Chaffers Marina Archives - Which way is starboard again?

I’m an author – it says so on the box! (book launch details)

Whenever I think about being an author I feel like a giant fraud. Like any minute now someone is going to come tap me on the shoulder ask for my credentials and force me to admit I’m just pretending.

The packages that I arrived home to this afternoon however are forcing me to accept that this might not actually be the truth.

Two boxes with ‘Which Way is Starboard’ printed on the side and ‘author – Anna Kirtlan’ on the address label have made everything seem very, very real.

I have a partly written blog on the sailing trip which I will put up, but just quickly in the meantime – here are the details of the book launch(es):

Firstly there’s a ‘lunchtime event’ at Unity Books. The word ‘event’ makes me a bit nervous. I hope they don’t expect me to sing and dance! What I will do is blah a bit, read a bit and sign stuff. If that sounds like your sort of thing, I would love to see you there!

For those of you who can’t make that, or would prefer something where there is booze, I am also having a shindig upstairs at the Evans Bay Yacht Club

There is also a trip down South planned with a launch at Oamaru’s Adventure Books during Anzac weekend – details and confirmed date to come in another blog.

So, it’s all on folks! I’m quietly terrified but very excited, will keep you posted.

Driving Miss Daisy

So, on the day we were finally ready to cast off for the South Island, just minutes before we were due to motor out to the diesel dock, this happened.

I am absolutely disgusted with myself. I make it all the way around the South Pacific with only a few bruises, and I manage to sprain my ankle filling up the water tank (which I am beginning to think has it in for me) while we are still in the marina.

I had just filled one tank and was trying to stretch the hose across the boat to the other when I slipped on a metal railing and splat – I’m on my arse with water spraying everywhere.

Paddy knew it was a proper injury, rather than one of my usual trips or stubs, because I went quiet. My usual bumps and bruises tend to be accompanied by loud and creative cursing.

“A you alright?” he asked.

“No.”

(The other thing I am when I’m hurt is honest, no time for niceties.)

“Ankle,” I managed to splutter, before lapsing into angry silence – and perhaps a little shock.

Angry because we were so close to getting away and this time it was my clumsiness holding us up.

It didn’t help that there was an audience either. One of our marina neighbours had popped over for a chat about where we were going. I was gossiping with him and not really paying attention when it happened.

When you are at sea you carefully measure each step you take and line up each hand hold, but when you are in familiar surroundings in the marina you tend to get cocky, which is exactly what I did.

Our neighbour was great. Once he and Paddy ascertained there was nothing broken and helped me hobble back to the cockpit to secure a pack of frozen mixed veggies, he finished filling the water tanks for me and gave us a hand at the diesel dock.

I wasn’t going to let an ankle sprain stop me from going on this trip, not after two weeks of boat maintenance. So I sat up on deck with my Watties’ stirfry and tried to work out what I could still do with both arms and one foot (quite a bit actually it turns out.)

To add insult to injury there was, of course, an audience at the diesel dock. It’s located right outside a couple of waterfront cafes and provides an excellent yachtie wildlife show for the latte sippers.

Other than the pitying looks the thing that annoyed me the most was that after my weeks of rope throwing practise, Paddy ended up lassoing the bollard at the dock.

I’d had this vision of myself in my sailing gear executing the move like a pro, drawing admiring gazes from the coffee crowd. Instead I was parked up on the back of the boat with my ankle in the air and the Skipper doing everything.

Once we got underway the trip was actually pretty uneventful. There was no wind at all and Cook Strait was flat and still as glass. I managed to do everything I needed to rope-pulling wise from the cockpit and even managed a few hopping missions below deck.

Paddy was incredibly supportive, calling me Big Foot and Sasquatch and repeatedly offering to suture my ankle (which I repeatedly declined).

Between the rapidly melting veggies and pain killers my ankle wasn’t hurting that much and the swelling started to go down so I figured it wasn’t a really bad sprain. What I was really looking forward to was getting to our spot in Erie Bay and soaking my foot in the water.

Straight after anchoring up that’s exactly what I did and it was marvelous. Like sticking your foot in a giant liquid icepack.

The longer my foot was in the water the warmer it felt so I decided to carefully lower myself in (“you have to be cognizant of the fact you are bung” was Paddy’s helpful advice) and just swim with my arms.

It was a bit fresh at first but after a while it was lovely. I invented the double-armed, one-legged bumble-stroke and managed to flail my way to shore.

Lying back on the beach looking over at Wildflower sitting peacefully in the bay’s evening light made it all worthwhile. Just me, the crickets and some yobbo playing Hello Sailor on the boat’s stereo. It was utterly perfect.

Erie Bay being perfet — Erie Bay being perfect

Spot where the Double Armed One Legged Bumble Stroke was invented

The bumble-swim had an amazing effect on my ankle too, being in the cool water for so long seemed to work wonders and a bit of enforced rest and some Voltaren later I am now able to put weight on it. The swelling has gone down now and it’s just a bit itchy bruise, which is a good sign it’s healing.

Also, the stew Paddy made with the defrosted veggies was lovely!

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.

Making sure we're secure — Making sure we’re secure

I was quite taken with the colour of the mallet used to hammer in the cradle legs!

Securing the 'stairs' — Securing the ‘stairs’

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.

Nothing says 'romantic valentines day' like scraping slime off a propellor — Nothing says ‘romantic valentines day’ like scraping slime off a propeller

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.

There's a boat under all this somewhere! — There’s a boat under all this somewhere!

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!

And then there's the weather — Was quite taken with the striking contrast in water colour here. The grungy, churned up water is the shallow stuff and the dark blue the deeper.

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!

My first review - thanks Boating NZ! — My first review – thanks Boating NZ! (Not sure about the whole ‘set off with her man’ bit, but Paddy’s pleased to be introduced as ‘an experienced sailor’!

The perils of doing the dishes

Paddy is in Australia.

He flew out on the red-eye and had to get up at 4am to check in at the airport.

I took pity on him and offered to pop by the boat this afternoon and do the pile of dishes I knew was sitting there.

I turn on the tap ‘splutter, splurt, splat’ – no water.

No problem, time to fill the water tanks – I hop off the boat, grab the hose, chuck it in the tank and get on with the job.

Am washing away when suddenly ‘woosh, gush, splash!’- water is bursting in through the pantry and pouring into the boat.

Top tip – water usually belongs on the outside of a boat, not blasting in through the kitchen.

I drop everything, leap off the boat and turn the hose off. Rush back in and mercifully there’s no more water coming in to the boat. The bilge alarm – which goes off when there’s water draining out of the boat – is however going bananas, so we might not be out of the woods yet.

Paddy is in Australia.

I take a deep breath, hands shaking a bit – but can’t lose it now.

I figure there’s no immediate danger as the boat isn’t listing and there’s no more water coming in. The alarm is screeching because it is doing what it is meant to, draining the excess water out to sea, but I can’t honestly say I know everything is actually okay.

Paddy is in Australia.

Frazzled brain remembers he left an Aussie celphone number. I call it. A nice young woman answers. She is most definitely not Paddy.

Must have put the number in wrong. I go through my contacts, call Paddy’s sister, babble a million miles a minute.

She calmly details a number of ways she will try to get hold of Paddy.

Alarm is still screeching. Time to get the cavalry in. I leave Rachel to go on a Paddy hunt while I look for someone to help.

Hands shaking a bit. Can’t find my keys to unlock the pier gate. Another deep breath. No time for this – chill out woman!

It’s getting darker now and there are no obvious lights on any of the boats on our pier. I run down the dock until I see a boat with lights on and bang on the side.

Yes I was doing the damsel in distress thing, but I honestly didn’t know if the boat was okay. I would rather make a bit of a dick of myself than not have done everything possible and have our house sink.

I was reasonably confident this would not be the case because there didn’t seem to be any more water coming in the boat, but I wanted all my bases covered.

At this point I feared we had a split in our water tank. Not life threatening, but a big, messy job to fix – just as we had taken leave and were planning to actually take the boat away on a trip.

The cavalry came in the form of a lovely chap called John, from a launch with the serendipitous name of Friendship. A professional skipper, he was calm and relaxed with me – everything I needed right then.

Deducing no immediate danger, John set about looking for the leak while I tried to get hold of Paddy again.

Turned out I had dyslexiced the number when I put it into the phone. A quick fix up and I manage to get through. At this point Rachel has reached him as well. It was good to know I had a team backing me.

I tell Paddy “there’s no need to panic but…” I hear my own voice and nearly fall over. Me telling someone else not to panic? What topsy-turvy world is this!

Paddy of course is calm and zen and we agree I will call him back once we have found the root of the problem.

Mercifully it was not a split water tank.

It turned out the seal on the screw top that closes the tank had stretched to buggery and the water pressure just popped it off, spewing a bunch of water into the bilge. It will be as simple as going into a shop and buying a new one.

The alarm cheerfully honking away in the background was doing exactly what it was meant to as the water drained out (it’s still piping up on occasion). All is as well as it can be.

John kept to the yachtie code – politely leaving me to lick my wounds in the knowledge that next time he could be the one needing help. I owe that man a beer.

I am overnighting on the boat just in case, but other than the odd honk from the alarm all seems fine.

Yes I probably could have found the source of the leak myself eventually, but I would rather have someone on board who could have helped if the situation was worse than we thought.

Also, I did all this without having a screaming panic attack.

That is no small thing.

I live with the kind of anxiety disorder that, on a bad day, can have me leaping out of my skin if someone beeps their car horn.

Yes, my heart rate got up and I talked really fast, but I made myself understood and got the job done.

I am not curled up in a foetal ball gasping for air.

I haven’t kicked this thing yet – but I am feeling calm and the boat seems to be fine.

This is something to celebrate.

On a slightly furrier note…

With everything else going on I completely forgot to post these photos of the visitor we had last week!

One cold morning this week I was walking down our frosted pier, thinking Arctic thoughts when a flapping movement caught my eye. While a polar bear wouldn’t have been out-of-place in those sort of temperatures, it was a slightly smaller mammal I spotted.

I hadn’t had my morning coffee so I thought my tired brain might be seeing things – but nope, there was definitely a seal – flopping in an ungainly fashion down the ramp.

I was a bit worried he was injured because seals don’t usually come into the marina and also because he was so very little – but apparently the juveniles like to go wandering, so he was probably just fine. I snuck as close as I could to check but before I could offer him the leftover seafood chowder I was taking to work for lunch he jumped in the water and swum off – much more graceful in water than on land

Some factoids about New Zealand fur seals: http://www.doc.govt.nz/conservation/native-animals/marine-mammals/seals/nz-fur-seal/facts/

PS – I really don’t have the words to do justice to the amazing people who came out in support of my blog on mental illness. The response was more than I possibly could have expected. I’ve had friends, family and complete strangers contact me with positive messages and stories of their own struggles – some also coming out publicly for the first time. All I can say is that you are all stars. The more we talk about it, whether privately or publicly, the more we realise – and the world realises – we are not on our own and we are a force to be reckoned with. I don’t normally do soppy and emotional, but you guys made me soppy and emotional – shame on you (and thank you!) 🙂

Rude awakenings

There’s nothing like being ripped out of a dream by a blaring alarm to remind you you’re not sleeping in a house.

Paddy and I had a 4am wake up call today courtesy of the bilge alarm (an insistent shrieky siren that lets us know when there’s water in the boat that shouldn’t be there).

The alarm was a little overenthusiastic during our trip to Tonga and had me leaping out of my skin a bit so I think I might be a bit sensitive to the sound.

It was certainly me sitting bolt upright yelping “what the hell is that?” while Paddy dozed on peacefully.

After some yawning, muttering and pulling up floorboards we deduced that yes, there was water in the boat that shouldn’t have been there.

I was quite proud of myself actually – once upon a time Anxiety Girl would have heard the siren blaring, taken one look at the water sloshing into the bottom of the boat and immediately decided we were done for.

It would have been “throw the goodluck trolls in the grab back and get off the boat, we’re going down!”

This time though, even in a 4am fug, I was able to avoid leaping to the worst possible conclusion in a single bound, go get a torch and help Paddy check out what was going on.

I figured since he was only looking mildly annoyed that it wasn’t anything too catastrophic, but decided not to ask any annoying questions until he had finished bailing the offending water from the bilge with a glass and sponge. (Admittedly I may not have been quite so chilled had this happened in the middle of the ocean…)

Wildflower's innards — Wildflower’s innards

The most important thing to check when you have water coming in to the boat is whether it is salt or fresh. If it’s salt water then it’s coming from outside and you might have a leak, if it’s fresh then it was inside the boat already and can be isolated.

In this case the water was fresh and coming from, of all mundane things, a leak in the bathroom piping. So after bailing out the excess water from the bilge and shutting up the alarm we were able to crawl back into bed and deal with it in the morning.

After pulling everything out of the bathroom cupboards the next day we discovered the culprit was a tiny crack in the piping leading up to the tap in the sink – a lot of fuss and noise for a minor household chore (albeit one you have to bend yourself into awkward positions to sort out).

So think about that next time you are grumbling about having to do plumbing repairs at home – at least your house doesn’t holler at you until you get it fixed.

Splash!

Getting a reasonably sized boat down from the hard and back into the wet stuff is challenging at the best of times – add a typical Wellington gale into the mix and its even more so.

Complicate it further by having to reattach the forestays (wires at the front of the boat that hold the mast up) while you are bouncing around in the water and you have a recipe for an interesting Sunday afternoon.

I have immense respect for the people who operate the travel lifts that move these fish out of water. Sven, our driver, was a master – essentially reversing 18 tonnes of ship with a giant tractor while Paddy paced behind like a broody chook.

I, who at the best of times struggle to reverse a Mitsubishi Mirage, could only look on in awe.

A bit of brute force was needed to get her out of the cradle — A bit of brute force was needed to get Wildflower out of her cradle

"Be careful of my baby!" — “Be careful with my baby!”

Watching Wildflower being slowly edged backwards towards the water was nerve-wracking enough but that wasn’t the end of it. The travel lift has a belt that goes across the front of the ship exactly where the forestays sit, so they have to be removed in order to move the boat.

This is a teensy bit unnerving because it means, for a short amount of time, there isn’t really a whole lot holding the mast up. The rear wires (backstays) are still up but there’s always the nightmare that the mast might fall backwards. Since it was only for about 15 minutes and we weren’t actually sailing this was pretty unlikely, but Paddy wanted to get the everything fully attached quick smart.

This was no mean feat – there is a huge amount of weight on the wires (it’s a pretty big mast they’re holding up) so it takes a fair bit of brute force to get them reattached. The cavalry, in the form of Sven, arrived to help, while Wellington did it’s best to be as unhelpful as possible – in the form of 35 knot gusts. Wildflower is stroppy in reverse at the best of times (she has a big bum which tends to go where it wants to) and it was only the ropes lashing her to the dock that kept her from making a break for freedom.

I stopped taking photos pretty much as soon as I got onboard as I kind of had to hold on while she jerked about. Some grunting, heaving and a few cheers later though and the mast was well secured. We hurriedly let go of the ropes holding her to the wharf and glamourously ploughed backwards into the harbour, finally on our way home.

After a slightly bumpy ride across the harbour – with the lovely Grace, a resident boatie, as an extra set of hands – and a slighty bumpier landing we were back in our berth at Chaffers Marina.

While it was great spending time with the awesome folk at the Evans Bay Yacht Club , after 103 days on the hard both boat and skipper were glad to be home. Even in rotten Wellington weather, she just feels happier in the water.

Splash!

Getting a reasonably sized boat down from the hard and back into the wet stuff is challenging at the best of times – add a typical Wellington gale into the mix and its even more so.

I, who at the best of times struggle to reverse a Mitsubishi Mirage, could only look on in awe.

After a slightly bumpy ride across the harbour – with the lovely Grace, a resident boatie, as an extra set of hands – and a slighty bumpier landing we were back in our berth at Chaffers Marina.

Back on (and off) the seahorse

There’s nothing like spending the day with barnacles down your bra to remind you how glamorous sailing can be.

Paddy and I have spent the past week getting Wildflower ready to leave the marina for the first time in more than a year. It’s just a short hop – cruising down south round Nelson way – but, since we both work fulltime, it has necessitated doing a year’s worth of boat maintenance in a very short space of time.

Part of this involved hauling the boat out of the water to water-blast and scrape all the growth from her hull and – because I am smaller and slightly bendier than Paddy – I got to crawl underneath to give her a bikini wax with a wire brush. Considering we had found mussels big enough to cook on the barbecue growing on the poor old girl’s fenders, we were pleasantly surprised at how little gunge there really was on her (bra-nacles and sea-slime aside).

After a fresh coat of antifoul Wildflower was back in the water and we have been hauling things on and off the boat, putting up sails and playing with the engine ever since.

I must admit I am a little nervous. It sounds crazy – I’ve sailed across the open ocean to the South Pacific and back and a little trip across Cook Strait is giving me the heebee geebees – but it really has been a long time. What if it’s not like getting back on a bike? What if I forget how to do it?

Because if this level of rustiness a few weeks ago I decided to get pro-active. When we went away last time we spent a huge amount of time getting the boat ready to go and not really enough getting me ready and I wasn’t going to make that mistake twice. It was time for some remedial sailing lessons.

When we hit the water on the way to Tonga I realised very quickly that I didn’t really have a handle on the mechanics of sailing. I knew I had to pull on a rope when I was told to pull on a rope but I didn’t really understand why I was pulling on it. In Paddy’s words, learning to sail on Wildflower was like learning to drive in a housebus.

One of our crew members had done a bit of racing and seemed a lot more confident about what was going on than I. Since I didn’t think I would be much chop as racing crew I thought I’d go right back to basics and learn to sail in a dinghy.

Enter our friends at the Evan’s Bay Yacht Club again and in particular Hamish the incredibly patient beginner sailing instructor.

Unfortunately the beginner classes were full up, but Hamish reckoned I would be fine on the intermediate course – I had had previous sailing experience after all. Well, it was sweet and optimistic of him but I found myself floundering pretty quickly in the smaller 420 dinghies we were sailing.

The 420s are 4.2 metres long – bigger than the little dinghies the beginner sailors used, but much smaller than Wildflower. Compared to our boat the ropes on the things were like dental floss! Playing around in the 420s was really great because it gave me a very immediate example of how your actions affect the way a boat sails. In a big boat everything happens quite slowly and there is a delay between your actions and its reaction. In a dinghy you know pretty much straight away when you’ve stuffed it up.

Hamish was great as an instructor but he’s definitely of the boatgan genus – constantly trying to get me to tweak this or that to get the boat to go faster. Again, sweet and optimistic but at that point my biggest concern was not sailing into anything or ending up in the drink.

My first lesson was hilarious. A fellow learner and I ran over the buoy we were supposed to be tacking around and ended up taking it with us, necessitating the nautical version of the Birdie Dance bum-wiggle to remove it – with instructions helpfully shouted by Hamish from the safety boat. I kept muffing my left and right (sorry, Port and Starboard) and may have picked up a couple of new swearwords – it was brilliant fun and I left with a huge grin on my face.

My second experience in a dinghy wasn’t quite so successful however – since I was back on the sailing bandwagon, Paddy decided it would be fun to enter us in the East-West Dash ‘race’ from Evans to Days Bay and back again in a 420. In hindsight, given I had only had one lesson and Paddy had never sailed a 420 before it probably wasn’t one of our brightest moves – but enthusiasm won out at the end of the day.

We were doing really well for a while – even passing a couple of other boats – until we were swamped by a rather large wave just as we’d reached the end of the bay. Another big difference between Wildflower and a 420 is that a 420 doesn’t have a keel, which means – unlike our sweet, solid dependable ship, they actually can tip over – which is exactly what this one proceeded to do.

Before we had time to bail out the excess water we found ourselves on a rather unfeasible angle. Paddy very calmly said “okay, we’re going over now” – but I, in utter denial, had other ideas, roaring “No we’re not!” while ineffectually trying to throw my weight against the quickly capsizing boat. I’m sure it would have looked hilarious to any onlookers – like trying to stop a tank with tissue paper, particularly when the inevitable happened and we both ended up in the drink.

To add insult to injury I found myself surfacing under the sail and not being able to reach open air was really rather frightening. I managed to keep calm and swim for the nearest bit of open blue (which, given I am prone to freaking out, I am actually rather proud of) and gulped deliciously fresh air just as Paddy was heading over to help me.

Having established we were both safe, Paddy and I clung to the upturned boat, in rather choppy waters, trying to work out what the best course of action was.

Unfortunately we hadn’t reached the “how to get your boat back upright” part of my sailing lessons and there is a trick to righting a 420 that neither of us knew, so Paddy and I flailed around failing miserably.

The coastguard was lurking around, but just watching us at this point, until they saw a local boat come to ‘help’. The skipper of said boat (who shall henceforth be referred to as Captain Angry Beard) proceeded to do so by shouting instructions on how to right the dinghy and getting angrier and angrier when we were unable to comply. “Get on the bow!” Captain Angry Beard roared, so Paddy climbed on top of the bow of the boat and sat there looking puzzled (we later deduced he probably meant ‘point the bow into the wind’). “Get in the boat!” he bellowed at me after we managed to get it partially upright – I however had been treading water for about 15 minutes and just didn’t have the strength to pull myself over the side, much to his obvious frustration.

At that point my lifejacket popped open (slightly too big with sun-damaged clasps – am now going to buy my own dinghy jacket) and everything ceased to be even remotely fun. Angry Beard was shouting at us, I was swallowing water and Paddy was roaring at him to get help to get me out of the water and sod the boat. (He then whispered to me that I wasn’t in any danger, he just wanted to get Angry Beard to get someone who could help us.) At that point I’d been treading water for 25 minutes, I was tired and scared and utterly over it.

Then one of the Evans Bay locals came to our aid with a launch. I managed to swim aboard, he helped us get the boat upright and Paddy managed to limp the dinghy back to the yacht club using just the headsail.

We stayed at the yacht club for a few medicinal beers, licked our wounds and watched the rest of the boats come in. Our rescuer’s biggest concern was that I wouldn’t let the incident put me off sailing so I assured him I would be back the following Wednesday – I’m nothing, if not stubborn.

The following Wednesday we got the Capsize Talk (which I’m sure had nothing to do with me!) which was just as well since it was a rather windy evening! In Wellington if you don’t go out when the wind is up then the odds are you will never go out at all and I felt safe knowing we were in the bay and being stalked by a safety boat.

Long story short the dinghy I was in ended up capsizing (this time I jumped well clear of the sail!) but this time we were able to right it. Unlike a smaller dinghy the 420 is heavier and you can’t just stand on the centreboard (the little bit that sticks out at the bottom) and flip it over. It’s a two-person job where one stands on the centreboard until the boat is halfway up and the other swims in, clutches on to something like the toe-strap and uses their bodyweight to help right it (though you have to make sure you scuttle to the high side of the boat as soon as its upright or the whole thing goes over again – something else learned from experience). So now I know exactly what Captain Angry Beard was trying to say when he was yelling at me to “get in the boat”.

Capsizing and righting the boat did huge things for my self-confidence and every subsequent lesson did the same as I was able to translate a lot more of what was going on in the smaller boats to the way Wildflower worked.

I wasn’t the world’s best student – I stuffed it up, got scared and swore a lot – but I left each night grinning like an idiot.

I won’t jinx things by saying when we are leaving (other than it’s very soon!) but, while still nervous, I am feeling a lot better about hitting the waves again.

I have concluded that I will probably always be better as crew than as skipper – but hopefully this will make me better crew.

PS – we will be lurking around down south for a few weeks and my big plan for that time is to Finish the Damn Book. Will keep you all posted on progress.

A year in captivity

We hurtled headlong past a milestone last week and I didn’t even notice – I was too busy being busy.

Paddy was the one who worked out we had been back in civilisation for a year. Fittingly it was a text message from our celphone provider that tipped him off – thanking us for a year of our custom.

A year.

A year of celphones and emails, alarm clocks and meetings. A year of job hunting and job finding (Paddy), flat hunting and job renewing (me). A year of wondering where on earth the year had gone.

A year ago I had returned from paradise wondering how I would ever be able to fit into society again.

A year ago I had a tan – now my pasty white legs are safely hidden from sight by brightly coloured tights.

A year ago the prospect of not having to do laundry in a bucket anymore still excited me.

I thought I had returned a changed person. That the challenges we faced, the people we met, the fear and the excitement would make me look at the world in a very different way – and for a while it did. But I have slotted in as though I never left.

When we got back had a lot to catch up on – the tailend of the election campaign and the colossal mess that was the Rena disaster being the most apparent. We’d also missed all the internet memes. It was as though the entire country was talking gibberish. We had no idea what a ‘nek minnit’ or a ghost chip was. Now I check my twitter feed every five seconds to make sure I haven’t missed any breaking news and I am Grumpy Cat’s biggest Kiwi cheerleader (though I still don’t really get Gangnam style).

In some of the more isolated spots we visited I found myself fantasising about things that I once took for granted – ground that didn’t move, shops that stocked what you were looking for, being able to give a friend a call and meet them for a coffee.

Now I’m getting irritated by the little things – long queues in the supermarket, busses running late, people who don’t answer their emails. I’ve had a lot less coffees with friends than I planned. I have been too busy being busy.

Don’t get me wrong – being back has been great. I’ve caught up with much missed family and friends, I have custody of my fur-child again, I’ve remembered how important it is to have a job that you really enjoy. I’m getting fitter, I’ve lost a bit of weight and I’ve even started riding a bike again for the first time since I was a teenager. I’m not unhappy. I’m just shocked, really shocked, at how fast the year has gone.

In the book I am writing there is a chapter called The Time Bomb (and yes, the book is still happening – that’s the subject of a different blog, which I guess means I am officially blogging again).

It describes the battle Paddy and I had with suddenly having to deal with time. Not island time, which we all know is a pretty fluid concept, or weather time, which nobody can argue with, but ‘real world’ time. And we really did struggle. The plan was that we would get back, fix the things on the boat the needed to be fixed, get out on the water more so I could keep practising and getting more confident, and finish the damned book.

Instead, Paddy went from nautical Mr Fixit to corporate Mr Fixit, I got embroiled in politics and education and come the end of the week our brains were frazzled and we’d sleep all weekend. We began to get frustrated and began to second-guess ourselves. We’d had all this time and now we had none. What had we done with it? Had we wasted it? Could we have done things better?

I took us a while to get out of that slump – a year to be precise.

The boat hasn’t moved for a year, not really. There is a terrible looking green sludge growing on the fenders. The dinghy was practically growing a forest below it had moved so little (except for that time someone took a joyride in it and the police found it – yet another subject for another blog). But the weather is warming and so are we.

We had a big springclean on the boat before our annual Guy Fawkes party (they light the fireworks on the Wellington waterfront so we get the best view in the house), Paddy has a new boom he wants to attach, I’ve started sending material to publishers and I’m blogging again for the first time since July. I’m happy to be writing again. I get twitchy when I don’t write.

I’m going to get out sailing casually with the guys at the Evans Bay yacht club (my new flat is far too conveniently close to their bar!) and now that the weather starting to warm I’m going to rejoin the local dive club – because I haven’t done that for a year either. I am a little nervous about the latter though, since the last time I was in the ocean the water was about 26 degrees! We’re also planning on taking the boat out for a decent trip somewhere in February, which I am quite looking forward to.

Now I find myself standing in supermarket queues fantasising about a tiny little store in the middle of nowhere where you can’t find anything you want and half a cabbage costs $20. I want the ground to be moving again. I miss the sea and the sand and the people and thinking about seeing them again makes me smile.

We’re coming out of hibernation, stretching and yawning and sniffing the air, and it feels good.

And on that note – here’s some explosives.

Category: Chaffers Marina

I’m an author – it says so on the box! (book launch details)

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Driving Miss Daisy

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When will I learn?

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The perils of doing the dishes

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On a slightly furrier note…

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Rude awakenings

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Splash!

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Splash!

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Back on (and off) the seahorse

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A year in captivity

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