Day 135/13

Noon Position: 44 39S 176 30W

Course/Speed: ENE6

Wind: NNW25-30

Bar: 1015, dropping a point per hour

Sea: NW8

Sky: Dark, rain, more dark

Cabin Temperature: 60

Water Temperature: 57

Sail: working jib, three reefs; main, three reefs, reaching

Noon-to-Noon Miles Made Good: 160

Miles this leg: 1,592

Avg. Miles this leg: 122

Miles since departure: 18,847

A dirty, sleepless night. Up once an hour to discuss our course with Monte, this as the wind backed steadily, or take in more sail or both. By morning we were reefed right down and winds were a steady 25 and 30 from the NNW, wind Mo is carrying as far forward as she can. Rough ride, to say the least, but Mo is a champ and is banging out (literally) 6 and 7 knots.

Three photos in succession of just what “rough ride” looks like from the pilot house.

If I’d not known we were on approach to the Chatham Island group, the birds would have told me. Albaross by the score this morning, along with the now usual Cape Petrel and others. And now we pass kelp pods.

I was able to begin adding north into our course after noon, and soon after that the most southerly installation of the Chatham Islands hove into view, the most aptly named Pyramid Rock. For us it was a formidable dark triangle on the horizon, along with other lumpy masses that make up the southern constellation of islands and rocks. I’d hoped to get closer, but 12 miles off was my best shot, given that the wind refuses to back into the west as per forecast.

In the afternoon I radioed the Chatham Island Maritime Station to chat and to pass a message of greeting from Tony Gooch, who sailed past these islands on his solo round the world voyage in 2002 and also called in to say hello as he passed. But my partner on the island wasn’t willing to abide such informality. We never got past call signs and positions.

Yesterday, or should I say today, Mo and I crossed the International Date Line at 180 degrees (west/east) longitude or exactly half way around the world from Greenwich, England, where resides zero degrees longitude. Forthwith, May 5th resumed again, or so I have read. Beyond sliding over a thick green line on the chart plotter, not much seems to have changed.

Mo and I passed under Greenwich and into east longitude on February 2, 2018, headed, as it turns out, for Hobart. Now we’ve reentered west longitude, exciting for me because two of my favorite places, Kauai, at roughly 150W, and San Francisco, at roughly 125W, are on this side of the planet.  

Day 134/12

Noon Position: 44 31S 179 45E

Course/Speed: E5

Wind: NNE13

Bar: 1027, steady

Sea: NE2

Sky: Overcast

Cabin Temperature: 58

Water Temperature: 55

Sail: Working jib and main full, close hauled

Noon-to-Noon Miles Made Good: 43

Miles this leg: 1,432

Avg. Miles this leg: 119

Miles since departure: 18,687

Consider for a moment the commonality of human experience through time.

We lay becalmed all night. The sails hung like sheets on a line, dripping with dew. I stowed them after dinner, put on the anchor light and went to my bunk.

At midnight, I rose, anticipating wind from the north, but the sea was but an undulation, smooth and black and quiet as breath. A beaming moon hung above the spreaders, a lone eye keeping watch as the firmament slumbered. Then the white flash of a bird on the wing.

I rose again at four. Now the anemometer said 8 knots, but on deck I turned my face to the north and felt nothing. The mast had played its tricks; as we rolled it whipped the wind instrument back and forth from three stories high. Up there, it was blowing 8 knots. But nothing had changed down below.

Finally, an hour before sunup, we sailed on the foretold northerly.

The day came on gloomy, again. Even at noon there was the sense that the sun had not quite risen. Then the wind veered and we were being pushed east. North and out of this ocean is what I want, not east; north and out of the reach of the coming great harvesters from the west; north and out of a foreshortened day and lowering gray; north and out of the grim and the cold.

And yet.

All day the albatross and the cape petrel circled Mo in packs, the one soaring in slow arcs at distance, aloof, observant; the other quick flapping so close as to receive lift off Mo’s weather topsides. Then a pod of seals. Then they depart astern, and it is just the boat and the sea. All about, the horizon is a clean, endless expanse.

And I think, who would choose to come to such a place, and who, having seen it, the abode of the wild god of the world, would ever choose another.

Then, from a friend, I receive a note with a poem attached. The Seafarer, one of the first Old

English poems, anthologized in c. 975 AD, but likely much older.

Heres’ one section:

33 Now, therefore, the thoughts of my heart are in conflict as to whether I for my part should explore the deep currents and the surging of the salty waves–my mind’s desire time and time again urges the soul to set out, so that I may find my way to the land of strangers far away from here–but there is no one on earth so confident of temperament, nor so generous of his gifts, nor so bold in his youth, nor so courageous in his deeds, nor his lord so gracious to him, that he never worries about his seafaring, as to what the Lord will send him; he will have no thought for the harp, nor for the ring-receiving ceremonial, nor for the pleasure of a woman nor for trust in that which is of the world, nor for anything else, but only for the surging of the waves–and yet he who aspires to the ocean always has the yearning.

—

How strange today to feel kinship with a voice so old. We think our thoughts are our own; our experiences, sought-after, we gather them to us as if fresh and new. But they are not; they pre-exist us and those who begot us and stretch back, with lives of their own, to the very beginning. We can only ever see, per The Quartets, “as if” for the first time.

—

Here is the entirety of what was sent:

The Seafarer (SAJ Bradley translation)

I can tell the true riddle of my own self, and speak of my experiences – how I have often suffered times of hardship in days of toil, how I have endured cruel anxiety at heart and experienced many anxious lodging-places afloat, and the terrible surging of the waves. There the hazardous night-watch has often found me at the ship’s prow when it is jostling along the cliffs. My feet were pinched by the cold, shackled by the frost in cold chains, whilst anxieties sighed hot about my heart. Hunger tore from within at the mind of one wearied by the ocean. This that man does not understand, who is most agreeably suited on land – how I, wretchedly anxious, have for years lived on the ice-cold sea in the ways of the sojourner, bereft of kinsfolk, hung about by ice-spikes; hail pelted in showers. There I heard nothing but the raging of the sea, the ice-cold wave. Sometimes I would take the song of the swan as my entertainment, the cry of the gannet and the call of the curlew in place of human laughter, the sea-mew’s singing in place of the mead-drinking. There storms would pound the rocky cliffs whilst the tern, icy-winged, answered them; very often the sea-eagle would screech, wings dappled with spray. No protective kinsman could comfort the inadequate soul.

27 He, therefore, who has experienced life’s pleasure in cities, and few perilous journeys, insolent and flown with wine, little credits how I, weary, have often had to remain on the ocean path. The shadow of night would spread gloom; it would snow from the north, rime-frost would bind the ground; hail, coldest of grains, would fall upon the earth.

33 Now, therefore, the thoughts of my heart are in conflict as to whether I for my part should explore the deep currents and the surging of the salty waves – my mind’s desire time and time again urges the soul to set out, so that I may find my way to the land of strangers far away from here – for there is no one on earth so confident of temperament, nor so generous of his gifts, nor so bold in his youth, nor so courageous in his deeds, nor his lord so gracious to him, that he never worries about his seafaring, as to what the Lord will send him; he will have no thought for the harp, nor for the ring-receiving ceremonial, nor for the pleasure of a woman nor for trust in that which is of the world, nor for anything else, but only for the surging of the waves – and yet he who aspires to the ocean always has the yearning.

48 The woodlands take on blossoms, the cities grow more lovely, the meadows become beautiful, the world hastens onwards: all these urge anyone eager of mind and of spirit, who thus longs to travel far upon the ocean paths, to the journey. The cuckoo too serves warning by its mournful cry; summer’s herald sings and foretells cruel distress at heart. That man, the fellow blessed with affluence, does not understand this – what those individuals endure who follow the ways of alienation to their furthest extent.

Now, therefore, my thought roams beyond the confines of my heart; my mind roams widely with the ocean tide over the whale’s home, over earth’s expanses, and comes back to me avid and covetous; the lone flier calls and urges the spirit irresistibly along the whale-path over the waters of oceans, because for me the pleasures of the Lord are more enkindling than this dead life, this ephemeral life on land. I do not believe that material riches will last eternally for him. One of three things will ever become a matter of uncertainty for any man before his last day: ill-health or old age or the sword’s hostile violence will crush the life from the doomed man in his heedlessness.

72 For every man, therefore, praise from the living, speaking out afterwards, is the best of epitaphs: that, before he has to be on his way, he accomplishes gains against the malice of fiends, brave deeds in the devil’s despite, so that the sons of men may afterwards extol him, and his praise may endure for ever and ever among the angels, and the splendour of his eternal life and his pleasure endure among the celestial hosts.

80 The days have been slipping away, and all the pomps of the kingdom of earth. There are not now kings nor emperors nor gold-giving lords like those that used once to be, when they performed the greatest deeds of glory among themselves and lived in most noble renown. This whole company has perished; the pleasures have slipped away. The weaker remain and occupy the world; in toil they use it. Splendour had been humbled. Earth’s nobility ages and grows sear just as each man now does throughout the middle-earth. Old age advances upon him, his face grows pallid, grey-haired he mourns: he is conscious that his former friends, the sons of princes, have been committed to the earth. Then, when life fails him, his body will be unable to taste sweetness of feel pain or stir a hand or think with the mind. Although a brother may wish to strew the grave with gold for his kinsman, to heap up by the dead man’s side various treasures that he would like to go with him, the gold he hides in advance while he lives here cannot be of help to the soul which is full of sins, in the face of God’s awesomeness.

Day 133/11

Noon Position: 44 52S 178 51E

Course/Speed: NMNE4

Wind: SSW10

Bar: 1027, steady

Sea: W5+ (old rollers)

Sky: Partly Cloudy

Cabin Temperature: 60

Water Temperature: 55

Sail: Twins poled out ful.

Noon-to-Noon Miles Made Good: 127

Miles this leg: 1,389

Avg. Miles this leg: 126

Miles since departure: 18,644

I came on deck this morning to find a small washer lying near the mast. Mo made slow way northeast with the twin headsails poled out and mostly full. Wind was light but steady, the sky, blue, the water too. A lovely day to be at sea. Except for this discovery.

It is never a happy thing to find random parts scattered on deck. I searched the mast and its hardware thoroughly but couldn’t find anything amiss. Mystified, I left the washer where it fell by way of reminder. No chance of it being swept overboard today.

In the early afternoon, the donor revealed himself. I was at the bow preparing to renew the headsail sheet ends when I noticed the radar reflector at the second set of spreaders swinging as we rolled. One of the two bolts attaching it to the mast flange had, over the months, come apart.

I sat down and watched for a time. What if I just left it? But it was no use. There were too many miles to go and too much possibility for lines to foul. There was nothing for it but to climb the mast and remove the reflector.

Have I mentioned that I’m afraid of heights? I’ve been meaning to practice an ascent to the very top since…since I bought the boat. Each time I crash land in some exotic port, it’s on the to-do list. But somehow the priority is not very high.

Today the priority changed.

I donned my harness, a few wrenches I guessed might be the right size, and climbed.

Once at the reflector, it quickly became clear unbolting the remaning fastener was not in the cards. The job required two hands, and though the sea was not in any sense boisterous, the background swell, magnified by 40 foot of mast, meant one hand and both legs were always hanging on for grim death.

I descended and dug out a hack-saw. I’d cut the plastic housing from around the nut, I reasoned.

Once at the top again, I made several cuts only to find that the saw met a stainless steel reenforcement plate inside the reflector. Of course. Well made piece of kit.

Hmm. Can’t undo the bolt. Can’t cut it (can’t get the right angle). Can’t cut away its support. Ideas? We’re running out of light.

The only one that remained was to cut the stainless flange holding the reflector to the mast, a simple job on deck. But here it took an hour. I’d cut with the hacksaw to the count of 45. Then rest. Then cut again to the count of 45. Ooop. Here’s a roller. Hang on. Then cut again.

Finally done. Radar reflector off the mast. And the jagged flange pieces pressed back and out of the way.

Only then did I look around. What a sight. A seemingly endless horizon all to ourselves.

On deck, my legs quivered. I went below and had a beer.

—

Dark. The sea is nearly still. I’d wanted to get up to 45S by the time the northerlies set in and we’ve done that and more. We’re now ghosting along at 44 30S where we await wind currently piling in over the top of New Zealand. Will be here by morning.

This position should mean an easy reach the remaining 200 miles to The Chatham Islands and give us a reasonable shot at getting above the worst of the coming lows. I’ve never seen such a succession of ugliness as is making for South Island this week. It is fortunate we rounded Steward Island when we did. Now if we can just be far enough north…

Day 132/10

Noon Position: 45 52S 176 12E
Course/Speed: ENE5
Wind: WSW10-15
Bar: 1022, steady
Sea: W3
Sky: Overcast
Cabin Temperature: 59
Water Temperature: 53
Sail: Twins headsails, poled out, full

Noon-to-Noon Miles Made Good: 145
Miles this leg: 1262
Avg. Miles this leg: 126
Miles since departure: 18,517

A gray boat sliding above a gray sea under a gray sky.

Today is unnaturally dark and still. The deck of cloud does not change; above is uniform; a light spot to the west holds its position; the foreboding sky astern does not advance.

For the third day we are coasting along before a light but steady breeze from just south of west. Sometimes it is more west, sometimes more south and never more than 15 knots. Mo’s wings are spread wide to catch it all, and we are chalking-up solid, respectable daily runs. Our next waypoint, the Chatham Island group, is now less than 300 miles off.

But nights are flat dark, though the moon is full, and dawn is ominously late. I sleep long. In the day I go about chores. I clean the cabin, making sure objects that could fly are stowed. I check chafe on lines that will be surely tested soon. In the afternoon I make a cup of tea and read Adlard Coles *Heavy Weather Sailing.*

And hour after hour we glide. It is beguiling. It is too quiet. The wind is too steady. Too favorable. It’s all a little too easy.

Only the continual gray gives any hint that things can turn.

And turn they will. In two days we will be beset by northerlies followed by the upper limb of two lows in succession. I’m eager to get above 45S, higher if we can, so as to avoid the stronger winds that will surely want to push us south.

But this wind we have now cannot be rushed. I cannot fly more sail. I cannot shorten the nautical mile.

So we coast on, hugging the outer edge of high pressure to the west. Riding the wind.

And I wait, holding my position in a gray boat on gray water under a gray sky.

 

Day 131/9

Noon Position: 46 47S 172 57E
Course/Speed: ENE 7
Wind: W15-20
Bar: 1016, steady
Sea: W5
Sky: Overcast
Cabin Temperature: 56
Water Temperature: 50
Sail: Twin headsails, poled out

Noon-to-Noon Miles Made Good: 148
Miles this leg: 1,117
Avg. Miles this leg: 124
Miles since departure: 18,372

“I know what your problem is,” says the man standing on the dock at the Hobart yacht club. “I’ve been reading your blog. You’re that Eight Figures fella.” The man is smiling. We shake hands. He’s happy to meet me. Then he tells me my problem.

“That double headsail get-up with those poles,” he says, pointing, “they’re not fit for the Southern Ocean. Those are for tradewind sailing.”

This is now common, being informed by strangers, admittedly sailors, that they understand my problem before any problem has been declared.

Another told me that my rig was too big. “Way too much mast for down here,” said the man, this just moments after he sat in my cockpit for the first time; just moments after I’d handed him a beer from my own stash.

Another stated that my draft was too deep. “You need one of those lifting centerboards, like the French boats have.” He said this with a nonchalance that suggested such a thing could be got at the local marine store just left of the magazine rack.

And finally, I was recently informed that my transom was too small.

All of which suggest a simple truth is not popularly understood: telling a sailor straight-away of his cherished yacht’s failings is like starting a conversation with, “Hey, but your dog sure is ugly.”

The last of these informants had the good graces to be correct, at least, and I was reminded of it today as I did chafe check on Lt. Wattsy (the hydrogenerator). There are so many christmas presents hung from the transom–boarding ladder, wind vane, hydrogenerator, life raft, outboard motor–and so little space on which to hang them that getting at any one can involve them all–and me nearly over the side, to boot.

In this case, Monte (Monitor Wind Vane) had to be taken entirely out of commission before I could even get at Lt. Wattsy.

The chafe check was just in time. I could see the wear on the lifting line, but what I’d not anticipated was the much worse chafe on the set line, used to keep the unit in the lowered/deployed position. This line runs under the unit for about a foot, a section not easily visible from on deck.

The chafe conveys an interesting lesson: expect dissimilar wear when using dissimilar materials. For the set line, I’ve used Dyneema core covered in a non-Dyneema material. The cover has worn through on almost all sides while the Dyneema core is still in great shape. If the cover had separated completely and slipped, well, that could have been trouble.

Fixed now.

Tonight stops the flow of my best house wine.

My pattern is, weather permitting, to end the day with a beer, usually around sundown, then to cook and eat dinner, and then to have a small glass of wine directly after. I’d have the wine with dinner, but boat movement disallows letting something stand idly by.

Upon leaving San Francisco, Mo was gifted a quantity of Amphora Wines by my friend Jim Walter, a wine maker there. The bottles have long ago been dispensed at boat parties, but the box wine has held out until now.  www.amphorawines.com

Actually, the box is moldy and dilapidated, but the wine inside is beautiful.

Now I must move on to Chilean and Argentinian box wine, which I’m sure is most excellent for cooking.

Cheers to my friends at Amphora for the lovely Vino Tinto (as they’d say in Argentina).

Day 130/8

Noon Position: 47 42S 169 36E

Course/Speed: NE7

Wind:WSW20

Bar: 1003, rising

Sea: W10

Sky: Broken, clearing

Cabin Temperature: 55

Water Temperature: 49

Sail: Twin headsails poled out

Noon to Noon Miles Made Good: 156 (now that’s more like it; over twice the distance of the last two days combined)

Miles this leg: 969

Avg. Miles this leg: 121

Miles since departure: 18,224

All night we rode the top of a low whose center was so far south, it fell off my weather chart. The forecast had called for 25 knot winds from the northwest turning west after midnight and then southwest by morning. Perfect winds for rounding a cape like New Zealand from the south. I thought we might run dead before it–headsails poled out–the whole way.

As we came to the bottom of The Traps, wind remained northwesterly, brisk and increasing. I canted the twin headsails a touch to starboard in an attempt to put some east in our course, but it was no good. Even double reefed, we were carrying too much sail, sail that seemed intent on dragging us south.

Yet I hung on.

It is a difficult flaws to overcome: sticking to a strategy, whether sail or course, past its usefulness in hopes that conditions will soon change.

By four in the morning, winds were a steady 30 with long pulls to near 40 and still northwest. Mo rolled gunnel to gunnel as if trying to shake off her press of canvas. But what made me rise and dress in foulies was that we had passed 48 South and were still going down. I had just turned May 1st–the northern equivalent of October 1st. The sun sets at six and doesn’t come back till after seven. This is no time to linger below 48 South.

I lowered the poles beneath a pale moon undercut by scud the color of ice. The sea was heavy and black, breaking with abandon, but happily, it hadn’t had time to develop height. Not yet. Earlier I’d caught a Stewart Island Maritime Radio forecast; gale warnings everywhere. You could see where this was going.

Back in the cockpit, I noticed we were making an easy 6 knots under bare poles. I sat and watched the night for a time as Mo enjoyed her relief; then set a tiny jib, put her head east and went to bed.

The low moved on by mid morning; by early afternoon it was clear with brisk winds from the southwest.

We’d made it round the bottom of New Zealand.

We’re now headed north and for home.

To celebrate our rounding of the cape, this morning I ate the last of the Hot Cross Buns. These were everywhere in Hobart during Easter. My wife’s favorite; mine too.

—

Temperatures have been falling steadily with our southing, which means cold management has become necessary again. We departed Hobart drenched in the warmth of Indian Summer with 70 degrees an easy average, but recently a cabin in the low 50s is more the norm, and there’s no heat save one’s own when we’re underway.

This means I’m back to wearing Ugg boots any time I’m not on deck. Feet in particular, once cold, take ages to rewarm. Often an hour’s nap in the afternoon in a thick, down bag is *not* enough time to warm lower extremities. So, the rule is that feet should never be bare, not even for a visit to the head; and thus, Uggs go on any time I rise in the night and first thing in the morning.

The pair I’m wearing has covered my feet across the top of the Arctic and (almost) around the world. A patch here and there has kept them going strong.

Day 129/7

Noon Position: 47 34S 166 07E

Course/Speed: SE 7-8

Wind: WNW to 20

Bar: 1009

Sea: W5

Sky: Broken but lots of sun now; front visible astern

Cabin Temperature: 55

Water Temperature: 54

Sail: Twins poled out

Noon to Noon Miles Made Good: 62 (We sailed 140 to gain those 62.)

Miles this leg: 813

Avg. Miles this leg: 116

Miles since departure: 18, 068

I tacked to the south just after dinner, still close hauled. At midnight the wind began to swing into the west (hosannas!), so I tacked again, now heading southeast, but still reaching in zephyrs. The sea had flattened; the full moon, a cold, ivory disk hidden, at times, by soot-colored clouds.

By nine the next morning, wind had come dead aft, and I unfurled Mo’s twin headsails. Relief. Finally, wind, boat, sea, and man all in accord; all moving joyously in the same direction.

And sun we had and birds. By noon wind had risen to the high teens and higher. Now Mo charged off at 7 and 8 knots, and, as if in celebration, was surrounded by clouds of gyrating birds, Prions uncountable, Cape Petrels, an Antarctic Fulmar, Bullers and Black Browed and Wandering Albatross, White-Chinned Petrels, Storm Petrels, a Southern Giant Petrel, a Tern I couldn’t identify, and more Prions. Prions everywhere. It was as if Mo was a gray moose lumbering a blue bog, covered by such swarms was she.

Most photogenic (because they came close) were the Cape Petrels, dark head, white under, dark above but splashed with large white spots on the overwings, the appaloosa of petrels and most distinctive for it. These we’ve seen in singles and pairs usually in company with Prions ever since our Tasmanian departure. They will come right up to the boat, even swing *under* the genoa pole before settling in the water just aft. For this I thank them and ask most politely that they communicate such friendship with the Bullers Albatross, another southern ocean stunner, which has thus far avoided my camera.

All afternoon the front continued to approach, slowly at first and then more slowly still, not winning the sky until mid afternoon. I was disappointed. Surely the gloom would hide any chance we had of seeing The Snares, but in fact, no. At 1400 hours, there they were, a low smudge on the horizon eighteen miles to the south and east.

Mysterious to me is why such sightings like The Snares, and in February, The Crozets, are so exciting. After all, I saw but a dark lump in the far distance, but that lump filled my imagination with fire. How thrilling to have discovered it, to wander its bird infested cliffs, to chart its margins. I felt again the thrill of exploration, as if I’d at last found something at the end of this long, watery road.

No such thrill is associated with The Traps, which we will pass below well after sundown.

Day 128/6

Noon Position: 47 00S 164 28E

Course/Speed: E4

Wind: SSE11

Bar: 1016

Sea: SE4

Sky: Overcast

Cabin Temperature: 55

Water Temperature: 54

Sail: All plain sail, close hauled starboard

Noon to Noon Miles Made Good: 42 (ah, the pleasure of working up wind)

Miles this leg: 751

Avg. Miles this leg: 125

Miles since departure: 18,006

Wind has been light, generally, for two days and coming, generally, from the quadrant into which we wish to proceed.

I say “generally” because there is simply no constant here except variability. Over the course of an hour, winds will be 6, 8, 12, 16 knots anywhere from southsouthwest to eastsoutheast, as if we are navigating the insides of a river that’s still carving out the banks that will eventually be its confines. Several cycles of this an hour, hour after hour.

Nothing wrong with variability, of course, except that we are either nearly becalmed (6 knots) or standing on our ear (16 knots), and each velocity change requires the tiniest tuning of the windvane in order to maintain a course that looks, well, like a course. I gave up the tuning bit early yesterday, and so our track has taken on a meander that is the very picture of the wind flow.

Yesterday I tacked at sundown in order to get more south into our approach, and as we sailed out of the wind and into the ridge (calm) below us, I tacked back to the east and north. That was at one in the morning. It is evening again and when done writing this, I’ll do the same…hopefully for the last time. Westerlies should fill in before morning.

The slowness of this rounding of New Zealand, the fact that it required so much southing from Hobart (from 42S to 48S) and its passage challenges (The Traps and The Snares) may lead one to ask why I chose a south about rather than a north about of the islands.

The answer, simply, is the need for easting.

The major feature of this leg home may, at moment, appear to be New Zealand. In fact, the major feature is the trade winds both below and above the equator. Once in them, we will ride their steady push through a full 60 degrees of northing, and if my position in them is poor, our passage will be weeks of what we’re experiencing right now. Slosh and bang at 4 and 5 knots.

I will confess here without shame my extreme dislike for the monotony of slosh and bang at 4 and 5 knots.

The trades winds blow mainly from east to west. Below the equator there may be a southerly component and above the equator there may be a northerly component. My objective is to enter the southeast trade winds, which pick up at around 30 South, at a point that will allow me to take the wind on the beam (ish) rather than the nose (ish). This will make crew happier and vessel faster.

To accomplish this, I need to keep moving east for some time, maybe as far as the longitude of Tahiti–nearly as far east of New Zealand as those islands are east of Tasmania–before making a strong turn to the north, and the only way to do that is to stay in the south where the wind (unlike this week) prevails from the west.

A north about the island has the disadvantage of putting me all the way up to 35 North and smack into the horse latitudes well, well west of my goal. Some suggested a pick-and-choose course could be made east at that latitude, but my watching of the weather files in the weeks prior to departure suggested it would be a fiddle.

The other problem is that, in my watching, the winds in the Tasman Sea have tended to be strong…from all directions. I couldn’t figure out what my course of attack would be. And as such, it felt far more risky than a “simple” south about.

Granted, winds from New Zealand up and to the trades have been anything but consistent over the last weeks, so this may have been a “pick-your-poison” kind of choice.

But the choice has been made and will pay or it won’t. Either way, I sense the weather now is helping to announce that this will be a long trip home.

I’ll be glad to get The Snares behind us and to be moving, if slowly, out of the gray and the cold.

Day 128/5

Noon Position: 46 39S 163 36E

Course/Speed: SE5

Wind: S15

Bar: 1023

Sea: S4

Sky: Broken, sometimes squally

Cabin Temperature: 56

Water Temperature: 54

Sail: Working jib, full; main, one reef, close hauled on starboard

Noon to Noon Miles Made Good: 138

Miles this leg: 709

Avg. Miles this leg: 142

Miles since departure: 17,964

Viewed from space or, more likely, from my small scale chart in the pilot house, New Zealand’s South Island looks nothing imposing, a long, smooth shape resembling a dog bone and absent the hooks and daggers of its kin to the west, Cape Horn.

But zoom in a bit and a dragon’s tooth, Steward Island, becomes visible at the southeastern corner; and another zoom shows a collection of rocks, many submerged, hung just far enough off her eastern flank to catch the unwary mariner as he makes an otherwise conservative rounding. This has apparently occurred because the rocks are named in warning. These are The Traps.

Now follow a line south and west some fifty miles and you will find a ragged, three-pointed island surrounded by rocks, again, innocently placed well out and in a location one would otherwise presume to be nothing but open ocean. These are aptly named The Snares.

Add to this Aukland Island one hundred and fifty miles further south, and suddenly a rounding of New Zealand’s southern-most promontory looks more challenging.

Especially if one is making his final approach in winds that have turned South Island into a lee shore.

—

Overnight our southwesterly slowly shifted south until our couse was east and then a bit northeast. I let Mo go. Sleep the previous night had been largely non existent, and now that we were close hauled, my berth on the lee side pulled me into its comfort.

At dawn I adjusted sails and found I could eke a bit of southing into our course. Now we were well above my rhumb line from Hobart to midway between Stewart Island and The Snares, but all day the wind tempted me with now a bit of southing, now a bit of easting. So, I hung on and hoped.

Until now. The sun has just set. Winds have finally and decidedly moved into the southeast and are driving us right at New Zealand. So, I’ve tacked around…and away from our goal.

I hesitated because “helms alee!” is nothing trivial. Mo is set up for long distance, not short-tacking. The removable inner forestay is permanently in place and the storm jib is hanked-on and ready. To come about means rolling up the headsail, shifting the running backs, and gybing (or should I say, wearing ship) onto the other tack.

But done.

Now we head due south and toward a windless, high pressure area. I’ve reefed in. There’s no point in rushing. Westerlies don’t return till day after tomorrow.

Day 128/4

Noon Position: 46 21S 160 17E

Course/Speed: E7

Wind: SSW 25

Bar: 1013

Sea: SW5

Sky: Clear with puffy cumulus

Cabin Temperature: 59

Water Temperature: 52

Sail: Working jib, 3 reefs; main, 2 reefs, close hauled

Noon to Noon Miles Made Good: 143

Miles this leg: 571

Avg. Miles this leg: 143

Miles since departure: 17,826

The sea does not teach patience so much as demand it as a requisite for survival, this in the context of the last day, whose Southern Ocean has been her usual fitful self. Wind is 25, then 12, then 30, then 20; then it’s N then NW, all in the course of a few hours. In reef, out reef, tune sail in, tune it out; converse with Monte re pointing strategy.

Just when all is set, it changes.

When wind finally settled in today, the direction was nearly south at 25 knots. We’ve been close hauled all day, and Mo is one wet puppy.

On the up side, we’ve had sun today, sun that turned towering cumulus into great white cities in the sky; sun that gave the sea that deep obsidian and made the waves look like rolling, liquid boulders.

And we are fast. At current rate we should reach an imaginary way point between New Zealand and the Snares Islands in two days. That is, if we can avoid the coming calm.

Getting colder the further south we get. Temps in the cabin failed to reach 60 today.

But soon we will be headed north once again.

Day 127/3 this leg

Noon Position: 45 47S 156 56E

Course/Speed: ESE7

Wind: NW20

Bar: 1006

Sea: NW5

Sky: RAIN!

Cabin Temperature: 60

Water Temperature: 53

Sail: One reef working jib, One reef main; wind port quarter

Noon to Noon Miles Made Good: 133

Miles this leg: 428

Avg. Miles this leg: 143

Miles since departure: 17,683

Rain began just after midnight. Heavy at times but always steady, it continued till mid afternoon. Luckily, the wind was constant for the Southern Ocean, moving from NW to NNW and cycling between mid teens and high twenties. This allowed me a delicious indoor day, mostly. I got to sit in the pilot house in my down jacket and sheepskin boots and watch the mantled albatross cruise by; even in the gloom that counted for light, his beak, yellow atop, black below, and his sooty gray face was precisely, brightly marked to the point of seeming airbrushed. How can such perfection of color and shape be eked from a diet of squid?

In the afternoon I wrote cards to my wife, whose birthday is tomorrow. I’m pleased with my “90 years old” card,”chuffed” would say Joanna. No, my beloved is not 90. I’ll let her share the interior if she so chooses.

In the early afternoon, the day did an about face. Within the course of a few minutes, the rain ceased and the wind shifted ninety-degrees, from NW to SW, without changing velocity. Suddenly we were pitching into the minimal swell, and I was scrambling on deck to get us gybed around. That was the day’s exercise.

Now we run before the wind on a lightly reefed headsail and make an easy 6 – 7 knots.

Breakfast was oatmeal a plum and an avocado; lunch, a can of soup with bread and cheese. Last night, a big stew of tomatoes, black beans, salmon, and mussels all atop polenta. Appetite is returning.

Tonight between squalls a three quarter moon silvers the oily, heaving sea.

Day 126 (Day 2 of this leg)

Noon Position: 44 58S 153 59E

Course/Speed: ESE4

Wind: W10

Bar: 1013 steady

Sea: W3

Sky: Squally

Cabin Temperature: 65

Water Temperature: 55

Sail: Wing and wing with main and working jib

Noon to Noon Miles Made Good: 150

Miles this leg: 295

Avg. Miles this leg: 147

Miles since departure: 17,550

f

“Good Morning, Monte.* It’s nice to see you at your post again.” I say.

“Buenas Dias, Senior. I enjoyed my, how you say, shore leave, but it is nice to again have a hand on the tiller and wind in my face.”

“What wind?”

“It is an expression, Senior.”

“I know. I’m just impatient. I too enjoyed my shore leave and could have enjoyed more of it. ”

“Ah, but senior, you are a sailor–you spend too much of money in port and eat too much of food. You get fat and lazy. Besides, your boat, she like a fine guitar, lovely to look at but only happy when she is played.”

“Be that as it may, I could do with a fast passage. I am impatient to be home. Day two feels like day two of forever.”

Monte sucks his teeth. “Tsk. Tsk. Tsk. It is not good for a sailor to be impatient. On this trip there will be many slow days. I recommend you nap when the wind she is light. I will wake you when it picks up. Some days at sea and you will be yourself again.”

*Monte is my much trusted Monitor Wind Vane who can be quite gabby on certain days.

___

I am impatient for many reasons, but one, at least, is rational. I want us to get around New Zealand while the getting is good. Depending on the day, the weather reports show benign wind for the next week (*benign* being 30 knots or less) or a 45 knot screamer followed by a tight low in the lee of South Island.

That said, I can feel the rhythm returning. There’s a timelessness to being at sea, a rather slow kind of timelessness, that takes getting used to. But sleeping in shifts and being forced to make sail changes at night, as we have done these last two, is a fast way of getting into the groove.

I’m not quite there though, one indication being a lack of appetite. Dinner was cold soup from the can forced down just so I could say I’d had something. I then forgot breakfast today till I was nearly shaking. I made a quick bowl of Museli with a double shot of Soylent for milk around noon and felt much restored.

Over night the main complained of our deeply quartering wind angle by slamming the boom against the vang and sheering a pin on the lower vang block. Easily fixed, but a reminder that the vang needs to be more than hand tight, even when you think the sail is plenty full.

I gybed at 2am to take on starboard wind that had gone from north to westsouthwest after dinner. Then it was still in the high teens, but has been steadily softening. Now we run wing and wing with the two headsails poled out in 10 knots of breeze, a far better arrangement than wing and wing with the main in light stuff–for the main slats and bangs like a berserker.

One wonders at the toughness of sails–how they can take such a beating and hold together, much less hold their shape. I bought all new HOOD Sails before departing. I had cruised with HOOD sails before and was impressed with their solid build. Now Mo’s sails have over 17,000 miles of flying, 10,000 of that in the south, and even the working jib, which is called such because it is almost always working, still looks and feels new. Can they take the 9,000 miles home and then another 40,000 for the Figure 8 redo? It certainly appears so.

More sail changes tonight as winds moves back into the north. And that is how we make our easting.

Day 125 (Day 1 of this leg)

Noon Position: 44.00S 150.46E

Course/Speed: ESE7

Wind: N20

Bar: 1014 and falling

Sea: N4

Sky: Scattered cloud and haze

Cabin Temperature: 69

Water Temperature: 60

Sail: Working headsail, one reef; Main, one reef

Noon to Noon Miles Made Good: 145

Miles this leg: 145

Avg. Miles this leg: 145

Miles since departure: 17,400

Down the River Derwent toward the sea goes Mo. We are motoring in the company of friends, who will see us as far as their weekend mooring. The day is bright, warm, windless. The water is glass and the trees along the shore show the burnt oranges of deep autumn. Just last week there was snow on Mount Wellington and a hard, cold wind on the bay. Now it is Indian Summer; a high caps the entire island.

Some hours out, I look into the pilot house and see that the chart plotter has gone black. I attempt to power it up, but get nothing. I reboot the whole system. Nothing. I check power to the device and get the expected voltage, but still the unit is dead.

My heart sinks. This happens as we are departing?

To be fair, the chart plotter bore the brunt of the deluge that immediately followed the last, worst knockdown. For a few seconds, it was entirely under water. But in the intervening months, it had shown no sign of being the least bothered by the dunking. It had worked without a flicker through that disaster and on every day since.

By now it is late, and I opt to take a mooring in my friends’ private bay while I work through the problem. There I get Phil Sandman on the phone. “Was the fuse box also underwater during the knockdown? If so, check for a corroded fuse. It’ll be blown but not entirely and may be passing volts but no current.”

I had checked this at sea, had pulled the fuses, cleaned them, had oiled the connectors, but they’d not made the shore list because, like the chart plotter, they’d worked every day since. Now they are indeed corroded, and the chart plotter fuse is indeed blown but not entirely. I replace all the fuses from my spares kit.

At first light Mo and I are off again, motoring down Storm Bay.

South of Tasman Island, I notice that most of my AIS ship targets have disappeared, and when I try to raise TAS Maritime on the radio, I get only silence, though I can hear them clearly. A check of an AIS tracking site shows I fell off their page earlier in the day.

A week ago we did a full shakedown and tested everything. How can this be?

“Remember, you beat the boat up pretty badly,” Dustin had said the week before. “You’ve had the mast-top in the sea at least twice; you filled the cabin with water. You may be working through knockdown issues for months.” I continue southeast for two hours running checks that tell me nothing good and contemplating a 9,000-mile passage without radio or AIS.

At six o’clock, I turn back. “I’m returning to Hobart with technical problems,” I say when I raise the customs man, David, on the phone, “and may need two days to effect repairs.” “Understood,” he says. “I know your case details. Keep me up to date as work progresses.” That is all.

Mo has lines out to Constitution Dock by eleven.

Next morning, Darryl Ridgeway is tapping on Mo’s hull before I’ve finished breakfast. “Saw you come in on that tracker of yours! How can we miss you if you won’t go away?”

Darryl immediately runs me into town for a spare fuse block and a new VHF antenna. In the afternoon, I meet John and Steve and wives Dee and Hellen, who have brought their boats to Constitution Dock for the weekend. John and Steve spend the rest of the day helping me install the new equipment. We are done in time to visit a local brewery and toast a second departure attempt, and then Dee makes dinner for all of us.

In the morning I buy meat pies and fresh bread and vegetables with my pile of coins, and once again admire a town I’ve come to love. So like my home, but smaller and manageable; so rich in history; such beautiful sailing grounds; such delightful people, if only they wouldn’t mumble so.

Then down the River Derwent toward the sea goes Mo. We are motoring, alone this time. The day is bright, warm, windless. The water is glass and the trees along the shore still show the burnt oranges of deep autumn. The same high is still parked over Tasmania. But the chart plotter is solid now; the AIS shows targets upwards of 20 miles away.

We are far south of Tasman Island by sundown, still motoring in calm, and even 20 miles off I can pick up the island’s white light.

After midnight, a wind comes out of the northeast. I raise sails, switch off the motor, and with that we have departed Tasmania.

The morning is gray and chill. Winds are now 20 out of the northeast. We’ve long since sunk Tasmania, though briefly I think I can smell it on the breeze. Mo shoulders along on a reach at 7 knots and better.

I have slept well and dreamt hard, but I have not avoided the blue funk of departure. There is too much I already miss about Hobart–where I was comfortable, warm, and Mo did not throw my coffee across the cabin–and too long to the comforts of home.

Why did I commit to a difficult return to San Francisco only to then restart the Figure 8 when I could have spent a winter slowly gunkholing around Tasmania?

Today I do not have a good answer.

The route home is long and complicated. It runs the westerlies south of New Zealand, making sure to avoid both the Traps Islands on the one hand and the Snares Islands on the other; then on it presses east and north a bit until roughly the longitude of Tahiti. There it makes a full turn due north and weaves a maze of tropical islands. In the southeast trades at last, the on-the-wind slog begins in earnest and won’t end until well north of Hawaii; then the route passes clockwise over the North Pacific High and runs slantwise to the southeast and down to San Francisco Bay.

From 48 South to as much as 40 North; through two trade wind belts and two of Horse Latitudes, across the doldrums and around the big Pacific high.

9,000 miles.

That’s the leg home.

Thank you again to all my friends in Hobart. To Captain John Solomon, Darryl and Ursula Ridgeway, Zane, Sally, John, Steve and Hellen, John and Dee Deegan, Phil Sandman, to Sonia in the office and Bosun Anthony at the Royal Yacht Club of Tasmania, and to all those I am forgetting. Thanks for making it so hard to leave.