I'm sure Napolean would have loved this to be the title of his later life memoir, but for us it looks like this Thursday is the day.
It hasn't been an easy decision because we don't set off on major ocean crossings without everything on Wind Wanderer working properly, and even then we have breakages and gear failure before we get to our destination. As silly as this sounds, it's normal and common to most yachts doing long passages. The elements can be brutal. The tongue in cheek description of a cruiser's life is one of repairing boats in exotic locations.
The longer we've spent here the more stories have emerged of sailors who sailed in 2 years ago and are still here. Only one or two, but without an airline service a simple mistake at either end of the order and a quarter of the year has gone by the time the right part arrives, if South Africa has it. If they don't, 3 to 5 weeks delivery from the USA to Cape Town, and if it just misses the ship, add another 4 weeks 'til RMS gets back to Cape Town, and another week to get to St Helena.
On the other hand the lift out here is cheap, and so is labour. On the other hand (I feel like Tevye in Fiddler on the Roof) climbing up and down the ladder, and it's a fair way down, to get to the public toilets and showers wouldn't do much for the sweet harmony on the boat. Stay in a guest house? Sixty pounds per person per night, or around $250 Aussie for the two of us.
We're also not that convinced about their claimed ingenuity and 'make a plan' skills.
I tried to get our propane (LPG) tanks filled for 3 weeks while watching our last tank steadily going down. Nobody could come up with a simple adapter so their filler fitting would work with ours. Theirs work with UK and South African tanks. We have American tanks that in addition to the large, outside conventional thread, have the left hand internal thread so we've been able to connect all around the world, apart from Tahiti, but there we had enough to go on with. We could even fill our tanks in South Africa.
After trying just about everything it looked like we were going to have to buy a local tank at great expense to use here and get us to the Caribbean. I knew Louis on Ave Del Mar had an old regulator he doesn't need that would screw into our tanks and I already knew how to drill through the one way valve. The problem was finding a fitting that their filling connection would screw into. To make things more difficult, they aren't allowed to use anything connecting gas hose with hose clips. They have to be rigid clips of the type only factory produced hoses would have, or all metal.
It was looking like I'd have to find an old, out of date local tank to try and plunder the valve, and with this last resort solution in mind I went to talk to Larry at the Rose and Crown. He'd become out 'local guy' ever since helping us tie to the mooring on our arrival when our transmission failed.
Larry dragged me through his shop and out the back to a junk room and started searching. Years ago he had some tanks arrive from the UK that came with some Y shaped connectors for taking two gas lines from one. The foot of the Y was male left hand thread and the arms female. We suddenly had a bit of everything. I cut off the foot, had the hole braized closed and screwed it into one arm as a plug. The other arm would take the local filler fitting. The cut off foot had thick walls so I could drill out the hole to allow a force fitting of the old regulator. Voilla!
I presented the odd looking adapter to the service station on 'gas filling day', avoiding the 16 pound service fee on any other day! The price of gas here is bad enough, 20 pounds for 4 kilos. George scratched his head and looked skeptical. He knew we'd been trying to find a solution for weeks.
"Well, it's got no hose clips so I guess I can give it a try..."
We had to wait until late afternoon because they take the tanks somewhere inland to fill them. It worked perfectly. We have two full tanks, about 2 months supply and plenty to get us to the Caribbean. George said his boss would buy our adapter because they've turned away hundreds of tanks from visiting yachts over the years. I thought I might take a thousand pounds for it, but I doubt he'd buy and we may just need it again somewhere.
While stewing over the question of repairing here or sailing a broken boat to Trinidad with it's vast boat repair resources, Hokulea arrived.
Hokulea is an Hawaiian war canoe and was built to traditional standards in the 1970s with a view to establishing that Hawaiians could have explored far and wide using their stars only navigation and that they could sail to windward.. They are actually more a catamaran with 2 hulls and 2 masts with sails shaped like a leaning V. There were 10 or 12 crew, many Hawaiian and this time they are doing a circumnavigation. The crew changes for different legs and once again they are going traditional and navigating by the stars. There is one place in Hawaii where this skill is handed down, so I guess the captain and the navigator don't change. The navigator is quite young, maybe in his 30s and to sail from Cape Town and find St Helena in the middle of the South Atlantic is amazing, particularly when yu consider southern hemisphere stars are different to the northern hemisphere.
But their idea of 'traditional' was interesting. They had propane for cooking and ipads, and at night they walk around with little LED lights on their heads. But they don't have an engine and carry all their own water, or catch it when it rains. They do have a 45ft yacht as a support vessel that trails them by about 5 miles and has all the modern gear, but they claim they haven't had to be helped or corrected so far.
Having said that, they left on a day with light wind and not from an ideal direction, having the non-supporting support vessel tow them further out to sea. I guess support has levels of definition. It's most likely they have deadlines to meet for crew changes so tradition has to wear the pressures of the 21st century.
Nevertheless we found the whole project interesting and inspiring.
And talking of inspiring, the ARC rally boats arrived, and left, just over a week ago. This is now a big enough event for them to start one each year. Basically it's a rally for people who want to do a circumnavigation with everything organized for them, and in the company of other yachts with assistance available if you get into trouble. They have parties at their destinations and sightseeing tours organized etc. It's expensive to sign up and so the boats are usually big and expensive. Many participants are elderly and you get the impression they have worked all their lives, have a great boat, and can quickly do a circum in 18 months before heading for their next bucket list item. The younger participants have money but not the experience or confidence to do an ocean crossing.
Jimmie Cornell who started them is a sailing guru and most of us use his book, World Cruising Routes as our first reference when planning a voyage.
The first boat in was Makena, a huge Lagoon catamaran. It arrived at night and all we could see was a very high mast, and nav lights so far apart you could fit a small suburb between them. The mooring field here is tricky with enough hazards in daylight and a classic example of why we don't enter anchorages or harbours after dark.
They were talking to St Helena Radio who told them Port Control would call them back. It was after hours so they would have been on standby.
We watched the cat coming in closer but up at the far end of the bay where they would run foul of all kinds of lines and moorings for local boats. They were inching in and had a spotlight so wouldn't get into too much trouble but there was just nowhere to moor there.
St Helena Radio could have helped them but they are sticklers for rules and protocol and just kept replying that Port Control would get back to them.
Well, we're great believers in the cruising culture of helping each other out so after giving Port Control 20 minutes to respond, we called Makena. You could hear the relief in their voices.
We quickly established they were 33 tons so would need one of the scarcer red moorings. The yellow ones have a 20 ton limit. Fortunately we'd been out in the dinghy the previous day and noticed there was just one red buoy available ahead of the boat in front of us.
We guided them towards us by flashing a strong torch, and then Sandy stood at the tip of the bowsprit where she could shine the beam on the red buoy while I talked them in on vhf 16.
We watched their $2m cat manouvering with 2 big engines and powerful bow thrusters until they were right over the mooring. We'd love to rough it like that!
Over the next few days we saw a variety of boats arrive and met a few of them on the ferry. We took a particular fancy to a London registered Amel 54 ketch. It was a cream coloured boat with all the trim maroon, including the running rigging. Even their fenders had maroon covers with their name embroidered on.
For about a week around 13 ARC boats came and left and the ferry guys ran themselves ragged, as did the charter operators, car rentals, tour guides, laundrette, and town in general. Even Steve in Port Control, who has become a good friend, actually had to work! The RMS St Helena came in adding all its passanger activity to the mix. And just to crown it all, the whale sharks which are late this year, arrived. We've even had one visit our boat. They are the biggest fish in the ocean and can grow to 60 ft. Very docile, they just glide along in all their distinctive chocolate brown with white spots livery, gulping huge quantities plancton and at this time of year, tuna eggs.There has been a research team here tagging them to study their travels.
But now we're down to just a couple of cruising boats again and tomorrow we'll be leaving this little bit of uniqueness, weather permitting, and setting our course for Trinidad in the Caribbean. It's THE place to get work done with boat yards and exxperienced personel and cheaper than America, although probably not by much.
We will be engineless apart from topping up the transmission to chug out of here, and doing the same at the other end to get into the boatyard at Chagauramas. At around 3800 nm, or 7500 kms it's a long haul and given we'll most likely have a dead patch crossing between northern and southern hemisphere wind systems, we're expecting to be at sea for around 5 weeks. We're carrying extra water because our watermaker is old and down by 50% production. We've got the generator running sweetly and can use the main engin to charge batteries at night too should it fail. The broken strut is stable enough and will manage with the short amount of engine work ahead.
The currents are tricky approaching Trinidad but we've collected advice from those who know the area and chosen the best route. The Venezuellan pirates issue worried us a lot, the last 2 incidents involving yachts were only last December, but by all accunts their main interest is fishing vessels. Christmas to Feb/March is huge for Trinidad as boats come in from all over the Caribbean for Carnival, second only to Mardi Gras in Rio. It's big for their economy, as is the boat industry in general and they have responded vigorously with coast guard patrols, including air, and there have been no more incidents since then. We would not be heading there if we didn't feel the risk is now low.
Once again a quick little post has gotten out of control!
Until next time...