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Of all the disasters that befall offshore sailors, near
the top of the list is a plugged head. I'm not talking about sinus trouble
when I refer to a plugged head. I'm talking about something much more
serious. A plugged head means that your toilet is blocked and the fact that
you are two-hundred miles offshore adds insult to injury. There is no one
that you can call on but yourself to fix it.
You face a choice. Either fix it or use a bucket when you go to the
bathroom for the rest of the trip. Although bucket and chuck it gets the
job done, it leaves a lot to be desired. It's hard to sit on a bucket when
your yacht is bouncing up and down, right and left. Bucket and chuck it is
difficult and unpleasant. It's not a pretty sight to behold.
When this ignominious disaster strikes, it's time to look fear in the eye
and pretend that you are a plumber and that you know what you are doing.
Almost anything is better than bucket and chuck it.
 On our recent thousand mile
passage to New Caledonia from Australia, I had to face my fear of plugged
heads. For the first two days at sea, I noticed that it was getting
progressively more difficult to pump the head. I optimistically hoped that
the situation would improve on its own. Perhaps, whatever was causing the
problem would fix itself. In all the years that I have been sailing, I have
never had a problem fix itself. So positive thinking and optimism at this
point were nothing but denial.
On the third day at sea, the partial blockage became complete and all
grounds for denial and optimism were gone. The situation was not all bad.
On the plus side, I was no longer seasick and the sea state was calm. If
the seas had been rough and if I was still seasick, this would have been a
job from Hell.
For some strange reason, I picked up my iridium satellite phone and called
my son halfway around the world and told him of my predicament and that I
was about to attack the plugged head. I don't know if I was looking for
encouragement or for someone to feel sorry for me. With the phone call out
of the way, I gathered up my tools and went to work.
In medical school I learned that it's unwise to treat a problem until you
are sure of the diagnosis. If the diagnosis is wrong, the treatment will be
wrong as well. The same is true when you have an obstruction in the head or
in its associated plumbing. Diagnosis must come before treatment.
You can't look at the head and tell the location of the problem. Either the
head pumping mechanism was broken or clogged or the hose that goes from the
pump to the ocean was blocked. Since the pump had been functioning
normally, I decided that the problem was not the hand pump. So far so
good. That meant that the problem was somewhere along the twelve feet of
hose that drain overboard.
We have a saying in surgery that the surgeon must not be afraid to put the
knife to the patient. In this case a knife was not required. I needed a
Phillips screwdriver and a Roto Rooter. I did not have a Roto Rooter and so
a Phillips screwdriver would have to do.
In the middle of the length of hose, there is a vented loop with a valve
held in place by hose clamps. This would be a good place to enter the long
black hose. I took the hose clamps off the area of the vented loop, hoping
that sewage would not spew forth into the locker in which I was working. I
had already spread half a roll of paper towels over everything in the locker
just in case sewage erupted from the hose. I was in luck. The sewage
stayed in the hose. I passed a small plastic snake down the hose for a
distance of six feet before I hit the obstruction. There was no way that
the flexible plastic snake could clear the obstruction. It would take
something more powerful than that.
Since I was two-hundred miles offshore, my options were limited. I had to
clear the obstruction with the tools that I had on board. I selected a tool
with which I could attack the obstruction. I picked up a rubber mallet and
figured that I had a reasonable chance of beating the one and a half inch
hose into submission and cause the blockage to move on. I climber further
into the locker and like a demented plumber, I started beating on the black
hose in the area of the blockage. I was desperate because if that did not
clear the obstruction, we would have to use the bucket for the rest of the
trip. Thinking about using a bucket for the next six days infused me with
enthusiasm as I beat on the hose. I don't know how many blows I delivered
to that evil serpent-like hose, but I hoped it was enough. I began to hear
the gurgle of sea water coming from the hose. That was a good sign. I took
my flimsy plastic snake and passed it down the hose once again. This time
there was no obstruction. Elation and relief flooded my mind.
I had met fear, looked it in the eye and won. I put my rubber mallet away,
hooked up the hose clamps and flushed the toilet. It worked. Victory at
sea. Once again I dialed my satellite phone and called my son half way
around the world. I shared a magic moment with him as I told him about my
victory. It doesn't get much better than that.
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Dodging Cyclone Gina
We measure an ocean passage in several different ways. The simplest is to
draw a straight line that connects our starting point with our final
destination and measure the distance between the two in nautical miles.
This method assumes that the winds will blow in a favorable direction for
the duration of the voyage. Unfortunately, this rarely happens except on
trade wind passages downwind.
The real measure of an ocean passage focuses on how many days we will be at
sea taking into account wind direction, wind speed and sea state. It’s not
the number of days that concern us. It’s the number of nights. We don’t
particularly like standing night watches and at night we can’t see whales,
logs, unlighted buoys, unlighted yachts and floating containers that have
fallen off ships. At night we are sailing blind and feel more vulnerable.
We feel like we are playing Russian roulette and we would like the passage
to take as few nights as possible. Sailing at night does not scare us, but
it does concern us.
Sailing from Australia to New Caledonia across the Coral Sea takes between
four and ten days depending on which direction the wind is blowing, which
direction we are sailing and how hard we want to push our catamaran. This
trip requires sailing in the trade wind belt in a direction that would
normally be against the trade winds. If we take the direct straight line
route (Rhumb Line), we will likely have to beat for eight-hundred miles to
windward directly into the trade winds. Racing yachts frequently do just
that. This approach beats up their crew and yacht and if things go wrong,
the voyage becomes a demolition derby. Sails blow out and yachts experience
accelerated wear and tear.
For cruising couples like us, sailing to windward for eight-hundred miles is
a poor option that we try to avoid. We study weather patterns and download
weather faxes and grib files so that we can sail eastward in the trade wind
belt without taking a beating. The secret of an enjoyable passage is to use
the high and low pressure areas coming off the Australian continent to give
us fair winds and following seas as we head east.
When Captain Cook explored the South Pacific, Australia and New Zealand in
the seventeen-hundreds, he did not know about highs, lows, weather faxes and
grib files. He had to hope for the best and take whatever weather came
along. He had no warning that a tropical cyclone was heading his way except
by watching the pattern of ocean swells combined with changes in wind
direction. Captain Cook’s ship, Endeavor, had to be able to take a licking
and keep on ticking because they could do little to avoid heavy weather.
Things are different now. Our vessels still need to be able to stand up to
severe conditions, but intelligent use of weather information makes it much
less likely that we will encounter seriously bad weather. If we do meet up
with it, we usually have enough advance warning to take evasive action and
minimize the risk. The most severe winds and seas associated with cyclones
happen in the eye of the storm. If we can stay several hundred miles away
from the eye, the severity of the storm and risk to the yacht will be
significantly reduced.
When we go offshore, we download weather faxes that show the location of
highs and lows and whether any cyclones are present. The faxes give current
weather as well as predicted weather twenty-four, forty-eight, and
seventy-two hours into the future. It shows the predicted positions of all
significant weather systems for up to three days.
Now we have a new tool called grib files that make ocean passages even safer
and easier. We receive these files by email on our yacht. The grib files
show wind speed, wind direction and barometric pressure for the region of
the ocean in which we are sailing. It also gives the predicted wind speed
and direction for the next five days for the same region. All we need to do
is send a request to query@saildocs.com
and tell them the latitudes and longitudes important to us and they do the
rest. We download at least one grib file each day while we are on passage
and it shows us which direction to sail in order to experience favorable
winds that will get us quickly and safely to our destination.
On this trip we let the weather faxes and grib files guide us across the
Coral Sea to New Caledonia. We left Australia on the back side of a high
that gave us light and variable northerly winds. The grib files showed that
if we sailed directly east along the twenty-six degrees and fifty minutes
south latitude, we would have favorable winds. The trade winds were not
present at this latitude because the high pressure area that was ahead of us
had shifted the trades to the north. The grib files predicted that we could
travel east on the back side of the high and thereby avoid sailing against
the trade winds. That is exactly what we did. Eventually another high
caught up with us from behind and gave us southerly winds for the last leg
of the trip.
We sailed in the
company of the yacht Tyche all the way to New Caledonia. The first picture
in this article shows Tyche and Exit Only on flat seas motorsailing to the
east on the first day of the trip.
This is what a grib file looks like.
They consist of a bunch of red colored wind arrows on the map of the Coral
Sea. The wind arrows show which direction the wind is blowing and the
number of “feathers” on the arrow shows the wind speed. Each red feather
equals ten knots of wind. Two feathers equal twenty knots and three
feathers equal thirty knots of wind.
On the fifth
day of the trip we had a nasty surprise. Weather fax showed that Cyclone
Gina had developed several hundred miles north of New Caleldonia. This was
a big problem because we were less than three-hundred miles south of New
Caledonia. Unfortunately, the weather fax gave only scant and sometimes
conflicting information about the cyclone. It reported that the central
pressure was nine-hundred and fifty millibars and such low pressures are
usually associated with severe cyclones. It gave us quite a scare. New
Caledonia had been hit by a cyclone three months earlier. That cyclone had
two-hundred kilometer per hour winds and destroyed forty yachts in Noumea.
This map shows the course we sailed across the Coral Sea for
approximately one-thousand miles. You can see that we did not take the
straight line route. Instead, we headed straight east to stay in favorable
winds and seas. When we were three-hundred miles south of New Caledonia, we
went into a holding pattern because of Cyclone Gina.
Saying that we were concerned was an understatement. We did not know what
to do. If we continued to sail toward Noumea, we would be heading straight
toward the cyclone and that seemed like a bad idea. Initially, the weather
fax predicted that the cyclone would head west, so we decided to continue
sailing east. Later, amended weather faxes from New Zealand said the
cyclone was heading southeast. This forced us to turn out boats around and
start sailing back toward Australia in order to put as much distance as
possible between our boats and the predicted path of the cyclone. This cat
and mouse game with Cyclone Gina continued for thirty-six hours. Next, the
weather fax said that the cyclone was going to remain stationary and weaken
into a tropical depression north of New Caledonia. By this time we were
going bonkers trying to figure out what the cyclone was going to do.
We had a conference over VHF radio with Tyche who was sailing twenty miles
away. We decided to sail full speed ahead for Noumea unless the weather
faxes told us to stop because the cyclone was reforming. We sailed north
checking weather faxes every three to four hours to make sure we were doing
the right thing. This turned out to be the correct decision. Within two
days we had sailed the three-hundred miles that remained to New Caledonia
and Cyclone Gina was history.
The run north from twenty-six degrees fifty minutes south latitude was a
rough downwind sleigh ride. We had squally weather and south to southeast
winds at twenty-two to thirty-three knots most of the time. Waves were
twelve to fifteen feet, but since we were running with them, the seas
remained manageable. We did some fast surfing down the large waves when the
winds gusted to thirty-three knots.
As we drew close to New Caledonia on the morning of the ninth day, we
intermittently had rain squalls with reduced visibility. This was a worry
because we were rapidly approaching the barrier reef that surrounds New
Caledonia. The pass through the reef is about one-hundred meters wide and
we needed good visibility to see the pass. If we missed the pass and hit
the reef, our boat would be history.
As you go through the pass and look to the north, you can see the wrecks of
two vessels that perished on the reef. Boulari Pass is narrow but
straightforward as long as you line your boat up fifty-degrees true to the
Amedee lighthouse which is just inside the lagoon.
 The
rain squalls gave way to patches of blue sky as we approached Boulari Pass.
Tyche maneuvered into position and went through the pass first. Although
large waves were breaking to the right and left, the pass itself was clear.
Tyche negotiated the middle of the pass with double reefed mainsail and
reefed genoa in twenty-five to thirty knots of wind and safely made it into
the lagoon. Within five minutes we did the same.
Here you can see Tyche romping along inside the lagoon under reefed main and
headsail.
We were ecstatic to make it safely through Boulari Pass and into the
lagoon. Now we only had to sail twelve miles north across the lagoon before
we could tie up in Port Moselle in Noumea.
Sea Life
We had only two flying fish land on the boat during the trip to New
Caledonia.
On the fourth day at sea we encountered two whales. They were about a
hundred meters north of our position and appeared to be swimming to the
southwest. They were spouting water and showed no apparent interest in our
yacht. We critically looked them over to see if they had the large dorsal
fins found on killer whales. They were not killer whales and that made us
happy.
Several years ago a boat from Australia was sailing to New Caledonia when it
was attacked by killer whales. The attack severely damaged the yacht but
did not sink it. They sailed back to Mooloolaba, Australia and hauled the
boat out at Lawrie’s Marina. The insurance company inspected the yacht and
totaled it because the structural damage to the hull was so severe.
We feel it is best to avoid whales when we are offshore. When we see
whales, we turn on our engines and motor away from them. We don’t
understand their behavior and we don’t want to do anything that might upset
them since they are bigger than we are. If they have a baby whale with
them, they might misunderstand our intentions if we get too close. Caution
is the better part of valor when you are alone five-hundred miles offshore.
Night Watches
Sailing at night usually is safe as long as someone is on watch. Although
ships may not see us at night, we can always see them because we have
someone on watch looking around the horizon every ten minutes. If we spot a
ship heading toward us, we can easily take evasive action.
On previous ocean passages, our children sailed with us and there were
plenty of people to stand watch. On this trip there would only be the two
of us. This was new territory for us and we wondered if we could keep a
good watch without becoming exhausted.
Standing night watches turned out to not be a problem. Instead of making a
rigid watch schedule that we rigorously adhered to, we came up with a
flexible routine that honored our biorhythms and different people’s need to
sleep at different times. Our modus operandi was simple. Whoever was the
most tired would be the one asleep and off watch. Conversely, whoever was
least tired would take watch. This meant that the off watch person really
was sleeping rather than lying in their bunk trying to go to sleep.
This flexible routine recognized that if you are sleepy, you should go to
sleep. And if you are not sleepy, you can take watch. If both of us are
sleepy, then the one who is the most tired physically and psychologically
should go to sleep first. After they are refreshed, they will take the
watch so the other person can sleep. This system worked exceptionally
well. We never laid in our bunk trying to go to sleep. When we went off
watch, we went to sleep quickly and slept soundly.
Valuable Lessons Learned from the Trip
1. When there are only two of us on board, it’s important that we
sail in a manner that is comfortable and conserves our strength. This is
best accomplished by sailing at a boat speed of five and a half to six and a
half knots. The boat motion is easier and we enjoy the sailing more. At
higher speeds, we feel like we are inside a washing machine and that we are
the laundry.
2 Grib files did an excellent job of predicting wind speed and
direction. They told us where to sail in order to avoid sailing against the
trade winds. The files were most accurate in predicting wind direction, but
they tended to underestimate wind speed by about five knots.
3. Weather fax did an excellent job of showing high and low pressure
areas and predicting their movement. They did not do as well in predicting
the movement of cyclones. This is because weather fax predictions are based
on computer models and there are several different computer models in use.
When weather faxes are in conflict, it means they are based on different
computer models. Therefore you cannot rely on just one weather fax. You
have to download multiple faxes each day until it becomes clear which
computer model got it right. Once things become clear, you can decide what
to do and take appropriate action.
4. Although grib files are excellent for predicting wind speed and
direction, they are not helpful for predicting the behavior of cyclones.
For cyclones, you must rely on multiple weather faxes downloaded over
several hours to determine the best course of action.
Conclusion:
We are confident in our yacht and in its ability to take care of us. We
would never sail offshore in a boat that we do not trust. When we go to
sea, we prepare for the worst and hope for the best. Making an ocean
passage into an enjoyable experience is a challenge and often an elusive
goal. Nevertheless, if we optimize what makes us feel good and minimize
what makes us feel bad, things usually work themselves out. If we sail at a
speed that is comfortable, take advantage of available weather information
and use good common sense, we will probably have a good passage and a
positive sense of accomplishment when the voyage is done.
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