Category: From NZ to Thailand

“Copra Shed Marina, Copra Shed Marina, this is Bob the Cat.” David lowers the VHF and squints into the sunlight.

“Copycat, this is Copra Shed Marina,” says a pleasant female voice.

“Copra Shed Marina, this is Bob the Cat,” says David. “We are arriving from New Zealand, will be with you at 1400 hours and will be ready to check in with Customs then.”

“Copy that, Copycat. That is fine. They will be ready for you.”

“OK. Bob the Cat says thanks for that.”

“Copycat, we need to know: did anyone die onboard the vessel since leaving New Zealand?”

David holds the VHF out in front of him, squinting at it quizzically. “Erm, no, all onboard Bob the Cat are alive,” he answers, raising his eyebrows at me. “And well. We are all well. I can confirm that all crew survived the trip.”

I laugh. It’s a weird question. There is a boat called Copycat – we left them behind in Opua. They were headed for Tonga I think. And why are they asking if anyone died? Maybe they are required to ask about death onboard – but, I mean, how often does it happen that a boat is trying to gloss over the loss of a crew member, deciding not to mention their absence when reaching the destination? I guess it happens.

“Oh, those kids we checked out of New Zealand? Well, they decided not to come in the end…” Meanwhile, couple furiously looking for a good, deep bit of ocean to dump the bodies.

Not us. We are well. The sun is beating down, the humid air is about 30 degrees C, and the number of coconuts floating in the water has been steadily increasing for hours. We can see little green islands in all directions, barricaded by white surf.

It’s been 12 days since we left New Zealand, 12 days since we last saw land. As we draw closer to Savu Savu, our port of entry in Fiji, we can make out the coconut palms, hear the roar of chainsaws and smell cooking fires. Little cars are visible, driving along a coastal road. Small buoys mark a coral reef. Resort huts sit unobtrusively amidst coconut palms, just off the yellow sandy beaches.

I breathe out and stretch. Oh, how wonderful to have arrived.

It’s been a good trip.

The sail from New Zealand to Minerva Reef went well. Out and onwards we flew, the wind filling our sails, the waves banging and crashing, shaking and stirring us. The ocean is a world of perpetual motion, of heaving seas and changing winds, and after a couple of days, it was hard to fathom a still existence, a stable platform, a quiet space. A tiny white dot on a huge blue sea, we were propelled onwards, surfing down the steep waves, rocking and rolling in the heavy swell. It took us six days to reach Minerva, daylight worlds of blue on blue, grey on grey and nights of silvery black.

The seas were reasonably heavy and so I suffered from relentless malaise: seasickness blending with fatigue into a permanent low-lying nausea impossible to shake. An all-day sickness only somewhat suppressed despite the promises of SeaLegs Prevent Travel Sickness, May Cause Drowsiness, Avoid Driving or Operating Machinery, a directive we can’t exactly follow although the autopilot did the lion’s share of the driving.

We fell into a pattern of David watching from 6 pm to 1 am, me from 1 to 7 am, with shorter daytime stints. During my night watch I swallowed endless cups of bitter instant coffee and savoured the powerful effect of caffeine for the unseasoned user: instant alertness, uplifted spirits, optimism, and a feeling akin to happiness and love spreading as the magic black fluid flowed through my veins.

The nights were amazing. Our passage was illuminated by a full moon spreading cool light and spawning ghostly luminous moonbows arcing over the silvery sea, kissing the undulating horizon, backed by blackness and the fizzy whizz of shooting stars.

Night watches are always painful for a committed sleeper like myself. On the nights when it is busy, where sails need constant adjustment, and the wind is quickening and waning as rainstorms darken the horizon, I wish for calm seas and light winds, space to read. But on the quiet nights fatigue threatens to overwhelm, and I resort to pacing the deck to stay awake, longing for sense-sharpening action to invigorate my sleepy mind.

After five long nights, on the sixth morning after leaving New Zealand we found ourselves at both ends of the rainbow, with colours transparently overlaying the rough sea, going almost full circle, beginning and end converging on our boat. Finally, we could see Minerva Reef in the distance – a barely perceptible thin line of white foam grazing the sea surface. As we got closer we could faintly make out the roar and see the turquoise lagoon water, a sandwich of light blue on white.

Minerva is an incredible place. A calm crater lake within a turbulent ocean, a near-perfect circle of ragged reef enclosing light blue waters fading to turquoise in the shallows along the edges. The depths rapidly rose from thousands of metres to 50, 40, 30 as we approached the pass, and we made out way through to the shallow lagoon against the swift outflowing currents.

We anchored up near the light-blue edge and had our first calm lunch in the sunshine. Three other yachts were already there, gently lolling on the still blue waters. Being on anchor was wonderfully calm, the nausea dissipating instantly, and Matias had his first full meal since we left New Zealand.

We stayed at Minerva for four days, sitting out some heavy weather approaching from the north.

During our time there we braved the low-tide reef flats, through the two-foot-tall waterfall created by the surrounding ocean spilling over the edges into the lagoon at low tide. The kids played in the shallow pools, hands and feet pushing hard, stilling their bodies towards the powerful inward surge.

A Japanese fishing boat wreck is shattered in many pieces just inside the reef, and on our snorkels, we found corals, colourful fish, and reef sharks. David picked up crayfish after crayfish, and in the evenings, we had crayfish every which way before retiring to blissful 10-hour stretches of uninterrupted sleep.

 

 

 

After two days in Minerva the violent storm we wanted to avoid shook up the water and we felt like we were on passage again – the wind howling, the waves rushing past the boat. As the storm raged on, the New Zealand to Tonga rally boats that left Opua two days after us started dripping in, wet, pale, and beaten after braving gale-force head-on winds.

When the rain stopped we left, hoping to make it to Fiji before the next patch of heavy rain.

And as usual, David got the weather just right. The trip from Minerva to Fiji was wind- and rainless, the Pacific living up to its name, ocean and sky converging into one grey mass, oily seas with a slow-rolling large swell gently lifting and lowering us. It was a calm trip, devoid of action, involving only little sailing.

As we moved further north we moulted, shedding sleeping bags and heavy-weather gear first, then blankets, and long-sleeves, and last t-shirts. Finally, we’re back in the tropics, the kids just wearing board shorts and sunscreen, David bare-chested on night watch.

And now we are close to Savu Savu. I lean back in my seat, letting the sun’s rays warm my skin, the light wind only adding a slight cooling effect.

As trips from New Zealand go, this one has been quite good – mainly downwind and with a calmish anchorage in the middle to sit out a storm. Still, it feels like an achievement to reach Fiji, and as I sit basking in the hot sun, I ponder the value of contrasts and of overcoming obstacles. On a boat, you live day to day, and the getting there is much of the journey, an essential part of the trip. Being on anchor wouldn’t be as sweet if we hadn’t just spent days at sea. Sleeping wouldn’t be as glorious if we hadn’t been wakeful for so long. Calm weather wouldn’t be as sharp a relief if we hadn’t just been through a storm. Reaching the searing heat of the tropics wouldn’t be as comforting if we hadn’t escaped the cold. The contrasts somehow sharpen the image, enhance the joys of everyday existence.

I hope the crew of Copycat are alive and feeling joy too.

Time is dragging on, and we’re still in New Zealand. In Opua, to be specific, stuck waiting for better weather.

The on-screen weather forecasts are still red-stained horrors, but David now has a cunning plan.

“We’ll leave on Saturday,” he states firmly. “We’ll sail north as quick as we can, on the back of this big low.” He gesticulates at the screen and I lean in. The forecast for Saturday shows an enormous dark red patch just north of New Zealand. When I squint my eyes, I can just make out the numbers in the legend of the colour bar at the bottom of the screen. Dark red equals 7 m waves. Goodness.

“We will go here.” He points to a thin path of light blue screen separating two large red blobs. I squint again. Blue equals 3-4 m seas.

“So, if we stay at the back of this low, and head northeast, we’ll be able to get to here fast – there’ll be plenty of wind, but at least it’ll be downwind sailing.”

“And then,” he continues, “we will get to here, and slow right down, waiting,” – he points to a blue patch on the following screen – “until this other low has passed through ahead. Once that’s gone, we’re sweet.” He smiles.

I gulp. It seems like it will be a bit tricky, staying on the thin blue path of relatively calm sea in amongst all that red, raging ocean, keeping firmly to the ridge between two abyssal weather lows. I don’t want to be negative, but it sure doesn’t sound like the perfect weather window.

On the other hand, the weather here isn’t optimal either. We’re anchored just outside the Opua Marina, in the channel at the mouth of the Kawakawa River. This morning, our barometer seems stuck on ‘Depression – low’, and the Northland sunshine is frequently interrupted by blasts of wind and rain.

The frequent change of wind combined with strong tidal flows and large freshwater discharges makes for a tricky anchorage. When we first signed in at the marina office they warned us about the many large logs that frequently drift through the channel, smashing into boats as they float past. Inside the marina, suspiciously immobile twigs stick out of the water, suggesting larger hidden logs firmly embedded into the mud under the murky water surface. And two days ago, we watched the haul-out of a huge log which had been towed into the marina for recovery before it crushed any boats.

I’ve been sleeping lightly, listening out for any crashing noises that indicate an incoming log attack.

As it turns out, it isn’t just floating logs posing a danger to anchored boats. This morning, as we sat quietly doing home-schooling, snug inside as the wind howled outside, David noticed that one of the neighbouring boats was getting closer.

“Do you reckon that boat is dragging?” he asked, pointing.

The boat, a nice-looking catamaran, did seem a lot closer than it had been earlier in the morning.

“Maybe it’s just stretching out the chain,” he said.

“That’s the one with the little kid on it a couple of days ago, isn’t it?” I asked.

“Yeah. Apparently, they’ve been anchored here for a couple of months.“

“Well, then they can’t be dragging, really – not if they’ve been here for a couple of months. Don’t worry.” I turned my attention back towards Lukie’s math problem.

A minute later Matias jumped up. “Daddy, it’s definitely getting closer! Look, it used to be ahead of us, and now it is at the same level as us.” He pointed.

And as we all focused on it, it became clear that the boat was definitely moving, slowly but surely, heading straight for the vessel moored behind us.

David rushed outside. “Come on,” he shouted. “Get in the dinghy, we have to get onto it!”

Matias and I scrambled into the dinghy, and we hurried over to the dragging catamaran. David jumped on board and started desperately trying to start the engines. Matias and I left him on the drifting vessel, rushing back to Bob in the lashing rain to get some fenders, hoping to minimise the damage from the impending collision.

We delivered the fenders, Matias jumping on board to drag them up.

“Get the dinghy away from the boat,” yelled David. “We don’t want it getting crushed. We’re going to end up on that boat, or on the mud. Go get a phone, call for help!”

Heart beating rapidly, I returned to our boat and called the marina to explain the situation. Through the thickening droplets on the cockpit clears, I could see David and Matias as they struggled in the wind and the rain on the deck of the dragging boat, which was now colliding with the boat behind.

Having finished the call, I jumped back in the dinghy and raced through the freezing wind to bring David his mobile. The dragging catamaran was now close to the mudbank, astern of the boat it collided with.

“Matias found the spare anchor,” he yelled. “So, we’ve stopped, for now.”

“Mummy, this boat got scratched on the side, when we banged into that other boat,” shouted Matias.

David reached for his phone. “The guy left his phone number here.”

He dialled. “Yeah, hi. I’m on your boat. It’s dragging on the anchor…”

I turned the dinghy, to get back to Lukie who was nervously waiting on our boat, and we watched from our sheltered cockpit as the boat owner came racing in his dinghy, closely followed by the marina officials. He got the engines started and Matias and David helped him raise the two anchors. The boat now under control, the marina officials peeled slowly away.

David and Matias helped the owner take the boat into the marina and secure it safely in a berth. The guy had been checking the anchor two days previously, where it had been set well in the thick mud. He, his wife and his young daughter have just moved onto the shore, as they’re expecting another child imminently and want to be on land for the delivery. He explained that in his time here, he has helped rescue several other dragging boats on the anchorage.

“It must be the tide,” says David. “As it switches direction, the anchor rolls over, and then once it’s on its back there is nothing holding it firmly into the mud. It just gets pulled along…”

Back in the warm cabin of our reassuringly stationary boat, we warm up with cups of hot milo. As the wind howls outside, rain lashing against the windows, we reflect on lessons learned. It’s probably a good idea to have a phone number clearly visible in the cockpit of your boat, in case someone else has to jump on board to save it. And having a secondary anchor ready to go is essential too.

Lukie takes a big sip of his milo. “Mummy,” he says. “That’s the longest break in home-schooling that we’ve ever had!”

“Yeah,” I sigh. “And the most excitement we’ve had in one morning for a while. Now back to your maths….”

Being on anchorage is not without risks, and navigating a thin blue path across a red ocean certainly seems more attractive as time, and boats, drag on.

“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.