George the incompetent autopilot, rudderless in the night, and the second half
Wednesday 30th March
It’s 05:50 and we’re at 1,211 nm with 15 knots of wind off our port bow. We’re still goose-winged and it feels a bit choppier than it has done through the night. The stars are absolutely amazing. I can’t open my eyes wide enough to take it all in. The nebular puffiness of the milky way is so clear, and I even had a couple of shooting stars pop by to say hello. This is the reason I came on this trip.
Yesterday we had an accidental jibe, as George, our autopilot that works off the wind direction, had a momentary lapse of concentration and so we swung around. The boom would have come sailing around and caused quite a lot of damage had the preventer not done its job. A snatchblock, however, died a painful death in the process. It completely bent the metal and snapped on one side…. A reminder of how powerful this wind can be and how careful we need to be to catch it safely. Not a good idea to have something go wrong at this stage…. We also turned the clock back another hour today as we reached Longitude 120 West mid-morning.
Thursday 31st March
It turns out that the unintentional jibe the other day ripped the rivetted kicker stay plate from
the main mast… Charlie (the skipper) spent most of yesterday drilling out the old rivets and reattaching the plate with much bigger rivnuts. I spent some time rifling through the workshop to find bits and pieces to give to him.
Today the wind is quite a lot lighter than the previous days – 13 knots apparent from the same direction – about 120 degrees off port. So Charlie and Will put the gennaker up – it’s so pretty. It’s much bigger than either the main or genoa. It’s only used in light winds as it’s made of very thin material. We’re now zooming along at 6.5 knots. We are 1,011 nm to Nuku Hiva and getting excited about the countdown to be in just triple digits... I have been keeping up the night-watch strength and conditioning exercises but definitely feel like my first run is going to hurt…..
Saturday 2nd April
The day was lovely, light winds, but with the gennaker up, we’re making good progress. We have been sleeping better, and the boys have no school so are happy in front of their Nintendo switch.
Into the evening, the weather got a bit squally and we put down the gennaker. At about 10pm, on Helen’s watch, a massive wave hit us and suddenly the boat had a strange floppy, directionless feeling. All of us shot up, Charlie got to the cockpit first, shortly followed by Will and me. The wind was up, gusts up to 35 knots were hitting and the rudder was unresponsive…. The roll on the boat was like nothing I have felt before. We were getting knocked all over the place. Charlie was telling us all what to do and was fairly calm but we could tell that this wasn’t a normal situation. Life jackets on, genoa down, and figure out what was going on with the rudder.
Within a couple of minutes, Charlie had diagnosed the problem: the boat’s wheel links via a chain to two cables leading down, through the engine room to the boat’s rudder. Bolts link each end of the chain with a cable. One of those bolts had sheared in two under the pressure of the waves. In the dark, with red headlamps, we got the tools out of the workshop. Will found a replacement bolt and Charlie set to work dismantling the steering casing. Will and Helen were then in the stern cabin, lifting up floorboards to find the emergency tiller, assembling it in sections, and passing it up through the stern hatch so that it linked directly from the rudder top (in the hull of the stern cabin) to the deck. Still rolling all over the place about 30 mins later, but with the bolt in the steering chain replaced, it turned out there was another problem further on. We could now turn to port, but not starboard. Undeterred, Charlie then went down to the stern cabin and fixed some cabling in the rudder top assembly that had flown out with the original impact.
Poor Kit had a load of books fall on his head and so was up and about. We sent him back to bed, trying to be calm and collected.
After nearly 2 hours, we were done. Problem fixed. Completely jacked on adrenaline, and the boat still rocking from the high winds, no one could sleep. Needless to say, the next day was more a case of surviving rather than actually achieving anything.
It’s also worth saying that through it all, everyone was completely calm and helpful. Charlie in particular switched into pro skipper mode – full of positivity, without underplaying the seriousness of the situation (he told us later that people abandon boats when they lose steering…). Having a logical mind to work backwards from symptom to diagnosis is absolutely vital in these scenarios. The rest of the team need to pull together, appreciate that everyone is working to keep their fear under control (hence adding to it by vocalising yours won’t help), and build on the positivity.
Having recovered from the exciting Saturday night, I felt like I wasn’t getting my fix of star gazing before the sun came up and so I have now switched shifts with Will. Charlie wakes me up at 3am with a cup of tea and I’m handing over to Will at about 5am.
Boat-birthday, land ahoy - Week 4
It’s my birthday! Will gave me an ironman training book recommended by a friend and the next instalment of Stephen Fry’s Greek history book – “Heroes”. The Panks gave me a beautiful turtle bracelet and some Galapagos place mats.
I also got 2 wonderful hand-drawn cards from the nephews. I do love that they call me DrAuntie Lisa. It never gets old. Totally the best thing to come out of having done a PhD. I got some lovely birthday messages on the satellite phone – thank you Stockdale parents, Pankrents, Cathryn and Julia!
I speed-read the ironman book and after putting all thoughts (and many frustrations) of training on hold during this ocean crossing, I am now getting incredibly itchy to re-start my training. We passed the 300 nm to go point and we’re counting down the hours until we reach our destination.
I was then entirely spoiled by Helen who conjured up breakfast pancakes, a lemon drizzle cake and sweetcorn and halloumi fritters for dinner.
Thursday 6th April
Land ahoy!!!!! Will spotted Hiva-Oa on his shift at about 6am. It is so wonderful to see land.
Wonderful and completely annoying that we have to sail right past it to the next island to check in, due to Covid restrictions. So off we go to Nuka Hiva, an extra 60 nm west. Passing by the island, we did get some mobile data and so I managed to download my whatsapp messages and saw more birthday messages! Thanks guys.
As I’m writing we are still 44 nm away from our destination so we’ll likely be anchoring in the middle of the night.
Friday 7th April
As forecast, we were still 20 nm or so off the tip of Nuku Hiva as darkness fell, so we kept the night watches going one last time...
We heaved-to around 02:00 local time, in a spot about 10 nm Southwest of the main port, Taiohae, with the wind coming in from the Southeast. That gave us plenty of sea-room to manoeuvre in case something unexpected happened (like a gale fetching up), and left us with a really nice point of sail to turn round into at first light for the run into port.
I had a pretty poor night's sleep, and spent some of it in the stern cabin, some in the saloon, and some of it on deck, trying to find somewhere where I was comfortable.
Will must have noticed, because the first thing I knew about my night-watch shift was him waking me up, with light streaking through the curtains, to tell me we were now heading into Taiohae, and that he'd taken my shift to let me sleep. He said the sight of our destination finally emerging out of the night's gloom was pretty special though, so maybe it wasn't entirely altruistic!
We all got a bit emotional as we finally drew in to land, and there was a bit of hugging and high-fiving. To top it all off, we even got a hail and welcome on the radio from our buddy boat, Selkie, who we'd hung out with on Galapagos, before we left, and who Charlie and Helen have been sailing with since the Caribbean. It was nice to see some friendly faces/sails after that long on our own!
As you can see, this has largely been Lisa’s diary of the trip, with some contributions from Will thrown in. Will has spent most of his writing energies on his book – I think he plans to write a separate blog about that soon. But he did have a few thoughts he wanted to add as a postscript. Over to him:
Will's Postscript
The one area where I can honestly say we have not had to lower standards is eating, thanks to having two great chefs on board. Lisa and Helen have really performed something akin to miracles with fairly meagre (and, as discussed above, often less-than-fresh) ingredients. Fresh cake and bread have gone a long way to keeping the crew happy day after day.
I also continue to be amazed by the ergonomics of boat life. Every time I think I’ve discovered the last hidey-hole on Lucky Girl, Helen will lift a meta-panel, and reveal the chocolate, or the biscuits. Smart girl, putting those the furthest out of reach from the crew.
I won’t deny it though, we’ve spent 14 days crossing now (*not true: we've arrived now. But like I said, this is a retrospective!), and have somewhere around another 9 still to go: life passes slowly. It’s a small space for 4 adults and 2 kids. Lisa and I are used to doing some form of cardio pretty much every day. We like getting out. Hard to argue we’re not out here, but as you can imagine, it’s a cruel sort of out, where it’s all around you but you can’t touch it!
There’s mental perspective to be found, also. You have two options, really: either go crazy, or embrace the solitude. There are no distractions, and no worldly cares. We know there’s a world going on out there, but for the moment it doesn’t matter, and we can’t connect with it, even if we wanted to. A little bit of me hopes vainly that by the time we arrive in French Polynesia the war in Ukraine will be over, and Putin will have stepped down. Too much to hope for? Probably. But it can’t hurt to dream.
So with the world placed in a sealed box for a few weeks, it’s just about us. I’ve read more books in these past 3 weeks than I’ve managed in the past 3 months. I’ve written about 25,000 words towards my next book (I'll stick a link up here soon, or you can just go and have a peek from time to time...), I’m catching up on some recommended TV (see our last post!), and I’m getting some solid guitar practice in.
And of course we’re spending some quality time with our family. Lisa in particular has been amazing with the boys. They’ve been taught about vaccines and epidemiology from a world authority! I’ve just about managed to hold their attention long enough to explain the apostrophe, and to write them a homemade crossword.
The boys know no different, of course. They’re 7 and 9 and, having spent the past 2 years on board, what came before is probably little more than a hazy memory. A couple of times there have been some minor panics (sudden squalls and heavy seas, usually, and of course, the night-time rudder fun), but the boys climb obliviously up to the cockpit fully laden with boxes of Lego as big as themselves, and proceed to spray bricks in all directions (in the way that only a true lover of Lego can).
And so we run on, boats following the current, borne ceaselessly on to our future...
