth we’re going to troll a line and involve ourselves in anything that might require spending more time out in the cockpit. Going to the dentist sounds like more fun.
The reports on the net are succinct, formal; position, course, boat speed, wind speed, wind direction, sea state, barometer- leaving unspoken information like- are they, those people on boats way up in Wanahakalugi land, wearing shorts or even any clothing at all? Is the water temperature warm enough to swim in or even just warm enough to be able to survive in for longer than five minutes?

All of us out waddling away on boats have to figure out our personal equation in the calculus of motion between galley and head, all of us have the opportunity to experience life as if we were a plastic toy in an angry toddler’s tub but, really, all of that is so much easier when it’s warm.

Going forward to move the jib sheet lead and being doused in water that makes one think: so this is what it smells like inside a whale’s mouth, rarely strikes one as fun but it’s so much less fun when the water’s only 46 degrees Fahrenheit. And then there’s the toilet, rarely a good-time spot in the best of conditions, but when a body needs to negotiate three to four layers of fabric just to get settled, then the toilet evolves into a thing empowered with the force of a vengeful enemy.

People on their way to Tonga. People on their way to Palmyra. People on their way to Warm. Are their toilets as mean to them as ours is to us?
But then, laying under a blanket of envy, imagining places that promise tropical heat while our cabin temperature drops below 55 degrees Fahrenheit I know that a comeuppance is on it’s way. Somewhere north of the equator waits a day so hot, so oppressive that even the ocean won’t be in the mood to move. Then we’ll complain about roasting alive but right now it sounds lovely. Until that piece of heaven crosses our bow we’re beam reaching on starboard tack doing our best to stay dry and listening wistfully to all the other boats report their whereabouts on the Pacific Seafarers Net.

Leaving Dunedin, New Zealand
Duncan shuttled us hither and thither for food and final jugs of fuel; his poor dog wedged in back with diesel and shopping bags full of cookies and meat. Gordon, Kevin and Peter shoved us off the dock waving until we stopped snapping photos. Jasper and Les stood out on the breakwater for a final goodbye.

A special thanks to Cycle Surgery, who rented us the nicest bike we’ve had and let us keep it right to the end and to Duncan, again, who returned it after we pulled away. And with that we are done.

So long to society for a while.

There’s more names, faces, favors to recall- that much we know, there’s always that village it takes to keep us going, but we’re operating with itty-bitty brains so forgive us for neglecting to mention everything and everyone.
We talk about stopping in Pitcairn but we shrug about it as well. Weather could very well have a different idea about where we go and where we stop. Weather’s funny that way, especially weather down here. Tight balls of low pressure roll along in front and behind us, high pressure holding them down like a bully holding the skinny kid’s head underwater. We look through forecasts, knowing the activity’s like crystal ball gazing, and we hope for Goldilock’s baby bear of weather- not too much, not too little- just the right amount.

As it is Dunedin may be our last port of call on this global journey. It was certainly our last foray into a restaurant, our last land shower, our last fumbling with foreign coin and foreign newspapers.

This morning, frost laid its white head on the docks and rugby fields. Leaves dropped off trees like lemmings and, along a last run ashore, breathing looked like the chug of a steam engine. It was definitely time to get out of town.
Despite that onset of winter cold during our last few days in town, we’re not sure we could have done better than Dunedin. Doesn’t matter, does it?
Currently armed with a new tactic for combating seasickness, a boat load of food- literally a boat load- a plastic storage container etched with the GPS coordinates of where Tawodi was moored off the Otago Yacht Club and a collection of new friends, we feel ready to spend a couple of months making our way home.

And just to keep too many from wondering- the sea-sickness cure- if you’re left handed put a plug in your right ear, right-handed- then plug up your left ear. We’ve not settled into the vomit-making roll so we make no claims as to the efficacy of this cure, we’re just hopeful, very hopeful.

And the plastic storage container? That’s for holding the ice-cream we can make using a powdered mix sold down in these parts. We have one special package marked for use once we cross back into our own longitude.

Seasick cure, plastic container replete with coordinates and special envelope of ice-cream makings courtesy of Gordon, a scholar and a gentleman no matter what anyone else might say.

Now it’s time to go stare at the green of land before it disappears. Could be a while before we see that again.