We left Rarotonga two days before Christmas, smack bang in the middle of the South Pacific cyclone season when most yachts are snugged up in close proximity to a cyclone hole or sheltering in more temperate latitudes. Planeloads of Cook Island ex-pats had flown in from New Zealand for the festive season, flush with holiday pay, and had almost cleaned the supermarket out of foodstuffs. So all we could get for provisions was a case of canned baked beans, packets of instant noodles, a sack of taro and bright-yellow hands of rapidly ripening bananas. The plan was to supplement these with fresh fish; but, two days out of Rarotonga, a huge mahimahi, its gleaming blue-and-gold body almost as long as mine, 20-odd kilos of solid seagoing muscle, skipped across the sea surface towards our lure. The bungy rubber fishing-line retainer stretched briefly, then snapped with a resounding and very conclusive TWANG. The mahimahi, our dietary supplement and the possibility of catching more, all disappeared in one fell stroke.
To make us feel better, I told Lindsay about the 1.5-metre shark I’d landed on deck sailing out of the Gulf of Panama. I brought it aboard via a snatch block rigged on the main boom and it thrashed around the cockpit, its tail beating like a demented drum major on the steel plating for what seemed like hours. Luigi, the ship’s cat, delighted in leaping on its back, wearing a smug expression as though he’d landed the fish himself. We had no refrigeration on board, so we’d eaten shark for days on end; fried fresh shark, salted shark, curried shark, boiled shark, in shark fish cakes, sun-dried and poached.
For the next four days Footloose, Lindsay and I romped along on a beam reach in the brisk south-easterly trade winds. The steep seas, stacked up over 5000 miles of uninterrupted ocean, burst against the port side and the spray made an almost permanent rainbow across her foredeck. The yacht’s charred interior creaked and groaned eerily, and we monitored the mast and forestay with hawks’ eyes.
Lindsay’s steel-reinforcing-bar steering wheel, which had seemed like an ingenious idea at the time, soon tore the skin off the palms of our hands, so we resorted to tying rags around them to take the pain out of our tricks at the wheel. Spinning the wheel also caused huge deviation in the magnetic compass mounted on the binnacle just in front of it. We steered three hours on, three hours off, each lost in our own thoughts and adapting to our ocean routine. But watch changes were an opportunity to yarn, socialize and discuss Lindsay’s plans for the fire-battered boat when we got her home to Picton.
After crossing the Tropic of Capricorn, at 23 and a half degrees south, the wind eased for a day, then came back as a full-blown northerly gale. Footloose soared along, launching off wave-tops like a 14.15-metre-long surfboard, as the sea roared and tumbled around her canoe stern. Lindsay told me about the time he’d sailed as mate in the HMS Bounty replica from Whangarei to Los Angeles. ‘We averaged 13.6 knots for 24 hours once,’ he said. ‘The foredeck was awash right back to the windlass and the crew were climbing out to the end of the yardarms to trail their fingers in the wave tops as they roared past.’
I rejoined by telling about the time I’d been helming a 23-metre ketch, Ocean Mermaid, in the Southern Ocean one ink-black night, well within the iceberg limit. She’d launched herself off a wave crest that had pegged the log (speedo) at 20 knots for what felt like minutes, charging between green bow-waves that seemed to reach halfway up the mast. The big hydraulic brake that held the propeller shaft still while we were sailing burned out, and the off-watch crew clamoured at the hatch, climbing over each other to get out and see what was happening. The mast and rigging hummed like a swarm of hell-bent bees.
For four days Footloose raced along, ticking off the miles, then the wind and sea subsided to a glassy calm. Lindsay told of the time he worked on the Caribbean pirate ship at Disneyland which ‘sailed’ around a lagoon on rails. ‘You had to keep your eye on the weather — if it started to blow, or look gusty, we had to reef the sails smartly or she’d get derailed,’ he chuckled. ‘Talk about embarrassing.’
My light-air story was about racing a maxi boat in the Governor’s Cup in New York Harbour. As we led the fleet, ghosting towards the leeward mark under a huge lightweight spinnaker, a friend of the boat’s owner, standing by the mast, took one last suck on his cigarette and flicked the butt overboard. An updraught caught the butt and blew it into the middle of the spinnaker — where it melted a hole about a metre round in the gossamer Dacron while we all gaped in disbelief.
Soon the wind filled in from the south, and Footloose buckled down to work, smashing her way through the steep seas and crashing into the troughs. We anxiously eyed the shored-up mast as it swayed above us. ‘Never been dismasted before,’ Lindsay said. ‘Me neither,’ I replied. There was the time, though, when we lost a lee cap-shroud on an 80-footer, beating out of the Bahamas into the Gulf Stream. Sarah, on the helm, tacked just as the weather stay, about 30 metres of 12-millimetre stainless steel wire, crashed on deck. We scurried to stabilize the mast with halyards, and managed to keep it pointing upward.
Big waves burst over the bow and swept down Footloose’s deck. ‘I remember a wave on the Bounty once,’ Lindsay recalled. ‘It hit one of the square sails and sort of got funnelled along until it came out the other end like a fire hose. Blew the helmsman clean off the wheel and into the lee scuppers — and he was a pretty beefy guy too … bowled him for a row of skittles.’
For four days we battered to windward, heading towards Great Barrier Island — the closest course we could lay to Cape Palliser. As New Zealand crept over the horizon, the wind eased and we motorsailed south past East Cape. ‘Spent a week trying to get past here once,’ Lindsay said, ‘in a little Blom schooner — I tried everything I knew, but the bloody thing just lay on her side and slid sideways. We’d tack out for 12 hours, then tack back and end up north of where we’d started out from.’
Lindsay and I talked of yachts and fishing boats; the vessels Lindsay had helped build as apprentice, shipwright and foreman at Jorgensen’s boat yard in Picton and Fair Isle; the Athol Burns motorsailer he’d helped build and then skippered around the Pacific and down the coast of Australia. We laughed about the salvage job on Stewart Island where a cray-fishing skipper had plonked his boat on a rock that left it high and dry, two metres above high tide, and how they’d got it off in one piece.
We talked about the stormy transits and hidings we’d both been dealt by Cape Palliser, the forbidding stone palisade at the south-east corner of the North Island. True to form, just west of the cape a vicious gust of wind tore what was left of the mainsail in half, and a rising north-west gale began to pepper our faces with horizontal rain. The electric pump which sucked fuel from the tanks and fed it to the engine, burned out as we powered west towards Wellington. Lindsay siphoned diesel from the fuel tank into an oil container and then poured it into a bucket lashed to the main companionway, from where a hose gravity-fed fuel into the engine, and I steered for Wellington Harbour entrance.
At somewhere near midnight, as we hammered past Wellington Harbour heads, there was an ominous WHOOSH and a cloud of steam roiled up from below-decks. Lindsay killed the engine and dived downstairs to investigate while I unlashed the anchor and flaked the anchor chain on deck ready for instant deployment.
The gale shrieked through the rigging, driving us inexorably back towards Barrett’s Reef which foamed white in the black night behind us. As the black fangs of the reef got nearer to Footloose’s stern, I scuttled nervously back and forth between where Lindsay toiled frantically over the hot engine, and the bow where I nervously eyed the approaching reef and rattled the anchor chain. ‘I’m gonna drop the anchor, Lindsay,’ I’d yell. ‘Give me a couple more minutes, Lindsay,’ he’d yell back. Through the driving rain, I could see house lights twinkling ashore and pick out the black cliffs towering behind them. ‘Miserable bastards are probably having a cold beer and watching TV,’ I thought.
Finally I heard ‘GOT IT’ yelled from below, followed by the reassuring roar of the re-fired Ford diesel and the first spew of cooling water out of th
e exhaust. Footloose gathered boat speed and crept away from the foaming white fangs of the reef crashing in the night astern, while I breathed a hundred or so sighs of relief and began re-stowing the ground tackle.
A couple of hours later we tied to a downtown Wellington wharf in 40 knots of north-west wind and cold, driving rain, 13 days out of Rarotonga. Looking like refugees from the Black and White Minstrel Show, red-eyed and smudged with soot, we hailed a taxi in our wet-weather gear and asked to be taken anywhere we could get a decent steak. He dropped us at the only restaurant open at that hour and we sat, appreciatively munching steaks and drinking beer, while around us theatre-goers in formal evening attire eyed us warily and chatted about the night’s show. Later we walked unsteadily back along the waterfront, squinting against the wind-driven rain, joking and laughing uproariously at the joy of being alive, well fed and watered with a good boat to go to.
Lindsay and his wife Olive refitted Footloose, renamed her Cruisaway and sailed to Alaska, Canada, the Pacific Islands and Patagonia in her. Their travels gave Lindsay a whole host of new stories — about re-building the cyclone-battered schoolhouse at Vava’u in Tonga and collecting books in New Zealand to send on to its pupils; or introducing chainsaw technology to a remote fishing village in Tierra del Fuego and cutting up their winter firewood supply, normally a summer’s work, in just a few days. But Lindsay died a few years ago after falling overboard from Serena, the classic 20-metre Sparkman & Stephens ketch he skippered in the Mediterranean.
Serena was 14 miles off the south-east coast of Sardinia, running before 25 knots of wind and 3-to 4-metre swells, with a triple-reefed main and jib. Lindsay was working at the mizzen mast when the only other crew member heard a splash and a yell. She ran up from below-decks, threw a horseshoe buoy over, punched the man-overboard button on the GPS receiver, started the engine, dropped the sails and attempted to steer back to the GPS co-ordinates of the position where he’d gone overboard. The Italian coastguard answered her Mayday call and a patrol boat arrived with crewmen who joined her to assist along with two search-and-rescue helicopters — one of which recovered his body four hours later.
Farewell, shipmate, and thanks for the stories.
WIDE OPEN WHEELHOUSE
Braveheart’s a great wee ship, there’s nae doubt about it. Her aura begins with the name, bestowed by her New Zealand owner and is backed up by her adventurous history. Braveheart’s taken film crews to Antarctica, rounded Cape Horn on numerous occasions in both directions, visited South Shetland and the Kerguelen Islands, carried supplies to Pitcairn Island; and her crew have rebuilt a historic wharf in South Georgia and made friends among the Falkland Islanders.
I flew into Wellington to skipper her on an early season trip to Ushuaia, in Argentina’s Patagonia province, from where she’d take an Australian film crew to the Antarctic Peninsula. It would be a baptism by fire for my first trip as Braveheart’s skipper, but I had total faith in the doughty little ship.
We were in for about 4500 nautical miles (8350 kilometres) of Southern Ocean seafaring — on the roughest waters in the world, where massive seas sweep unimpeded around the globe. Leaving Cape Horn to port, we’d be motoring up the Beagle Channel to Ushuaia township.
But Braveheart could handle it. Built for the Japanese Government as a 37-metre water-sampling ship, Braveheart has all the legendary sea-keeping abilities of the Japanese distant-water fishing fleet which roams the oceans of the world to stock Tokyo’s fish markets. Her flared bow and rounded stern give her buoyancy at the ends and a low centre of gravity ensures a comfortable ride.
The 117-tonne (displacement) ship is powered by a Niigata main engine which is the size of a 1-tonne truck and develops 1200 horsepower at 550 rpm. Braveheart’s the best sleeping boat I’ve ever been in. The cosy dark of the lower deck, lulled by the engine’s steady pulse, is like a return to the womb.
Alongside Queens Wharf in downtown Wellington, she was being loaded for the expedition. A helipad had been added above the aft deck and on it a Squirrel helicopter was securely lashed, anointed with corrosion inhibitors and wrapped in bandages of plastic wrapping for the Southern Ocean passage. Every cubic centimetre of the ship’s tankage was full of fuel or fresh water. Drums of aviation fuel for the helicopter were securely lashed around the aft deck. Cartons of provisions, spare parts and other material were being chain-ganged aboard and stowed below.
Finally, by early afternoon, Braveheart was ready to go — but I was not. It was blowing around 50 knots of southerly in Cook Strait, straight at the harbour entrance, and the tide was in full ebb, emptying the harbour out against it. I was well aware that Braveheart was heavily laden, that I was new to the ship, and that conditions at the harbour entrance would be pretty bloody atrocious. A couple of hours waiting for the tide to stop running out would give us an extra opportunity to re-check all our cargo lashings, and the crew would be able to walk into town to buy extra toiletries or reading matter. And what’s a couple of hours over a 20-day voyage?
‘Look,’ Nigel Jolly, Braveheart’s owner, said emphatically, ‘if you let the crew go into town now, you won’t see them again until pub closing time. I’ve got a meeting in Palmerston North at 3:30 and I want to see my ship sail before I go. You will sail now.’ Another skipper who had been master of Braveheart before was standing nearby. ‘Yeah,’ he said, ‘we’ve sailed in worse conditions than this before. She can handle it.’
With the power of hindsight, I should have put my foot down — the decision was mine after all. But I sailed.
I eased the ship off the wharf and, as we steamed across the harbour, the owner’s son and chief mate, Matthew Jolly, worked on the foredeck putting a sea cover over the anchor windlass. Braveheart began to buck into the incoming swell as we lined up the harbour leading lights astern and headed towards Cook Strait. I kept the speed well down to prevent the people working on the foredeck from getting wet by spray.
I love leaving and entering Wellington Harbour: the brisk rawness of this huge refuge right next to the raging weather of Cook Strait, the colourful houses snuggled up among the surrounding hills and the rocky wilderness which flanks the eastern approaches all give it a special aura — it’s a sailors’ harbour, as James Herd, commander of the barque Rosanna, observed while surveying the harbour in the 1820s: ‘Here,’ he said, ‘all the navies of Europe might ride in perfect security.’
The men finished the last lashings on the foredeck and checked around before filing into the wheelhouse. ‘Aahhh … it’s great to be getting away to sea again,’ Matthew said. We continued chatting while Braveheart bucked into the oncoming seas at a leisurely few knots.
Instinctively, I felt her bows drop off and my heart went with them. From where I stood at the helm all I could see was a wall of ugly green water, with streaks of white foam flecking its face, bearing down on Braveheart. From the helm I couldn’t see a crest or the top of the huge wave about to come crashing down on us. I yelled the time-honoured Anglo-Saxon term for sexual intercourse and the others spun round to look out the wheelhouse windows, transfixed by the oncoming doom.
Then it was on us. One second I stood in a warm, dry wheelhouse; the next I was clinging to a handrail for dear life while tonnes of sea water smashed Braveheart’s thick, toughened-glass wheelhouse windows to smithereens and tried to tear me from my handhold. The next second we stood, stunned, knee-deep in water, while more monstrous seas queued ahead of us and the ice-cold southerly storm tore through what had been glazed windows just moments before.
Almost all of Braveheart’s electronics had been annihilated by the flood, but Matt grabbed a handheld VHF radio from its bulkhead charger and I called Beacon Hill harbour radio to tell them what had happened and that we’d be turning back. A 6-kilogram ClearView screen had been hurled across the wheelhouse, between the other guys and me, and was embedded in the bulkhead at the aft end of the chart room. A lot of water had got below, but the engine-room door was dogged tight and Braveheart’s engine and controls
were all still intact and operable. The acrid smell of shorted electrics filled the bridge, and alarm bells clamoured noisily while charts, pilot books and other printed matter sloshed around our feet.
Turning Braveheart around to head back up the harbour was one of the hardest things I’ve done at sea. I waited until what looked like a longer period between wave crests opened up before us and, with the helm down and maximum engine revs and propeller pitch applied, the heavily laden little ship began her turn. Another big wave reared up alongside and looked set to broadside us. But Braveheart showed her heritage — millennia of Japanese seafaring, design and ship-building skills — and rose over it while the sea roared away beneath us.
Nigel Jolly had been summoned back off the road to Palmerston North by cellphone and was waiting at the wharf. By the time I’d berthed Braveheart, a small legion of tradespeople was gathering — new windows and electronics had been arranged and the huge task of mopping up began. Jolly owned a truck-wrecking business in Palmerston North and understood full well that a ship alongside the wharf, like a truck off the road, is not making money; and he used his superb organizing skills to get Braveheart back on the road.
Blue Water Page 21
