Water bogans, an unexpected swim and little lion men

There’s something about the word ‘race’ that brings out the petrol/sail head in many skippers, regardless of how fast their boats are.

As I have mentioned before Wildflower is not exactly a speed demon, but that doesn’t stop Paddy from trying to make her go faster. On the way to Port Vila Paddy tried to race a catamaran (though I am pretty sure its owners were unaware they were ‘racing’). We were on a pretty good tack and had a decent breeze so Captain Bogan decided to make the most of it. It was quite exhausting to watch, every time it looked like he was going to sit down he leapt up again to tweak yet another sail.

My idea of good sailing and Paddy’s differ slightly in one aspect. As far as I am concerned, if you are going in the right direction reasonably comfortably and not too slowly, then I am all for sitting back, relaxing and letting the boat take us forward. Paddy on the other hand is from a different genus – the Boat Bogan (or Boatgan as I prefer to call them) – and if there is the teensiest chance of getting things to move an iota faster, he will take it. (Paddy is also a member of a sub-species of Dinghy Bogans – or Dogans – but that is an entirely different story.)

We didn’t win the ‘race’ with the cat but we did manage to gain on them a little, which made the captain happy. He did get another chance to stretch his legs though, and this time in an actual race – though not aboard Wildflower. When it comes to footing it with the converted racing boats that make up some of the fleet, sadly the poor girl doesn’t stand a chance.

There was, however, another boat – Kharisma II – in need of crew for an inter-fleet fun race and Captain Boatgan jumped at the chance. He volunteered me as crew as well, which I was actually a little apprehensive about – having never raced before. Luckily there were plenty of other enthusiastic hands on deck so I was able to master the art of being what is known as ‘rail meat’ (sitting on the rail to help make the boat go faster) with the occasional rope pulling duty thrown in. Paddy was in charge of the genoa (head sail)and spent most of the time pole dancing. This isn’t as dodgy as it sounds (though still highly entertaining) – basically it involves leaping around on the foredeck wielding a spinnaker pole like a lance in order to hold out the headsail to prevent it from collapsing.

The race itself was great fun and the insults traded between the boats hilarious. Cries of “starboard”(as in “I’m on a starboard tack so you guys have to give way”) were met with equally loud cries of “horseshit!” and the odd “eff off” – which makes me think it’s probably a good thing the sound on the America’s Cup coverage doesn’t extend to what they are hollering at eachother! It was all in good fun though and nothing was taken particularly seriously.

Kharisma II is a Bavaria 44 and quite a speedy little number, so Paddy was in his element – and the water bogans on board weren’t far behind in enthusiasm. We had John (one of the ICA organisers) as skipper, Kharisma’s owners’ Jens and Ros, Harley who was crewing on another boat – Summer Soul – and myself. Ros and I got pretty good at keeping out of the way of the boatgan brothers as they wielded ropes and winch handles. In fact Kharisma II was such a speedy little number that we were the first over both the start and finish lines. I can’t really go into detail about our winning strategy – other than it seemed to work – but if Paddy fancies putting more detail in, he is more than welcome.
He was quite taken with the fact that the fastest boat in the fleet (for that afternoon at least) was crewed by people from the slowest boat in the fleet.

In saying that, Wildflower may not be able to claim the tortoise title for much longer. We’ve actually managed to beat a few boats to a couple of anchorages lately. We had a sail maker look her over in Vila and tweak the second-hand headsail we bought in Denerau. He also remarked that the boat’s rigging was loose – so one day, while I was grocery shopping in Vila, Paddy set about tightening it.

When I returned, I found him sitting on the plank leading up to our boat – sopping wet.
I should add a word about this plank – which was helpfully provided when we tied up to the dock in Vila, because there were no moorings left by the time we arrived. It was similar to our plank at Savusavu yacht club in Fiji (which also happened to provide a red carpet for squillions of ants to board our boat.) That plank was a bit more manageable however because we were tied to the wharf stern to (arse first) which meant there were lots of lovely handholds to help get on and off the boat. In Vila there was no real space or opportunity for use to turn Wildflower backwards so we ended up tied on bow to (front first), which meant no handholds at all. The plank was wobblier, further away and mocked my little munchkin legs every time the tide changed by making itself steeper.

As you can imagine, when I caught sight of a soggy Paddy straddling my planky nemesis, I immediately thought the worst. It turned out that Paddy had had an unexpected swim, but what happened was much scarier than I thought. He had been tightening the rigging at the front of the boat when the rigging screw he was tightening failed. The forestay (the main wire holding the mast up) had several tones of pressure on it and it let go with an explosion. The stay shot up and hit Paddy in the side of the head and knocked him off his perch. He grazed his ear on the anchor on the way down and was hauled out of the water by our neighbours on the dock. It was a very close call since there were a lot of things besides the anchor that he could have hit on the way down and it gave us both quite a fright. I felt terrible that I wasn’t there when it happened but there wasn’t really anything I could have done to stop it anyway. By the time I got back Paddy had dusted himself off and was back to rigging tightening. Although it would be unlikely that we would be tightening the rigging at sea, it was still better that it happened at Vila Harbour where there was lots of help around. Despite the mishap, the tightened rigging and newly tweaked sail has definitely made a difference in our speed though and Paddy has been quite pleased with our progress.

On a much slower note, before we left Vanuatu, we decided to have a luxury night on land. Not counting our stay at the Jungle Oasis on Tanna (which, although loads of fun, was a little on the uncomfy side) it was the first proper night we had spent on land since leaving New Zealand. We stayed at a very cool resort called Mangoes, which is run by a family friend, Michelle, and her fiancé Callum (please feel free to correct any stuffed up spelling Michelle!). For a night we grotty yachties lived in, what for us was, the lap of luxury. We had drinks and dinner with Michelle, Callum and some of their friends from Christchurch and I got my first taste of coconut crab – freshly arrived that day. They arrive alive and we are told they are quite a fearsome sight corralled in the kitchen with their huge snapping claws (apparently if one of them manages to escape into the garden there is a distinct shortage of volunteers to go out and catch it!) The crab was huge and delicious and incredibly messy to eat. By the time Paddy and I had managed to completely dismember ours the others were looking at the dessert menu – it was great fun!

We slept in a huge double king sized bed and the room had its own swimming pool, which I spent a blissful morning sitting in and drinking coffee while reading a book. The best part of the whole experience for me though was that the room came complete with a Crazy Cat Lady Option – in the form of a kitten called Leo who pretty much has the run of the resort.

DISCLAIMER: If you are not a cat person you may want to skip this next bit

Since I am missing my own moggy terribly, this appealed to me immensely. Leo was a rescue kitten who was brought to the resort after his mother had been hit by a car, and he has certainly landed on his feet. He has the entire resort at his disposal and, if guests allow him, he’ll waltz in and out of their rooms, sleep in their luggage and even cuddle up with them for the night. So, of course, poor old Paddy had to share the humungous bed with me and a kitten. He was pretty good though and stayed curled up in the same spot, not bugging us until 5.30am when he wanted breakfast (at which point I palmed him off to his real Mummy).

My Ollie was a rescue kitten too and arrived at about the same age as Leo (3 weeks). I found the tiny creature in the middle of the night squawking in the bushes of one of my flats when I was at university. I was told not to get attached to him because, having been abandoned by his mother, he was likely to die – but he had other ideas. Nearly nine years later he has been carted from one end of the country to the other, ruling each household with an iron paw. Because he has moved so much he doesn’t know how to be territorial and tends to settle in pretty much anywhere as long as I am there. Not knowing that he is actually a cat may have something to do with this too (apparently Leo has this issue as well.) Paddy dubbed Ollie ‘Little Lion Man’ because, although he grew into a rather large cat, he’s a bit of a wuss. (I once saw him cornered by a mouse that was giving him a severe ticking off in its squeaky little voice.)

He really is my fur child – so you can probably imagine how traumatic it was for me to leave him for 6+ months. The thought of leaving him at a cattery broke my heart and I don’t think he would have gotten on too well with my parents’ lovely, but rather enthusiastic, Cocker Spaniel Molly. I was at my wits end when Paddy’s dad David saved the day by offering to take him. He lives out in the country and has a big house, a huge garden and lots of heaters (in short, a moggy paradise). There were a few hiccups when we tried to settle Ollie in – including me waking the entire household up at 6am because I was convinced he had fallen out an open window and hurt himself (it turned out that the crying I heard was a weird sounding bird and he had been hiding under the bed the whole time). There was also an episode involving Ollie in the garage stuck behind an old fridge, Paddy trying to fish him out with a brush on the end of a long pole, and me wringing my hands and crying every time he let out an unimpressed yowl. By the time we left though Ollie was confident enough to prowl around the house, eat his food and let David give him a pat. Paddy assured me he would be fine but it was the cat Mummy that had the issues more than the cat.

David has been great though, putting up with my tragic phone calls checking up on Ollie. I even talked to the cat on the phone and felt heaps better when I heard him purr back at me. Last time we talked Ollie was settled and happy and giving David lots of cuddles, so I am feeling a lot better about things. I do sometimes worry that he won’t recognise me when I get back, but I’m trying not to think about that. Paddy reckons I’m worrying unnecessarily and he’s probably right, but cat lady genes are hard to fight!

PS – yes I am aware that I am a country behind, but this is the last Vanuatu blog and a New Caledonia one is on the way, honest! New Cal is an interesting place. It is picture postcard perfect but suffering from a serious identity crisis. Although it is not technically it is still the closest to an occupied country we have been in so far, but I’ll leave that for the next blog xx