At sea, 15 miles east of Cape Kidnappers
Thursday 27 May 2021
The weather forecast turned out to be remarkably accurate – very little wind, but a confused sea, the result of a lingering storm north-east of here.
On “paper”, the sea state looked worse than it actually turned out to be, showing as it did, a swell of up to 3 metres from one direction, 3 metres from another and a localised choppy “sea” of up to 2 metres. In reality, with minimal wind, we were able to make good headway – 139 nautical miles for the first 24 hours. It’s just that the sea constantly had us rolling this way and that, making things very uncomfortable.
This lack of “comfort” extending beyond the simple act of getting around on deck, or lying still in your bunk, to the more important necessity of gaining mastery over an “upset stomach”. In the end the ship’s first aid box came to the rescue, with what friend Dr Graeme Duke describes as “magic medicine” … a small box of tiny pills I’d stowed aboard 18 months ago, just in case. Long story short … the “magic” worked, and pretty soon it was smiles all round, plus an interest in eating some food – again.
Passing Cape Kidnappers had me reaching for Captain Cook’s journals – the original author of the nautical charts in these parts – and on Sunday 15 October 1769 he describes how one of his Ship’s company was over the side, and the local natives (Maoris) …
“… seiz’d hold of him, pull’d him into the Boat and endeavoured to carry him off; this obliged us to fire upon them, which gave the Boy an opportunity to jump overboard. We brought the Ship too, lower’d a Boat into the Water, and took him up unhurt. This affair occasioned my giving this point of land the name of Cape Kidnappers”
The sun came up, putting an end to the long cold night, with the coastline slowly slipping by on the port side. Numerous sail changes through the night kept sleep to a minimum, as we tried to supplement the ever-faithful Perkins engine with whatever speed we could muster from the fluky breeze.
Then sometime in the afternoon the autohelm started beeping and then displayed a message about exceeding the maximum “deviation”. We’d had this sort of thing before, and eventually it would correct itself, so I wasn’t too concerned. The chart plotter even lost our position for a time, with Alvin’s calm response being … “that’s OK, I’ve been using the App on my Smartphone anyway, see…”
And that’s true. I’ve got the same App on my phone as a backup, plus a further program on my laptop called OpenCPN with an external GPS beacon that acts just like a chart plotter.
But still, it would be nice if the autohelm would do its thing again, and hold us to a straight course. Sadly, this was not to be. We even turned it off, then on again, several times, still to no avail. In the end we blamed it on the rolly sea state, and figured it would get better after a prolonged rest – I hope we’re right, I’d hate to have to get the manual out.
Dolphins made an appearance today, which was nice. Plus, the occasional seal. And I should mention that as I pulled our trolling fishing line in last night, an enormous sea creature, which I took to be a shark, or some other animal with lots of fins, lunged at the shiny lure from the side, just missing its target. Something I was very pleased about, given its size.
We continue to study the weather forecasts, with usual phone and internet communications being maintained most of the time, despite being 5-10 miles off shore. Our next big decision was whether to continue up and around East Cape, and from there onto the Bay of Plenty and our current destination Tauranga. Or … pull into Gisborne for a day or two, for some rest and recreation, and to also sit out the next expected blow from the north.
There was no need to put this decision to a vote … popular consensus aboard favoured a wee pitstop … so I called ahead to the Gisborne Marina Manager to sort out formalities.
“yes, we’ve got a spot for you” replied helpful Daniel … which was all I wanted to hear. And “yes”, we could send him through evidence of a “CLEAN HULL” (in the past 30 days) plus our “INSURANCE SCHEDULE” – (showing we were good for up to $10 million of liability damage) – prior to arrival.
Then, upon arrival we’d need to provide our vessel “ELECTRICAL WARRANT OF FITNESS” and “POWER CORD TAG” in the event that we wanted to plug into shore power … which we did.
The lesson here is clearly that if you want to get away from bureaucracy by going to sea … it’s no use … it will follow you. So, the other lesson is … make sure you’ve got the right piece of paper so you can help others tick the boxes on their forms, and all will be well.
Smooth seas, fair breeze and rolly and lumpy as expected
Rob Latimer
NZ2020 