The first day to New Caledonia has been almost by the book from what we expected of the weather. Our weather forecasts predicted light to no wind the first night, and light Southerly breezes today. The expectation is that later in the trip the Southeast Trade Winds will fill in and make for a faster passage. But for now it was motoring all night, sailing slowly and drifting West all day today, and an expectation of another night motor sailing.
We’re erring on the side of sailing too far West in anticipation of the trade winds. If we’ve headed West of coure course, Southeasterly winds will be more on our beam and easier sailing than if we headed too far East. Then, when the wind fills it will be from behind the boat, which is less pleasant and more difficult to sail.
We’ve been fishing otday, but no fish so far. Either it’s too cold for the things, or we’re not moving fast enough to present an interesting looking lure.
The Dumpster Fire of Departure
Getting out of New Zealand this time was a series of annoying setbacks and bad weather. The original plan was for us to be in New Caledonia well before Will arrived back from college in the UK. We’d booked him a round trip flight from London to Brisbane, Australia, and a one way leg from Brisbane onwards to Noumea, the capital of New Caledonia, arriving in Noumea on June 2rd.
We weren’t really ready for a nice departure window sometime in early May, we planned to leave a week or so later on the next good weather window. That weather window never materialized.
The trip from Opua, New Zealand to Noumea, New Caledonia is about 875 nautical miles, which is about five days on Evenstar. Ideally, we’d find a forecast where no seriously nasty weather would be due for five or six days, then slip out and go. That didn’t happen. For weeks on end a series of low pressure “troughs” – stormy systems of high winds, rain and rough seas, marched across the Tasman Sea providing no clear window when we could set sail without the expectation of 40 knot winds, 15 foot seas , or some unpleasant combination thereof. When your forecast for a five day trip includes three days of rotten weather, it’s time to stay put and wait.
We ran up against a problem because our NZ Visas expired on May 26th. So we had to make a call – head out into the bad weather, or extend the visas. The cost to extend the visa was the same as last time ($165 NZD) except that to stay longer than six months requires a chest X-ray. We got the X-rays and extended, because the forecasts did not look good.
As we got closer to Will’s arrival date we saw what looked like a good window, only to have it evaporate a few days before our deadline to meet him arrived. We booked a new flight for Will to Auckland arriving June 1st, and we planned to take the good weather window on the 3rd and go. But as Will was boarding a plane in the UK, a new trough appeared on the forecast. The trough that was coming was a monster, stretching from New Caledonia all the way down over South Island, and taking a week or more to clear the area. By the time Will got to New Zealand we knew we weren’t going anyplace for at least another week or more.
We spent DAYS stuck on the boat after he arrived with howling wind, pouring rain and chill air. It’s winter in New Zealand now, and with the cold came the condensation. The inside of the boat had been dropping with it, as every wall on the outside of the hull was cool, and the warmth from our breath, our cooking, and so on caused condensation to pile up. It dripped on our heads while we slept, made the curtains wet, and got into everything. New Zealand winter is fairly mild, it’s like winter in say, North Carolina. But the cold nights and the humidity had been a plague on us since the beginning of May. Kathy was continually fighting off mildew and wiping things down.
Eventually, the giant trough cleared and we got ready to go. We returned out friend’s car on Thursday the 9th, hoping to leave Friday. It became apparent that Friday would be a zero wind day, so rather than plan to spend a couple of days motoring and burning a few hundred dollars worth of dead dinosaurs, we decided to wait until Saturday.
We began some of our final systems checks and discovered a few small problems. On Saturday morning the generator (the NEW generator.) stalled out for no reason. I deduced it was probably a bad thermostat, since the engine was not over heated. It started up right away after the stall and ran for another hour with no problem. So I did an emergency thermostat swap. Later, we found the button that controlled the main sheet electric which wasn’t working right. So I ripped the ceiling off the aft bathroom to get access to the winch and swapped in a spare button for the wonky one. Yeah! Well prepared spares supply: 2, gods of boat breakage: 0.
By three in the afternoon we were tired, but ready to go. We went in to Customs to clear out, which would be followed by a visit to the fuel dock to fill up on duty free fuel. One can only get out of paying the 15% tax on it by filling up after clearing to leave the country. We cleared out, went back to the boat, and prepared to pull the dinghy engine off and raise the dinghy to stow, when disaster struck.
We lift heavy things like dinghy engines, the Pudgy, people up into the rig, etc. with our spinnaker halyard, which is long enough to run back to a powered winch. So lifting a 150 pound boat out of the water becomes a push of a button instead of manually cranking the winch. We hooked the engine up to the halyard and put the halyard on the winch and.that winch button was wonky too. A quick test showed that ALL THREE electric winches were acting the same way – as if there was a dodgy button. They would spin up for a second then stop.
This was not good. We could, in theory take off and use the winches manually. But they are big winches and the loads are huge. Just winching up the dinghy engine five feet in the air we managed to drop a winch handle over board. The manual operation is a backup; heading off shore without the winches working properly would be irresponsible. So half an hour after we cleared out we were back at Customs asking them to chuck all that.
This of course was a Saturday. We cleaned out the locker where the winch controlling systems were kept. It was beyond damp. All that condensation had built up on the outside of the waterproof control boxes and the covers. We wiped everything down and purchased some dehydration bags to soak up more moisture. By Sunday, the winches worked again. Contrary to what you might expect, this was worse than continuing to malfunction. Because there was no way to reproduce the problem, there was no way to diagnose it and ensure that the problem was fixed.
Sunday, while running the generator, it also stalled. Again. So it wasn’t the thermostat. This is another deal breaker for not heading off shore. We need to be able to charge the batteries, and our 12V alternator on our engine was already acting up. Without the generator we wouldn’t be able to charge the start battery except for using solar panels, which isn’t realizable enough
On Monday morning we called the guys that installed the new generator last year and they came out to the boat. After much poking and prodding they discovered a lose ground wire that was not only the likely culprit for the stalls, but explained why all the dials and gauges had been going wild for weeks as well. With that sorted, I asked them to look at the messed up alternator, and they fixed that too. That’s an explanation for another day, but it made me happy to have that fixed, too.
While the guy was working on the engines I was tracking down the Lewmar guys in Auckland to talk to them about the winches. Finally I reached them late in the day. There wasn’t much to talk about, beyond that we couldn’t find the problem anymore. We’d been testing the winches for two days and they were working. Yes, the moisture causing it wasn’t an outlandish idea they confirmed. This was as good as we were going to get on this.
So finally, on Monday night we had a fixed generator, working winches, and a functioning 12v alternator on the engine as a bonus. Tuesday we still took a while to get our act together, and I even managed to drop a credit card on the floor in the marina office and leave it while paying for our fuel. We got a radio call as we were steaming out of Opua about the credit card, and had to turn back, lower the dinghy and send Will to row into pick it up (remember.the engine is off the dinghy for passages!).
But finally, by about 4:30, we got the whole clown show on the water and were on our way.
