The Reef at Last

Anchored on the Great Barrier Reef

We’ve been sailing north inside the Great Barrier Reef for about six weeks, but yesterday was the first time we actually saw it, dove on it and anchored beside it. Further south the reef is a bit thin and it’s well off shore. (Running a length equivalent to the US west coast, the GBR isn’t a continuous reef, but hundreds of small reefs linked together like a pearl necklace, with gaps.) Once you hit Cairns though, the reef starts to close with land, the water warms up to a more pleasant 24C and it becomes easier to visit. Easier, but not easy.

 

hanging out with a turtle

The Barrier Reef is what divides the north coast of Australia from the Coral Sea—and having sailed on the Coral Sea, I can tell you it’s a moody piece of water that alternates between calm beauty and frothing nastiness. This means when you visit the reef you need at least a few days of sustained calm to make it work. Otherwise you’ll find yourself anchored in heaving seas with invisible (but deadly) reef all around you. For context—the one place Captain Cook went aground and tore apart the Endeavour was on Endeavour Reef, two reefs over from where we woke up this morning.

Lots of sailors who pass through this area are content with anchoring behind islands and exploring the inner reefs. But I really wanted the experience of dropping our hook in what looked like the middle of the ocean, miles from land. The tour boats do it all the time, but they have speed in their favour: they head out early in the morning and return to a safe harbour by dusk. But because we’re on the move north, we didn’t want to go in and out of the same place.

So in Cairns I nervously watched as a high built in the Tasman Sea, the sign of the end to a sustained period of calm. As soon as we finished all our chores: we had our luff tape on our genoa replaced, our scuba gear serviced and new seals put in the outboard… We set off for Low Island and then Turtle Bay on Tongue Reef.

The reward was anchoring in an endless expanse of sea and then taking Maia for her first extended dives in three years. Her confidence and joy underwater were gratifying to see. The reef itself was lovely—lots of corals, though not as much colour as we saw further south. The fish life too was smaller and sparser than we hoped. Strangely, much of the reef is only a Habitat Protection Zone—which means you can fish as much as you like (no trawling) and even collect aquarium stock!

 

Despite the lack of abundance, our dives were beautiful. The night sky held a bright moon and the seas stayed calm. This morning the wind started to rise after dawn and we turned north. It’s clear the wind patterns are beginning to change and the season for travel up here is coming to an end—the time’s come to hurry ourselves on to Darwin.

Sunrise on the reef--no land in sight

Growing Up Afloat

I’m not sure how most parents mark the passing of their kid’s years but for us, alongside the height marks on the wall, and the outgrown shoes, we’ve noticed Maia’s developing maturity by changes in our anchoring routine.

 

Maia at three

There was a time when she was very wee that when the moment came to anchor I’d strap her into her car seat and try to chant to myself, ‘it’s for the good of the boat’ while Maia protested very vocally and Evan tried to get my attention with hand signals before dropping the hook. Then came the stage where we would talk to her in advance, explaining she needed to play quietly and not interupt us with questions until the anchor was down and the engine was turned off. Sometimes if it was going to be complicated anchoring or docking we’d even pull out special toys. 

“Is the engine off yet? No? Then please wait to talk to us.”

By the time she was seven she knew the drill and would tuck herself away with a book until the boat was silent and settled, and then we could look out at the new neighbourhood together.

 

off on her own exploring

 

Then came the latest change, “I’d like to learn to anchor the boat.”

Our parenting style falls somewhere between ‘high expectations’ and ‘childhood is short and the magic should be protected’. What this means is when Maia brought home a recent report card we barely looked at it but asked if she’s having fun learning and is getting everything out of school she hoped. On the boat it means we expect her to help with every chore but if her imaginary mermaid friend wants to help too, we’ll get both of them a scrub brush.

 

school holidays are even better with a friend along

 

So through the years Maia has ‘helped’ but it was more about teaching her how to do things, and how to be part of a crew, than actually getting things done. Recently though this has changed. Along with bigger feet, and a height mark on the wall I no longer have to bend down to make, the way Maia helps us indicates she’s growing up. When we were hauled out to paint the bottom the quantity and quality of her contribution caught us both off guard. But it wasn’t until we went out sailing afterward that we really saw that our little girl had grown into a sailor.

And as she set the anchor and helped stow away gear, and made her friend feel at home and taught her how to use everything on the boat, we discovered we're sailing with a very different person than we arrived in Australia with. And I couldn’t help but feel proud and amazed.

“I’m not sure a boat will be my dream when I’m an adult,” Maia told me one evening as we watched the sun set beyond our anchorage, “but it’s a good way to grow up.”

scenes from our latest trip out

 

Regalvanizing-from A to Zinc

rusty chain--some links are in better shape than others

If you’re not a boater, a rusty anchor chain probably isn’t that exciting a thing to contemplate. But when those rusty links are the link between your boat and your anchor (a piece of equipment that is easily one of the most important items on a boat, or under a boat) the rust gets personal.

Chain is expensive stuff—and in recent years, because of increased costs, the protective zinc coating found on chain has become thinner. This means that unless you are diligent about washing down your chain, end for end it as it shows wear, and touch it up with a wire brush and zinc paint when the first spots of rust do show up, before you know it you’ll have a rusty ball of chain in your anchor locker.

 

take your chain for a drive

Or at least we did. Our chain is about 5 years old. Not that old in the boating world—but a few years of constant use, followed by a year in the anchor locker meant that our chain was rapidly approaching the cut-off point between salvageable and garbage. Although surface rust, even if it’s a bit flakey, isn’t the end of the world for chain-but you do need to remove heavy rust to have chain regalvanized.

As a guideline you should toss rusty chain if:

- Wear exceeds 10% of a link diameter (check where the links connect).

- The chain is cut, nicked, cracked, gouged, or pitted.

- It’s distorted, twisted, bent or stretched.

- You don’t know its history, including how many times it’s been regalvanized.

If you got around to regalvanizing before we did and the surface rust was fairly light (indicating you still have some zinc coating left) you can probably send it straight for regalvanizing without prep. If you have more rust then you’ll need to look at sandblasting, which is normally hugely expensive, unless you try a version of poor mans sand blasting.

 

bare metal after 10 km--we were still able to see the stamps on the links indicating we hadn't lost much material

We headed off out of Brisbane in search of a sandy road. When we found one we tied the chain the trailer hitch and set off down the empty road (the one car that passed us was pretty confused, or thought we were confused). By end-for-ending the chain a couple of times and driving through sweeping S turns the chain started to show bright metal after about 10k. Then it was off for galvanizing.

Because I ask about this stuff I learned the first step of the galvanizing process is a caustic soda solution to remove grease and oils from the steel. The chain is then immersed into a pickling solution of sulfuric acid. Then it’s ready for the molten zinc.

newly galvanized chain

The result is a thicker coating of zinc than what the chain had when it was manufactured—which means it should last longer. Especially because we’ll take better care of it this time round and not wait so long before regalvanizing it again.

Our cost at Industrial Galvanizers in Brisbane was $2.05 a kilo—and our chain came in at $166. Far less than new chain would have cost (we can’t get our chain here so would have needed a new gypsy as well).

The Day Job--storm story

Because I'm pretty sure most of you don't care where Scarlett Johansson might go for a romantic escape, or which Olympic stadium was the coolest--I don't normally link to the stories I write for a living on this blog. But this one for Cruising World was one that I first wrote about here--way back in Feb 2010. So I thought it fit.

Safety at Sea: When Fury Overtakes a Cruisers’ Safe Haven

Anchoring lessons are learned, some the hard way, when a freak winter storm blows into Mexico's Bahía de Banderas.

by Story and Photos by Diane Selkirk 

David Norton

The harbor off La Cruz de Huanacaxtle, in the northern part of Bahía de Banderas, on Mexico’s Pacific coast near Puerto Vallarta, is a popular anchorage for cruisers. In winter, it’s known for providing protection from north winds, though it’s exposed to the south.

Bad weather is something we’re prepared for—at sea. But when the passage is over and we’ve dropped the hook, hurricane-force winds and 6-foot seas are the last things we expect. But we realize that extreme weather can happen just about anywhere. We experienced this firsthand when winds in excess of 80 knots ripped through Bahía de Banderas, on Mexico’s mainland near Puerto Vallarta, toppling trees, blowing windows out of high rises, and cutting power to towns around the bay. Over half of the 60 or so boats anchored in La Cruz de Huanacaxtle, in the northern part of the bay, dragged or lost their anchors, and dozens more ended up with shredded sails or impact damage. Two boats went aground.

Read the rest of the story here: http://www.cruisingworld.com/people/passage-notes/safety-at-sea-when-fury-overtakes-a-cruisers-safe-haven

Afternoon Adventures

Add two more anchored boats and you have how the anchorage looked during our blow

We’re hanging out in the Santa Rosalia area, enjoying the town and the internet. After we leave here we understand there’s one pay-(a lot)-as-you-go internet café in Bay of LA and that’s it. And considering I have a couple of research-heavy stories in the works, being in Santa Rosalia (or out at Isla Marcos where we can swim, fish and get Banda Anchas 3G service) is pretty much the best option as long as nothing too untoward is brewing in the south.

The problem with Santa Rosalia is it has a small, crowded, busy and very old (as in 140-years-old) harbour that has a bottom consistency of Jell-o. And not just your standard Jell-o; it’s more like that nasty Jell-o salad stuff, with chunks. So sometimes you hook a chunk (which could be anything from the wreck of a 19th century schooner to an old car) and sometimes your anchor simply drifts around in the Jell-o.

If all goes well, the boats at anchor (which are all crowded in a back corner) all drift around together and no one's the worse for it. But yesterday our flat calm, slight overcast day brought an afternoon blow that added some excitement to the place.

Big winds typically come at night; when people are home. But yesterday’s breeze picked up when half the folks were off their boats. And as the wind hit and we all pulled back into the sludge, some of us moved, and some of us didn’t. The first boat to start the slow drift was just upwind of us. We watched Francis Lee (whose owner Jesse was on shore) head straight between our bows, threatening to make us a trimaran.

As Francis Lee closed on us, we slipped out rode, until we were within a boat length of Third Day. But Third Day had nowhere to go because although Lori was aboard she couldn’t get the windless to work (and she also had a solid wall behind her). Meanwhile Hotspur was also on the move and was closing in on Third Day's port side. But Jim was aboard with 10-year-old Carolyne (who got a crash course in driving the boat in high winds and became a hero for the day).

Fortunately it’s a small town and Jesse got back to Frances Lee before she made any structural modifications to our hull. He picked up his anchor and moved. Jim picked up his and moved. Then for good measure we picked up ours to give Third Day a little space. While moving though we got garbage caught on our prop (the harbour is full of stuff…) and lost propulsion, which forced us to anchor a bit sooner than planned.

The fact it was daylight and the wind never got above 30 knots was our saving grace. That and the fact no one dragged quickly. The lesson though is this is not the place to be in bad weather. It’s a terrible harbour. Nice town, good internet, but a terrible harbour.

Knot

Just before we hauled out the other day, we pulled up the anchor--like always. And found this: a knot. For the uninitiated to anchoring, knots are not something normally found in an anchoring chain. You see, to anchor, you drop the anchor, then as you go in reverse you pay out anchor chain (the rode). The result should be knot free.

The difference is we're in La Paz: home to the famous La Paz Waltz. The Waltz is caused by a combination of wind against tide, which can make boats do any number of odd things--from sailing in slow circles, to drifting sideways at a great rate, to spinning in quick circles. What the Waltz typically doesn't cause is knots. Technically the whole knot thing shouldn't be possible.

So how do you think we got it?

Best answer shared in our comments section will earn travel writer swag. Seriously. When we get back to Vancouver in July I'll offload something from my acquired swag stash--I may even let you choose.

The aftermath

Made it into the marina after Ev cleared the prop. We were greeted by dozens of people to take our lines - everyone had a story. One boat that had been anchored near us told us he wondered where we had gone - then realized he dragged more than a 1/4 mile. Another ended up with parted dock lines and became wedged under the pier. There is no power or water in town. Every boat we've met has some damage. We seem to have gotten off easy compared to stripped windlesses, shredded sails, broken wind generators and damage from dragging into each other. The local weather forcaster has been here 11 years and has never seen weather like this.

We're starting to clean up and beginning to get our heads around going through a 100 mile an hour storm. We're preparing for part two. The jet stream has dropped lower and sped up, we were told, which means the chance of further tropical disturbance is high.

The good news is the marina has at least a half dozen kids in it. Maia is off to find them.

Well, Holy Crap!!

Thunder, lightening, driving rain, 88knots (101 mile per hour winds) and six foot breaking seas. That's what we just had in the La Cruz anchorage. No water spouts though--so that's good.
We're wired but ok. Our anchor held and as luck would have it we were windward of the fleet (except two 70 foot steel fishing boats that missed dragging onto us by a few meters while Evan steered out of the way...) The anchorage is unrecognizable right now. We don't know where many of the boats are. From what we've heard on the radio it sounds like a few are in the shoals. A few made it into the marina, a few motored out into open water. Very few had anchors that held.
Our options became limited with the discovery that we have a length of blue poly line wrapped around our prop. It's still far too dangerous to free it and if we start motoring to somewhere else we could loose our engine. We have chafe in one section of our anchor rode caused by when our bow roller self-destructed so at first light, or as soon as the seas have eased to make it safe, we (being Evan) will go into the water to free it. Storm anchor is on deck ready to heave over.
El Nino, you're killing me, baby...
The jet stream is way down here. I'm shaky on the details but these storms are utterly unpredictable right now and can come back up with no warning.
May be a very long night...
This may be why rum was invented.
7:30 am
We had a low sleep night. Perfect after a five-day passage. The anchorage is eerie. Before the storm we had boats all around us. Now the nearest is as though it's in a different anchorage and where there were 50 or more yesterday, today there is 25. They're spread across the bay in clusters. Discovering things like shreaded sails, lost dinghies, damaged decks. The radio keeps chirping with calls from the beach--people finding things; dinghies, surf boards, gas cans, oars and wanting to get them back to their owners before the stuff is lost to the tides.

Planes!

There are lots of things that can disturb a deep and peaceful sleep on a boat: Changes in motion, rising wind, engine noise that sounds like you are about to be run over by a very large truck…

The large truck wakes us every time.

First we contemplate whether the island we’re anchored off of has an 8-lane freeway we failed to notice, then we wonder if we dragged up near it. It’s when we poke our head out the hatch when we realize the noise is a float plane – which is coming directly at us.

It took a bit to get used to this. There is something a bit unnerving about staring directly into a propeller; a feeling that hasn’t improved despite the fact that we have the experience multiple times a day. Pretty much any quiet harbour doubles as an airport up here and inevitably we seem to always anchor right in the middle of the runway.

Bumping and Banging

Sailing successfully is all about having the right skills. We’d like to think it’s about having the right boat and the best equipment – and often those will get you through. But in the toughest moments it comes down to knowing how to do things right. All that boring basic seamanship stuff.

This came up for us over and over this week.

We’re the first to admit our skills are a bit rusty – but we do have them. When we sail, we check the weather report and have all the sails set to go before heading out. When we anchor, we always anchor with an eye to who’s around us and as though it’s going to blow.

For example - rust at the end of the rainbow is best avoided.

This came in handy in Nanaimo. It was Sea Festival weekend and hundreds of boats were jam-packed in the small basin – hoping to see the fireworks.

Then came the lightening squall.

We sat steady through the chaos of boats piling up on each other. But then, one big power boat tried to smash our dreams. He was on the bow – doing something with the anchor, while she stood on the bridge deck flapping her arms.

We were directly down wind.

It took the shouted advice of the boats around them (I sort of just screamed ‘don’t you dare hit us!!’ rather than offering direction) for her to sort out to turn on the engine and steer the boat.

They really ought to have known how to control a dragging boat.

Our basic rule is there are no plumbers (or mechanics, or electricians) at sea. And we need to know how to take care of our boat and ourselves. I probably rely on Evan far too much for all these things – but we are pretty good at trouble shooting together – which is why we now know the water tank we thought was leaking (think huge repair job) was actually a leaking hose clamp (leak is now checked off on the to-do list).

This week also included the repair of a lost alternator bolt while we were underway (Ev found the bold but not the nut and had to retap the bolt to fit a metric nut). A sheared a bolt on the outboard engine bracket. A *really, really* clogged holding tank and a bit of computer grumpiness.

And while it seems like we had a sucky week of repair after repair – this is pretty much expected on a newly launched boat.

At least I keep telling myself that.