DAYS ON A SACRED PASSAGE -- Part II

Hugh Clay

(As promised in the last issue, Hugh concludes the story of Aratapu's passage home from Hobart, Tasmania, to Plymouth, England.)

Those who read the last Flying Fish will remember that Aratapu is in the middle of a nine month cruise-cum-delivery-trip from Tasmania to UK. After eight weeks in Chile, we're now rushing north to catch up with a tight cruise schedule.

8 April 1993: Robinson Crusoe Island

The Port Captain insisted on a detailed passage plan to Galapagos, with an estimated position every day for the next fortnight -- ridiculous. We motored up the lee side of the island past friendly lobstermen working their pots, and into Bahia Oeste to see Alexander Selkirk's cave. We couldn't land because of the swell, but the cave was still obvious (perhaps a bit `restored' even). Still incredible to think he spent four years four months living alone there. Once clear of the island we soon picked up the trades; at midnight, Mandy claimed surges to 9 1/2 knots on the swells.

13 April 1993: Isla San Felix

The Pilot tells us this island is uninhabited, but there's a very obvious naval outpost on the bare volcanic island. The VHF sparks into life and we have to report our credentials, last port and destination even though we're not landing -- I thought we'd escaped Chilean bureaucracy. The island looks even more bare and moonscaped than the south side of Robinson Crusoe, and the rocks off (Roca Catedral de Peterborough) are quite gothicke, even though I can't discover who named them. Masses of birds about, including masked boobies (a sort of super-gannet) and pretty grey noddies, both of which nest on San Felix.

We've had a frustrating time getting this far. The trades dropped out completely twenty-four hours out of Robinson Crusoe, and puffed intermittently from all directions just long enough not to get sail drawing. Robin's continued efforts at fishing went from joke to all-out panic when he hooked a dorado; it chased him all round the deck while we followed him up with murder weapons (hammer, knife and, the only effective solution, gin in the gills). We were even reduced to motoring through the calm, and when the wind returned, we beat north-west for thirty-six hours (in the South East Trades!) into an increasingly boisterous sea. We had an exciting squall at 0300 this morning as it backed south-west, but let's hope the south-easterlies are back for good now.

19 April 1993: 2045'S, 82°5'W

They weren't -- we've had a very frustrating week. Wise words in Hiscock don't help: `the navigator mustn't be disappointed if he encounters conditions different from those shown on the pilot chart', but we've had calm and light northerlies since leaving San Felix, where the pilot charts promised 1-3% of calm and 70% of winds between east and south. As we'd all got used to running down the Trades at an easy 6 knots, tempers are a bit frayed: `from NNE3 and 5 knots to SE2 and 3 1/2 knots to E1 and floppy bang bang, and all in 45 minutes. And rain. Who said the womanly wind's like a fickle mistress? He was understating it'. Near eruption when Mandy (in her bunk) icily asked Robin (on watch in the cockpit) if he'd mind eating his apple less noisily.

But there are compensations: we spend most daylight hours in the paddling pool, my tasteless orange dinghy tied on the coachroof and filled with seawater. I'm spending my night watches learning the pleasures of celestial navigation when you have a clear sky and reasonable motion, and Pete Ingram's programmable calculator to do the donkey work; Jupiter, Sirius and Rigel Kent are becoming good friends.

22 April 1993: 14°40'S, 85°45'W

This is more like it, back to 150+ miles/day pace. `Tootling' with south-east force 4-6 and the two big jibs on the roller, reefing occasionally when it gets a bit too much for the self-steering. Last night we had a wonderful visitation at dusk from at least 300 dolphins, racing and jumping as far as we could see, and after dark turning into an underwater firework display of phosphorescent trails.

There's lots of birds about, mostly boobies and storm-petrels with the occasional tropic bird and tern. The storm-petrels are impossible to differentiate, but I'm glad to see (in Harrison's Seabirds) that the real experts find them difficult too.

30 April 1993: Bahia Wreck, Isla San Cristobal, Galapagos

We just muddled our way in here last night on echo sounder and radar, since none of the lights made sense. The town looks a bit non-descript, but there are sealions draped over all the dinghies, with pelicans, frigate birds and very blue-footed boobies everywhere. Swimming in calm water is good for a change and there's a fair crop of goose barnacles on the port topsides to scrub off. Only one other yacht here, but not very friendly. The Port Captain is playing by the book -- we can stay three days `for repairs' at $35 a night lying on our own anchor. We've been adopted by the local caf': good to see pictures of Blackjack OCC and Lone Rival OCC in their visitors' book. We won't see much of the islands this way, but giant tortoises and marine iguanas seem possible. Perhaps we should have gone to Academy Bay and seen (and paid) more.

We had good views of the albatross colony on Espanola as we sailed in, with lots of handsome albatross swimming and swooping round us, and frigate birds attacking the burgee!

4 May 1993: off Isla Genovesa, Galapagos

There's guano on deck! We sailed overnight (and crossed the Equator at 0530, so not much of a celebration), so we could get a look at the bird cliffs inside the flooded crater basin here. We're being mobbed by red-footed boobies and frigate birds, but some of them have got their red display pouches semi-inflated and swinging ponderously from side to side. The others displaying on the cliff-tops look quite splendid with huge red footballs at their throat -- so much so that Mandy thought one of them was an abandoned beachball. There are tropic birds, lava gulls, herons (unidentified), pelicans and lots of other birds to see.

I hope this offsets Robin's obvious disappointment at not seeing more of the islands. On Isla San Cristobal we ended up paying lots for a boat ride to the north of the island to see giant tortoises (and lots of Darwin finches). We saw the rather repulsive marine iguanas and a splendid cliff-full of nesting blue-footed boobies. Mandy and Robin ventured into the disco, where Galapagueno youth were only too keen to teach Mandy the local dance style. And we enjoyed some more or less authentic cuisine. But now we're bound for windless Panama with every diesel can chock full.

9 May 1993: 5°58'N 82°53'W

We're still sailing -- there's been bits and pieces of wind, mostly from astern, for most of the way; we've been making way whenever it's force 2 or above, so we haven't had to engine too much yet. Navigation is getting a bit interesting -- we're using a coastal chart and transposing the longitude, so our position is in the Andes. More challenging is the fluxgate compass which has become unpredictable, with deviation of 90° on some headings. The spare ship's compass now has a mere 30° deviation, and the autohelm is about as accurate. So we're navigating on a combination of all three (115° flux = 50° ship's = 45° auto = approx 70°T), with occasional checks back to Satnav and handbearing compass.

It's sweaty and stuffy and Robin is fantasizing aloud about shopping in Sainsbury's, having a hot bath and sleeping in his own bed. The night sky is always impressive with distant lightning all round the horizon and an ever-changing cloudscape occasionally obscuring a bright full moon. We had company for the first couple of nights with a red-footed booby roosting on the pushpit, very handsome with bright red legs, bright blue beak and smart brown plumage.

15 May 1993: Colon, Panama

This day Aratapu transited the Panama Canal. It's my first transit, but Aratapu's third, so the net cost is US $35: good value, I'd say, despite the long-winded form-filling process. Our line-handlers (three girls on a backpacking trip and keen to see the canal) were on board at 0530, and our pilot, a friendly Panamanian improbably called Gerardo McNally, at 0545. We were transiting with Valencia, a 1936 40ft S&S design with suspect engine and small rudder, so I ended up doing most of the manoeuvring, and bringing both boats alongside a tug in the locks was a challenge.

It was fun to see the Culebra Cut, the first section of the Canal. GF Wynne of the Minera Mining Company (who lived in my house in Wales) designed the `Excelsior' rock drill, which was selected in an international competition by the French Panama Canal Company. They used 200 Excelsiors for drilling the Culebra Cut, before their operations were ravaged by malaria and the Americans took over. The Cut seems pretty narrow when passing a Panamax ship (950ft x 110ft), but the Panamanians are spending huge sums on a widening programme to allow two-way traffic throughout the Canal. Gerardo thought this was more of a political statement than a realistic possibility. Robin, who is in the shipping business, gave us the lowdown on passing ships, but neither he nor Gerardo could explain a note on the day's schedule against ship N25: `requires knuckle-duster'. We were far enough ahead of schedule to take a detour through Gatun Lake and stop for a swim, though we had to keep to the marked channels to avoid dead trees which still stick out of the water on both sides. After a delay we had to scoot into the Gatun Locks under the bows of a tanker, which followed us in to within 15 feet of our stern. Gerardo told us to go like hell as soon as the lock gates opened, though only afterwards did he tell us this was to avoid the turbulence caused by the mixing of fresh and salt water.

We're now anchored on the flats in Colon and about to row ashore to toast our arrival in the Atlantic at the Panama Canal YC. We had a great evening last night at the ramshackle Balboa YC with the delivery crew of a Beneteau 50 (who had seen Assent OCC at Easter Island) and an engaging US couple who built their Herreschoff schooner at Martha's Vineyard. "Do you realise that the first time in five months I've had a girly chat?", said Mandy when we got back on board: maybe we have been a bit short of company.

18 May 1993: San Blas Islands, Panama

We've grabbed an idyllic day here before the crew change, but we should be staying for weeks: that's the problem with our tight schedule. We arrived late last night and fiddled our way to an anchorage of sorts off Cayos Chichime, but an islander called Rocky dressed in not much more than a baseball cap paddled out in a dugout canoe and led us through the pass in to the lagoon. A thunderstorm overnight made us glad to be in real shelter, and we woke this morning to a picture-book view of palms, thatched huts and dugouts on low, sandy islands, surrounded by turquoise blue sea. We were soon besieged by island women in dugouts keen to sell us molas, the local embroidery. We went ashore to visit Rocky in his very basic hut and walked round his tiny island, wondering what they lived on, apart from fish, coconuts and a few scrawny chickens. After saying our farewells we sailed gently round a few more islands, passing a few relaxed islanders sailing their dugouts well out to sea, and anchoring a couple of times to swim on the reefs. Now we've got an overnight sail back to Colon to meet Alex Scott-Bayfield off the plane and see Robin off home.

19 May 1993: Portobello, Panama

We're still in Panama -- Iberia lost Alex's luggage, so she's got to go back and retrieve it tomorrow. Thank goodness she had the new compass sender in her hand-luggage, so we now have an operational steering compass again. We've escaped here from Colon -- it's a charming fortified old town, still redolent of the days when Hawkins sailed in to pinch Spanish gold, and there's a lot of restoration going on (with Spanish money). We didn't enjoy our shopping in the Colon supermarket, covered by a guard toting an Uzi submachine gun, but at least we're fully provisioned, with lots of Heineken at $11 a case to quench Caribbean thirsts.

It amazes me that there's boats sitting in Colon for weeks, and they `haven't got time' to sail twenty miles here or just a bit further to San Blas. A strange idea of cruising, but I suppose I should be glad there's still a beaten track to get off.

28 May 1993: off Guantanamo Bay, Cuba

Well, there's the rolling green bulk of Cuba, and we're beating straight past, through the Windward Passage against the current. I've got all the charts for Cuba and Belize on board, but no time for either, with hurricane season approaching and a crew changeover date to meet.

We've been lucky with the breeze so far, carrying one tack (mostly north-east 3-4 but squalling up to 6-7 occasionally) all the way from Colon to the east end of Jamaica. I thought it smelt of cocoa as we beat round Morant Point, buzzed by a Jamaican coastguard boat. It's pretty sticky down below with hatches battened down, bashing to windward. Lots of mods required to make Aratapu a tropics boat: more ventilation which stays watertight when she's submarining to windward and some sort of beer-cooling device would be first priority.

We've just heard the US Coastguard responding to a Mayday, and mounting a search with floodlights for a man overboard about thirty miles away. It's top end of 6, and pretty rough, so we don't rate their chances. We're certainly not making much progress to windward over the current, though she's punching purposefully into it.

31 May 1993: Little Harbour, Long Island, Bahamas

We're two days late for meeting Pete and Christine Cottam in Georgetown, but as we were going to arrive at night we've stopped here. When we closed the coast we found another hole a mile south of here, which Mandy expertly conned us into from the pulpit. There was a wrecked Westerly on the reef with a big hole gouged in her side and equipment scattered around (some of which had already become nest sites for noddies). By the time we motored out the onshore swell had risen, and we hobbyhorsed alarmingly through a couple of seas before she broke clear. When we found the real Little Harbour there was another wrecked yacht on the beach, with bits of keel, mast and equipment strewn about. Is someone trying to tell us something?

We had a fast passage up here once we rounded Cape Maysi and bore away. The weather doesn't look very Bahamian, with overcast sky and dull, grey light.

2 June 1993: Stocking Island, Georgetown, Exumas

Well, we look very stupid. We're aground on a falling tide in the middle of an anchorage of smart yachts. Pete and Chris, who have never sailed before, are beginning to wonder what kind of skipper they have entrusted themselves to. We just motored over here to look at a few other boats, and missed the channel. I've pulled out the paint pots and started painting the waterline, to create the unconvincing impression we meant to go aground! Still the weather's lovely, and the rest of the crew is enjoying a day on the beach.

A bit different from when we sailed in yesterday, under three reefs and a scrap of jib with south-west force 7 up our backside, and no way of seeing the `unmistakable' channel through the grey drizzle (despite what the cruising guide may say about the shoals always showing up white). Chris and Pete spent a boring long weekend waiting for us in an expensive, cockroach-infested hotel, while all the locals went to the regatta on Long Island. When I saw the racing boats and their huge rigs I was sorry we'd missed seeing them race through the blow.

I spent most of yesterday clearing Customs (very friendly and efficient) and Immigration (the opposite). It's great to have some mail and news of home, especially for Mandy who missed out on mail in Panama. Chris' first night aboard was disturbed by finding a cockroach -- now we've pulled the fo'c's'le apart, we're pretty sure it was a solitary specimen -- our first and last, I hope.

6 June 1993: Allen Cay, Exumas

We were away early from Shroud Cay to see the iguanas here and get across the reef into Providence Channel before dark. It's a bit crowded here: the iguanas are obviously used to being fed, and great at posing for the camera, with Aratapu and crew in the background. We've really enjoyed pootling up the Exumas, sailing (and motoring) gently through the islands with just enough pilotage to keep it interesting, dropping the hook three or four times a day and learning the delights of snorkeling. It's surprisingly unspoilt and uncrowded. Warderick Wells was a dream of a tropical anchorage, with Aratapu lying in the midst of wonderful bright blue channels surrounded by sparkling white sandbanks. We called there briefly after a night at Malabar Cays, because we thought the place would be crowded, but there were only two other boats (and another wrecked one on the bottom below our keel, victim of a gas explosion). We all swam under and up into Thunderball Cave at Staniel Cay, and got bitten by the bugs and admired the egrets among the mangroves at Shroud Cay. Pete's even been learning how to use the sextant, and his first sight was a very high altitude one.

(Later): It's weird to be out of sight of land in 3 metres of water, sailing gently across the reef with coral just below the keel -- Mandy at the masthead has got the best view.

8 June 1993: Man of War Cay, Abacos

"I don't want to go to sea again" Mandy says, and Pete and Chris look as if they agree. But if we're going to catch their plane in New York we've got to go this evening, even if it is my birthday. We celebrated last night with an excellent Bahamian fish supper in Marsh Harbour, after a day snorkeling at Pelican Cay (great fish and coral, and even a tiny turtle). I feel a bit out of place here in the midst of so many golf buggies, big boats and swish houses, so perhaps it's a good thing we're on our way.

14 June 1993: Chesapeake Bay, USA (Hampton, Virginia)

We ducked in here because none of us were enjoying beating into a nasty head sea and north-east force 6, even with dolphins playing round the bow. The Coastguard was busy last night with searches for lost windsurfers and rescuing a yacht which had lost her rudder. Alex is enthusing loudly about her first all-American breakfast and we're waiting for Immigration. We had a very calm passage as far as Cape Hatteras with a brief shove from the Gulf Stream, motoring a bit and running for a day or so under spinnaker. Even so, I think Pete and Chris were glad to see land again -- a week is a bit long for your first offshore passage.

(Later): US bureaucracy is the worst we've met so far. The US Embassy in London refused to issue Alex a visa because UK citizens don't need one, even when she specifically said she was sailing in. Now Mr Immigration is threatening a substantial fee for issuing an emergency visa. Customs tell us we don't need to clear Immigration, but when I phone to check Immigration say I'll get a big fine if we don't. We've been waiting the whole day for him, and feel like the US Government Service could do with some customer service training.

18 June 1993: in fog, somewhere off Sandy Hook, New York

We're blundering on into New York and thank goodness it's starting to clear -- we haven't seen a thing since we left the Chesapeake two days ago. There's too much shipping around here for relaxed sailing in fog, even with radar. I'm sure we missed some good cruising in the Chesapeake, but we enjoyed motoring up the James River to see Jamestown (the first permanent settlement by the British in the New World) where a beaver attacked the shopping in the dinghy while we were sightseeing. The mast had about 5 feet clearance under the James River Bridge, and I ran aground again trying to avoid the hundred rusting ships of the US Navy Reserve Fleet.

(Later, in Great Kills): A great reception at Richmond County YC, where friends Tom and Helen White have been waiting for us. I can't imagine a club in the UK being quite so welcoming to strangers.

19 June 1993: South Street Seaport, New York

It's a big thrill to sail your own boat in to New York, and to end up here just by the barque Peking (which I remember as Arethusa, moored on the River Medway where I learnt to sail). Tom and Helen joined us for the day, with eighteen-month-old William, who spent most of his day in the sink being cooled off as it was incredibly hot and stuffy. Despite the haze we got great views of Manhattan skyscrapers and the Statue of Liberty. Alex spent the day saying "I don't believe I'm here in New York" and is now planning how best to enjoy her last few days here before flying home. I almost feel like sailing on before my illusions of the place get shattered (and before I go bankrupt with the mooring fees).

(Aratapu sailed on through New England to a roasting fogless Maine, round Nova Scotia and `down north' along the coast of Labrador as far as Cape Chidley in Hudson Strait, before crossing the Atlantic at the end of August.)

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