No Where in Particular

2007


    I needed to go sailing.  Not wanted.  Needed.   You’re a sailor.  You know what I mean.

    I had been back on THE HAWKE OF TUONELA for almost three months, and I had been sailing for two days.  Or more precisely for parts of two days.  A few hours.

    On the other hand I had worked on the boat for most of many days.  All the painting cycles had come together, like mid-ocean waves climbing onto one’s another backs, to become a great, cresting monster of maintenance.  Annual anti-fouling; every other year deck; and nine years topsides.  So I painted the 37’ sloop from the bottom of her keel to her mast step.  Most of her twice. 

    During a three week haul-out I spent six to eight hours every day, except for one when it blessedly rained, standing on ladders and scaffolding, holding a vacuum sander against the topsides.  I had never before used a vacuum sander, which is required by the boat yard.  The end attachment is shaped like a steam iron, and I felt as though I were ironing wrinkles from a very big shirt.  That, too, had to be done twice, with a finer grade of paper the second time after applying filler to several hundred spots.  For a while THE HAWKE OF TUONELA had measles. 

    I highly recommend vacuum sanders, which unquestionably saved the New Zealand environment and my lungs from pollution.  The sander also operates as a regular vacuum cleaner, but unfortunately requires far too much power for me to use away from an infrequent shore connection.

    I did a number of other things as well.   Resumed the never-ending struggle with mold and spiders, which thrive in my absence.   Installed a replacement chart plotter.  Rewired a solar panel.  Oiled wood.  Removed  the Monitor from the stern, disassembled it, inserted two spacer washers to try to prevent the main gears from separating when the servo-rudder is lowered into the water, as they recently and distressing had begun to do; and then reassembled it, which is a job better done by an octopus.  I was at least one, if not six, arms short.

    Interrupted three times by passing showers, I finishing applying nonskid paint to the deck two days before Carol arrived for Christmas, during what was New Zealand’s coldest December in sixty years.  December is supposed to be the start of New Zealand’s summer.  This year it was more like New England in fall without the leaf change. 

    A day that started off fine gave us the opportunity to head north to spend Christmas at Whangaroa, on the short list of my favorite anchorages in the world, and though in an absence of wind we powered most of the way, we did get the sails up, both coming and going.

    When Carol flew out, I took THE HAWKE OF TUONELA back to the boat yard dock to have the aluminum grid in the bilge repaired.

    In order to save weight on what was thirty years ago a racing machine,  Charley Morgan used aluminum where possible.  I have replaced most of this with stainless steel:  chain plates; stem fitting; rudder shaft.  But it would probably cost more than THE HAWKE OF TUONELA is worth to replace the structural grid in the bilge, so I am stuck with palliative repairs as needed. 

    During a hard passage between Cape Town and Fremantle in 2002, which saw eight gales in six weeks and two or three knockdowns, two cross-members cracked.  I had them sistered a few years ago.  During the recent haul  out I found a new crack in the aft port corner of the grid.  This needed to be repaired when the boat was in the water; and in fact when she was, the crack became invisible.  Still I knew it was there.  So back to the boat yard, where a brace was welded and bolted in place.

    This was not a difficult or even expensive job.  I had kept a length of 8 mm aluminum bar from the previous repair.  And two days later THE HAWKE OF TUONELA was once again swinging on her mooring.

    In mid-January summer had finally come to New Zealand.  A big high was sitting in the Tasman.  There were still things on my to-do list, but nothing that had to be done.  And, as I said, I really needed to go sailing.

    I like to make early starts, but I didn’t.  I was willing to power the first couple of miles north to where the bay widens, but I wanted to sail, so I waited until 9:30 to leave my mooring.

    The tiller pilot steered THE HAWKE OF TUONELA between New Zealand’s ever green hills for forty-five minutes, until off Russell the first cats-paws touched the water, and I set the sails and engaged the Monitor without a problem.  Perhaps the spacers had helped, but, disconcertingly,  I wasn’t sure because I have never really understood why the gears came apart.

    A gurgle from the bow.  The hull heeled a few degrees.  I repositioned my Sport-a-seat, leaned back and thought:  Ahh.

    A half mile north of Russell, the bay opens to a nine mile wide entrance between Cape Wiwiki six miles to the north and Cape Brett twelve miles  to the northeast.  I made several long, slow tacks against a light northeast wind, that slowly built to eight or nine knots.  

    My wind instruments had the speed right, but the angle wrong, showing  a constant reading of 109º to port.  While I like some features of my solar powered wireless Micronet system, such as the minimal power drain and the ease of repositioning displays, the system has not been reliable.  This was the third masthead unit in two years, and now it, too, was lying to me.  A display and a transmission head had also failed and been replaced.  I hadn’t had useful electronic wind data since one of those knockdowns between Cape Town and Fremantle dipped the masthead in the water and removed the unit of my previous system almost five years earlier.  For that matter I hadn’t had electronics on my first two circumnavigations.  But still there was still some lingering, forlorn wish that the thing should work.

    More than a dozen boats, mostly day trip commercial vessels following porpoise, were clustered north of me, so I kept south, near a line of islands separated from the mainland of the North Island by a half mile wide sound.  As the wind increased slightly, so did THE HAWKE OF TUONELA’s speed.  She tacked easily under the Monitor.  Loosen one control line, turn the vane with the other, let go the jib sheet, winch in.  It was good to use the boat and my body.

    A mile west of Cape Brett is an isolated rock, white with droppings, named after the birds who rest there.  I passed it near noon, and lunch was fish for us all:  salmon from a can for me and something fresher for  small penguins, bobbing on the surface, and gannets gliding and diving from above.

    I admire gannets.  Occasionally I see them from my mooring, but they prefer the deeper water of the northeastern bay.  They are about the size and shape of a large sea gull, but seem to have more character and dignity.  Sea gulls are too much like us:  omnivorous; aggressive; and loud.  Gannets, with their golden heads and white bodies with black tipped wings, are beautiful and workmanlike.  They hunt, rather than scavenge, with power and grace.  And, plummeting into the water, they put on a show for me as THE HAWKE OF TUONELA glided east.

    The warm breeze veered slightly, forcing us close to Piercy Island, which lies a couple of hundred yards off Cape Brett.  Captain Cook named them both for Rear Admiral Sir Piercy Brett.   It is possible to sail between Sir Piercy’s names, but we were likely to be becalmed in Piercy Island’s wind shadow, so I kept to windward.

    Afternoon day trip boats sped past, taking visitors to view one of the world’s many “Holes In the Rock”.  A year or so ago, one of them lost power while going through the hole and drifted aground.  The passengers were removed by helicopter, but salvaging  the wreck proved impossible and it sat there for several months until the sea claimed it.

    I let the Monitor steer THE HAWKE OF TUONELA into the South Pacific and a sense of openness and promise as the land fell away behind us.  This is good, I thought; but I need more.  My mooring is perfectly situated, surrounded by beauty and quiet and enough facilities on the shore, in one of the world’s truly great cruising  grounds.  But increasingly I miss the open ocean.  I looked ahead and let my mind run five thousand miles to Cape Horn; but then I would like to sail in the other direction, up the deserted northern Queensland coast from Cairns to Cape York again, too. 

    Well, neither was going to happen this day, and I needed to decide what to do next.  I also needed to change into Levis and a long-sleeved shirt.  Proximity to the hole in the ozone layer over Antarctica has surprisingly, considering climate and distance from the Equator--the Bay of Islands is at 35ºSouth--enabled northern New Zealand to surpass Queensland, Australia, as the melanoma capital of the world.  Even with sun screen I had had more than enough sun for the day.

    Back on deck I rejected spending the night at sea, sailing east until midnight and then turning back, because I expected that the light wind would die after sunset.  I had many choices.  Inside the bay are almost countless anchorages.  I have four or five favorites, depending on wind direction.  Any of them would do tonight.  But I turned THE HAWKE OF TUONELA’s bow  slowly toward a small harbor five miles south of Cape Brett I hadn’t visited for a long time.  I had been sailing to no where in particular, which had just become a place called Whangamumu.

    Falling off to a beam reach decreased the apparent wind, and our boat speed dropped to three knots.  I watched two other boats, one a catamaran motor sailing with her main sail set, the other a small power boat, pass inside of me near a steep coast reminiscent of California’s Big Sur and make the turn into the harbor, before a mile off I started the Yanmar and gave up sailing myself.

    Whangamumu has a double entrance.  The first is between a rock named Flat, which it may once have been but is no longer, and a peninsula to the south, and the second, narrower, a half mile further on.  As I neared the second,  I saw a number of boats inside.  New Zealand’s long summer holiday was ending and I assumed that most of them were making their way back to Auckland.  There was still plenty of room to anchor, and I let go the Spade in 20’ of dark green water at low tide.  The clarity of that water momentarily startled me as the anchor remained visible all the way to the bottom.

    Another thing struck me about that water.

    THE HAWKE OF TUONELA’s gel coat is yellow, but when I bought her she was painted Awlgrip’s Jade Mist Green.  Green is not my favorite color for a boat; the burgundy I had on RESURGAM is.  But when I painted her nine years ago, I wanted to use International's one part Brightside and burgundy was not available, so I choose their teal.  I use one part paints because of ease of application and touch-up.  I use International because I know I can get their paint all over the world.  However they double-crossed me by dropping teal.  So this time I had to change to their sea green.   It is a good dark green, but I do not think it matches the sea.  What I realized as I looked over the side is that it is the exact color of the water at Whangamumu that afternoon.  So THE HAWKE OF TUONELA is actually Whangamumu green.  I’m sure International will want to make the correction.

    A few more boats came in after I did and by sunset there were sixteen, including THE HAWKE OF TUONELA, with room for many more.

    I was anchored in the center of the oval harbor.  Most of the other boats were clustered near the ruins of the old whaling station on the north shore.  I was nine miles due east of my mooring at Opua, but had covered thirty-two miles north, east and south to get there, all but five under sail.  Twenty-seven miles.  There is so much difference between crossing oceans and day sailing.

    At 9:00 p.m. I took a glass of wine and went back on deck to look for Comet McNaught, reportedly the brightest visible for several decades, and as the sky darkened, there it was to the southwest, looking just as a comet should:  a ball of light trailed by a long tail fanning out with  distance.  I had read that it is millions of miles long.  In the sky it was perhaps six inches.  Although the comet moved only slowly toward the horizon as the Earth revolved, it somehow gave an impression of great speed, of rushing into space.  I found myself trying to imagine what primitive men must have thought when they saw such an object suddenly appear in the night sky.

    The comet reminded me of the story told of the poet Conrad Aiken in John Berendt’s MIDNIGHT IN THE GARDEN OF GOOD AND EVIL.

    Aiken and his wife used to take a pitcher of martinis and go sit near his parent’s grave in a cemetery overlooking Savannah harbor.  One afternoon he noticed a ship pass with the name COSMOS MARINER, which pleased him.  And when they returned home and he checked the newspaper’s shipping news, he found:  ‘COSMOS MARINER:  destination unknown,’ which pleased him even more.

    I found myself counting back to when I had last sailed into Whangamumu.  It must have been either October of 1991 or January of 1992.  Fifteen years ago.  At age sixty-five it seemed unlikely that I would be sailing in again fifteen years from now.  But then again I might. 

    Cosmos mariners.  Destination unknown.