Patience is a virtue…

Leaving Wellington - oh so long ago!
 
Sorry guys! WordPress seems to hate my photos at the moment so this is all you get (will try sticking them up on Facebook)

Well my idyllic introduction into the world of cruising has been a little less than idyllic.

It has, however, been an amazing learning curve  and certainly hasn’t been boring!

We are holed up in Opua with the rest of the fleet at the moment and it doesn’t look like we will be out of here any time before Friday. The weather, not to put too fine a point on it, has been complete arse – interspersed with the odd fine patches.

Apparently this has been the longest time the Island Cruising Association has held off on leaving and one or two skippers are definitely getting a little bit twitchy! The good news is that from Friday onwards we should be heading into a great big high with just the right amount of wind blowing in the right direction – ie perfect sailing conditions. Most people (particularly those of us who had a bit of an uncomfortable trip up here) are more than happy to hang around for the good stuff!

The only real issue is boats with crew who have a set amount of leave and have booked flights back from Tonga – though it looks like our crew will be okay – thank goodness! It sucks for some people who pretty much have to turn around and go back as soon as they arrive but, as I am fast learning, that is the nature of cruising!

Poor old Paddy had this lovely vision of us having a b beautiful sail up north, which would help me become more of an experienced boat-chick for the trip offshore. Unfortunately. the weather had other ideas.

We either had no wind at all or it was blowing from the direction we wanted to go in – making for a couple of lumpy nights.

I’ve had some great help through the scarier bits from both Paddy and a friend of ours Fergus, who was kind enough to help us take the boat from Wellington to Auckland and Auckland to Opua. Fergus was really patient with me jumping at shadows and was a brilliant help when it came to the early morning watches. I definitely think I would be in a much different headspace going in to this if it wasn’t for him!

For the first couple of days out of Wellington both Paddy and I were rather jumpy. Paddy was up and down like a meerkat checking out the boat’s every little whirr and creak and I was making myself nervous about having to do night watches.

For my first couple of night watches I was hyper-vigilant, jumping at stars and shadows, thinking they were land or other ships. At one point I dragged Paddy out of bed because I spotted the port light of a HUGE ship that wasn’t showing on the radar and was heading straight for us. It turned out to be the moon rising.

 (I have since discovered this is a common rookie mistake so I don’t feel so bad!)

After a while though I realised that things happen pretty slowly out at sea and looking around every 10 minutes is just fine. Once I got a little more relaxed about it I was able to set up an alarm, put my ipod on and lie back and watch the stars, which was quite lovely.

I have to admit there were times when things were a little challenging for me on that trip. We had quite a few fishing  boats lurking around in the dark during a particularly lumpy night when the wind was against us, and they did make me a bit panicky. We were also shepherded out of the way by a ridiculously long vessel we later discovered was a ship towing a 10 kilometre cable doing a seismic survey. We suspect it was the Petrobas boat, which could be why it didn’t radio to tell us what it was up to  – it probably thought we were protestors, but all we wanted to do was get out of its way!

Navigating our way into Auckland harbour at night was also pretty exciting. We wouldn’t have done it the way we did if we didn’t have Fergus’s local knowledge, but he was able to expertly guide us on a rather interesting course. The scary thing about heading towards Auckland is that there are so many damned lights it seems impossible to see which ones apply to you – what I thought was a navigation buoy tur ned out to be the Skytower!

It took us four days to get to Auckland and we arrived at 5am, absolutely knackered. Fergus’s wife Dianne had managed to secure us a  berth next to their boat in the marina (they are both live-aboards too) and we had a Champaign breakfast – minus the breakfast – to celebrate completing our first leg, before falling into unconsciousness.

We camped out at Bayswater Marina for a few days waiting for a window in what was already looking like some pretty crummy weather. It worked out great for us though. We were literally able to step off our boat and onto Fergus and Dianne’s, where we had some delicious meals (Dianne is a primo cook!) and great company. Dianne also gave me lots of helpful tips for cruising survival and some bread recipes I’m looking forward to trying out.

I also had a surprise visit from quite a large chunk of my family, some who live in Auckland and even an auntie from Australia (will post pics when WordPress loves me again) which was really lovely.  So Paddy got to meet the family, all at once, in a very small space! He did very well and I have a sneaking suspicion they might quite like him 😉

Mum and Dad came to check out the boat before heading off to meet us in Opua (which is just as well because we couldn’t get a marina berth in Opua and had to anchor off and I don’t think Mum fancied a lumpy dingy ride!) They’ve spent the past few days with us, which has been really great and even arranged for a bit of shore leave for me.

Hanging around in Opua has been really interesting actually because it has given me a good insight into the sailing community here and the people we will be travelling with.

The next blog will be an Opua special (including the trip over) and hopefully I’ll be able to get some photos up as well  xx

Lots of thank yous and a blog-pology

I apologise in advance for what will probably be a sorry excuse for a blog.

I have enough material and photographs to write about 10 of the things on our last few weeks of preparation, but  we have pretty much run out of time – so you’re not getting any of them.

I do promise a huge blog backlog when we get to the islands though!

At this stage it looks like we will be leaving for Auckland on Monday. That should take 4 to 5 days, and then we head for Opua. From there we will sail on to Tonga around April 30.

I have to say this unemployment lark has not been living up to its reputation at all! (Although I’m not technically unemployed as I am taking unpaid leave from my job)

Instead of sitting around smoking pot and playing playstation (or whatever else our lovely minister of social development believes unemployed people do) we’ve been getting up earlier than did while we were working and have been going round the clock getting Wildflower ready to leave. Paddy even ended up pulling an all-nighter rewiring the engine panel!

At this stage it looks like sailing across the Pacific is going to be the easiest part of the whole process! (touch wood.)

There have been a few speed bumps on the road to paradise (like the company we insured the boat with going bust and me thinking my cat had done a runner) but everything has been sorted now.

We have been given the okay by our new insurance company, and just minutes ago Wildflower had her category 1 status sign off – woo hoo! (there is a whole blog waiting to be written about this, but it will just have to continue waiting for the moment.)

I know I have been a bit of a stress bunny lately – and I would just like give a big thank you to my family and friends who have helped and supported us and put up with my twitchiness.

I would also like to thank those people (and tradespeople) who have gone the extra mile to help us out and who gave us faith in humanity when others were stuffing us around.

In the wonderful people category I would like to include;

Mike  our lovely next door neighbour – an engineering geek like Paddy – who has been over on our boat day and night helping weld stuff and mount stuff and who lent us his 4W drive to help clear out one of Paddy’s sheds. We will be meeting he and his wife Danica in New Caledonia and they will be sailing back to NZ with us, which should be a lot of fun.

Jenn and Trevor for helping us out with the (increasingly frustrating) job of getting the cockpit cushions sewn. In the end it turned out that we were working with a sewing machine that was in need of a serious tune-up – so Jenn’s infinite patience and Trevor’s help in eventually out-sourcing the work was very much appreciated.

Rebecca and Jared for helping me out with the grocery shopping trip to end all shopping trips at Moore Wilsons to stock Wildflower up for the journey.

Paddy’s Dad David for looking after my fur-child Ollie while we’re gone. It makes me feel so much better knowing he will be living in a place that he knows, where he will be looked after and fussed over rather than being shoved in a cattery.

My Mum and Dad, for supporting me through all the lunacy. Mum for staying strong and supportive even though I know this trip worries her and she will find it hard to let us go (we will be fine though!) and Dad for going back to school to get his amateur radio licence so he can talk to us out at sea. Oh, and one more for Mum for letting Dad put a dirty great pole in the middle of her garden to aid in said communication!

(there is a blog – and photos – on this to come!)

In the wonderful tradies category I want to include our international boat building family (Gregor the Maltese welder and David the Chilean carpenter) for all their hard work making Wildflower safe and beautiful inside and out.

Grant Henderson who managed to tame our recalcitrant sewing machine and even made us a repair kit to take away with us, should it need further ‘persuasion’ (for the record, the machine is running beautifully now.)

Dave and Ian from Wellington Providoring who have also been a great help.

 Finally I would like to thank Paddy for building a beautiful boat for us to go away in and for working so hard to make sure that it is safe. Also a huge thank you for being there for me when I became a crumbling wreck after I thought Ollie had run away. To be fair (even though he probably has better eyesight than me) an 80 year old man looking for a black cat that likes hiding in dark places was always going to be a big ask – but I wasn’t about to see sense. I think it was the final push that broke down the damn holding the stress, tiredness and nervousness in and I just needed to wail like a banshee for a bit. I’m fine now (and the cat came back) and feel heaps better for it, and Paddy didn’t run away screaming, which is always a good sign!

Hopefully we will be able to jump online some time before we head to the islands, but if not. I’ll write again when I’m lazing under a coconut tree drinking something with an umbrella in it 🙂

One for the stalkers

Just a quick entry because I am in the middle of house packing hell at the moment.

This one is for the nervous family members, nosey parkers and stalkers among you (you know who you are! 😉 )

The Island Cruising Association has set up a way for people to see where in the ocean we are as we travel.

This running fleet position reporting is done through a map on a website called Skipr.net, which will follow us as we progress on each leg of the trip. It’s free so friends and family can use it to have a perve at where we are, and it’s pretty easy to use.

* First go to the skipr.net website here: http://skipr.net/

* In the box that says “where is that boat?” type in Wildflower II (long story and the subject of another blog) and press ‘search’

* You’ll see a picture of us with a map next to it. There is an upsidedown teardrop on the map that shows where we are (at the moment it says Chaffers Marina Wellington)

It’s pretty basic at the moment but we will add more information and pretty pictures when we have a bit more time.

A few of you lovelies will be meeting us on various islands to dodge the winter for a bit – and no doubt we will be missing you all by then. For others interested in hanging out in pretty places with us for a while, here’s our itinerary –  there are lots of cheap flights to the Pacific on at the moment and we would love to see you xx

12 hacksaw blades and don’t skimp on the buckets

Yesterday I learned that you cannot leave this country in a boat unless you have 12 new hacksaw blades and four buckets on board. This is just a small sample of the demented shopping list we need to check off to get Wildflower up to category one standard so we can legally go offshore.

One or two hacksaw blades I can understand, but 12! What on earth for? Are we going to need to break out of prison? Is there an island I don’t know about that barters in hand tools? Are we going to be boarded and demanded to produce the requisite number of hacksaw blades?

The buckets make a little more sense – they can be used for bailers or collecting sea water and make excellent receptacles for queasy passengers (which I can sadly vouch for from personal experience…) But even if you are sailing single-handedly, you still have to have four of the things – offerings for a passing lolrus perhaps?

Along with the hacksaws and buckets, category 1 also involves spending thousands of dollars on equipment we don’t ever want to use. Flares, lifeboats, fire extinguishers and flashy beepy locatory things all have expiry dates on them – so you buy them and (all going well) don’t use them, only to have to chuck them out and buy new ones that you don’t want to have to use – a little perverse really.

Also, it turns out that New Zealand is the only country in the world where you have to meet a required standard before you can leave on a boat – and, while I would like to think this is because we are a particularly safety conscious nation, it probably has more to do with the fact that New Zealand covers the largest search and rescue area in pretty much anywhere. If people get in trouble in their patch then a lot of money is spent getting them back – and it’s  a pretty big patch!

Our search and rescue patch

So mother, you can rest assured. I will be leaving New Zealand in a ridiculously safe boat!

On a different note – a couple of people have asked me if the quake in Christchurch has put me off going on the trip, and I have to admit there were a couple of moments (and I recognise them for what they were) when I didn’t want to leave because I was afraid  something else might happen while I was gone. But I know that is something that, even with all the willpower in the world,  I have absolutely no control over.

What I do have control over (and what everyone does) is my fear. And a perfect example of that is Christchurch. Watching life doing its damnedest to go on when I was down there at the weekend was truly awe-inspiring.

You can’t live a life of what-ifs, because you never know when a boulder is going to roll into your living room and sell on TradeMe for $60,000. If the quake has taught me one thing it’s not to put off what’s important. Do the things you have always wanted to do, tell the people you love that you love them, don’t hold anything back because you never know what’s around the corner. If the people of ChCh have the strength to pick up their lives and keep going, then I sure as hell can run away to sea with the pirate I love and have a life-changing experience.

I’m a Cantabrian born and bred, and every day we are seeing how tough that lot are!

A shout out to the journos

Just a quick note to all the reporters out there who are busting a gut to get information about the Christchurch quake out to the public – and particularly those in the city itself.

You are doing an amazing job – I can’t even begin to imagine what you guys are going through right now. 

Before I turned to the dark side and became a communications advisor I was a journalist for a daily newspaper, and it was the ambulance chasing that I struggled with the most. Jumping into a car and heading towards the sirens, not knowing what I was going to find.

I was really lucky. Nothing even remotely close to what is going on in Christchurch happened on my watch. The hardest interview I ever had to do was speaking to the mother of an 18 year old boy who died in a fire as a result of a very sad accident.  She was incredibly strong and just wanted to talk about her wonderful son – and in the end she was the one offering me a drink! At one point in the interview she made a very poignant comment and, almost without conscious thought, the first thing that popped into my head was “that’s my intro.” I felt revolting, like a vulture. After I left her house I pulled the car over, had a cry, then went back to the newsroom and wrote up the story – and that was only one death.

After the paper was published, the boy’s family called and thanked me for getting his story across and some of his school friends came into the office to buy extra copies of the paper. Those people will never know how much I needed that thank you.

So here’s my thank you. I have been glued to the internet/newspaper/television hungrily searching for information and trying to make sense of what is happening to my home town. Many of you will have friends, family and colleagues affected by this tragedy. You will be physically and emotionally exhausted, but you will keep going because that is what you need to do.

The fact the Press got an issue out after what happened to their building is nothing short of amazing.

There are so many people out there so desperate for information and you are doing an incredible job.

PS – You have probably already read this story, but if not, please do. It is written by Vicki Anderson from the Press who was in the building when the quake struck and it is the most beautifully written piece I have read on the quake so far: The day the earth roared

When disaster hits home (and the power of Twitter)

I was planning to blog on the huge amount of work required to get the boat up to Category 1 standard so we can leave the country. I was going to write about my insecurities about getting everything organised and my worries about the time that is so rapidly ticking by.

But yesterday threw all that sharply into perspective.

I am from Christchurch. My family and friends are in Christchurch – I lived and worked and partied in places that are now rubble.

I can’t stop staring at the television. I keep recognising places where friends and I lived, loved, ate and drank too much, listened to bands, op-shopped and held meetings that were going to save the world. Places where people I know still do these things.

I managed to contact my parents shortly after the quake happened and nearly cried with relief when I heard  Mum’s voice on the other end of the phone. They were shaken, but okay. Another big aftershock struck while I was talking to Dad – I could hear it through the phone. I heard Mum cry out in the background and then the phone went dead. The few seconds it took for me to reestablish contact after that felt like years. It was so scary. But they are okay. They are strong, amazing, wonderful people – and I know they will be fine (but it doesn’t stop me wanting to shovel them on to a plane and get their arses up to Wellington!)

I have also managed to track down a lot of my friends – mostly through twitter and facebook, and I have a whole new respect for social networking. I only begrudgingly set up a twitter account for work purposes, so I can keep an eye on what’s trending in the education sector. But I gradually started to find interesting people to follow and began to embrace it more. Yesterday however I saw it in a whole different light – not just because it was a fantastic way of finding out what was happening as it was happening, but because of the way it brought people together. I have already heard of several people who found out that loved ones were okay because a complete stranger tweeted the name of the person sitting next to them and that information was retweeted and retweeted until it reached the person it needed to. People have also been tweeting the locations of people they are concerned about and people in those areas have looked out for them – complete strangers helping people who were too far away to offer any practical assistance.

I’m not going to beatify Christchurch – it would be hypocritical. I have done my fair share of pissing and moaning about its clique-iness, how judgemental people could be, how the most important thing seemed to be what school you went to and woe betide you if you wanted to dress or act a little bit differently. But, just as they say you can’t pick your family, you can’t pick the town you are born in either and, despite its foibles, you  also can’t help  loving it. It’s home.

I’ve had some shitty times in Christchurch and I have had some great times and met some beautiful people – and it is those people that are coming to the fore in this crisis. People helping eachother out, looking after eachother.

I feel helpless here. I want to be down in ChCh pulling bricks out of buildings. I couldn’t even donate blood because the bloodbanks here have been inundated with offers (which is wonderful!)

All I can do is donate some money and offer my love and support – through, twitter, through facebook, through this blog – to all of those who have lost loved ones, to those who are still waiting to hear from people, to those who are picking up their lives and soldiering on. I wish I could do more.

For those of you wanting to donate to the people of Christchurch there are a number of ways to do it

The Salvation Army is running an appeal – you can donate online, through their Westpac account 03 0207 0617331 00 or call 0800 0207 0617331 00

You can donate to the Red Cross at www.redcross.org.nz/donate or send a cheque to: New Zealand Red Cross 2011 Earthquake Appeal, Freepost 232690, PO Box 12140, Thorndon, Wellington 6144or you can donate to their Kiwibank account 38-9009-0759479-00 or direct credit transfer to their special appeals banks account –  ASB 12-3192-0015998-02 at any branch of the PostShop Kiwibank, ASB and ANZ

You can also donate to the collections that I am sure are springing up all around the country. I am going to a quiz night tonight at the Mighty Mighty, by way of distraction – they will be collecting money there.

I will write the category 1 blog – but now is not the time. It’s tough and it’s tiring, but I know we will get through it, and there are so many others who need our thoughts and words right now.

Anna vs the machine

Being about as practical as a rollerskate on a walrus, it will come as no surprise to many of you that mastering Paddy’s industrial sewing machine has proved a bit of a challenge for me.

That machine has an amazing ability to turn me into a swearing, sobbing, fabric munching, bobbin snagging monster. I don’t like it when i can’t do something and when something as simple as sewing a straight line flummoxes me, I become a very angry, frustrated little person.

But last weekend, I actually managed to complete something useful

Paddy quietly worked on his generator while I cursed and spat at the machine in an attempt to make drawstring bags to secure various bits and bobs onto the boat. It didn’t help that I’d left Paddy’s canvass-sewing-for-dummies book at home and that every ‘how to make a drawstring bag’ page on the internet started with “this is a great project for a child learning to sew” – and hardly any of them had pictures!

Now I like to think I am a reasonably smart person, but when it comes to reading technical stuff – I’m not the sharpest tool in the shed. So when something that was supposedly so simple that a child could pick it up just wouldn’t compute at all, I started getting pretty shitty with myself. In the end Paddy took pity on me and helped me make the first one (admittedly after a fair bit of “I should be able to do this myself dammit!” protesting from me) and once I actually saw one physically done, it made much more sense to me, and the rest were much easier.

One of the cool things about canvas is that instead of cutting it, you melt it – which means you get to burn along the edges with a hot-knife (kind of like one of those poker machines you use to make pretty designs on money boxes in woodwork at school.)

Burn baby burn!

Industrial sewing machines are quite grunty too – because they have to sew things like sails – so it was a wee while before I managed to master the art of the straight line…

Look! A straight line!

…and was pretty proud of myself when I did!

Okay, so they are only small – but they are something useful, and I made them myself!

The next step is a little more complicated and I will be enlisting the help of a lovely friend of mine Jenn, who knows a little more about this sewing lark than I. We are going to get stuck into the cockpit cushion covers, which should be a challenge!

Unfortunately, after celebrating my success with the drawstring bags,  I got a little cocky and tried to sew together a couple of lee cloths (basically a bit of netting that stops you rolling out bed when the boat gets a bit wobbly) but unfortunately and this point the sewing machine decided it didn’t want to play anymore and stubbornly refused to sew.

No matter what I tried it didn’t work and Dr Paddy ended up having to take a look under the bonnet.

Paddy operates on my nemesis
Checking under the bonnet

When this didn’t work we both decided it was probably time to put the machine away before one of us threw it at something. When it still wasn’t working days later, Paddy was muttering about taking it back to the guy he brought it from and I was convinced I was jinxed and had destroyed the thing.

But on a flight to Auckland Paddy had a Eureka moment. He was reading the  instruction manual on the plane (as you do…) and discovered that sometimes when sewing particularly thick material the machine’s timing can go a bit skewiff. The actual answer is much more technical but went in one ear and out the other – so I will leave it to Paddy to explain in the comments for anyone who is interested.

So I haven’t killed the machine, its sewing again and the big stuff is yet to come – will keep you posted.

Our boat has six eyebrows!

Over the past lord only knows how many nights, Paddy has been lurking in his shed pasting fibreglass into moulds and inhaling all manner of chemicals.

This has all been in the name of plastic surgery for Wildflower – eyebrows to be precise.

Like eyebrows for people – which are designed to keep sweat out of our eyes – eyebrows for boats are designed to keep water (rain, sea spray) out of open windows.

 

Monobrow!

 

This weekend we got the chance to complete Wildflower’s facelift and since so much work went into these things I feel the event should be documented.

Paddy with two of his creations

 

Paddy was so persnikety about his work that we even ended up with a spare – one perfectly fine specimen hit the cutting room floor just because it had a couple of tiny green splodges.

 

The successful candidates

 

Like plastic surgery, you have to mark where the work will be done…

 

Eyeliner
Emo Wildflower

 

And then there’s the heavy-duty eyebrow trimming

Slightly more hardcore than tweezers

 

 

And finally the application.

 

 

Perfectly sculpted eyebrows

 

 

Don't hate me because I'm beautiful
The bandages will come off tomorrow and an extra layer of sealant put around the edges and she’ll be good to go.
It was a labour of love for Paddy but he did an awesome job. The amount of work he’s done to make Wildflower what she is is phenomenal. I’m really proud of him – and his beautiful boat.

 

And I never lose my wallet

“And in my mind
In the far-away here-and-now
I’ve become in-control somehow
And I never lose my wallet

Because I
Will be the picture of discipline
Never fucking-up anything
And I’ll be a good defensive driver…”

In my mind – Amanda Palmer

Yes I have just bought Amanda Palmer’s latest album – and you are probably (quite rightly) wondering what on earth this has to do with sailing.

Well the lyrics to this particular song jumped out at me in so many ways – particularly looking what I’m about to do.

WARNING: The following involves navel-gazing and has nothing to do with the mechanics of sailing – so boat geeks  may wish to tune out now.

Right (rips off bandaid)

I’m turning 30 in couple of months (ouch – that really did hurt quite a bit!)

By the time I turned 30 I was supposed to have my shit together.   I was going to be more organised, I was going to have stopped being scatter-brained and losing things, I was going to be a confident, competent driver, I was going to have my own house and at least 3 cats. I was going to have a sense of direction and stop panicking and swearing when I got stressed. I was going to be a published author, a journalist that made a difference for people who needed it and I would have at least three pairs of matching socks.

I was dangerously close to getting some of that too. I had the journo job, I looked at houses, I forced myself to drive , I learned to use a filing cabinet –  and I wasn’t happy.

“…And in my mind
When I’m old I am beautiful,
Planting tulips and vegetables
Which I will mindfully watch over

Not like me now
I’m so busy with everything
That I don’t look at anything
But I’m sure I’ll look when I am older…”

So I packed it all in and moved to Wellington. I jumped to the dark side from journalism to comms for a teachers’ union (a job I love and hope does make a difference) I pretty much stopped driving (great public transport so no need) and I moved into a rented flat with my cat.

“And it’s funny how I imagined
That I would be that person now
But it does not seem to have happened
Maybe I’ve just forgotten how
To see
That I’ll never be the person that I thought I’d be.”

If we go by my original standards. I’m nowhere near where I am supposed to be right now.

Instead I met a dirty old pirate and am running away to sea with him. I learned how to sail, swim with beautiful creatures underwater and do a lot of other things that scare me. Sometimes when I look at it all it can seem quite overwhelming.

“…And in my mind
I imagine so many things
Things that aren’t really happening
And when they put me in the ground

I’ll start pounding the lid,
Saying, “I haven’t finished yet,
I still have a tattoo to get,
It says, ‘I’m living in the moment'”.

I still have to work on the swearing and panicking when I get stressed, I still lose things and get frustrated with myself when I do. There is so much to organise and learn and do before we go – and I wouldn’t want to be anywhere else in my life right now.

“…Maybe it isn’t all that funny
That I’ve been fighting all my life
But maybe I have to think it’s funny
If I want to live before I die
And maybe it’s funniest of all
To think I’ll die before I actually
See
That I am exactly the person that I want to be.

Fuck yes.

I am exactly the person that I want to be.”

To me this song says we can drive ourselves nuts with visions of who we should be and how we should act at certain points in our lives, and miss the amazing stuff that’s staring us right in the face.

That, and matching socks are overrated.

Rock on!

The countdown begins

It’s 2011 and it’s official – we are running away to sea in a matter of months.

I am excited, exhilarated and scared out of my mind.

Sorry Mother but this is not a window to try to talk me out of this! 😉 It’s a stock-take of my own capabilities – where I am now and where I need to be in a few months time when Paddy, Wildflower and I take on the briny deep.

This is really happening. I am stopping work, putting my life into storage and disappearing for eight months. It’s one of the biggest, maddest things I have ever done. I’m not going to lie to you, it’s scary – but scary in the most thrilling way!

We spent a fabulous week over New Year’s sailing around the Marlborough Sounds, which gave me the chance to hone my practical skills and work out where my head was at.

But I was faced with my first limitation before we even left the marina. I discovered that –  despite having done two sailing courses – nobody had actually taught me how to throw a sodding rope. Unfortunately trying to tie a boat up alongside a fuelling dock (in full view of  people on the waterfront having coffee in the sun) is not the best time to realize this! Luckily, after a few abortive attempts and a lot of ineffectual arm flailing, a kindly chap managed to catch the end of the rope and help pull us in.

This humiliation necessitated some remedial rope- throwing lessons once we got to the Sounds, and  I was pleasantly surprised to find that it wasn’t actually that difficult once I knew the technique (it’s all in the way you coil the rope before you throw it.) Being slightly ambidextrous also made things a bit tricky – but that’s the subject of an entirely different blog!

The Sounds were gorgeous – we chilled out in our favourite spot in Erie Bay where I did a lot of reading, writing, snorkeling (and maybe a teensy bit of wine drinking…) and then headed to one of Paddy’s favourite haunts, Flipper Bay – near Picton.

 

Chilling out at Erie Bay
Flipper Bay bound

On the way to Flipper Bay we did a bit of sailing and I got to practise my boathandling. Unfortunately –  because of  either crap weather or a depressing lack of wind (yes I am aware of the irony of the latter, living in Wellington) – most of the travelling I have done on Wildflower has been under motor. So I have actually had more experience on the little boats I learned in at the Port Nick Yacht Club than I have on the boat I spend half my time living on.

This meant I over-steered, under-steered and sailed us round in circles – which would have been fine if there weren’t so many other boats about! At that point I was getting so flustered that I would go into a blind panic every time another boat approached, despite the fact that I knew all the give way rules and exactly what I should do.

This was around the time that wretched little beast Self Doubt reared its ugly head. “How the hell am I supposed to take this thing around the Pacific when I can’t even get it to go in a straight line?!” The funny thing (and a credit to Paddy’s patience) was that the more I breathed through the frustration and just did it, the easier it became and the more I watched the other boats in the water and worked out where they were going, the less frightened of them I was. By the time we were heading home even the ferries weren’t phasing me.

Flipper Bay is a lovely spot. It’s sheltered, the water is relatively warm and it is surrounded by regenerated native bush. This means you wake up in the morning to a gorgeous chorus of native birds. There are also quite a few jellyfish (not the stingy kind!) about and they are fascinating to watch propelling themselves through the water.

Neighbours at Flipper Bay
Native bush at Flipper Bay
Paddy looking for mussels on the beach
What became of said mussels

Flipper Bay also has tame ducks. These crafty little devils have worked out that if they tap on the side of visiting boats in the mornings for long enough someone will eventually come out and feed them. Paddy once witnessed a mother duck teaching her babies exactly how to do this. We ran into a mother and brood while we were there but I don’t think she was the sharpest tool in the shed because while we were standing on the beach throwing out food for them she decided to swim the troops over to the boat that we were no longer aboard and tap in vain instead.

Mama duck and brood
But you're going the wrong way!
Mama duck's failed attempt to tap food out of Wildflower

We left Flipper Bay for Wellington when we had what looked like a good weather window and we had a gorgeous sail for a good part of the trip. We had a 25 knot northerly pushing us exactly where we wanted to go.

Waiting at the entrance of Tory Channel

Then we reached the south coast of Wellington – and things got a little exciting.

We probably should have reefed the sails in sooner, but we were having such a great trip. Unfortunately this meant we had quite a bit of sail up when we got walloped by the 45knot winds (gusting 50k Paddy says). When the boat started tipping so far on its side I thought we’d be able to converse with passing fish Paddy suggested we should perhaps pull in the sail. I agreed (in a very small voice while clinging to the safety rail with every muscle in my arms.)

A note for the worriers: The boat cannot tip over. It is physically impossible. Because of all the weight in the keel it will only lean so far sideways before righting itself again. Paddy has actually experimented with Wildflower to see how far she will lean (NOT with me aboard I might add!) Secondly, we are attached to the boat at all times by safety harnesses that we can move up and down the boat with.

I handled it fine for the most part (with a few terrified noises and the odd expletive) but there were a couple of gusts that had me praying under my breath. At one point we had a postage stamp sized scrap of sail up but were doing 9 knots (which is apparently faster than the boat is actually supposed to be capable of going) which I think was pretty impressive! In the end though it was nothing the boat couldn’t handle, and that’s what helped me through it. When I saw Paddy calmly steering the boat in the direction we needed to go it really helped.

It was actually really good for me to see that the boat can cope with those conditions easily. The only casualties were the wind indicator at the top of the mast (Paddy says we needed a new one anyway…) and a few books that came out of the bookshelf. Wildflower and skipper did brilliantly and it gave me even more confidence in both.

Besides, apparently it would be very unusual to come across conditions like that in the Pacific (touch wood). They do say if you can learn to sail in Wellington you can sail anywhere!

The northerly stuck around so we had a bit of a sloppy trudge into the harbour using the motor, but at that stage I was so pleased that we weren’t diagonal anymore that it didn’t faze me at all.

So in short (with a few hiccups along the way) this trip has given me more confidence in the boat, the captain and myself. I intend to get out on the water as much as I can before we go –  and to keep learning.

Captain Paddy got us home safe and sound