“If this isn’t good enough then I’m registering her in Canada,” David says, straightening up, hands on his lower back. “Or Belgium. Nowhere else has these stupid regulations.”
We’re in Fairway Bay Marina, where we’ve kept Bob the Cat, our boat, for the last year. Having rented out our house and quit our jobs, we moved onto the boat ten days ago. The plan is to sail north into the sunshine and then see where the wind blows us.
However, since we moved onto the boat, David has been working nonstop on the boat. Sawing, screwing, sanding, securing, sweating, swearing – anything beginning with an ‘s’, really, and some drilling to boot.
Getting ready to leave New Zealand has proven a big job.
First, we have to pass the Yachting New Zealand Category 1 safety regulations. This means we must satisfy the mandatory conditions deemed necessary for vessels heading offshore by Yachting NZ. As a New Zealand registered vessel, we are not allowed to leave the country without a certificate saying we’ve met the requirements. When clearing out, the certificate must not be more than a month old, so every time a New Zealand flagged boat leaves for the islands, it’s got to be recertified.
If it sounds a bit onerous it is because it is. The regulations involve a three-page-long list of mandatory safety equipment and satisfactory vessel condition, covering things like fire extinguishers, life jackets, knives, buckets, rigging, navigation equipment, spare rudders, bilge pumps, life buoys, etc., as well as the presence of bunks to sleep on, cooking equipment, toilets and holding tanks.
It is fair enough that they require us to be well equipped and prepared as it is the NZ military that will have to come rescue us should we get in trouble on the way to Fiji. But the list is surprisingly long, and despite us safely having crossed the Pacific, the world’s largest ocean, in 2015, successfully carrying the family 12,000 odd nautical miles, we find that David needs to do some shopping. A lot of shopping.
He buys inflatable buoys, new fire extinguishers, and a storm jib. New flares, smoke alarms, life rings. Emergency beacons, sea anchor, lanyards. He has the life raft retested and repackaged. He gets a fourth reef put in the mainsail and a repair done to the genoa. He installs jacklines from the cockpit to the mast, and further to the bow. He works till midnight, when he finally rolls into bed, covered in sawdust, white paint, and black gunk.
An inspector has to come onboard to check out that we satisfy the requirements, and he finally arrives on the morning of Day 9. He walks through the boat asking questions, checks the rigging, the sails, the bilges, the galley, the heads, the cupboards, the flares, the engine compartment, the deck. He ticks his long list and quizzes us about experience and plans. It takes three hours to cover it all, but finally, he declares us good to go, pending a few additions. We need a sign in the galley saying: ‘Turn gas off at bottle’, and we need to write ‘Bob the Cat’ on our buckets.
In addition to all the safety gear, David has been implementing a score of other improvements. New batteries replacing the old tired ones. A new 65-litre 12-volt freezer. A small washing machine installed in the front starboard head. A starboard shelving system where we can store all the home-schooling equipment, the books, and the lego. We call it ‘the library’.
The messiest job was without a doubt reattaching the windows in the saloon. He had to break the old sealant, edge off the curved plexiglass, clean off any residue of fixant and then reattach it using the most incredibly gooey fixative. The old sealant is powdery and jet black, leaving black small black bits scattered all over the boat, black dust in every crevice, and black footprints covering the deck.
Not that all the ‘s’ jobs are David’s. I’ve been busy stowing, sorting, storing, shopping, sweeping, stressing, and sighing. Stowing all the gear we brought with us into the boat storage spaces, attempting a logical order so that we have a chance of retrieving stuff when we need it. Sorting through games, toys, clothes, medicines, ensuring that the accessibility of items matches their likelihood of being needed.
Shopping for supplies to take us through the remote Pacific islands we’re heading for, places where muesli, marmite, and mayo won’t be easy to get. After three massive shopping trips involving bursting trolleys and disbelieving check-out ladies, the provisioning is all done. Or maybe overdone – I tend to over-provision as if by stocking up till bursting I can reduce future uncertainties.
It’s weird, really. When provisioning, a switch inside of me flicks, and I start the hoarding. Extreme, almost compulsive hoarding – frequenting any shop I can get to, sniffing up and down aisles, grabbing any and all items that my not insignificant culinary imagination can see a potential use for. I’m sure it is some sort of normally dormant primaeval instinct, which erupts once I know that my last day in a well-stocked supermarket is nigh.
So, by the time I finish provisioning, we’re bursting. All under- and behind-seat storage is jam-packed with tins, jars, and packets which fall out whenever anything is opened. We have tinned tomatoes, sweetcorn, beans, peas, beetroot, coconut milk, and fruit in syrup. We have dried beans, chickpeas, and five types of lentils. We have rice, pasta, flour, couscous, polenta, milk powder. Jars of olives, sundried tomatoes, mustard, jam, mayonnaise. Flour and raisins, olive oil and wine, honey and baking powder. Our fresh produce fills the fridge to the rim, including feta and chorizo to last us months.
We have enough food to cover the needs of a twenty people overwintering in Antarctica or expeditioning into the Amazonian interior. We have enough to cater for a UN assembly or the upcoming royal wedding. There is no chance my family will starve in the next six months.
It’s not just with food that we’ve possibly overdone it. Leaving from New Zealand allows us to bring all our stuff, so the boat is now stuffed with guitars, kite gear, games, surfboards, lego, books, clothes, and linen. Add to that a ton of water and 500 litres of diesel, and all the extra weight is definitely showing: Bob the Cat is bulging, obese, lying so low in the water she is barely afloat.
Apart from sorting and shopping, I’ve been cleaning. Mopping up the saturated sawdust clinging to all surfaces in the cockpit centre locker. Brushing up black powder from the window change. Wiping off the endless smudged footprints that appear as if out of nowhere on the white deck.
Shore life is always dirty, and boat-based repairs or improvements are even worse. Every time the kids come aboard they bring with them sand, dirt, leaves, twigs, and pebbles. Everywhere David touches he leaves black handprints. To keep the boat looking fine for the Category 1 Inspection (first impressions and all), I scrub the decks on hands and knees for hours, only to straighten up and spot a new set of small black footprints back where I began.
Black feet aside, the kids seem to have settled straight in. I was a bit worried they would miss school friends and routines, especially as they’ve been sitting in Fairway Bay Marina with both parents busy fixing, cleaning, storing, provisioning. But they seem OK – I asked Matias how he felt about being on the boat and he said, ‘I love it.’ Just as well that they are the kind of children that look forward rather than back.
Not that we haven’t taken them out – apart from countless supermarket visits where they’ve been in charge of steering dangerously overloaded trolleys through the aisles, we’ve visited local beaches and swimming pools. It has also helped that there have been friends around. We’ve been catching up with Nico and Sascha and their children Khai and Arix, who used to go to school with Matias and Lukas. They have been living on a yacht in Gulf Harbour Marina for a couple of months, and the boys were thrilled to catch up with them
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On day 11 we finally leave Fairway Bay Marina, gently gliding over glassy water through the early-morning fog. We’re on our way – heading north, Whangarei first, and then when weather permits to Fiji.
It feels wonderful.
SV Bob The Cat 