Our memories

Top down from the inner foresail halyard area. 
At sea I let go a halyard, and yip - it was rock and roll up there. 

No photoshop, no one on the helm and miles of beautiful blue water.

Looking back, we realize now how few people have understood the change in life and efforts, along with the rewards.
Here are a few pictures of the good parts:

Leaving Panama, knowing +25knot
of wind was imminent

 Little did I know how much we were going to rely on this engine, which gave us no troubles. These narrow anchorages and passes are not palaces to sail. I admire the seamanship of the older generations, who approached landfalls without motive power. A new 50hp yanmar, with lots of marks on pulleys etc so I do not have to try remember in difficult times.





One evening, in the French Polynesians, we needed a slow overnight sail to enter the next reef system in daylight. Good company and beautiful conditions.








This view is our usual 'fwd of the beam' set-up, the 3 sails balancing them selves and the windvane doing the correction. Over 50% of our passages were fwd of the beam.

The big Genoa out forward of the bow does a fair job hauling her downwind.

 Our first offshore landfall, was the SE corner of Cuba, one of the joys of cruising - foreign landfall.


This is our V-berth inter-leading door. There is a warmth in wood, and whether this translates to ones psych or not is a different discussion, I just know how much pleasure we have had, been comfortably stationed inside.

Bowsprits and varnish

Work in exotic places

The main 2 jobs to tackle were internal tidy up and redesigning the bowsprit platform.

The bowsprit was my headache, as I did not want the original design.

I  made a new Stainless platform and used a GRP grating as a platform. However, the new (2006) Douglas Fir bowsprit is just lovely, and I couldn't bring myself just to cover her with paint. TOG readers have the same opinions.

Something looks amiss 

Thanks Mathew for your welding and workshop
 Pre assembly of platform and modified rollers

What a beautiful piece of timber  - well worth the efforts 

10 off holes needed cleaning and plugging
 - west system epoxy and some Tassie  oak 

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The Tortise and the Hare

I put my 2 cents of opinion into an event we were involved with on the NZ passage, because some context to land based reporting may be prudent. I trust all parties have weathered the associated lifestyle adjustments required. Our cruising is about self reliance, helping hands, a way of life, rather than a hurried destination list, we are the Tortoise, not the Hare.

We saw another beautiful new yacht smashed up in a yard in NSW, waiting for crushing, that begs the question why she was abandoned at sea?

Expensive modern yacht abandoned recently

With 27000nm under the belt, including the winter Cape and New Zealand waters, no one plans on being involved in a rescue. Despite the best preparations and training, outside help may well be required one day. So on that stormy night I realized some folks we never knew needed support or help.

At no time did the rescue authorities order/instruct us to help- on the contrary their professional voices were thoroughly calming.


Before responding to the rescue center:
1. I asked my wife if she could handle the extra effort - it was her final call, as we were already pretty well slogged out by then. She sat wedged in the companion way, closed up inside, watching the blue water and hearing the breakers & manning the radio - far more scary than my cockpit position - I love her dearly for that resilience in the tough times.
2. I factored in considerable drift and the sea state angle required to land upwind of the vessel (an assumption they would drift slower in the life-raft than in the vessel), it meant sailing our boat into some stiff seas.
3. We made it clear we could not do any "searching" or grid type traversing and needed a way-point.

I turned the yacht around at 3am, still bare poled and hove to again - sound simple, was not. At first light, set the yacht up to sail/motor to their last known position and after an hour communicated to Taupo Maritime I could make their position before nightfall - Note we had SSB radio, VHF and ability to charge batteries.
Our yacht is designed, built well, maintained adequately and we had already weathered similar storms, so had taken time to get to know limitations, both personnel and equipment. You can only get that knowledge through experience. Forums, clubhouse chats & books can inform you, but there is no substitute for reality.

What followed was an exhausting effort at the wheel, a lunchtime fly-by of the Noumea rescue jet and finally at sunset arrival within sight of SV Windigo. I had to hand steer, avoiding dumpers, surfing, climbing to windward and looking over both shoulders at the breakers.
VHF contact was made and then scheduled on the hour. Unfortunately after 11pm, I lost VHF positions, which resulted in extended deck time trying to get visual of the yacht in high seas (so we did not collide) - this was where the real dangers lay - night time, lack of sleep for multiple days and in close proximity to a vessel. The beneteau was getting a pounding and it's motion was horrendous - clearly not designed for those conditions. At about 4am the ship arrived and I asked the captain if he could continue watch on my behalf....I put the VHF and SSB volumes on full, set the alarm for first light and collapsed downstairs. The rest is covered by the media, but do not be fooled by the sea state, those pictures are taken in the direct lee of a big ship...we still had standing waves breaking on our deck that morning.

 http://www.3news.co.nz/nznews/yachties-return-to-heroes-welcome-2012111917#axzz3UEK2XxPx

For some reason I was not given the drift rate of the SV Windigo, so took a few hunches of my own...dealing with two remarkably different hull designs and associated drifts - it turned out SV Windigo drifted downwind 34nm in the 18hr period. (Needless to say my logbook was a scrawl of vectors and Waypoints, as tiredness required everything to be written down.)

So by 10am it was all over, ....but 800nm still to sail, so we hoist sails, DBL clip on deck and pace ourselves for the next weather system. That evening when the NZ warship tried to find us... but I was hove to down stairs re-balancing that "sleep" equation.  By day 14 or so?? what ever it was, we were keen to be at anchor. There were two sharp fronts that hit us further south, where sleet, fatigue and sea states were worse than the low up north. We were kind of over this windward passage. It was a reminder of how rough oceans can become and how much sail change and adjustment you do with clocking weather systems. I heart-fully thank those that welcomed us in at Opua - all a bit overwhelming.

Re hand steering, well..that not overly correct, but my laziness meant it was easier to lash the helm, not something I wanted needed advertising. We sail our yacht across oceans, she is well built for that purpose. I think there are few yacht designs around today that allow for extended ocean sailing with the helm lashed.

 I deliberately limited use of the working auto-helm, to conserve battery power. There was a lot of floating pumice that could block the engine sea strainer in bouncy seas (I could and did run the engine to charge batteries, but just limited it). Also, we had cracked the glass of the solar panel, holed the selfsteering paddle and the wind gen had stopped working. Re damage, pretty minor in the scheme of things:

• A wind gen isolation switch was removed & cleaned  -15mins (should have been done earlier!!), 
• The wind-vane paddle epoxied & reinstalled in Opua. I didn't feel like getting it water logged and was too lazy to fill the 2" hole with epoxy at sea - could have everything was onboard. 
• I purchased a new solar panel and kick myself for not bringing our one inboard 6 hours earlier.

If engaging in independent activities, paid for out of your own pocket money, I suggest: an apprenticeship, depth of understanding and respect of the environment. Weigh your own inputs above the reliance on modern equipment, paid weather routers, sponsors agendas and electronics.

The process of learning - aged antifouling

Pacific Blue and an underwater job to keep the
speeds up above 6 knots in the doldrums

I was reflecting on why we did or didn't do certain jobs earlier.
Mostly we did the preparations that enabled us to sail independently without breakdowns; but for those sailors attempting ocean crossings, this  re antifouling job I would bring forward. On hindsight the toxicity of the paint had already been lost.

The anti fouling simply was not working, which required cleaning far too regularly. Twice I dived her clean while in the open ocean, (which also allowed me to spear 3 mahi mahi for a feed.)

Start scraping with 3/4 inch tungston blade - days of work.

 So in NZ under the advice of the yard owner (Charlie), we stripped all that antifouling off and haven't had to dive with the tiger sharks in Morton island since.
 

500 discs to prep for painting .

Hardest part to remove was where the  first coat 
of  antifouling was bonded into the epoxy.

The primer coat on and now on the easier homeward journey

1st Coat of Epoxy, all coats are colour coded

2nd coat and weather still good

3rd coat and refreshing the masking

2 coats in one day, bonding in the 
antifouling while the epoxy is still tackie

Tasman crossing on the homeward leg.

Pumice Stones 

We have aboard a piece of the new world - Pumice, which was now 6 months old and pretty organic & ripe. On the NZ leg we never managed to catch a "new" piece  - just goes to show how things slow down with a bit of growth attached.

We did 160nm per day for the 3 days after clearing Opua - with a strong post frontal system. At Norfolk island the wind stopped and then turned unfavorable, we decided to push on. (A light 15knot wind was predicted, which is easy sailing.)

200nm off Brisbane and 
definitely on watch!

BUT one hell of a passage resulted with 10 days of strong westerly head winds driving up a shitty steep seas against the prevailing current.

We were regularly tacking, when our VMG dropped and were finally down to storm tri-sail and storm jib for the last days of the passage.

Hard yards won on Port tack

Add to the fun were idiotic fisherman cutting across our bow, large ships and all the while knowing fellow cruisers are enjoying Fiji's anchorages.

We were heading home for some much needed work. I'm happy to say that Tasman was the hardest passage I've done.

What is a Tayana 37?

It is hard to state how pleasing on the eye the Tayana 37 is, a beautiful looking yacht. But rather than bore you with the details, simply refer to the below link and let the experts tell you. 
TOG = tayana's Owners Group is an active group with unlimited knowledge to tap into - a huge positive for any new boat owner.

http://www.ftp.tognews.com/Publications/Reviews/Good_Old_Boat_Magazine/Tayana37Mar05.pdf

Needless to say each yacht owner has their own opinion on these matters. Catch a few on a pacific island with a cold beer on hand, and you may even be led to believe, based on the robust arguments, yacht design is the B all and End all of lifes circles. Wait until they start talking about "weather".

We have passaged 170nmile days and equally hove too for several to avoid damage and rest. 8.5knots is a respectable speed, but typically far too fast for short handed ocean sailing. I am happy with my 5.5 to 7knot speeds, so what if we arrive two or three days later, in the grand scheme of things.

The truth be known, when you safely anchored in paradise, speed is all but irrelevant. Water, shade, good food, no repairs and fine company, become so much more of why you commit to the hard times.

Finding our home - Adventure Bound

After crossing USA (west to east); driving  from Carolina to Rhode Island; return plane trips offshore to extend visas; we were back at the same yard we had previously sea trialed, hauled and surveyed a different T37 .... 

We were finally guided to a private seller, and after spending 2 nights aboard enjoying her warmth, Adventure Bound was chosen to take us home.

  

The hard yards in the yard

A word of caution, when a area has four separate seasons, you only have three months before the weather changes. So with the visa ticking away, a smelly Menhaden Fish Oil factory upwind there was ample reason to launch her & sail her south.

Donny cooled us off under his trees when the heat index climbed too high - and to Marcelle's delight we were invited to his family's crab picnic -and the "southern" hospitality -  thank you. 

Some boats never relaunch - as Charlie from the yard shows us how to drain the summer rain water from a flooded boat - a big drill undersides!

a.     What we removed

Rudder, peeling varnish, TV and DVD, sub woofer, dingy davits, lots of wires, protractor modem engine driven refrigeration, full length mirror in the heads and so on and so on. All part of focusing on getting her sea worthy and ready for a knockdown.

b.     What we repaired?

The rudder, prop shaft removed and inspected. Gland packing redone. The emergency tiller was trimmed back 3 foot as it didn't fit on the spigot. Bowsprit was lowered to the ground, stripped, varnished and resealed. Roller furlers free up and rigs re tensioned.

c.      Finally the launch day arrives

A truly beautiful day for the launch and Charlie let us rest quietly in the slings to test all the systems and check the through hulls - kind courteous and patient.
Her birthday present almost completed - floating, looking beautiful again.

 We had yet to sail her a mile and 6 months had past!