Racing Myself


2009


    2149. 

    That was the number of miles from where THE HAWKE OF TUONELA was swinging on a mooring off the most recent reincarnation of the Bora-Bora Yacht Club to her home at Opua, New Zealand.

    From the beginning I had intended to complete this circle in less than eighteen months; but along the way I discovered that I was ahead of the then world record 203 sailing days of my first circumnavigation; and I must admit that now I wanted to beat that time.  If I could cover those 2149 miles in less than 33 days, an average of only 65 miles a day, I would.       A former race boat, THE HAWKE OF TUONELA sails well.  She has many more days of more than 160 miles in twenty-four hours than under 100, and to that point in the voyage had only one day’s run of less than 65 miles.  I was confident as I sat on deck the night before I left and watched locals paddle pirogues across Bora-Bora’s beautiful lagoon.

    Two and a half weeks later, I wrote:  ‘I might not break EGREGIOUS’s record after all.    It was inconceivable that I would make a passage this slow, but isn’t any longer.’

    Between the vision and the reality falls the shadow.


    It began well enough.

    I dropped the mooring at first light, powered across a smooth lagoon and out the pass, and when I set the main and genoa and turned southwest, the 37’ green sloop made an easy six knots with the southeast trade wind on the beam.  An easy return to the sea.

    The wind weakened that afternoon, then strengthened after dark, giving us a rougher but faster ride for three days with noon to noon runs of 137, 150 and 150 miles.  On the fourth night I saw the loom of light from Raratonga; and the island itself was visible sixteen miles to the south at dawn.

    We were making a fast passage.  And then we weren’t.

    The wind faded.  THE HAWKE OF TUONELA began being thrown around on leftover seas.  Raratonga is a high island, but not that high and too far away for us to be in its wind shadow.

    I set the big asymmetrical on the gennaker furling gear to stabilize us.  It worked.   My own white cloud got us moving again at five knots, though 20º high of course.

    In mid-morning I jibed to point us west instead of south on what became, despite a falling barometer, a classic high pressure day:  pure blue sky, decreasing wind, smooth sea. 

    I took a solar shower in the cockpit, and then listened to music on deck, as THE HAWKE OF TUONELA, heeling a few degrees, glided ever more slowly onward.  By mid-afternoon the wind was down to six knots and our SOG--speed over the ground from the GPS--was hovering around four knots. 

    Seven or eight thousand miles behind us, my high school class was holding its Fiftieth Reunion.  In absentia I was given an award for being the person who had travelled the farthest not to be there.


    Before a passage I am often asked what my plan is,  and my invariable reply:  I will do what the wind lets me.  I look at the pilot charts, although I know that these are averages that may have no relevance to a single event.  And after all these years and voyages, I hold the world in my mind.  On this circumnavigation I had previously visited every place except Cocos/Keeling, so generally I know what to expect.  Then I go and I adapt.  Beyond Raratonga what the wind would not let me do was sail to New Zealand.

    Light wind.  No wind.  Head wind.  Gale.  A formula for a slow passage.

    By sunset the wind had all but died.  The spinnaker drooped more than it flew.  Our SOG was a dismal 1.9 knots. 

    In the dark cabin I watched the PIRATES OF THE CARIBBEAN; and the next afternoon, just after I had logged a day’s run of 67 miles, a pirate ship came over the horizon.  At first I could not believe my eyes as the tips of three masts appeared, then an entire fully rigged ship.  The sails were not set.  I was the only one trying to sail that day.  She was powering east, and it was a good day for it.  I have encountered real pirates, and I did not think this really was one, but either a training vessel or a cruise ship.  I couldn’t make out her national ensign.  I could see that she wasn’t flying the Jolly Roger. 

    She powered steadily east until she disappeared, while we ghosted slowly west and didn’t.

    Increasing low white puffs of trade wind cloud caused me to expect an increase in wind, and it came in late afternoon on the beam.  I lowered the spinnaker, and changed  to main and genoa.  Seven to eight knots of breeze moved THE HAWKE OF TUONELA at six knots, and when the wind rose all the way to ten knots, our SOG was 6.7 to 7.1 across smooth seas.  She needs so little; but she got less.

    I fixed myself a gin and tonic, sans ice, and while drinking it on deck, enjoying THE HAWKE OF TUONELA’s motion, saw a dolphin rise beside the bow.  Unlike some sailors, dolphin are not loners.  You never see just one, and a moment later five other glistening backs arched from the water,  Then more and more.

    With Sarah Brightman singing over the cockpit speakers, I finished my drink, boiled water for freeze dry babotjie, and ate dinner on deck.

    Perfectly glorious.

   

    But perfection does not last:  if it did we wouldn’t recognize it.

    A day’s run of 121 miles--normally disappointing but a triumph in view of what was to come--was followed by one of 108 miles, and then 67, 82 52, 56, 93, 97, 66, 88, 99, 81, 90, 146, 67, 90, 73.  Eleven less than 100 mile days in a row, and fourteen out of fifteen.  By far the two slowest weeks of the entire circumnavigation back to back.

    The days were mostly beautiful and sunny.  The nights were mostly lousy, but not always in the same way.  Variety is everything.

    I was awake most of one night while THE HAWKE OF TUONELA lurched and rolled, the jib collapsed and refilled, sheets and blocks banged. 

    And awake most of the next after a line of clouds from the west just before sunset caused me to lower the spinnaker I had set that morning.  I sat on the foredeck, leisurely coiling the sheets and furling line--after all we weren’t going much more slowly with the sail down than we were when it was up--watching clouds overrun the sky, before setting the jib.

    In an hour we had a 25-30 knot headwind.  Torrential rain pounded on the deck, accompanied by lightning and thunder.   At 10:00 p.m. it abruptly stopped, and I set the mainsail with a single reef because in darkness complete except for a sinister swollen orange sliver of moon, I couldn’t tell if more wind and rain were coming.

    For the rest of the night we rattled and slatted, except for three times when I found us sailing slowly east, with the jib backed.  

    During passages I routinely have my instrument system display SOG and COG--Course Over Ground--from the interfaced chartplotter’s GPS rather than speed and heading from the system’s own paddlewheel transducer and fluxgate compass.  After several failed attempts at balancing THE HAWKE OF TUONELA, I realized that under these conditions that was a mistake.  I switched from COG to the fluxgate compass’s true heading and found them to differ by almost 180º.   Although the bow was pointing west, the GPS showed us sailing east.  It couldn’t tell that we were going there backwards.  There are truths you don’t want to know.

    For a few days the wind died almost completely, and we set new records for the slowest days of the circumnavigation of 52 and 56 miles.   Most of those were made with the spinnaker collapsing and filling on average eight times a minute.  I timed it.

    I stopped thinking about the end of the passage, and focused only on the next small artificial increment:  reaching the last time zone

GMT -/+12  at 172º 30’ West on September 28.  Crossing 30º South on October 2.     Passing from the Western Hemisphere to the Eastern at 180º on October 5.   This one wasn’t easy.  We finally had wind.  But too much--25 to 30 knots, gusting higher--and from the wrong direction:  directly ahead.

    At noon we were eighteen miles from the International Dateline.  Four hours later we were a single mile east of it. 

    Earlier in the year I had tacked THE HAWKE OF TUONELA in 55º with the Agulhas Current behind me.  Now under double-reefed mainsail and deeply furled jib in jagged 4’ to 6’ waves we tacked in 140º.  Not by compass, but COG.  Our choices were south or northwest.  South was closer to Opua’s bearing of 239º, so I pointed us that way, and six hours later we made the mile west and finally crossed 180º.

    New Zealand’s weather is characterized by change.  Highs and lows chase one another rapidly across the Tasman; so when the wind blew hard from the southwest I was not concerned.   Any wind was better than no wind, particularly when it could be expected to change direction within twenty-four hours or so, and when it did THE HAWKE OF TUONELA would make miles. 

    After the initial gusts, the wind settled around twenty knots.  The days continued mostly sunny, though cool.  Shorts and t-shirts gave way to Levis and Polartec.  I was close enough to New Zealand to receive broadcast radio and learned that a freak spring snow storm had stranded motorists in the middle of the North Island.  I started living in my foul weather gear, both to be ready to go on deck if something broke, and because THE HAWKE OF TUONELA is not a dry boat going to windward in more than twenty knots.  Often I wore a hat to keep drips from falling on my head while sitting in the cabin.  And the wind blew from the southwest for a week.

    We often made five and six knots, but almost never in the right direction.  The limiting factor wasn’t how fast THE HAWKE OF TUONELA could go--I could have pushed her easily to seven knots--but how often she leapt off a wave and crashed into the trough beyond.  Many days we covered 140 miles over the bottom, tacking back and forth every few hours, only to have day’s runs between noon positions of less than one hundred miles, and not all toward Opua.

    On deck or below, I am always sailing the boat.  On deck my eye moves from the sea to the luff of the jib to the instrument displays in a continuous loop.  Below deck, there is the angle of heel, the sounds of the water moving past the hull, and even when reading I often glance at a Micronet display I keep nearby.  That week it all became too discouraging, and I turned both instrument system and chartplotter off.

    Day after day I found myself standing in the companionway, staring forward at endlessly white-capped waves marching toward us, seeking some sign of a break or change.   What was most painful is that these were wonderful days for sailing--just not toward New Zealand.  The wind had only to veer or back 20º or 30º so I could ease sheets.  THE HAWKE OF TUONELA would cease crashing off waves, and we would be making 160 miles a day.

    Relief came in the form of a welcomed gale.  

    As the low, of which I had heard on New Zealand radio, but would have predicted myself from the clouds and falling barometer, approached, it bent the wind to the north.  We were only 146 miles from Opua that sunset.  The wind was forecast to blow 35-40 knots the next day, Friday, and then return to the infernal southwest at 30 knots on Saturday. 

    The Bay of Islands is one of the few places in the world I will enter after dark.  I had done so on my last return passage from Fiji.  These have become my home waters, and the Quarantine Dock is long and easy to approach.   This passage which I had expected to take two and a half weeks had already taken three and a half.  I did not want to face thirty knots on the nose on Saturday.  I wanted to get in.

    As the wind continued to veer and increase during the night, the main blanketed the jib and I lowered it at 2:00 a.m.  By dawn we had 20-25 knots and I deeply furled the jib in anticipation of more.  Our speed remained at six knots.  A waypoint near Cape Brett at the entrance to the Bay of Islands was 77 miles away. 

    At 9 a.m. the instrument system was showing apparent wind of 25 to 30 knots, with occasional gusts to 35.  THE HAWKE OF TUONELA was moving ahead of it relatively smoothly.  The barometer was down to 999 millibars,   a dramatic 17 millibars lower in 24 hours.  With such a drop, I was surprised the wind wasn’t stronger.

    I was in the cockpit repeatedly in intermittent cold rain, letting out and taking in the jib.  I didn’t want to overpower the Monitor,  but I wanted to be off Cape Brett at sunset.  Often a single roll on the furling gear made a half knot difference in boat speed.

    At 11:00 a.m. there were two unexpected changes.  The sky began to clear to the northwest, and the wind began to back.  By noon we were 46 miles from Cape Brett and in trouble.  The wind was forward of the beam and we were being pushed south of the cape.

    Sometimes the center must hold.

    I went on deck and raised a deeply reefed main.

    Waves swept the deck while I was setting the mainsail.  The halyard and clew reefing lines run to the cockpit, but I was at the mast to tie in the tack line, which doesn’t take long; and at the boom for the reef points, which took longer because frequently I had to drop what I was doing and hang on with both hands.

    Back in the cockpit I was winching in the clew line when we flew off a wave and tension on it suddenly released, causing me to fall backwards.  Fortunately I didn’t land on anything with a sharp corner.

    Mainsail trimmed, I tuned us closer to the wind with the Monitor control lines.  We didn’t have enough sail to power through the waves and our speed dropped to four knots, so I unfurled more jib until our SOG was back to 6 and our COG 220º, above the 210º bearing of Cape Brett.  Now I wanted to know the truth.

    Throughout the afternoon the wind continued to back, until by 3:00 p.m. when we were close-hauled, heeled 30º to 40º, smashing into 9‘ waves, the wind, perhaps influenced by the land thirty miles away, began to veer, and I knew that if nothing broke we were going to make it.

    I sailed THE HAWKE OF TUONELA harder that afternoon than perhaps I ever have.  I spent most of it in the cockpit in rain, grateful I had bought new foul weather pants to replace the last pair which were no longer waterproof.  Sheets of water swept the deck, hitting me with solid body blows.  Sailing to windward in a gale is a contact sport.

    In another three hours the wind had veered enough so that I was able to lower the mainsail and continue under deeply furled jib.  Although the sun was visible below the clouds as it neared the horizon, there was still no sign of the land the chartplotter said was only twenty miles away.  Not until Cape Brett light became visible at 7:30 p.m. was I certain New Zealand was really there.

    I let us sail for another hour before I went on deck to change from jib to engine and Monitor to tiller pilot.

    I set up the tiller pilot first, and then started the engine, which I had test run for a half hour the day before.  It started right up and ran just long enough for me to furl the jib before sputtering to a stop.  Almost simultaneously the bracket connecting the tiller pilot to the tiller snapped.  A shout of frustration split the dark night that temporarily damaged a sailor’s voice.

    Re-engaging the Monitor and unfurling a bit of jib to get us under control, I went below to check the engine and find a spare tiller bracket.  We were three miles north of Cape Brett and in no immediate danger, and this was at worst only an inconvenience.  I could sail us within anchoring distance of the Quarantine Dock and possibly all the way up to it, even if it took all night instead of two hours under power.

    From the sound of the diesel and the way we had leapt around that afternoon, I concluded that air had gotten in the fuel line.   Thanks to a mechanic who installed a squeeze bulb in that fuel line, bleeding my little Yanmar is not difficult, even at sea, and after two tries, the engine started and did not stop.

    Getting the broken tiller bracket off and the new one on required removing nuts from two bolts while the tiller was being moved by the Monitor, but it got done; and an hour later we were again under power and tiller pilot.

    I checked our position on the chartplotter, then sat on deck to let my eyes adjust to the darkness.  Looms of light ahead were from Russell and Pahia.  A flashing light abeam was on an isolated rock, just off a line of small islands separated from the mainland.  There was relief in knowing where we were and being able to picture my surroundings in my mind.

    The mouth of the Bay of Islands is several miles wide, so the seas were still rough, but they steadily abated as we moved west, and I went forward to put the anchor in place and drag 75’ of chain onto deck before dropping it back below to be certain it was not snarled. 

    Off Russell I put out dock lines and fenders.

    The last hour was beautiful.

    With everything in place, I stood in the cockpit. 

    The water was smooth now.  The wind had almost died.    Midnight had passed.  Only two miles to go.  The waning gibbous moon came over vineyard covered hills to the east to join Orion.

    A red light on a buoy to port, and a final curve between hills.  I could barely make out boats moored on both sides of the channel.  Ahead I saw the red light on the end of the marina breakwater float that serves as the Quarantine Dock.  I took off my foul weather pants to have greater mobility and disengaged the tiller pilot, took the tiller myself, and cut the engine to quarter speed.

    Two hundred yards off, I shifted to neutral.  A large sailboat was tied to the Q Dock.  There was plenty of room for me behind her or in front.  I put the engine back in gear and eased us forward. 

    In the end I couldn’t have asked for better conditions.  In neutral again, THE HAWKE OF TUONELA glided to the Q dock, I stepped off, secured bow, stern and spring lines.  When I looked at my watch a minute later, it was 0045 October 10, 2009 ship’s time.  1245 October 9, 2009 GMT.  Total sailing time for the circumnavigation:  193 days, 10 hours.

    I stepped back aboard and poured a tiny amount of the Laphroaig I had been saving for that moment into a crystal glass.  I was too tired to have more.  I drank it in the cockpit.  Everything was so quiet, so still.

    I had raced myself and won; but only because I had a big lead going into the final leg.

    I went below and could not sleep.