Travel Log from 2013!!

From reading back on the blog entries, I think we left our travel log at New Caledonia, so for those of you that are interested here is how we got to Port Philip Bay.

As previously mentioned we had a fantastic run from Futuna to New Caledonia, and it almost seemed a shame to stop, but we hadn’t given our advanced notice of arrival to Australian Customs, who requires minimum of 96 hours notice, so we needed to find some internet to do so and we had already planned to stop in New Caledonia .

We spent a week in New Caledonia, manly around Noumea, but with a few nights at anchorages just north of the city, to give us a break from the busyness of the city and anchorage. We saw a wild dugong, met up with friends from Nelson, Whangarei and Tonga as well as making some new friends.

I would like to go back and do some more exploring of this area at some time, especially the more remote areas, but in saying this it would be on the way north as we did find the slight drop in temperature noticeable and we weren’t in the water nearly as much as we had been. 

We left New Caledonia on the 31^st October passing through the outer reef at midday for a planned 850nm to Coffs Harbour, Australia.  Overall the trip was variable, with light winds, to no winds leaving us motoring for several hours most days or higher winds causing us to reef up and down several times a day.  Thank goodness for the generator and the ability to fill up the diesel tank in Noumea just before the credit card expired!

 We had a few exciting moments on the trip, one being during the day when Paige was on watch.  We were expecting a change in wind direction with a front later in the day, but it came through several hours earlier and stronger than expected. I was in the saloon with Paige, and we were sailing along nicely under autopilot, with wind from the N-NE , 15-20knots,  when all of a sudden it went very quiet and in less than 30 seconds the wind hit from the south, 20-25knots.  We hadn’t had a chance to change the sails, and called out to Dan who was having a nap to come and help us.  It took all of us to get the boat back on track, by turning off the auto pilot, sorting out the sails, which were all back winded and sorting out our heading again.

Another interesting time was just on dark of the same day.  Dan was on watch and I was heading off to bed for some sleep. All of a sudden there was a bang and the boat seemed to lurch and feel off.  Dan hurried outside to investigate and in the fading light quickly worked out something was wrong with the genoa.  With torch light we realised the genoa halyard and broken at the entry to the mast and the genoa was trying to fall down.  We quickly furled the genoa and instantly the boat felt sluggish, but there wasn’t much we could do at time. Over his watch Dan managed to get some of the genoa out so that the boat had better steerage and a bit more forward power but we were not making the speeds we had anticipated, so we contacted Australian Customs via the Satellite phone to let them know we wouldn’t get to Coffs Harbour in the time expected.

Finally on the evening of the 6^th of November, Dan once again celebrating his birthday out at sea, we set anchor in the outer harbour of Coffs Harbour. We were advised by the marine radio service there that we would need to wait until the morning to be able to clear customs, so we settled down to a full night’s sleep after another 6 days and 7 hours at sea.  

We had a week in Coffs Harbour, where we enjoyed the Botanical Gardens, the river walkways, the beaches and the pier. We met up with friends that we first met in Tonga and they shouted us a much appreciated coffee at the marina cafe. We spent time on free internet, organising for our mail to be sent to our next stop and sorting out our finances which weren’t looking very healthy, to the point that in the full week at Coffs we didn’t spend any money!

 

 

 

Our next stop was an overnight sail to Port Stephens where we collected our new credit cards, spent some money on re-provisioning the boat, getting Australian sim cards and internet connection. We also met up with the designers of our boat Jeff and Lorraine Schionning and the couple that Dan was to end up working for.  After meeting them, and a very informal job interview we made the decision to head south to Melbourne, Victoria. 

Next stop, Sydney, where we spent a week anchoring for free next to a dog walking park, just around the corner from the Sydney Fish Market where we could leave the boat during the week days for free under the watchful eye of the friendly security guards while we explored Sydney CBD.  We also spent some time with Dan’s brother Andy and on the Sunday morning headed out onto the harbour and up the tributaries.  This was a very nerve racking experience with many vessels out on the water creating lots of wake/wash and not seeming to observe many of the maritime rules for passing other vessels at an appropriate speed or on the right side! We left Sydney early on a Thursday morning after watching the Wednesday night race yachts out on the harbour on our way over to Manley.

 

 

We called into Jervis Bay for a few days waiting for the southerly to blow through, and then headed out again to continue south. The plan was to stop in Eden, but the wind was with us and would continue to be so we decided to carry on around the corner into Bass Straight.  I was a bit nervous about this notorious stretch of water, but we had the weather gods on our side and had a very benign passage, even having to motor at times due to no wind. The biggest issue we had was keeping an eye out for all of the shipping on the way down the coast and in the straight, especially at night, not having radar or AIS (automatic identification system). We again thought to stop at Wilsons Promontory, but realised if we stopped it could be up to a week before we could leave again for Port Phillip Bay, so decided to carry on. 

 

We knew we had to get to the entry for Port Phillip Bay on a slack tide and at the time we made the decision this was looking like what we would have.  Unfortunately the wind dropped away in the night, causing us to motor again, but not fast enough as when the wind came in it was from the South West and building. We didn’t get to the entrance until the tide was flowing out so fast it was causing the waves to stand up through the middle of the channel and at one point we were doing a boat speed of 9 knots, but only making way over ground at 1 knot. In hindsight it was very full on coming into the bay, with breaking waves almost as high as the spreaders, approximately 8.5m high, but at least they were from behind us. We negotiated the entrance by dropping the main sail and coming in with a partly furled genoa, which enabled us to have good steerage of the boat without going too fast.

 At one point I realised Rylee was busy taking photographs out of the side of the cockpit, and realising the conditions suggested he get his lifejacket on.  When he was inside doing so we were hit by a wave from behind with such force that he fell over.  He came out laughing, saying that that hadn’t happened before!  We slowly made our way through, negotiating a route that bypassed the steepest waves through the middle of the channel and avoiding the reef and rocky outcrops that surround the entrance.  We also came across a couple of turbulent areas that we later learned were created from large underwater holes. These were bigger than our boat footprint and when you hit the side of them they took the boat where they wanted, not where you thought you were headed!

After an hour of nervousness an d great skippering from Cpt Dan we came past Queenscliff and headed around the western coast of the bay towards Portarlington.  We made it as far as St Leonards for the first night and were in bed and sound asleep before 8pm after another three nights and days sailing.

The following morning we were up early and made our way around to Portarlington, with wet weather gear on and a wind so cold it was causing our noses to drip!  We were met by Dan’s new employers and had a quick tour of the local area before settling in for our year and a bit in one spot.

Getting Back to the Blog!

Firstly, big apologies for the LONG delay in blog entries.

For the past 15 months we have been based in Portarlington, Port Philip Bay in Victoria, Australia.

 

Dan has been working with a couple helping them along with their project of a 17m G-Force catamaran, designed by Jeff Schionning, the kids have been to school for the first time since 2009 and we even lived in a house for 7 months, leaving Division II on a mooring for the winter months.

Highlights of our time in Portarlington:

All the great friendships and connections we made

 

Visits from Family and Friends

Extracurricular Activities; Girl Guides, AFL, Soccer, Craft, Cards, Sailing

Lowlights of our time in Portarlington:

Weather

Anchoring Options

Realising our CQR anchor really doesn’t like holding in shifting sands in winds above 35 knots!

And now it is time for us to move on.  Rylee and Oliver have just finished  term one at the local primary school, in Grade Six and Paige has been back home schooling with me on the boat since the start of the year. We are currently in Williams Town, Melbourne having a cockpit cover made, as well as catching up on all the boat jobs that need doing that don’t get done when you are working up to 6 days a week.  Dan has been able to fit the generator start panel, replace spreader lights, noise insulating the generator, fitting new bed bases to go with our new mattress and will start making inroads to a few minor boat repairs that need attending to. 

The kids and I have been sorting and tidying bed spaces, food storage and living areas, in preparation for heading out into Bass Straight.

As well as all of this we have been exploring the local area, with a trip to Science Works, finding the local skate park, taking the boat up into Docklands, with a walk into Melbourne CBD and working out the best places to provision the boat from.

Our plans from here – to head North and find some place warm.  We have many options available to us and we will wait until we are further North before we make any firm decisions.  Firstly, get our cockpit cover finished, then finalise a few loose ties in the area and wait for the right weather to get out of the Rip at the entrance of Port Phillip Bay and head East towards Eden.  We may stop at Wilsons Promontory or Lakes Entrance but if the wind is going our way we will probably keep going while it is still comfortable.

Samoa in Retrospect

O.K. I am going back in time quite a bit here, but now have no excuse for not writing more extensively on our time in Samoa.

Getting there was not pleasant. As mentioned in a previous blog we planned to leave Tonga early Thursday morning and be in Apia, Samoa around lunch time on the Friday, which allowed us 27 hours to do approximately 200nm. Being in Niuatoputapu, we only had access to weather via our grib files, which gave a good indication of what was happening but not a very detailed picture. Hence the expected E-SE of up to 20knots ended up being NE-E with squalls up to 35knots, which made the trip quite uncomfortable at times and we had been hoping to sail between the two big islands of Samoa at first light but found ourselves able to see the pass at dawn but due to the wind angle needing to tack to be able to get through them and then once we were through finding that there was a westerly current with E winds that meant we couldn’t make headway as we were being pushed west, and we didn’t get into Apia until 1630. When we looked back at the weather for that time, we realised that we had sailed through a convergence zone meaning that the weather was more unsettled with squalls, and we also found out that as you get closer to the equator the trades do tend to back more to the East and this is the predominant wind for around Samoa.

There was another catamaran that had left Niuatoputapu the same morning we did and they were ahead of us and we heard them radio Apia Port Control for customs clearance from 1500, but were told that authorities had finished for the day and that they would need to clear in the morning. The next day being Saturday we thought this was strange, and as it transpired we were unable to clear until the Monday morning, which meant a weekend sitting on the boat in the Harbour. We had already realised that we would probably miss customs clearance earlier in the day when our progress was so slow, which was O.K. as we had jobs that would keep us busy on the boat. Dan did radio Port Control on the Saturday morning and they allowed us to go and get some water from the dock so we could get on with the washing. Again Dan needed to do further repairs to the stitching on the tramp as with the wind and waves in the squalls the day before the port tramp had come apart again. We also lost one of our life buoys from the life lines, one of the wind generators stopped working and on the Friday morning we lost hook and lure to a very big fish as the trace was bitten right through. The wind generator was an easy fix of a new fuse and we decided that if the fish was big enough to bite through the trace we didn’t want it anyway!

We did have a visit with the other catamaran that we arrived with, so that helped to break up the time, and there was VHF talks with a couple of boats that were in the marina that we knew which was helpful as they were able to help us with info about Samoa. Clear in on the Monday was swift and easy and all completed within a few hours, despite visits from three different agencies. Dan then organised for us to go into the marina so that we could give the batteries a good charge with shore power and make it easier to provision and get fuel etc. We had looked at prices for this in Tonga and had budgeted for two nights, so we thought we knew what we were going to need to pay, but when Dan went to do this when we were leaving the marina they asked if we were leaving Apia and we said that we were going back into the harbour for another couple of days, as we still wanted to do some jobs etc in Apia so she said to come back and pay when we were leaving. We did this and it transpired that they charge for anchoring including the days that we were there before we cleared in, plus the cardboard printed marina passes (which no one ever checked) and another $16.00 that we don’t even know what it was for, so of the $180.00 Tala we had they charged us $176.00 when we thought it would be $80.00 and we would have $100.00 for fresh fruit and veges! Needless to say this left a very sour taste in our mouth about the whole Apia experience, especially as I believe those boats anchored in the harbour that didn’t go into the marina were never charged for their stay. I feel if you are going to charge for anchoring it should be advertised and everyone should have to pay. If we had known it would cost us so much we would have not cleared in and carried on to Wallis.

 

 

 

One of the local colourful buses of Samoa

 

Kids enjoying the rare treat of an Ice Cream in Apia

 

 

In saying this we did get to meet up with friends Paul and Francis who we met in Whangarei on their yacht Monkey Fist that we weren’t expecting to see and as we had some paper work to sort out we also got a Samoan sim card for phone calls and a Digicel modem which gave us good internet access, even in Savaii Island, where we were originally told we wouldn’t get coverage. We also visited the Samoan Village in Apia, which is at the Tourist Visitor Centre and puts on a really great show for a donation and was very entertaining as well as helping to explain a lot of the cultural values that the Samoans have. We learnt about traditional cooking, arts and crafts and of course their tattooing.

 

Traditional Samoan Meeting House.

Oliver with our favourite entertainer of the day.

 

Woodcarving the Samoan way.

 

We also managed to get the generator coupling fixed (this had broken in Tonga and we had only been using the generator if really needed.) We found a blank coupling after visiting several likely looking motor parts shops and the staff there were really helpful, giving us phone numbers and address for engineering shops that might be able to machine it for us and even ringing them for a price. But they suggested to first try the NUS (National University of Samoa) where there was an engineering course. Dan found his way up there and they organised for one of the students to do it as a learning experience under the watchful eye of the tutor. When Dan went to collect it he took some cash, but also 2011 Rugby World Cup hats that we brought as gifts back in NZ and an outer of chocolate bars, and he also took Paige, so when the tutor knew we had kids, he didn’t let us pay and they shared the chocolates and hats among the class as payment. We also found a shop that had material on clearance, so we selected a couple of different styles with cotton to match and our friends on Monkey Fist that were heading to Niuatoputapu delivered that to them for us.

 

 

Because we had to wait for the coupling, also because you need a cruising permit to visit any other anchorages in Samoa, and we didn’t think we would have any internet access after leaving Apia and because we need the right weather for sailing we ended up staying in Apia for a week. We then headed west to the bigger Island of Savaii which was a good day sail to the first anchorage of Matuatu Bay. On the way we caught two Mahi Mahi within half an hour of each other, and as I am writing this we still have the last fillet in the freezer, so they have kept us fed for a long time!


We went for a walk on the Sunday morning in Matuatu Bay, leaving the dingy on a beach close to a resort as we had heard that every beach belonged to a family or village and that if you used the beach or shore waters you needed to pay for this. It wasn’t until a few days later that we realised we did pay for this as we were looking for the kids slip on, water proof shoes and couldn’t find them anywhere, and we remembered that we had taken them ashore at Matuatu but left them in the dinghy. Obviously where we had left the dingy someone decided they needed the shoes more than we did. If they had come to talk to us about it we could have given them something else from our stores as for the rest of the time away we needed to carry the kids to shore so there shoes didn’t get wet or they had to go barefoot, which in itself isn’t a hardship, but just inconvenient, especially as they are getting so heavy! We didn’t find any redeeming features at Matuatu and all the activities in the area needed to be paid for so we only stayed the one night before moving on to Asau Harbour.


We left in the afternoon for a short sail west, and are really glad we weren’t any slower as getting into the harbour was rather hair raising and would have been impossible in the evening. We could see Monkey Fist in the harbour but for the first time this trip our electronic charts did not match up with what we were seeing, both the Navionics and the Max Sea. We did finally spot some small bent channel markers and with all eyes on reef and current lines made our way into the Harbour and anchored up by the well kept but unused wharf at the eastern end of the Harbour. We spent six relaxing days there, swimming in the body temperature waters, jumping off of the wharf, meeting the local kids in the pools made out of the lava rocks on the shore and exploring the little island on the reef.

One of the many flowers in Asau found on our walks

One of the Local Churches

Rylee about to enjoy a swim, jumping in off of the targa bar.

The local kids came out to visit it.

Oliver mid jump!

 

 

We also spent a day helping Paul and Francis give out reading glasses through the Recycle for Sight programme run by the Lions. The reading glasses are collected by the Lions, checked for breakages and lens strength by a programme run in the women’s prisons in Australia, and then the volunteers get training on how to test and how to fit them for people who may not have access to them, such as in the Pacific Islands, Vietnam etc. Paul and Francis have helped thousands of people on their travels to help them to see and read again. The day after running one of their clinics the local minister said to them that all of the older people in the village were really tired as they had all stayed up late the night before reading with their new glasses! Paul and Francis had organised to run a clinic in Asau at one of the church halls. When we arrived the church ladies fed us a breakfast of egg sandwiches, kakao (Samoan Chocolate Drink) and fresh green coconuts. We then had a busy morning, testing and fitting everyone who arrived for reading glasses and some of them for distance glasses as well.

Paige helped by holding the pointer at the letter chart for checking distance vision and the boys helped by keeping the testing glasses clean and generally fetching and carrying. Sadly we couldn’t improve sight for some of the people due to severe damage to their eyes from diabetes or other issues, and for them there was a small range of sunglasses just to help with comfort from sunlight and wind. Other people were quite cheeky and wanted several pairs as they saw so many glasses but we had to explain that they would also be given out in other Islands as well. Rylee and Oliver also took many photos for Paul on his camera. There was also a small kindergarten at the hall and we gave away a pile of picture books to them. Paige read aloud to the group with the teacher translating while we were there. We also gave out soft toothbrushes to them, which we had brought from NZ, and I hope that they use them as many of them already had rotting teeth at ages 3 and 4. Once the rush of the morning was over, we enjoyed a lunch of taro, turkey soup, sausages and again green coconuts. Everyone seemed very grateful for the glasses and it was very enjoyable to be able to meet with people in this way

 

Our lovely cooking team.

Dark clouds over Asau.  One of the reasons we stayed a week, to avoid the squalls!.

As we still had internet access we were able to keep an eye on the weather, so we made the decision to set off for Wallis on the Saturday morning, knowing we were going to have light winds for the 210nm trip and aiming to arrive on the Monday morning to catch the slack tide for entering the pass into the lagoon. This ended up being no wind by Monday morning and we were still 60nm away from Wallis, so we made the decision to motor the last 60nm and get through the pass on Monday afternoon.
Our time in Wallis will be our next blog entry.

Photos from the past few months....

Rylee skurfing behind the big boat in Asau Harbour, Samoa.

Friends from Asau Harbour, Samoa. Rylee and Oliver spent many hours playing with these guys, despite not much English on their side and no samoan on ours. They had their own salt water pool right on their front door step which was lots of fun for all.

Local kindy kids, with Paige reading to them from some books that we were given to hand out from my work. The teacher was really pleased and said that they would be really helpful to her and the children. The best thing was this kindy was in a room with no windows right on the beach of the bay, with the breeze coming in...just magical.

Wallis stone formation in the middle of reef. We think it was a natural formation but you never know.

Paige and me on her birthday in Wallis, October 10th. And her Birthday Cake...Tongan No Egg Chocolate Cake recipe.

Some of the Wallis insect life...this thing was HUGE, the photo doesn't do it justice really!

One of the Islands in Wallis, we had an amazing first few days with very little wind and sparkling magic, but the place sure does change when that Easterly crops up....

And another of the Wallis wildlife that kept us all entertained for hours...again the photo doesn't do their size justice...