Category Archives: Passages & Crossings

Drama on the high seas

8 Replies

First and foremost everything is fine on board, we are continuing on toward Fiji as planned still with a stop in Tuvalu.

We left Majuro bound for Fiji with 2 stops along the way, Kiribati and Tuvalu.  Its the end of cyclone season, Yippie, except for the one that just popped up between Vanuatu and is heading toward New Zealand.  We are heading to “Bula” country, home of friendly people and kava ceremonies. 

When we left the Marshall Islands we had 2 steering helms, 2 rudders, 1 auto pilot and 2 souls capable of steering the boat with any of those.  And we have an emergency tiller too, in case everything goes pear shaped.  Let me say, we have had some “challenges” on this passage south. 

First arriving Kiribati, one of the steering boxes on the starboard side decided 24 years was enough, and demanded attention.   One its bearings on the inside the steering gears rusted through and burst into pieces.  One steering station down. Now we can no longer steer the boat from the starboard helm, and that is also where the gas pedal is.   So picture a clown car with the clowns carrying around the steering wheel, yet the car won’t turn. Turn as you might the steering wheel, helm, just spins indefinitely.   To actually turn, you have to run to the other side of the drivers end clown car to steer and run back to give it gas or slow down.  What can go wrong?  🙂  The clowns always make it work, right?   I actually removed the steering gear (red below) where the bearings disintegrated, so that the pieces and wobbly gear wouldn’t lock up the steering completely.  So whew,  order bearings to repair and head off to Tuvalu.  Not ideal but we have 2 of everything, part of being a catamaran.

Left Kiribati bound for Tuvalu.

The sail started out as champagne sailing doing great speeds and making short work of 700 miles we were making toward Tuvalu. It devolved a bit into prosecco sailing when the speeds dropped a bit, but still great fun.   Day 3 the squalls of the ITCZ (convergence zone between north and south hemispheres), quick wind shifts and gusts made for some exciting times.  Nothing out of the normal for this part of the pacific crossing the equator and the convergence zones.   When the wind went too light and on the nose, it was time to check the engine fluids before starting and to spot any potential issues.  I found the port rudder “control arm” broke at some point, probably during one of those pesky 30kt squalls.  The ones that steel your perfect wind and force you off course.  Thinking back, the broken bit might explain why it took longer than normal to turn downwind to run in the storm.  So the port rudder is down till we find a stainless welder.  Its lashed to the central position now, its just not wobbling too and fro willy nilly, and getting a free ride.

So for those keeping count, we have 1 working steering helm station (port), 1 working rudder (starboard), 1 auto pilot(starboard), and 2 less than pleased souls on board.   And of course the emergency tiller when all else fails.    So now we still use the gas pedal on the starboard side, run to port side to steer, the steering rudder is actually on the starboard side.   Got it?  A bit complicated but we are still trucking along, albeit a bit more conservatively till we arrive Fiji and work on getting cold beer to tackle fixing the steering project.

Is it Fiji that doesn’t like our steering?  2 years ago, one of our rudders vanished on the way to Fiji.  This year, other steering components are making their voices heard. 

275nm to Tuvalu, then another 500ish to Fiji.. we will get there!

240 Hour Passage: Vanuatu to Marshall Islands

1 Reply

As you know, our blog posts run 10-12 weeks behind actual live events.  This passage occurred toward the end of September.  We have been playing in Marshall Islands for the past 2.5 months so keep reading and enjoy these adventures.  

We left the Rowa Islands which are part of the Banks Island Group in Northern Vanuatu on a bright, beautiful sunny day.  Our goal was to arrive Majuro in 9-10 days.  We hired a weather router, engaged the Passage Guardian, and had our very good friend, Donald feeding us weather updates daily.

Our weather gurus picked a fairly benign weather window knowing we would have at least 2-3 motor days.  We decided to take this window because the SPCZ would be fairly calm.  This is good as it is known for being a center for thunderstorms and unsettled weather.  We did not want any of that on our watch.

Day 1

Our first day brought us really nice winds, low seas and a slight current in our favor.  We were able to sail for the first 6-hours before the wind died and we ended up motor sailing the rest of the night.

  • Fish:  Caught and released a Skip Jack Tuna and a blue marlin
  • Miles Travelled:  130nm
  • Avg. Speed: 5.4kt and max speed: 9.7kt

This marlin gave Matt a really hard time, but we finally got the hook out of his mouth and released him to the sea.  Our freezers were full and could not accommodate this big fish.

Day 2 & 3

Talk about “low wind” days.  We had glassy waters out in the middle of the South Pacific  Crazy how calm the seas were.  We did something that we have never done before – we flew the drone off our moving boat.  Taking off and flying were easy, but the landing was a bit of challenge.

  • Fish:  caught another blue marlin, but this guy was able to do water dancing which wiggled the hook out of his mouth.
  • Miles Travelled:  130nm each day
  • Avg. Speed: 5.5kt and max speed: 9.7kt

We did manage to get a few periods of sailing and it was glorious!  We were full sail, pinching hard to the wind and making good progress at 7-8kts.

  • Fish:  No fish
  • Miles Travelled:  130nm
  • Avg. Speed: 5.4kt and max speed: 9.7kt

Crossing the Equator

Matt and I have crossed the equator once before so there were no “rituals” but we did enjoy seeing the Latitude go to zero.  We left the southern hemisphere and are now in the northern hemisphere.  Whoop Whoop!

The good thing about rain storms are the gorgeous rainbows that follow.

Playing Dodge Squall and Dodge Boats

What a pain in the arse.  We encountered 6 different fishing fleets.  The fleet consists of 6-8 fishing boats and their individual FADs (fishing aggregating device), and a mother ship.  Most had AIS tracking on but a few did not.  It required constant surveillance. 

If we are not dodging the fishing boats we are dodging the squalls.  Makes it an entertaining day/evening trying to avoid both.

We always hope to have a full moon on long passages but we certainly don’t plan around it.  However, this time we got lucky and had the bright moon during most of our passage.  

Of course the moon could not have all of the attention. The sun had to show off its beauty as well. My favorite images are those that have the glassy seas and the reflection of the sun and moon in the water.

Almost There, But we Slow Down

On day 8 we realized that we were going to arrive at the pass after dark. This is never a good thing when you are not familiar with the pass or its conditions.  So, we decided to slow down.  We would miss daylight hours by 2 lousy hours.  Why is this a big deal?  Well had we arrived 2 hours earlier we could be at the anchorage and enjoying a solid night sleep.  But instead we are out at sea for an additional 24 hours.  

We ended up dropping the sails and shutting the engines off.  Sugar Shack just drifted for 7 hours.  We have never just drifted on a passage or anytime for that matter.  We still maintained our watch schedule and had all of our alarms set.

Our first sighting of land.

As we arrived to the main pass we noticed 3 large fishing vessels waiting to enter as well.  They had to wait for a pilot boat so we stood off to the side to let them enter first.  Funny to be in a traffic jam on this remote island.

Summary

  • Total Miles Travelled: 1,339.22
  • Total Hours: 240
  • Average boat speed: 5.5kt
  • Max boat speed: 10.4kt
  • Hours Motoring:  136 hours or 5.6 days
  • Fish:  We caught and released (1) skip jack tuna and (2) blue marlin
  • Books:  11 books read (Christine)
  • Movies:  2 movies (Christine)

Formalities

The officials, Customs, Immigration, and Biosecurity came onboard Sugar Shack and it was truly the easiest clearance process we have ever experienced.  They were incredibly friendly and efficient, asked a few questions, signed a few forms and stamped our passports.  Sweet As!

The officials clear us in to the country with the easiest formalities yet!  Super nice group, a wonderful welcome!

Even though we motored more than we ever have on a passage, this was still considered a good trip.  We would much rather have no wind and calm conditions than face massive thunderstorms, squalls, and bad sea conditions.

Our blog posts run 10-12 weeks behind actual live events.  This passage occurred from 9/15-9/25.  The previous blog posts was written by Matt during our passage.  Prior to our passage, our last blog post highlighted the Banks Islands.

240 hours into the passage to Marshall Islands

Leave a reply


Are we there yet?

After a nice siesta out in the middle of nowhere. It was time to finish this journey. Seems I was so hard a sleep Christine couldn’t wake me. Well she did wake me, and I’m not sure what was said, but it was surely something I didn’t understand since she let me go back to sleep, and sleep 2 hours past original time to get going. So if you see me today, thank Christine for my beauty sleep, I obviously needed it.

Final passage sunset

Made contact on SSB in the morning to notify of our position and a time to meet at the mooring with another boater to give us the lay of the land.

We got to follow 2 container ships in the pass this morning, Looks like a busy little place, lots of lights along the shore and quite a few commercial boats inside the lagoon.

Just like the Houston ship channel. Lots of traffic this morning

Over all a comfortable passage, weather wise it was spectacular. Would have been better if there was more (or any sailing) involved, but that might have changed the sea state. I’m sure Christine will have a different opinion, but with the drugs she seemed pretty normal, if that is possible.

Noteworthy:
• SPC and ITCZ: I guess it’s possible that you can make it through without too much drama with the right amount of diesel and super slack weather window. Not sure if that’s true or not, but somehow worked in our favor, albeit a longer / slower trip that our normal.
• Lost : Tan lines, I’ve looked everywhere they are no where to be found. Something you’ve had for fifty something years and to have lost it. All is not lost, I have it on good authority that civilization brings them back.
• Diet : While the boat lost hundreds of pounds along the way, I’m sure I ate everything in sight. Any thing to keep awake, it’s the lack of exercise that isn’t good. A long HOT walk on shore will do wonders for the psyche, after clearing customs of course.
• Lost : SSB & Ham radios have been dying for a few years, but the once entertainment and safety at sea is still tapering off. Hardly any boats checking to PacSea net. We did use ours to keep up with a friend that is on his way to Japan.
• Lost : A little blood from a drone catch, count your fingers lucky, we we should have practiced that on flat ground before trying it in ocean swell.
• Learned : You can motor a long way when you need to, nearly 130 miles per gallon of diesel, by rough calculation.
• Lost : More of my sanity not sure how much I have left to loose, seems to be being replaced by senility, or is that just my bad spelling?
• Learned : Its frigging HOT this side of the equator, should have installed air conditioning instead of the diesel heaters.

Anchor down (mooring retrieved) and cold beer in hand! Yippie. Off to find the authorities and clear into customs and immigration.

And now back to your regularly scheduled program.