sv evi

Those are the titles Luz and Jade chose for their writing about our passage in home school this morning. It was rough when we left Port Vila — all three kids went in their bunks and took naps. Jade and Luz first played their game “wall-leecloth” where one calls out “wall!”, and they both roll to the wall, then “leecloth!” and roll the other way. When Jade woke up from her nap, I went to the aft cabin to grab her a coat because it was cold in the cockpit. I saw her going up into the cockpit. When I got her coat, I brought it up into the cockpit, but I didn’t see Jade there. I called out to Riki, who was on the foredeck rigging up the preventer, “Where is Jade?”. My immediate thought was a panic, “what if she fell overboard?” He said, “She went down below”. I answered, “I don’t see her anywhere down here!” He said, “Shit, are you sure?” I rushed back down below, yelling her name, and I opened the door to Tomu’s room and saw her sitting on the toilet in the forward head. Big sigh of relief. By the time I went back to the cockpit Riki was at the helm, about to start the engine so we could go back and look for her. I started crying from relief and the release of adrenaline.

After the first day and that scare, most of the passage was really dreamy — meaning not too big of waves, sailing along at 6+ knots in a broad reach, generally in the right direction, with winds of 18-25 knots. None of us needed seasickness medicine after the first day, and I could be below for hours at a time with no problem.

We played a lot of (card) games: hearts, Skat, pinochle (which we learned on passage), Casino, and even Settlers of Catan, though we had to tape our pieces down. I tried to give the kids (and myself!) something to look forward to each day, like a movie and popcorn, or brownies, or peanut butter chocolate chip cookies. Jade often listened to audiobooks and cleaned up the salon (ie. living area) as she did. We watched a great movie called Paper Planes which is about an Australian boy who makes it to the world championships for paper plane throwing. We did lots of sudoku.

I saw a whale! It breached in the trough next to the boat. Not sure what kind.

Riki and I fell into a rhythm of watch keeping. Usually he would sleep in the afternoon/early evening, say 4-7 pm. Then I would sleep 7 pm to 2 am, and he would sleep from 2 or 3 am until 7-8 am. We never woke each other up, and it wasn’t a strict schedule, but would just let the other person sleep as long as they could. On watch at night we watched episodes of the TV show This is Us, and also Miss Fisher’s Murder Mysteries, which is set in Melbourne, Australia in the 1920’s. I had a scare one night on my watch–since we hadn’t seen any other boats since leaving Vanuatu, I had become complacent. I was only checking the horizon for lights every 45 minutes (between episodes of This is Us), when one night I was surprised to see a big ship quite close to us! (hard to say exactly how close…a mile?) Yikes!! I rushed to wake Riki up, then started hand steering. My instinct was to steer away from it, so I started to do that — when Riki came he said, we need to go behind it, since we see its red light (port side), it is heading towards us, so he turned the other way to steer towards it and behind it. Whew! It seems like you are all alone in the big ocean until you aren’t!! So after that I set a 15 minute timer and checked every 15 minutes on watch.

I taught the kids how to check the horizon for boats, check the instruments for wind speed, wind angle, and boat speed, and check the ipad on the Navionics charting program to see our course relative to reefs.

I wore my aunt Evi’s T-shirt on watch, an old brown one with a Usenix graphic on the front. I thought about her one night, wondering, “can you see me now Ev?, here sailing across the ocean with my family?” The next evening I was texting my sibs about that moment, when dolphins came! They swam beside us, jumping and playing with the boat for 15 minutes or so. I always think dolphins are messengers from Evlet. I think she can see me.

The last 48 hours of the passage were brutal! We were about 15 miles from the entrance to the Hydrographers Passage, a main shipping lane that goes through the Great Barrier Reef, when the engine died. It was a fuel issue: there was air in the system. This happened at 5:30 pm. We unfurled the jenny and sailed towards the passage as Riki worked to figure out how to get the air out. He had done that many times before on his old boat, but never before on sv evi. He got it fixed by 8 pm, just in time for us to enter the passage. I went to sleep at 9 pm, and Riki navigated us through the passage, which has many lights. We saw one cargo ship, far behind us.

We had been given some notes on approaching Mackay detailing an alternate passage called Bramble Passage, which is unlit, and .5 miles wide at the narrowest point, and about 3 miles long. If we took Bramble Passage we could avoid a long motor directly into the wind & waves in the Hydrographers Passage. Riki woke me up at 3 am, just as we were about to enter Bramble Passage. It was blowing 25 knots, and we had the satellite images up on OpenCpn, as well as the regular charting program. We had the mainsail triple-reefed, and sheeted out far to starboard, with a preventer on. Riki was at the helm, and he was really struggling to steer straight down the channel — he would go way towards one side, then way towards the other side. It reminded me of when my Uncle Dave first started steering evi, before he figured it out. We turned around, back out of the Bramble Passage and dropped the mainsail, thinking that was making it hard to steer. But I also had trouble steering and keeping the boat into the wind while we dropped the main. Then we decided that it was too risky, and aborted the plan. We put the autopilot back on, and motored at 2-3 knots back towards the Hydrographers Passage (but at an angle, to meet up with the channel further south). Riki went to bed at 5 am, and he had been up since 7 am the day before. I chanted Nam myoho renge kyo (what I do when I’m scared/worried) for a solid hour, and as daylight came, everything wasn’t as scary.

After 7 or so hours of slow motoring, we turned the corner and could sail at 6-7 knots. We saw humpback whales spouting water. A storm was coming at around 7 pm, and I said, “Kids, in your bunks, there’s a storm coming”. They got in bed without question. I was tired and went to sleep, after verifying that Riki didn’t need me. He navigated through strong winds and heavy rain. I woke up at 10 pm and Riki went to sleep. I woke him up at 2:30 am as we were approaching the breakwater. It was scary because there were so many lights — it was hard to see where the entrance was. But we figured it out, and docked at the Quarantine dock at 3 am, no problem. We tied up the lines, set our alarm for 7 am because Customs was coming at 8 am, and fell into bed. Safe and sound on Terra firma!

The customs folks were very nice. They brought a dog to sniff around to see if we had anything we shouldn’t have.

The biosecurity team was also very nice…but it was a pretty intense process. They conducted a timber investigation and opened every cabinet, locker, and drawer on the boat. They looked under mattresses, inside lockers under bunks, everywhere. They took 3 ant samples back to the lab to see if the ants were dangerous to Australia’s biosecurity (they weren’t, just common sugar ants). They went through the whole galley and food stores, and took fresh fruit/veg, meat, cheeses, our honey from our friends at Ratty’s Landing in NZ, rice, popcorn, mung bean sprouts, and a bag of pasta that had weevils in it. It took 1 hour 15 minutes and cost $525 Australian Dollars.

We moved the boat to the fuel dock, fueled up, then moved to our slip. I took the bus for 50 cents to the grocery store, and came home with 4 bags of groceries. Avocados! Brie for $6 AUD! Bagels! A woman gave me free flowers in the grocery store. We went out to eat (full rack of delicious BBQ ribs each for Riki and I) and fell into bed again. What a lovely first day in Australia! We are so happy to be here!