6. Tahiti to Australia

Oz

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Sunday night…
Last gorgeous night at sea, and a fitting way to complete our crossing of the Pacific. Flat water, gentle sailing breeze, just-past-full moon, quiet, peaceful, and we’ll be at Mackay at dawn. Got buzzed by the Border Force airplane, and hailed on VHF, but they were very friendly and welcomed us to Oz. Have cleaned the boat thoroughly and disposed of all fresh foods, in anticipation of their stringent inspection. Fingers crossed about that. Have already scheduled our haul out for new paint. We’re as ready as we can be for our arrival and the changes that will occur.

Monday…
Clearing in was an interesting, lengthy and somewhat stressful experience. Five uniformed Border Force officials plus the sniffer dog greeted us. We were to stay up on the bow nets until the dog was done sniffing. That took a while, especially because she got excited about something in our spares locker. So they bring in the drug-and-explosive analyzer device, and determine that an aluminum (aluminium) bracket has traces of pseudo epinephrine, or something like that. Can I explain that…? No, makes no sense. (Later Tahawus had a similar experience where they detected traces of cocaine on some random piece of gear. Norm thinks they do that intentionally to rattle you!)

Then lots of questions, some seemingly friendly/chatty, but clearly they are trained to keep you talking about your background, etc. and they split the crew from the skipper, so your stories had better check out! The big question up front: “Are we going to find anything aboard that might be an issue? Weapons, plants, drugs,…?” Well, yes, actually. We have a 12-gauge flare gun, which we’ve been told is considered a weapon in Australia. “No worries, flare guns are fine.” Okay, but we also have a big store of prescription medicines, since our third owner, not present, is a physician. That turned out to be only a minor issue. They pulled out the two boxes of narcotics and sealed them in an unused locker in the head. When we check out of the country we have to show that the locker is still sealed.

Okay, but there is one other thing. We had heard that mace and pepper spray are considered weapons, and Bob alerted me just before the inspection that he had a can of bear spray! Bob is from Canada, remember, so of course he carries bear spray across the Pacific 😉

That led to some research by Border Force, and with apologies they said they would have to confiscate the bear spray. Later in the afternoon we walked past an outdoor bar, and one of the guys was there. Seeing us, he of course asked if we’d seen any bears yet. No worries, the Border Force was friendly, courteous, professional, and they didn’t give us any further grief about strange substances on our spare aluminum bracket.

But still pending was the dreaded quarantine inspection. The agriculture guy was delayed, so we had to continue to stay aboard another couple hours until he showed up. We had been told they will confiscate most of your food, sometimes even your spices. Also told they would inspect the bottom of the boat with an underwater camera, and if they spotted any barnacles we would have to haul the boat immediately and have it cleaned at our expense. We were also told that if they found any insects, alive or dead, the boat would have to be fumigated, including sealing it all up and us moving off of it for two days — again at our expense, of course.

Well, the bloke was nice enough, but he certainly was painfully thorough — going through every locker, inspecting all food packages, and tapping all woodwork looking for signs of termites. He found some weevils in a bag of pasta. Uh oh… No worries, he says, these are garden variety weevils that are already in Australia. He disposes of the bag, but no further action. Then he takes a woven basket that I bought in Tonga and bangs it on the counter. And proceeds to point out tiny crawly things. This I had feared, as I had seen tiny ants around the basket, and I had sprayed it with an ant poison, but here they were still. Book lice, he says, not ants; the bane of libraries. Not a problem — he just wanted to show us that they were there!

In fact he ended up taking very little. Our 7 remaining eggs, the pasta, and the only fresh produce we still had aboard – some garlic. As he was leaving I asked about the underwater inspection. Yes, he has the camera in his car, but he only uses it on the boats with major growth. The gypsies, he says, who stay in one place a long time and don’t clean/repainted the boat.

Whew! Everyone was friendly and heartily welcomed us to Australia, but it was a major relief when it was over, we could take down our quarantine flag, and move the boat from the quarantine dock to a slip in the marina.

Tuesday…
Hauled the boat. Everyone seems professional and knowledgeable. By the end of the day the bottom is already clean, the waterline is taped for painting, a lower shroud is removed for measuring the new wire, and the first batch of decisions is behind us.

I feel an emotional “whiplash.” Being at sea one day, talking with various contractors the next. From solitude to city. We took the bus to the mall (just to look around; there wasn’t anything there that we needed). Bob rented a car. I visited a dentist to reattach a crown that had popped off. (I consider myself very lucky that this happened one day before arriving in civilization!) We have a list of maybe 30 boat tasks/issues/questions. Hard to prioritize, after the obvious top items. And what’s it all going to cost???

Water music performance, the night before we left Vanuatu.
Water music performance, the night before we left Vanuatu.
I like this poster that was on the wall at the customs office, when we were clearing out of Vanuatu. I think it’s funny how the last bit of the “story” is covered, so you can fill in your own blank for “You shoulda married _______”
A photo taken by Doina that I like -- figure out the message in Pidgin English.
A photo taken by Doina that I like — figure out the message in Pidgin English.
14.7 knots, and 7 miles ahead of Blue Wind
14.7 knots, and 7 miles ahead of Blue Wind
Approaching Blue Wind, to make our medicine transfer
Approaching Blue Wind, to make our medicine transfer
With weighted throwing line in place...
With weighted throwing line in place…
Good shot, into the sail
Good shot, into the sail
Thumbs up! Pull in that PB jar. We'll get the line back in Oz.
Thumbs up! Pull in that PB jar. We’ll get the line back in Oz.
A guest stopping for a rest
A guest stopping for a rest

Video of our welcome to the Great Barrier Reef:

In the slings in Mackay.
In the slings in Mackay.
6. Tahiti to Australia

Call for Assistance

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We’ve been within AIS range (~20 miles) of Blue Wind for two days. We would start to leave them behind, then the wind would change a little and they would start to catch up. At one point we had almost no wind, and we could see on the AIS that they were going 8 knots. Of course we concluded that they were motoring. And later in the day we got a fresh breeze, and went from about 5 knots to 10, and Blue Wind called on the VHF radio asking if we had just started our engines. (That’s a little funny, because our top speed under engines is about 7 knots.) Apparently they were watching us as closely as we were watching them. We each assured the other that we were not, nor had we been, motoring.

Then the conversation turned more serious. James (skipper) said that Ruy (his only crew member) was very sick. He asked about our medical knowledge and medications on board. Our “ship’s doctor” (Tim) of course is not aboard. We tried to call Tim on Bob’s satellite telephone, but without success. We sent an email via the SSB radio, and were pleasantly surprised to see a reply by the time we had rummaged through Tim’s collection of medications. Via satphone Tim then spoke directly with James. Although Ruy had already taken an antibiotic, Tim recommended a different one. (Broader spectrum? More powerful? I don’t know.) Blue Wind did not have the medication, but I did. So we made a plan with James to get it to him.

When the medical issue first arose we had altered course to gradually converge with Blue Wind. We knew we might be transferring medicine. We also discussed transferring a crew member to assist (in spite of the potential nightmare with the immigration authorities if we arrived with a different crew than left Vanuatu). Transferring a person would be much trickier than transferring a package. With ocean waves it is dangerous/impossible to bring the boats directly alongside — they could be pushed into each other, or the rolling could case the masts/rigging to collide.

James considered it, but declined the offer of crew. So as we were closing the last mile to Blue Wind…we cleaned out an empty peanut butter plastic jar…put the medicine in a sealed plastic bag in the jar…added a hunk of just-baked bread in another sealed bag as a nice gesture…tied a small line around the lip of the closed jar…tied the small line to a larger/heavier/throwable line…found a small water bottle that we half filled with water to act as a throwing weight…tied a small line around the neck of the water bottle…and attached that to the other end of the heavier line. We agreed that Blue Wind would hold their course at a slow speed, while Bill conned No Regrets under power and approached from astern, passing alongside about a boat-length away. I would then heave the weighted end of the line (while Bob takes pictures). If unsuccessful we could retrieve the line and try again. But I threw a strike — right into their mainsail, so the bottle slid down to James on deck. James then pulls the entire line to his boat, with the payload on the end. We’ll ask for the line back in Australia.

The transfer went without a hitch. Blue Wind is now motoring at top speed toward Mackay, some 300 miles away. We’re trying to stay within radio range in case any further assistance is needed.

Any offshore sailor would do as much to assist another boat if they could. But this experience points out a benefit of sailing in a rally — having another boat close enough by to help!

6. Tahiti to Australia

200 Plus

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We have flirted a couple of times with the 200 miles/day goal, but finally today we have definitively and unequivocally broken through that barrier! Our noon to noon 24 hour run was 225 nautical miles. Yeah! Our average speed for the past day and a half has been an awesome 9.5 knots. Rides down the waves are routinely 12 knots, sometimes 14, occasionally 16, and twice 18. We left a couple hours behind the other boats because we had to complete a repair aloft, but we have passed them all. Blue Wind is the boat to beat. They were 20 miles ahead of us when we got out to open water, and they are now 15 miles behind. It was gratifying of course to sail past Tahawus last night — they’ve shown that they can sail pass us upwind, now we’ve shown what we can do downwind. But of course this is not a race…

We are sailing with a reefed mainsail and working jib. Winds are in the low 20’s, though it was blowing 30 just before dawn. That was a wild time, with the roar of the water rushing past the hulls, and the anticipation of the next wave lifting the sterns in the utter darkness. Then the push of the wave accelerating the boat, and guessing from that initial push what the speed would be in the seconds that follow. Can everything withstand the immense forces at play…? Mostly the sailing has been “smooth” in the sense of not crashing into waves, though occasionally one smacks under the bridge deck and shakes the boat with a lurch that would have seemed terrifying months ago, but which I would merely call nerve-wracking after what we have sailed through to get here.

I do not expect to be the first boat to Australia, because the wind is predicted to go light before we get there, and both Blue Wind and Tahawus go much faster than we do under power. (And they will switch to power much earlier than we will.) But we are very happy to have shown what we can do under sail! Six hundred miles to go to the passage through the Great Barrier Reef.