Steel boats Archives - Page 2 of 3 - 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!

What a Canadian going to space can teach me about going to sea

I’ve just finished reading An Astronaut’s Guide to Life on Earth – Colonel Chris Hadfield’s autobiography.

For those of you who don’t know Hadfield became a bit of a social media rock star after posting a series of amazing YouTube videos from the International Space Station – everything from scientific experiments and stunning space vistas to how to brush your teeth in zero gravity.

Most importantly of all, he recorded his own version of David Bowie’s Space Oddity – IN SPACE!

Being the Bowie freak I am this of course is what first brought him to my attention.

He popped up on my radar again when I was talking to a friend about how sailing scared the hell out of me but I still found myself doing it. He said he’d just finished reading a biography that he thought I’d really like and promptly handed me An Astronaut’s Guide to Life – what going to space taught me about ingenuity, determination and being prepared for anything.

My first thought when starting to read was ‘pssshh, overachiever! There’s no-one in the universe (s’cuse pun) more utterly out of my league. My second thought was ‘hey, wait a minute! This guy thinks just like me!’

One of my particular skill sets is being terrified of everything (it doesn’t stop me doing things – but it can make them a lot more difficult). Paddy calls it catastrophising – put me in any situation and I will come up with the worst possible outcome, however improbable.

So you can imagine me astonishment when I read that Mr Overachiever Astronaut was actually scared of heights! It seemed about as logical as a person with anxiety issues floating offshore on a tin tub (sorry Wildflower!)

Hadfield did something I really admire, he harnessed his anxiety and made it work for him. He wrote about the power of negative thought and sweating the small stuff – and of course as an astronaut you have to sweat the small stuff to survive.

While nowhere near the same league he’d got me thinking – I’d never seen my negativity as having power before. When you think about it though it makes sense, as long as you actually know what to do if the worst happens.

In fact, during the one really scary experience I had on the boat (sorry – but I’m saving that for the book), I was actually able to handle things because I had a job to do and I knew how to do it. It’s the not knowing that turns you into a wreck.

Hadfield sums it up perfectly right here;

“In my experience, fear comes from not knowing what to expect and not feeling you have any control over what’s about to happen. When you feel helpless, you’re far more afraid than you would be if you knew all the facts. If you’re not sure what to be alarmed about, everything is alarming” (pg 52 – An Astronaut’s Guide to Life on Earth)

That sentence propelled me right back to our first night out of sight of land, the boat creaking and groaning as we punched into the wind that insisted on blowing in the exact direction we wanted to sail in. It was a little uncomfortable, but the boat was sturdy and we were safe – all the same, I was freaking out.

The reason I was freaking out was simple. I didn’t know exactly what was going on. Wildflower was making creaking, straining, banging noises I had never heard her make before. Because I couldn’t be certain if they were good or bad, the catastrophiser in me immediately decided they must be all bad. In short, I didn’t know what to be alarmed about – so everything was alarming.

Hindsight is a beautiful thing. Taking Wildflower offshore for the first time was a massive undertaking. We had a limited time window to wind up our jobs and our lives and make sure the boat was ready, but we didn’t spend enough of that time making sure that we as people were ready. Theoretically I was – I’d passed my Boatmasters exams, I knew the safety drill – but mentally I had no clue what I was letting myself in for. I didn’t know what I should or shouldn’t be scared of.

Paddy was then faced with the unenviable task of skippering the boat with the first mate was popping up and down like a meerkat on speed going ‘what was that?’ ‘is that noise normal?’ He lay down with me in the back cabin (one of the noisiest spots) and explained to me what each creak and groan was and that helped hugely – but that was one more task he shouldn’t have had to do.

What it taught us was that next time, along with the boat prep, there will have to be more people prep (at least for me) – and one of the things I am keen to do is an offshore survival course. The kind where you practice skills you more than likely are never going to need, where you actually deploy the life raft and bob about inside it in a swimming pool.

I already feel much better now I have actually fired off a flare and I would rather know what to do if things went to hell than have to rely on others to tell me what to do. I’m never going to be an all-singing, all-dancing, fix-it-at-sea woman – but I would like to be able to do something practical without losing my mind.

Paddy worries this focus on the negative will put me off, but I think the opposite. I think it will calm me to know I am as prepared as I can be.

Worrying is something I’m good at, so I might as well harness it.

And, as Hadfield says “Anticipating problems and figuring out how to solve them is actually the opposite of worrying: it’s productive. Likewise, coming up with a plan of action isn’t a waste of time if it gives you peace of mind. While its true that you may wind up being ready for something that never happens, if the stakes are at all high, it’s worth it.” (Pg 72 – An Astronaut’s Guide to Life on Earth)

You have to be careful though, there is a balance when you are at sea. Sometimes immediately leaping into survival mode can actually decrease your chances of survival. The thing with a boat is, no matter how uncomfortable things get, often the safest place to be is on board. It’s counter-intuitive, but it really does take an awful lot to make a boat sink – and if you cut yourself adrift on a life raft you are at the mercy of the elements. Nine times out of ten the safest thing you can do is stay on board as long as possible – the golden rule is that you should “always step up into your life raft”

A tragic example of this was the 1979 Fastnet race that got caught out in freak weather – it was the people who abandoned ship into their life rafts who were the ones who were injured or lost their lives and when the storm cleared the majority of the boats were still floating.

So I am going into this painfully aware of the balance but also with a sense of confidence that I think this will work for me. So thank you Col. Hadfield for helping me realise I can use my anxiety as a tool and that the power of negative thought could actually make me a better sailor.

PS: Note to my Mum – who I know is reading this: Stop freaking out. We will be taking a ridiculously safe and well-prepared boat at a safe time of year on an easy passage across the Pacific ocean – you have nothing to worry about (but I know you will because I know who the worry gene came from!) Love yoooouuu! xxx

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.

Bon voyage Mirabilis!

The last few weeks have felt like stepping into a time warp, as we watch our neighbours scramble to get ready to head across the Pacific.

I recognise and empathise with all of it – the race against the clock to get the boat ready to go before the weather decides to play silly buggers, the boat maintenance by tourchlight, the million little things that need to be tweaked , tied down and ticked off before you can hit the waves. Then you have to wrap up your life, wind up your job, pack away all your worldly possessions – you find yourself so busy your friends and family begin to forget what you look like.

I watch our neighbours get ready and part of me sympathises with them. But the other part of me is jealous as hell.

Mike and Danica Stent are about to embark on one of the biggest, maddest adventures of their lives. They will get to go places that tourists don’t often go and see things that most people never get to see. They will learn a whole heap about themselves, meet a bunch of amazing people and learn how to live life in whole new way.

Paddy and I first met our neighbours when Dani and I wound up on the same Boatmasters course. When we got to the whole ‘class introduction/why are you here?’ bit we were astonished to discover that not only were we both living at Chaffers Marina but we were on the same pier and practically right next door to each other. Paddy and I were planning to do the Pacific trip and Mike and Dani were getting their boat ready to do the same thing the following year.

It also turned out that Mike shared Paddy’s engineering geek traits so the two of them got on like a house on fire. It got to the point where I was a little concerned Dani would ban him from coming over – because every time he did it ended with “well Paddy’s got this and I think we should…”

This time last year it was Mike and Dani standing on the pier, waving us off – and this year we will happily return the favour.

It has also been great fun watching the nameless boat next to us grow handrails and new sails and morph into the lovely Mirabilis. A Mirabilis is a type of nudibranch – basically a really tiny, really pretty sea slug (Dani is a seasoned scuba diver and her work involves hanging out with all manner of interesting sea-critters). Mirabilis has only recently had her name unveiled, and I think it is pretty stylish!

I’m not going to say when they are planning to leave, because I don’t want to jinx anything – but lets just say it’s soon! I’m sure they will be great. Dani has had the chance to get out on the boat a bit more than I did before we left so she’ll have a much better idea about what all the bangs and creaks and groans mean.

Mike was our crew when we brought Wildflower back home from Noumea and he was great – he even did the cooking when I was too crook to manage it and he witnessed me having a bit of a meltdown reefing a sail in some bouncy conditions heading in to NZ and didn’t run away screaming, which I think bodes well.

But if I can offer any advice at all, here are a couple of things:

1) If you see the Port light of a massive ship coming for you when you are heading towards Auckland – it is probably the Skytower

2) If you see the Port light of a massive ship coming towards you late in the evening – it could very well be the moon rising

3) Venus is a b*tch – no matter how many times you see her and you know it’s her, there will still be a part of your brain that reckons she’s a boat

4) Reheatable passage meals are awesome. The last thing anyone feels like doing is cooking if the boat is bouncing about a bit and sometimes the simplest task seem to take hours while you are down in the galley. Being able to throw stuff in a pot and just stir it till it reheats can be the best thing in the universe!

5) Try to get some sleep. It’s really easy to stay awake all day, particularly if it is nice and sunny and you are really enjoying yourself, but if you don’t have at least a bit of sleep before you go on nightwatch you can end up jumping at shadows all night

So guys, enjoy. You will have an amazing adventure. There will be times when it’s not easy, there will be times when you fantasise about pushing each other overboard – but those will pass. There will also be times when you have to pinch yourself to believe you really are where you are – and you will create memories that will last a lifetime.

We will miss you, and we will expect updates on your progress – no excuses!

Happy Sailing!

Paddy and Anna 🙂