coromandel -> bay of islands

After hanging out most of the week in coromandel wanted to give my redesigned self-steering a good workout. I'm currently a few miles off Poor Knight's Islands, after having departed coromandel just now 24 hours ago (with a short stop at an island as there wasn't any wind for a bit)

After a somewhat bumpy night crossing the colville channel, things settled down a bit, and then up again, and after tearing the jib completely across (it's the old sail I practice sail repair on, so it tearing is a good thing ;) am now barrelling along under spinneker!

With just enough 3g to sync this message!

I have arrived! I just dropped anchor in Butler bay, Mangonui. This isn't actually bay of islands, I decided to go further north to make the trip a better test. According to my log book, I departed coromandel 1500 two days ago, and I just dopped anchor here at 1539, so that is ~49 hours sailing!

I also caught a really big fish and I'm gonna eat some of it then sit down and tell you all of my adventures.

I am currently just feeling relief at being stopped. Although I spent much of the time just reading, I was constantly ready to jump up and attend to an emergency.

I departed about 3pm, two days ago, after going for a swim to scrape the bottom - I had a long way to go so going a little bit faster would make a big difference. But by the time I had all that ready, it was late afternoon already. Anyway, I knew I'd be sailing over night, so it didn't make so much difference when I left. I wanted to test the new self-steering, but also I wanted to test myself

The old-self-steering was enough to demonstrate that a design was possible, but it didn't really work that great. Since then I have been day dreaming about a better version of that design... in the last couple of weeks I built that on the hackland cnc:

Same basic idea as the old one, but everything is more deliberate. Anyway, that was ready last week. I was just gonna sail to waiheke, but it worked, so I kept on going. Also, @lucas and @dangerousbeans were out, so we all sailed to coromandel and hung out there a while.

I wanted to give it a good test - the previous one I had constructed in the bay of islands, and used it to sail back, so the obvious test was sail to the bay of islands. After a while, the perfect mix of fairly promising winds and not needing to be on a video call for a few days happened.

I set out in pretty light winds, but sailing smoothly, taking this opportunity to write some code: I had previously made a small js app that used the phone's GPS to tell me current location, heading and speed. http://odominictarr.github.io/geolocation-demo I wanted to update that a bit to get average speed over the last minute, 15 minutes, etc... I took this opportunity to do that...

Until just a few hours in I was becalmed... right next to an island that I had camped on for a week, 11 years ago so I stopped to check how it was doing. The main thing I remember was: a lot of rats! It had gotten a lot bushier since then, maybe the rats had been exterminated. I didn't stay to find out. There was no wind, so I went back to my boat and made dinner...

And then just as it was getting dark, the wind started gusting through the gap between the two parts of the island! I weighed anchor and got underway. I was going fast on a beam reach, (sailing across the wind, the fastest point of sail).

But now I was getting quite remote, and sailed out of cell tower range, and then I discovered that the location api does not function in android chrome when a page is in offline mode! Luckily, I had this alcatel one flip phone, that would you believe it, has a modern browser in there, and had an older version of my demo app happens to be cached on it. That's how I navigated: get lat/long from the phone, and mark it on the chart every hour, using the compass as a rough guide where to point the boat (my boat is quite small and gets pushed around a lot by the waves so it's hard to sail it to a compass bearing more accurate than 5 degrees, and it's impossible not to veer from side to side in gusts too)

As I got around Coromandel peninsula, I turned and was now sailing with the wind on the quarter (from the back, but to the side) it seems this is the most difficult angle for the self steering, because the waves push you to the side. The wind was also building, in my log book I noted I had reefed the mainsail at 2242 (analogy: gone down a gear, for more control) But I made progress anyway, starting to pass great barrier island around 0130 hours... by 0400 I was passed great barrier, and just had the mokuhinau islands to pass to my port (left). At 0445 I put the second reef in the main, and set the jib poled-out, one sail either side, and it balanced down wind quite nicely.

All this time the self-steering was doing most of the work. I spent most of the time in the cabin, reading or taking quick naps (when not too close to hazards, such as rocks) jumping on deck periodically to check progress, or whenever their was a weird noise, or the the way the boat moved felt different.

At 0500 I noted that "a very slender cresent moon has just risen" Indeed, I realized that I don't think I had ever seen the cresent moon rise before - you need to be up very early. It was very thin and bright orange.

By 0630 I was clear of the mokohinaus, and now had only the pacific ocean in front of me. I took a longer nap this time, when I awoke, 0753 (I think I had an alarm for 8, I would never not set an alarm, in case the wind changed, and blew me back towards land) I realized this was the farthest out I had sailed.

Next, I had to figure out the next landmark the poor knight's islands. (I was disapointed to learn that the name of this island is nothing to do with a sect of knights that take a vow of poverty, but that someone thought the islands resembled french toast, aka, poor knights pudding)

Although the islands are towering cliffs all around, when I found them they where just a smudge on the horizon... so I sailed towards that.

At 930, I was getting hungry, I had breakfast, and second coffee. While relaxing with the coffee I heard a funny noise. It wasn't a banging, and it didn't happen again, and I was drinking a coffee, so I left it. When I did next go on deck, I was surprised to discover my jib (the front sail) was completely torn across!

I was surprised, because it wasn't even that windy! and this sail had already survived so much! This is my old sail that I practice sail repair on, so I'll have a good practice job when I get back to a sewing machine. The we were heading down wind, and the waves had settled, so I set the spinnaker and we tore off down wind towards the poor knights.

...

I sailed like that all day, until 1650, because the wind had gotten stronger and veered so it was on the quarter now, which pushes the boat around a lot, too much for the self steering. I set the medium jib, because it would be dark soon enough, and I'd rather not do another sail change in the dark. (ye olde traditional sailing ships reefed at night, unless they were outrunning pirates, or they were pirates)

I had decided to head for Mangonui instead of Bay of Islands. It added another 55 miles to my trip, so I'd definitely not arrive until the next afternoon, making this easily my longest trip. There were less hazards now. I just had to sail around things, not between anything. My plan was just to give everything a really wind berth, at least 10 miles. (the fastest my boat might reasonably go is 6 knots, more likely 5, so in the absolute worse case that I slept through my alarms, and the wind changed, i'd still have at least 2 hours before I hit anything. (I was setting alarms every 1 hour, so this was double the margin)

At midnight, I marked my position on the chart, and was shocked to see I was way off course, and heading straight for an island! I reset the sails, and self-steering, hopefully well away from the hazard this time, staying awake to monitor things. Then, when the next hour rolled around and I marked my position - I was shocked again! I couldn't possibly have travelled that far! or at that angle! as I was checking my notes, I realized that I had marked the previous position wrong. I'd taken 35 degrees 53 minutes south, and put that notches below the line marked 55 minutes on the chart... but i'm in the southern hemisphere, and zero is the equator. It's -35:53! when I corrected this, I had been travelling in a straightish line the whole time and didn't actually need to change anything. I had just made a simple mistake while sleep deprived. This is exactly the sort of thing I was doing this trip to find out - how would I handle sailing consecutive nights in a row? Is this something you can get better at?

Later, shortly after 0200, I was below decks reading, and a sound of lots of small waves breaking (sort of a smaller wooshing sound, not a big crashing) alerted me, I jumped up, and saw the depth sounder read 0.1 meters! I was about to run aground! I quickly disabled the self steering, and tried to steer away from the reef that I seemed to be on (funny, I didn't notice anything in this area on the chart) when I didn't hit anything, but the depth sounder still said weird things, flipping rapidly to different readings, mostly 0.1 or 757, which is what it says when the water is too deep for it, it seems. I realized, the depth sounder was just a bit haunted (all the electronics are). And that sound was just a weird wave thing.

The weird thing about the sleep thing, and making the mistake, is that by the morning, I had a coffee and felt relatively sharp again. I later had a hour nap during the day, and woke up feeling groggy... maybe a hour is just the wrong length? you get into REM sleep but it gets interrupted. A half hour nap is refreshing, or a longer sleep? I should also keep a log of the amount of sleep I get while doing this.

Early morning I came out and saw the moon again. It didn't photograph well. That's one thing I really like about sailing at night - it's something you just have to see with your own eyes.

Once the sun had risen, I just had to sail to doubtless bay, then into mangonui harbour. I estimated another 8 hours. The wind was very light. Was only going about 3 point something knots, but getting closer and closer. When I was quite close, I realized I had a quite heavy fish on my line (I take the line in at night). When I get it aboard, it's huge. Easily the biggest fish I've ever caught.

This photo is not very good at making it look big. But that green rectangle (a sponge) next to it's head, is actually 11 cm long - this fish is over 2 feet long!

I was getting pretty close to the massive cliffs that surround doubtless bay, and the wind was very light, but the waves were quite big, left over from before. This makes it quite hard to sail, because the waves moving the boat shake the sails, and they loose their shape, and then they don't create lift well. I figured I'd made it this far, I could just motor in... (I had managed to get the motor running again in coromandel) but then it wouldn't start. Starter solenoid just clicks, then nothing. It occurred to me that this swell could be a problem. If the wind is this light, I'm not moving very fast, theirfore the rudder doesn't work very well, if there is swell at the harbour entrance, that might be quite dangerous... I might have to anchor out side of that, which would be somewhat uncomfortable, or keep sailing. It seems there isn't enough power in the batteries... but there has been heaps of sun on the panels all day. Once I manage to sail slowly far enough away from the cliffs I try switching to the other old battery... it works! I'm motoring in! I start putting the sails away... and then the wind picks again! anyway I motor in, and find a nice spot to anchor.

I buy some ice to give me a chance to get through all this fish before it goes bad, and write this.

"The weird thing about the sleep thing, and making the mistake, is that by the morning, I had a coffee and felt relatively sharp again. I later had a hour nap during the day, and woke up feeling groggy... maybe a hour is just the wrong length? you get into REM sleep but it gets interrupted. A half hour nap is refreshing, or a longer sleep? I should also keep a log of the amount of sleep I get while doing this."

When sailing the sleep deprived seas of the span of a new born, I also found short naps restorative... anything longer than 45 mins but shorter than 3 hours I could never NOT feel groggy and wretched.

Loved reading this log - my partners parents sailed around the world for some 15 years and some of these stories make me wish they had had ssb to write their logs in...