When will I learn?

One of the things I have learned from sailing is that you can’t do it to a deadline.

Yet every time we try to get ready for a trip, I find myself getting pissed off at that very fact.

Back when I was blissfully ignorant of the ways of sailing, I assumed that if you had a boat, and you wanted to take it somewhere all you needed to was untie it and go.

I am afraid I am here to report that it’s just not that damned simple.

Paddy and I have both taken this month off to take Wildflower for a trip across Tasman Bay to Nelson.

Preparation for this started last month, on Valentines Day to precise, when I spent an incredible romantic weekend cleaning the boat’s bum.

This necessitated hauling her out of the water and putting her up on blocks.

 

 

 

Once properly secured I got to spend the day with my beloved covered in barnacles and stale seaweed.  Being smaller and bendier than Paddy I get all the fun jobs like lying under the boat scraping goop off its rear and painting antifoul on the bottom.

As usual I ended up getting more paint on myself than the boat. I also learned a valuable lesson. If you accidentally drop one of your headphones in a puddle of antifoul without realising then get back on with listening to your music you end up looking like you are bleeding from the ear. This necessitates a good scrubbing with solvent and gets you funny looks in the supermarket.

 

One of the main reasons for this trip is practice for the next Big One (Fiji next year). We have a lot of new systems on the boat designed to make life on Wildflower easier, safer, cheaper and potentially a little bit faster and the plan is to test them out.

This has meant the week from hell  hanging, wiring, hauling and installing all the things we haven’t had the chance to while we’ve both been working full-time.

To make things a bit cheaper – Paddy is installing a couple of alternative power sources. Solar panels and wind generators (yes, plural. Paddy’s logic is if some is good more must be better. This is the logic that has also led to my aching arms after helping winch up our massive new sails). Wiring up the wind generators has been a massive, fiddly and time consuming job for Paddy, but hopefully it will be worth it. Our last wind generator blew itself to bits in Tonga so a test run is definitely in order!

The next step is hauling all the stuff we don’t need off the boat and putting on the things we we do (dinghy, life raft supplies etc) which can be a bit of a frustrating process.I am definitely looking forward to not tripping over drills and toolboxes every time I need to go to the loo.

And then there is the weather. One of the most important things when you want to go sailing is for the wind to blow from the right direction – in this case we are after a nice gentle Southerly. So of course, pretty much as soon as we took leave from work the weather turned 50 shades of crap. That was fine while we had lots of prep work to do, but lately (if you believe the weather forecasters) we are being faced with either too much wind or none at all. Case in point today we were supposed to be hit with a 30 knot Southerly. I didn’t see it, did you?

I could start getting despondent but what would be the point? We will get away eventually and in the meantime we will be able to get a bit of practice with the new toys out on the harbour. One of those new toys is a much longer boom. Added to give us extra sail area in the hope that we will move a bit faster in lighter conditions. Wildflower is great in Wellington conditions because she is solid and stable and build for strong winds. Give her anything less than 15 knots however and she just sits there going ‘nope, not gonna move.’ We munched through a lot of diesel in the islands.

The new boom scares me. There’s more of it to knock you on the head with and it’s too damned high. The old boom used to knock on the roof of the pilot house occasionally, so Paddy, in his wisdom, decided to raise the new one a couple of inches. This wouldn’t be a problem for most people, but I’m a sea ‘Munchkin’ dammit. I didn’t even make it to five foot (and have now accepted that 34 is too late for a growth spurt). Paddy’s ‘couple of extra inches’ mean I need a kiddie stool to help pull the sail down. In short (see what I did there?) I’m going to need the practice!

The main frustration I am finding with all of this is actually me. It’s been a while and the terminology has completely gone. I’m finding myself still at the level where ‘genoa halyard’ and ‘main sheet’ are just ‘that red rope’ or ‘the blue and white one’. Who am I kidding pretending I know anything about sailing?

‘But wait. Didn’t you just write a book about sailing?’, you might ask.

Well, yes and no. It’s more of a book about not knowing how to sail and making it up as I go along. I’m still making it up.

At the same time though, there is stuff that’s coming back. Silly things like the fierce surge of pride you get when you tie off a rope (sheet, whatever..) with a figure eight and a half hitch without thinking about it. That you can still tie a bowline or a stopper not without really trying (though my clove hitches still needed a bit of practice!)

I have also been practicing throwing a rope down my hallway and lassooing the exercycle – to avoid some of the embarrassment caused by my crap throwing skills in the past.

Those of you who actually sail will be rolling your eyes, but you honestly don’t realise quite how bumbly I am . Those of you who do know how bumbly I am are probably quietly terrified right now. In fact, just this morning a friend of mine  said ‘If there was a high school award for Least Likely to Become a Sailor, I think you would have won it.’

Hopefully we will be on our way soon and in the least bumbly way possible.

And when we get back it will be straight into book stuff. Which Way is Starboard Again? The book hits the stores on April 1. There will be a launch/signing at Unity Books at midday April 15 and a party/signing at the Evans Bay Yacht Club on the evening of the 17th (details to be confirmed)

I think I’m more nervous about that than the upcoming sail!

Either way -wish me luck!