Category: Preparation

My ‘to do’ list keeps growing

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This is what our boat looks like at the moment. Preparing for an offshore trip feels like moving countries because it’s just as scary and groundless, and incredibly exciting, but you aren’t really leaving home. I still can’t get my head around that. Only part of me considers the boat ‘home’ in this sense. Zena our doggie, family and friends, familiar landscapes (Ngati Toa Domain, Pauatahanui Inlet, Whitireia Park, the marina laundry!) aren’t with us so how can it be home? But we’ll meet people and I’ll name every animal I see Zena of course. Last time we woke up to a family of noisy ducks by Kawau Island – Zena. On our trip to Tonga last time, a bird flew on our safety lines for a half-day rest – Zena! Little sharks that stick to the bottom of the boat at anchor – Zena! And of course the experiences we will make will add a whole new layer to life, especially the extreme and unexpected ones.

We’ll head off from Mana on Tuesday probably and sail up the West Coast. There’s no way I’m going around Cape Palliser and the Wairarapa Coast again – NEVER! Last time we went from 5 knots to an un-forecasted 35 and blew our headsail. Then we’ll sail around the top of the North Island – Cape Reinga, wow – and down to Auckland. The chances of getting a head wind are pretty likely at some point in the journey. I hate head winds. The boat bashes, and I imagine every joining device moving a teeny part of a millimetre with every bash. We have a few things to do in Auckland and then it’s back up the East Coast to Opua to wait for the right time to leave, from end of May.

When I came back in 2015 from our Pacific trip, I said I didn’t want to go back just for our own self-indulgent pleasure. Climate change is ripping communities from their roots and I can’t pretend I’m not connected to that anymore. The Pacific is bearing the brunt of human-induced climate change without having caused the majority of it. So, this time I’m going back to create a project called Living Memory. I have a whole lot of cameras donated and I’ll be working with a community. Anyone in the village can take their own living memory photos of the things they treasure, before another cyclone or other extreme event comes along. We’ll have informal photography exhibitions hopefully, and I’ll be able to leave photos within the community thanks to funds donated by family and friends to buy a printer and photo paper etc. If you’d like to donate, I’d love to buy more ink so we don’t run out! Donate here.

Back to my ‘to do’ list. We’ve got Cat 1 – phew – now it’s chowing into the small things.  Last time I cooked every meal from scratch and popped them in the freezer. This time I’m going to buy takeaway. It feels like cheating, but I’ve run out of time. Dinner will be nasi goreng from our fish ‘n chip shop, chicken korma from our local Indian restaurant, and a gluttony from the pizza shop. I have made a few meals too – pasta and meatballs, and warehou fish curry. Lunches will be wraps (corn crackers for me) and we’ll stick to the same snacks as we did last time: cubes of cheese and carrot, hard boiled eggs, cooked sausages, and a plastic container of bliss balls, peanuts, chocolates and Dean’s favourite bickies. And hopefully also Penny’s famous and very desired chocolate fruit cake (hint, hint!)

Will post a photo of our last sight of New Zealand again to say e noho ra when we leave. Must remember to breathe!

 

 

Things I’d never go sailing without

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We really didn’t know what we were doing. We Googled and forumed like crazy. We took advice from helpful people and thought really, really hard. But at the end of the day, we still felt ill prepared. Having said that, there’s not a lot we’d do differently if we were going to go on a sailing adventure again.

Here are some things we would definitely take again.

Green Bags. These are breathable plastic bags to store vegetables in and keep in the fridge. I did an experiment before we left: I brought two broccoli; one went in the fridge naked and the other went in in a Green Bag. The Green Bag one lasted three times as long. I get them from Trade Me (just put Green Bags in the search box). They’re imported from USA – NASA International Space Shuttle used to use them. You can wash them and reuse them 8-10 times – at least that’s what the instructions say – but I used them about 20.  Still good. Tip: Make sure there’s no moisture on the vege/fruit when you put them in. Or if there is, wrap a paper towel around it for a day or so.

Charcoal tablets and Alpine tea. When my Mum was dying, all the hospice nurses were obsessed with her bowels. Sailing can also be all about the bowels. For any kind of tummy bug or diarrhoea, we used charcoal tablets (thanks Peter). They absorb any nasties in your bowel (they actually soak up everything so drink plenty of water – I didn’t and got constipated). Lucky I also have a natural remedy for when you are constipated – a cup of herbal Alpine tea. After 3-4 hours you will definitely go – quite violently sometimes, but it absolutely clears you out. I wish the description on the packet had been a bit more honest – I took it when I was working in town once. I had a cup thinking it was an innocent herbal tea and got quite a shock when I walked home to the train station.

Audio books. For those terrifying night shifts when you can’t read or concentrate, listening to audio books is a really nice half-distraction. I only put one ear plug in so I could still listen to the weather and sea scream, waiting for any kind of different noise in. I subscribed to Audible. It’s $15 a month. The books take ages to download (do it before you leave because there’s no way internet in the Pacific can handle it). My favourite Audio Book is The Girl on the Train by Paula Hawkins. It’s not rocket science – plot drive with vivid characters and is a bit of thriller – and best of all, the actors are British.

Hair stuff. I looked about 10 years old but a hair band keeps your hair out of your face without having to use lots of hairclips. I bought some really expensive morocco oil hair moisturiser which I used every other day – just slip a bit through, like gel. It keeps it hydrated and even when I knew it looked like shite, it smelt yummy. Your hairdresser will be very impressed when you get back.

A groovy dress. On the odd occasion when we went to a resort, I’m really glad I had a nice frock to wear. I hate the term ‘grotty yachtie’ and tried hard to not be one. Of course you are one after five day passage without  a shower but there’s no need to look yucky just because you’re at sea. It is of course quite helpful to not look in the mirror though. OMG that first shower when you reach land is so unbelievably amazing.

LED candles. They look fake but give a bit of glamour. We have three in a set of different heights. They alternate different colors and have a remote control. They’re lovely it the cockpit at night. We had three but traded one for fish. And we also put fairy lights up in the cockpit which Dean did reluctantly until he saw how well they lit us up from a distance. If you forget to put your anchor light on, you still light up like a Christmas tree. It was quite a magical moment, rowing out in the dinghy and looking back at our stary night, gorgeous boat. They’re solar powered and hook up to our dodger. It’s also part of my cunning plan to make sure we don’t race our boat in the next Mana Cruising Club winter sailing season – the fairy lights will take too long to take down! Woop, woop.

A box of gorgeous things. Sailing is all about safety and trauma. As soon as I got to a bay I’d open out my box of gorgeous things and lay them out on the saloon table…a plastic lotus flower, a shell from Kapiti, half a coconut shell and a miniature crocheted Christmas pudding that my Mum won in the hospice raffle. This is a bit macabre, but I also have a Dead Box. It’s got funeral programmes, dried flowers, photos, notes and little things that remind me of the person who died. I also have the ashes of my little pussy cat, Willow, in my Dead Box. Dean thinks I’m weird. But being at sea doesn’t mean I don’t have feelings. There’s nothing like a good sob after a shit sail.

A shift bag. I had a large waist bag that I put all my shift essentials in (ear plugs, eye mask, clean knickers, alarm clock, gloves, note pad and pen). I attached it to the nav station so that even if it was rough, I could get to it easy. It was right next to the Grab Bag.

Okay, so I’ve asked Dean what he’d never go to sea without – he’ll be practical:

Three navigation tools. Ray Marine charts as our main nav tool, in the cockpit, and Open CPN and iSailor for our laptop and iPad. Dean also connected our chart plotter to the iPad. He blew up our radar two weeks before we left. Our amazing marine insurance people, The Marina Shop, made sure our insurance covered it and it meant we got new charts for the Pacific. Unlike some people, reefs were where they were meant to be.

Solar panels. As many as you can take.

Davits on our arch. Being able to hoist our dinghy up on davits which are attached to our arch: Not only was it easy when we got somewhere, but the dinghy was perfectly safe, still inflated, during passages. We were one of the only boats with an inflatable dingy and we never got into trouble. Dean had Outboard Envy. Ours has 5hp – a lot had 15hp. 10hp was common. Dean was obsessed with ‘getting on the plane’. I don’t see what the fuss is about. We got to places, eventually.

Soda Stream for fizzy drinks. He can’t live without his bourbon and coke. Except I bought sugar-free which he HATED and never forgave me for. Telling him that the amount of sugar that goes in a glass of coke is actually poisonous, and to stop you throwing up they put another poison in, doesn’t put him off.

Iridium Go satellite communications (includes an email address so we could email anywhere, any time, and 150 talking minutes). Apparently they’ll have 3G internet speed too soon. Iridium Go also has a tracking feature that Predict Wind can show on a website. This was great except for when it went a bit haywire and we got an email from Dean’s Mum saying, “you’re on land, you’re on land, what’s wrong?”

AIS. We wouldn’t go anywhere without it. It saved our lives: Once we were headed right for a rock. We had our chart zoomed out to 10nm which meant the rock didn’t show. The rock had an AIS beacon on and came up as an alert. It was a revolting night shift and our headsail had just ripped so we were in no mood to hit a rock. We should of course have scanned a paper chart more thoroughly before we left.  AIS is great for piece of mind for general collision avoidance too. It’s also handy if you want to avoid  someone in a bay, and you can turn it off if you don’t want to be found.

A good horn to announce your arrival in a bay and say a big goodbye when you leave. Oh for safety reasons too.

What are three things you’d never go to sea without?

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And cushions. I can’t buy furniture, art work, books, art deco things – we only have room for cushions. My new cockpit cushions have ducks on them. I love them. Dean doesn’t.

holiday 2

Nothing to do this this post, but my current favourite photo. This is the first time Zena went up on the deck, unprompted. Taken from our trip a couple of weeks ago to D’Urville Island and Pelorous Sound.

 

Offshore Medic Course – learning to sew Dean up

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I hope we NEVER need any of the skills we learnt over the weekend.

Dean and I went on a two-day offshore medic course. We are now meant to be able to survive at sea until someone rescues us.

We nicknamed our tutor Rambo Medic. He’s an ex combat medic and his face lights up when he talks about people being blown up and tropical diseases that “kill very beautifully”. He was very entertaining and a good teacher.

Here’s some of what we learnt:

  • Sea water has many bacteria and other nasties in. This is why cuts/burns get infected very quickly at sea.
  • There are lots of other uses for condoms while at sea, like putting one over a needle that’s stuck into someone’s chest to help them breathe.
  • When someone is ill at sea, feed them BRAT food (banana, rice, apples, toast).
  • Your stomach should gurgle every ten seconds. If it doesn’t, there’s something going on in there.
  • Slapping people is good. It can bring them out of shock and calm a hypochondriac (who, accordingly to Rambo Medic, are usually white, middle-class women). In the last course we did with him I made a list of all the groups/ethnicities that he offended, including fat,  skinny, short and tall people.
  • The symptoms for every tropical disease are basically the same and start with flu-like symptoms. Helpful.
  • Mosquitos love white light and pale blue clothing. Locals use oil on their skin as repellent.
  • I still react strongly to caffeine.  On the Sunday I had a coffee at lunch time because I was so exhausted. I’ve had three coffees in 30 years. Lately I’ve been trying to get used to caffeine because it’s an ingredient in some seasickness tablets.  Dean said I became “Hyper Janie” and was “only a bit annoying”. I’ve decided that even if the caffeine does help me get through a night shift, it will keep me awake when it’s over.

Your turn:

If your patient has their stomach contents hanging out, do you: a) Shove the contents back in and bandage the wound; b) leave them out, wrap it against the skin in plastic; or c) cut them off, put them in a plastic bag and give it to the medic when they arrive. Answer: B.

We learnt techniques for clearing airways, CPR, relocating dislocated shoulders, sewing stitches, administering drugs into the butt, replacing fluids etc.

But when it’s a 50 knot storm and there’s just me and Dean, and he’s knocked out with a bone sticking out of his arm and not breathing, and I’m at the wheel hyperventilating because it’s too rough for our autopilot – how the hell am I doing to do CPR, stop the bleed and reverse his hyperthermia?

Rambo Medic said it’s fine to stamp on Dean’s chest as I steer – whatever it takes.

Apparently it’s a grey area whether doing this Offshore Medic course is part of Cat 1. We were definitely going to do it though. But I now even more paranoid about medical stuff while at sea. I’m going to have to add this to my “let it go” list.

Gulp.

We’re leaving Auckland tomorrow.  Hopefully. We’ve been waiting on parts. And Dean has been clever with things like hanging the dinghy from the arch at the back of the boat, fixing the radar he blew up, fixing the water maker, securing the oven top and lots of other things. And I’ve been playing shop, buying storage containers and programming emergency numbers into our satellite phone. More about the sailing boy-girl thing later – it’s a Thesis subject for sure.

First stop, Rangitoto Island, then Waikheke Island, Tiritiri Matangi, Kawau Island and up to Opua.

Still pinching ourselves.

Rambo Medic showing us how to insert catheter. Only to be done under medical advice!

Rambo Medic showing us how to insert a catheter. Only to be done under medical advice!

 

Me checking my own tongue for sickness

Me checking my own tongue for sickness.

Dean learning to sew stitches on a pigs trotter (close to human skin.)

Dean learning to sew stitches on a pigs trotter (close to human skin).

The pigs trotter stunk a bit

The pig’s trotter stunk a bit.

My messy stitch on the left, Dean's perfect stich on the left

My messy stitch on the left, Dean’s perfect stich on the right.

Afterwards!

Afterwards!

What a boat looks like when preparing for offshore

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IMG_1253I’ve just watched the entire series of The Batchelor in just five minutes. How? I watched it online and skipped to the end. I didn’t cry. The last time I watched The Batchelor, I invested eight or nine weeks in the programme, and cried with Cinderella joy at the end.

We’ve spent two years investing in this trip to the Pacific Islands. The ending will be all the sweeter, surely, for all the agony and joys of getting there that we’ve been through.

This photo is what our boat looks like at the moment. Sooooo much going on.

There is just two and a half weeks until we leave Mana, for Auckland, then Opua, then Tonga, Fiji, Vanuatu…and back to NZ via Norfolk Island. The only thing I know about Norfolk Island is that you have to give way to cows.

We’ve got 72 things ticked off our to do list. Here’s a sample:

Fixed radar that Dean blew up; bought label maker; got spare blow up bits for lifejacket; applied for 0 interest, no repayment (ever) credit card; put letters on our dinghy, BamBam (our boat is called Pebbles); fit solar panels on new arch; disposed of old emergency location beacon (the supplier sends the lithium battery to the Army to blow up); bought Green Bags to keep veges fresh (yes I am going to be one of those sailors’ wives); sell one car – depending on debt, sell other one; bought lashing lines (???); bought powdered egg; waterproofed bimini; glue top of pantry down.

Only 3,575,880,399 to go.

Sigh.

 

Follow me as I sail from New Zealand to the Pacific Islands!

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IMG_00042 May is the day. We set sail from Opua, Bay of Islands, New Zealand, to Tonga. First, we leave Mana Marina where we’ve been living for two years, on 1 April. Yes, it’s April Fools Day, but we’re not one for superstition (I’m tapping my head and touching wood as I say that).

In fact, we’ve just changed the name of our boat from Pebble Rebel to Pebbles. I did try to get a virgin to pee in the bilge – as our dog peed on the marina lawn I tried to shove a cup under her pee, but all I got was a dribble on the side of the cup. So my Facebook post to The Ledger of the Sea is going to have to be enough.

We’re in manic preparation mode for our trip mode.  The Category 1 inspector from Yachting NZ is coming in two hours. Wish us luck.

I’ll be posting as I go. You can also read previous writing from my Boat People column in KapiMana News, and other magazines and newspapers. You can also follow our journey via GPS to see where we are at any time. I’ll put that link up soon.

And you can wish us ‘fair winds and calm seas’ at any time, by leaving a comment.

I suppose there’s always a first time to do things. I’m good at firsts. It’s the seconds I struggle with!

Thanks for joining us. It’s the community around us that has kept us going at times. Sign up to the RSS feed to receive my updates, or follow us via email (on the right).

Arohanui.

Janie