Division of Crew

Posted on May 17, 2012 by Frank Taylor

We were literally within minutes of departing for the airport in Raleigh (just 10 minutes after the post I made about our luggage), when Karen got a text from her sister in Houston. Her sister was having more complications from a mysterious illness which had started a couple of weeks earlier. Karen had already been worried, and this one tipped the scales. Karen felt she must stay in the US and go help her sister. So, with only moments to think things through, we decided I would continue to the boat and she would stay.

It was a lonely trip half-way around the world, and even more lonely back at the boat. I managed to re-pack the two checked bags I brought to have the most critical boat parts with me. But, a lot was left with Karen’s bags. My trip went remarkably smoothly with no delays (in fact, all flights arrived early). The only hiccup was that one of the big bags did not get on my train from Brisbane to Bundaberg. But, they got it on the next train and delivered it to the marina the next morning.

Meanwhile, they finally diagnosed Karen’s sister’s ailment: she has Rocky Mountain Spotted fever from a tick bite. They began treatment for it, but she has some complications from the fever having lasted so long. Karen is still there and expects to stay some more days until there is improvement.

We had begun plans to have our daughter Trisha join me next week to help me with the boat until Karen gets here, but she has just received a jury duty notice for next week. Argh!

At this point, I am going to need to find someone to help move Tahina up to the Whitsundays. Any volunteers?

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Heading Back Down Under

Posted on May 14, 2012 by Frank Taylor

We are leaving this afternoon to begin our long trip back to Australia. It was great getting to see so many of our friends and family! And, this time we will only be gone a few months before we are back again to visit during the winter holidays. We have a full load of luggage – almost 300 pounds: 4 checked bags (almost 50 lbs each), 2 carry on bags, and two backpacks. That’s the maximum number we can take without extra fees. Whew!

We fly back to Brisbane, and will then have to move our load of luggage onto the city train, then we have to reduce each bag over 40lbs to reach the maximum allowed on the long-distance train (we have extra bags for this), and then take that train to Bundaberg. Then we have to figure out how we’re getting back to the boat (we forgot that part!) – probably a rental car.

We have to thank our friends the Schwabs who were kind enough to host us in their house for almost our entire visit to the US – nearly a month. They were really great to allow us to do this, and even loaned us a car for a while until we made other arrangements. It really pays to have great friends!

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Happy Graduation Weekend

Posted on May 14, 2012 by Frank Taylor

The primary purpose of our trip home was to attend the graduations of our two daughters. Their graduations coincidentally happened on the same day and time in two different cities. Karen and I had to split up and each attend a ceremony for only one of them each. The ceremonies were on Friday afternoon, so many friends and families would have had a hard time going anyway.

We held a graduation party for both girls on Saturday. This way many of our family members and friends were able to come. First we had a lunch party for just family – with 22 attending, and then followed this with a party at a community center private room. We had cake and snacks and had the interesting experience of introducing the 22 family members to some of our close friends and family. We had the girls bring their caps and gowns and everyone got to have their picture taken with them.

Since it was Mother’s Day the next day, I made sure to bring some flowers for my mom. Of course, I brought flowers for Karen as well. I also brought roses to give one each to all the other mothers who were at the party. The only problem is that I forgot to give out the flowers until everyone was leaving. I think I missed giving some to a few who left early. Grrr

Some of our family came from as far away as Pennsylvania and the mountains of North Carolina. After the afternoon party, most of the family went to the house of my nephew and niece who live in the Raleigh area. We had an impromptu BBQ and spent another couple of hours before everyone headed their separate ways. It was a wonderful day with friends and family! A moment well worth traveling half-way around the world to attend.

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Remembering Our First Atoll

Posted on May 10, 2012 by Frank Taylor

For many years I had been reading about sailors crossing the Pacific Ocean. One of the my favorite topics was about the experiences of visiting the Tuamotus atolls in French Polynesia. Atolls are actually ancient volcanic islands which over the eons have re-submerged until all that is left is a raised round reef, which circled the location of the original island, and a lagoon in the middle. Land formed on the surrounding reef, so you have islands in a circle around the lagoon. Polynesian people settled on the many atolls in this region with plentiful fish in the passes of the lagoon, coconut trees on the islands, and pearl farms in the the lagoon. The people are friendly, and the beauty of these atolls is unbelievable.

Our first atoll was Manihi. It not only lived up to my expectations, but left an unforgettable imprint on my life. We had such a fantastic time visiting there! From the moment of our arrival at the anchorage (seen above), to the moment we had to leave to visit the next atoll, it was an experience of a lifetime. We snorkeled the pass with thousands of fish, shark, eels, octopus, and lobster. We visited a pearl farm in the lagoon, picked our own oysters and learned how to extract pearls. We met the island people. We took a night dive on the outer reef. We kayaked the lagoon and visited islands. We watched sunsets and visited a polynesian resort. Read about our experiences at Manihi and see lots of photos in this post. It includes photo albums of our diving, and many of the sights we saw there.

While we were there, we flew my kite aerial photography rig and took images of the village from above which ended up being published in Google Earth. You can not only see the photos I took in this blog post, but also visit Google Earth or Maps and see the very high resolution imagery of the village there.

We have been back in the US visiting friends and family for three weeks. Already, I’m yearning to go back to our boat Tahina, and continue our journey so we can experience even more moments like those we had at Manihi. We return to Australia next week, and will begin heading north to the Great Barrier Reef.

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Looking Forward to Diving

Posted on May 1, 2012 by Frank Taylor

Diving Rainbow Reef, Fiji

Our daughters graduate in a few days, and later this month we will be back in Australia heading towards the Great Barrier Reef. We have been busy not only visiting friends and family, but also buying lots of boat parts, and new diving gear. One of our daughters – Trisha – will be joining us for a month while we dive the Great Barrier Reef (GBR). She’s taking a class to get re-certified (she was last certified when she was 12 years old). So, we bought her some gear and we have bought some more gear to replace aging scuba equipment on the boat. We want to be in tip-top shape for the diving on the GBR!

We had some fantastic dives in Fiji last year. But, the GBR has some fantastic reefs and sea life and should provide us with some real quality diving and underwater photography opportunities. If you’d like to see and read about some of our favorite dives on the trip, check out some of these links:

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Boat Parts and Supplies

Posted on April 23, 2012 by Frank Taylor

You would think that the cruising life allows you complete freedom to take your boat to any place you want and spend as long as you like. To a certain extent this is true, but in practice there are some constraints that all cruisers have to deal with. Probably the most frustrating constraint to our freedom are boat parts. Life on the ocean is extremely harsh when it comes to the wear and tear on parts of your boat. The salt of the ocean is highly corrosive, the constant motion under way puts a lot of strain on the boat and rigging, the wind puts enormous forces on the rigging, the hundreds, or thousands, of hours on the engine put a lot of wear and tear on the machinery, etc., etc. Inevitably, things break.

Most boats carry as many spares as they can manage to fit on the boat – mostly of the things most likely to break. But, there is always something that breaks that you don’t have a spare for, or spares that have been used up. In some cases, you can afford to go a while without getting the part fixed. However, someday a part goes you HAVE to fix as soon as possible – your boat can’t go anywhere. Then the nightmare of constraint occurs.

If the part is inexpensive, you ask other cruisers if they have it or you try to make a fix. If that doesn’t work, you go ashore and look for chandleries. If they don’t have it, or there are no chandleries, then you have to get the part ordered from another place. This is when the real problem begins. How to get the part from some foreign port to where you are. Meanwhile, you likely will have to sit and wait for the part to arrive. Especially if the part keeps you from using the boat in some way.

You can likely just get on the Internet and order the part from a favorite chandlery, and have it shipped by FedEx or some other delivery agent. FedEx will likely cost you $150 or more no matter what the size of the package. Others might be cheaper, with varying degrees of reliability. However, just ordering and having them send it doesn’t guarantee a speedy arrival. In some countries, the customs and local delivery agents may cause you all sorts of delays and costs. Every cruiser has a story of the package that went awry in its delivery. In some cases, deliveries can be delayed by days or even weeks or months!

Fortunately, there is another delivery option that most cruisers try to adopt. Get someone coming from a first world country by air to bring the part in their luggage. This greatly reduces the risk of delays due to customs and delivery agents. And, it can reduce the cost quite a bit, although if your friend has to pay for an extra bag, you may get stuck paying for a baggage fee.

Any time you have a guest arriving to spend some time, you are likely to ask them to bring a bag or two (or more) filled with boat parts or favorite foods, books, or movies and other items from home. And, if you go home for a visit (like we are now), you can be sure you will buy lots of stuff and bring it back to the boat.

I just completed a big order (35 lbs of stuff) from our favorite online marine chandlery – Defender.com. They have most of the parts cruisers need at discounted prices, and their online system is very friendly for cruisers. They keep track of previous parts you’ve ordered and make it easy to re-supply the spares. They also keep track of your previously used addresses so its easy to get the order to your favorite friend’s house, or your mail service.

We have also been buying supplies from our favorite merchants for clothing, shoes, electronics, movies, kitchen supplies, foods, and more. We will have at least two extra bags for all the new stuff we’ve purchased on our way back to Australia.

We also brought our Raymarine chartplotter from the boat to the US so I could ship it to Raymarine to have it repaired. One of the buttons stopped working. It’s a lot cheaper to bring it via luggage to the states and ship it to them than take the risk with international shipping.

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Sunset Tonga

Posted on April 21, 2012 by Frank Taylor

We watched this beautiful sunset from Tahina while anchored off the island of Nukunamo (mosquito island) in the Ha’apai group of islands in the Kingdom of Tonga. This was in October of 2010. The cone-shaped “mountain” is a volcano on the island of Kao – about 75 km away.

Sunset in Tonga

You can read more about our visit there in this post and the posts before and after it. Here’s a map showing the location of Tahina where the photo was taken, and the location of the volcano 75 km to the west.


View Sunset in Tonga in a larger map

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Back to the USA

Posted on April 13, 2012 by Frank Taylor

After weeks of work on the boat, with a few breaks here and there, mostly drinking sundowners with our boating friends, we are finally ready to leave for our trip back to the USA. Tomorrow we take a train to Brisbane, spend the night in a hotel, and the next day go to the airport for our flight to the US. Thanks to the International Date Line, we will actually arrive in LA a few hours before we take off from Australia. But, I think we’ll still feel like we spent almost an entire day flying. We then have to fly our way all the way across the continent to North Carolina.

We completed a lot of big jobs on Tahina, but there will still be a few when we return. For one thing, we will be bringing back lots of boat parts to replace items that have gone bad or will soon be a problem, plus spares. In fact, we’ll probably have a couple of extra bags to bring back. Even if we have to pay extra baggage fees, it will be worth not having to have to ship them to Australia and go through the clearance mess again.

We are very excited to be going home and getting to see our friends and family! It will be a busy time between trying to catch up with people, shopping, getting packages delivered, graduation party, and many more activities. We’ll probably get an overdose of exposure to so many people we know. But, it will be great!

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Spinnaker Entry to Australia Story

Posted on April 11, 2012 by Frank Taylor

Those of you following us closely know that we had a frustrating time trying to get our spinnaker delivered while we were in Brisbane. Despite the fact that I ordered the sail from Quantum Sails in Capetown back in February, and called them a week before we arrived in Brisbane for two weeks, I had the hardest time getting them to deliver the sail before we left Brisbane. We ended up having to delay our departure by two days before they finally got it to Brisbane on Thursday before Easter. I think the sail maker had delayed making the sail when I told them in February I wouldn’t need it until March. When I called them to ask for delivery they suddenly remembered they needed to make it.

Anyway, when I finally knew it was on its way on Wednesday, I started trying to make arrangements to pick it up. I thought it would be a simple matter to get a rental car. But, it turns out they were all booked because of the holiday weekend. No problem, it would be a simple matter to take a taxi. Wrong! The taxis were also booked, even to the airport!

Fortunately, Brian on s/v El Regalo came to the rescue. He and JoDon had just returned from a camping trip and he offered to take me to the airport. I told him he could probably just drop me off while I did the formalities. We got to the air cargo place, and they confirmed they had the package. Yay! But, I needed to take some papers to Customs to fill in clearance papers. Thankfully, Brian stayed and drove me 4 km to the Customs building. We had to wait a few minutes for them to open. The customs service desk guy was very nice and was helping me fill out the paperwork, but he said once I filled out the papers I would have to wait until Tuesday (because of the holiday weekend) to get the package unless I used an agent to file it electronically. So, after several phone calls we found an agent who would do it for only $245.

Thank god Brian stayed because we had to drive to another town. There we had to wait a while because they had to research how to get our paperwork done because apparently being a foreign yacht needing a package was unusual. After going off to get an early lunch, they finally got the paperwork. Although we aren’t supposed to have to pay taxes or duty as a foreign yacht, they claimed I would have to pay “other fees” to avoid the duty and taxes. The other fees worked out to be half the price of the duty and taxes. So, after paying almost $1000 to pick up our package in Australia we finally had the clearance papers. While I’m grateful the agent was able to do it so quickly and get us out that day, I wasn’t happy with the price. We then drove back to the air cargo place and they brought the box to Brian’s car. We got it! That was the important part.

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Lots of Friends

Posted on April 9, 2012 by Frank Taylor

We’ve been working hard the past month both in moving the boat up from Port Stephens, and performing maintenance and cleaning all over Tahina (to prepare her for our season on the Great Barrier Reef). But, a nice balance to all the hard work has been the re-union with many of our friends we have developed during the past two years crossing the Pacific. Our friends who have also been taking their boats and lives on the experience of a lifetime. And, these same friends have also been working on their boats preparing for the season.

Once we reached Brisbane, we knew several boats were parked in the area. Many of the crews were just returning to their boats after travels to various locations. I’ve already mentioned several in earlier posts that we visited there: Callisto, Totem, Songline, and Oso Blanco. It was great to see all of them. Especially Totem and Songline because the former is staying in Australia for a while, and Songline has been put up for sail and Aussies Kristina and Phil are moving back on land for a while. So we won’t see them for an undetermined time.

The day before we left Manly, we knew that our friends on Kilkea II were arriving after a nice 9-day sail all the way from New Zealand. We didn’t have confirmation, but Karen and I took the 1.5 mile walk to the train station, rode the train to the nearest town to Rivergate Marina (where the port of entry for entering boats is located) and proceeded to walk towards the marina (4km) away. We caught a bus to try and get us closer, but the bus driver didn’t tell us to get off before we crossed the river bridge. Turns out there is no easy way to get back once you cross that bridge, so we had to take a taxi. It took us 3 hours in total, but we finally got to the marina and found Kilkea on one of the docks with a locked gate. We went 20 meters away to the marina office and they unlocked the gate electronically for us. As we started out the office door, a woman asked if we would like a ride on their golf cart to the gate. I just broke out laughing, because at our marina in Manly it was a half-mile walk to the office and they didn’t even provide bikes or anything! We finally got to Kilkea and gave them a warm welcome to Australia. They had friends from another boat visiting with them as well, and we all had a good time and drinks for a few hours catching up on each others’ lives. David and Marian were thrilled we came to see them, and we are looking forward to seeing them again as we travel north to Darwin. The other boat crew had a car, so they took us back to the train station.

The next day, we moved our boat up to Scarborough. We had a beautiful day and a great sail for the 3 hours it took to get there. The reason we went was so we could visit with our friends on s/v Boree. Bert and Ingi just got back to their boat after a visit to their homeland of Germany. They are spending the year here in Australia before heading out again, so we wanted to make sure to see them. After anchoring, we went in for drinks with them and plans to go to dinner. Several other boats we know were there (e.g. s/v Worrall Wind, and El Regalo), but their crews were off traveling still.

We had only been there a while when the crew of El Regalo unexpectedly showed up. They have their boat up for sale and had a buyer, so they returned early from their camping trip. Brian and JoDon were invited to come with us for dinner, we had last seen them in New Caledonia when Brian had an accident cutting off the end of a finger. It was great having dinner with these friends and catching up as well.

The next day was when I was supposed to pick up the spinnaker. This story is worth its own post, so expect it later.

Meanwhile, we arrived in Bundaberg. Here were many boats we know: Leu Cat, Serenity, Trim, Sea Mist, Delos, and others we don’t know as well. And, Callisto caught up to us a day after us. We’ve been continuing our boat projects, but yesterday we got invited to a 4PM “beer time”. The restaurant here at the marina doesn’t have a happy hour (they ought to!), but it was a great excuse to quit work early. We had a great time visiting with everyone, and the female half of Trim had just returned from the US.

Everyone is really excited about heading north. Many of the boats here (except for Callisto and Tahina) stayed here in Bundaberg for the past 6 months. So, they are particularly excited to be headed out sailing again. Most of the boats are expecting to leave in the next few weeks. Tahina will be at least two weeks behind most of the boats headed North. But, not to worry, most of these boats will be joining the Indonesia Rally with us, so we are sure to at least catch up with them in Darwin, if not at the GBR.

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