The story of our delivery trip from her old home port to Lyttelton. I wrote these words not long after the trip, and actually I found it very interesting from the distance of two and a half year. I hope you'll enjoy it too.
I’m the proud owner of Waimanu II since 28th September 2015. I bought her in Dunedin with the hope I can sail up to Lyttelton in the next couple of weeks (depends on weather and crew availability). After a little think and check on the weather forecast friend of mine Paul Pawlik (from MPYC) my son and I decided to drive to Dunedin, do some final checks on the boat and make a final decision about the departure. It was important because for this weekend had a wide range of prediction in terms of weather from various “highly recommended” websites. Option one, the weather turns crap, we do some sailing around Otago harbour and drive home safely. Option two, the weather holds as it was and we leave Dunedin (of course with the chance we can safely stop in Oamaru, Timaru or Akaroa depends on our “luck”). Both plan looked sensible at that point, so we checked the forecast at early morning and decided to go. My son got the car to drive back, Paul and I on board with our excitement and a dash of sea sickness after a couple of hours on the sea. The trip started with 20 knts of N wind so we headed away from the shore at the beginning. Full sail wasn’t too much, we enjoyed the 20° heeling angle with 6+ knts speed (SOG). Paul plotted our desired destination to the GPS (Akaroa head), and we started to set up for the 3-4 hrs tacks as we expected to go upwind most of the time. The wind supposed to turn SW around Sunday morning to give us a great lift to Akaroa. The wind strengthened by noon so we had to put the first reef on and we rolled up the genoa by 1/3. Comfortable 6-6.5 knts speed without excess heeling, also with a great balance on the helm. Only inconvenience the missing spray dodger. As the helmsman missed a larger wave (that happened a couple of times with both of us) a great amount of water sprayed over the deck to make a reminder “keep focused”. As the day gone we got prepared for the night (another reef, the second and we tried to have some rest and set the watch system as it is in the books). After sunset the wind dropped quite a bit so we had to roll the genoa up sheet the main sail hard and turn the engine on. Paul tried to stay below and have some sleep but that was really hard because of the constant discomfort as I mentioned before. After three hours his face turned up in the companionway and we swapped. I had struggled to keep my eyes closed but finally I managed to get some sleep. When I woke up Paul asked to turn the engine off as we got a bit of wind. So we were sailed again. As we agreed we will not use the tiller pilot because it will not be too efficient in terms of keeping the boat speed we had to steer all the time. It was much easier than I thought, even during the pitch black night. Shortly I took the helm I checked the GPS and I noted we are almost halfway through to Akaroa, so we have a great chance to get there by Sunday evening. The sky cleared, the stars started to give me some help to keep the course, I felt really comfortable at that point. Even I noticed a bright spot on the horizon which was heading towards us. Must be a large cargo ship, I have to keep away from their way so I changed our course by 10˚. Unfortunately “they” did the same thing so we were still on collision course. The bright spot got bigger and bigger and finally I realized how foolish I’m, as the moon took his shape over the eastern horizon. The rest of my watch was uneventful, just like Paul’s. The real change came after sunrise. The wind picked up even further, we had to set the third reef to the main which was really difficult. The third reef line was not set and one of us had to work on the cabin top to get the main sail secured. After a couple of attempt Paul lost his grip and he got airborne and landed in the cockpit. During this spectacular attraction he kicked something with his knee, which was pretty painful and made the rest of the trip even worst to him. Sunday 10:00 am, the wind speed exceeded the 40 knts (as we estimated without proper wind instrument), the sea become rough and we seemed to be over canvased. We tried to reduce the genoa. As you can imagine the furling line slipped off my hands so we ended up with full headsail for a minute or so. That was a scary moment when the entire genoa started to flapping violently to be ready to tearing apart itself in any second. The furling line only 6 mm so I had no chance to pull it by hand, we had to use the sheet winch to wind the headsail back. During this operation, the genoa sheet escaped from the windward track and tangled up to the other side make the sheeting even more difficult. This time we experienced about 4-5 m waves, came parallel with the boat from SW (we were heading to NW straight ahead to Akaroa). My sea sickness developed even further, Paul had a hurt knee, we were not able even to tack because none of us able to go to the foredeck to free up the tangled headsail sheet, so we weren’t happy campers anymore. Luckily the wind kept the direction, also maybe a little bit eased (or maybe we got used to it). The darkness were sneaking around us, we didn’t noticed when the sun set either. We were focused to the GPS screen “40 nm to go estimated arrival in 5 hrs”. Disappointing this is barely changed in the past few hours. The only good thing when the Akaroa head navigation (light house) light came to our sight. We continued our course for another hour or two (hard to say none of us checked the time this point) when Paul managed to identify obstacles on the GPS map, also we seen the lights of the port. Next challenge what we faced to, to find a shelter, ideally with a proper mooring. We were uncomfortable to use our anchor in this condition. First spot Anchorage Bay behind Cape Three Points. We quickly realised the water much more shallow than we expected so we turned around towards Glen Bay. Finally we grabbed the first empty mooring (orange buoy, if the colour code is correct must be suitable for us) and we hoped it is in good shape as well. A quick try to call our loved ones let them know we are alive, than I tried to get to work the phone chargers without any luck. The wind was blowing outside I tried to identify different noises, flapping ropes, the rudder, oh no the dinghy! I grabbed my boots and popped up to tie everything up… another attempt to sleep. with success. Next morning the wind died a bit but that was still strong enough to hit the boat from one side to the other. I used the laptop to charge one of our phones to let us arrange the temporary mooring and the transport back to Christchurch. Thanks to Akaroa Cruising Club especially Johnny Bell to come down to the club house and let us unload through their facility The weather luckily changed for the following weekend so we accommodated our self on Waimanu II at Friday evening, with a plan to do some maintenance (replace the genoa sheet, install the freshly repaired spray dodger, check the main sail, clean the bilge etc) and early start at Saturday morning. As we discovered a small rip on the main sail (the batten pocket was sitting on the side stay during the last stormy stretch a week before) we tried to patch it with "proper" sail repair tape which was failed to bond to the sail we ended up to use good old duck-tape and took the batten off to reduce the pressure on the repaired spot. Worked really well. Eventually the wind died out when we reached the head and we had to motor about half way around the peninsula. Finally the wind picked up and we finished the day with a gentle reach/downwind mixture.
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ArpadSkipper/sailor with engineering background and can do attitude. ArchivesCategories |