We left New Caledonia on 12 Nov 2015. We sailed off of our mooring at Ilot Maitre with our friends aboard SV Dream Time sailing behind us to send us off in style. They broke off to head to another year of lovely gunkholing around Noumea, and we continued sailing out Dumbea Pass pointing at Sydney.

 

We knew we would hit a front around 28S and after that the weather was unpredictable but with nothing too scary in the forecast and the MJO was behaving itself. We hoped to sail to Sydney but we knew we wouldn’t know if that was possible until we started pulling weather forecasts after the front.

 

We started out in 10-15 knot winds, had a bit of light air sailing which over the course of a few days clocked around to the NW. Instead of a few hours of fickle wind while the front passed (as has been our experience in the past) the wind simply flipped 180 degrees to the SSE in the 20-25 knot range. We reefed down and pointed East until the winds slowly backed around to the ESE and we could continue sailing toward Sydney. After a day or so of this, the forecasts were showing the possibility of an East Coast Low forming over Sydney and so we turned for Coffs Harbour.

 

At this point we had a 24 hours spinnaker run with an eddy in the Australian current pushing us toward Coffs. Light wind, flat water, sunshine and a favorable current – a Pretorien owners dream! Note: This site gives an excellent visual of the current state of the current.

 

The clearance was easy peasy. They took our produce, eggs, cheese and milk and canned meat (poor pate gone) – all as we had anticipated. They examined our shells, took a few pictures, charged the stupidly expensive fee of $380AUD and were on their way. Nice guys.

 

Coffs Harbour was a surprising treat. It is a dirty, dusty, slightly run down port filled with a interesting, diverse, salty crowd of honest to goodness sailors. The staff were super friendly. The town was cute and we were picked up when hitch hiking immediately and even given a ride when we were just asking someone about the bus. The showers were hot, high pressure, and with shower heads taller than I am. As an aside, for whatever reason, even though I am only 5’8” most S Pacific shower heads are positioned at my neck requiring (on the few times we’ve been in ports or haul outs) me to crouch down to shampoo. If Coffs were closer to Sydney we would have stayed there for a while but the lure of Christmas and NYE in Sydney proved too difficult to resist.

 

We made it!

 

TThis is not an installation guide (the installation instructions from CruiseRO are clear) but I thought I would add a few photos to identify “where in the heck we fit the parts” for a 20 gallon per hour SeaMaker watermaker (AC) on our 35’ Pretorien.

Our Honda 2000 lives (when not in use) under the helmsman seat in the lazarette, on top of a three jerry cans of diesel which are on top of the main diesel tank. More on that (per request) later.

The main pump and membrane fit in the drop bin just aft of the fridge on the starboard side of the boat (the location requiring Carol’s advanced yoga skills).

The boost pump was mounted to a floorboard cut out in the inboard cubby just forward of the sink (the one with the opening hatch to the walkway at foot level).

That’s it. Those are the 4 main bits. The rest was running tubing and electricity. Our intake thru hull is port of the keel and was installed by a previous owner.

This post was inspired by reader follow-up questions from our most recent "snapshot" post (Snapshot: 3 years of cruising).

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Was the primary motivation of your cruising boat purchase one of fear or love? Were you choosing a boat that would make you safe from all of the dangers present on the open sea (the Tortoise boat)? Or were you choosing a boat that would increase your already high fun factor under sail (the Hare boat)?

In our limited experience, the fear emphasis is a gross (and probably unfair) generalization of N American cruising culture and the love emphasis is a gross (and probably unfair) generalization about French cruising culture. Of course it is true that many N American's love sailing, many buy Hare boats, and Tortoise boat owners are not necessarily fearful people. It is also true that the French are safety conscious and can be sometimes found in stout boats (although sleek aluminum vessels are more likely than traditional cruisers). However, the emphasis on one versus another I think is, on average, fair.

We were listening to a French single sideband net and one boat talked about having entered one of the Tuamotus (atolls with passes) at night. He was a single hander and he said that he could see the hole in the atoll with his binoculars so he went for it. My reason for telling this anecdote is not because we think that this is a good idea but because on the French net his statement didn't cause a single reaction. Not that the French listeners thought it was a better idea than I did, but it didn't evoke an emotional reaction. Carol and I had a lively discussion imagining if this same person had made this statement on a mainly N American net. Mon dieu!

The personal emphasis on fear vs. love interacts with a whole host of cruising boat and cruising plan decisions: What level of risk can you accept, do you want to accept? Will you accept a certain level of risk if it increases your level of fun? How much? Do you believe in preparing your boat for all possible ocean conditions (e.g., pitch poling, perfect storms, etc)? Or do you believe in choosing to sail within the limits of the imperfect vessel that you have (e.g., sailing in season, avoiding certain passages or certain oceans)?

I recently read this post from one of my favorite bloggers which was also printed in 48 North.

I was fascinated by Totem's description of someone getting judgmental about the choice of an open transom for a cruising vessel (i.e., dangerous for their children). Although Totem didn't comment on whether the person was being mild or intense, I've seen the same judgments or criticisms passed and often with a lot of emotion attached. The Hare decides that even if they assume that their keel will get ripped off if they hit a submerged container at full speed they are OK with that because their 9 foot bulb keel adds to their fun factor. The Tortoise disagrees. No problem, people have different levels of risk assessment. What is impressive is sometimes the Tortoise disagrees in an emotional and verbally aggressive way. Why do some Tortoises freak out about the Hare's acceptance of risk?

I believe that some people who make fear based cruising decisions find love based cruising decisions very threatening. It is as if the lack of fear of the Hare rips the lid off these particular scared-y Tortoises' barely contained fears about the ocean. Further, one person's choice not to buy into a certain design feature or piece of safety gear calls into question the other person's choice to include it. If I choose not to buy a parachute anchor, the person who bought a parachute anchor feels as if I am questioning their choice. If they can convince me somehow that I am wrong, they rationalize their own expenditure and decision.

Certainly, there is the opposite problem of people who have set off cruising in lightly built boats, with little safety gear, not because they've consciously chosen the trade-offs and compromises but because they are actively ignoring and minimizing any possible dangers. We'll call these people the Ostriches. The Ostriches can get very angry and defensive when the Tortoises (and the Hares) point out the failings of their vessels. The Ostriches also, by failing to acknowledge the weaknesses of their vessels, fail to sail within the limits of their vessels and are the bane of emergency rescue services worldwide.

Like most people, we think we're in the middle. We wish we were even sleeker and sexier when we are playing but are very happy that we're stout when we're afraid. Well done, Wauquiez, well done.

If there is one thing we have come to love through cruising, it is containers. Any type of bag, or box, or fabric cube that makes it easy to find things, to move our stuff around when we inevitably need to reach whatever is stored underneath, and to keep things from dropping into the deep dark reaches of the bottom of some of our lockers and lazarettes.

Even better than just a container is a watertight container. Not just to prevent water, but even inside the boat in dry areas to prevent salty  humid air from ruining everything from food to electronics and to prevent fabrics from taking on a “boat smell”.

Now imagine that you have a container, that is watertight, and it can be used to store things in a previously unusable space in your boat – a cruiser’s dream, right?

While we were in N America we picked up a stash of Snaptainers and brackets (white or black) at Fisheries Supply in Seattle. You can see the entire collection (and pick up your own set) online here. After more than 5 years of living aboard and 3 years of cruising, we had some pretty specific ideas about where we might be able to use these bad boys and we have just installed the first batch: 3 at the navigation table and 1 in the “coffee cubby”.

It is the little things that can drive you crazy in cruising and so it is the little improvements in life, particularly for things you use on a daily or near daily basis, that we find make a big difference in our fun factor. Less suck means more energy for fun.

With the 4 installed containers, our USB sticks, phone cards, boat stamp, long distance wifi router, boat cards, etc are dry and contained in small organized containers at the navigation table. Every morning when we make our coffee we can lift the manual espresso machine out of its cubby (clearance above) and slide the ground espresso snaptainer out of its bracket. Everything fits perfectly, nothing has to be stored in a pile.

Next stop will be installing the same system in the lids of our lazarettes!

HAUL OUT MONDAY

Anyone who has had to maintain a house or car knows how a bunch of little jobs can add up to a fair amount of time and our haul out was filled with these. None of these jobs required us to be out of the water but when we were faced with weeks of rain we ended up doing some of these jobs because they could be done indoors.

One thing that Carol and I learned quickly when we moved aboard was that in such a limited space we both needed somewhere to shove stuff we didn’t feel like dealing with, in a space where it wouldn’t interfere with the other person’s peace of mind*. In our main living area we both have a cubby and what we jam in the cubby is our own business.

However, my cubby used to be the liquor cabinet. Our Pretorien came from the factory with a mirror backed, velvet lined liquor cabinet in addition to the wine locker. This became my cubby. The problem was that it had this fancy nice latch so that the door would open to horizontal and not further and Carol and I quickly figured out that we could put the laptop on the door of the hatch for movie nights…until we ripped the wee screws out. I replaced that latch with the same type of hook latch that is on the rest of our cupboards.

On another rainy day, I opened up our asymm spinnaker sock to see why the line that pulls the sock up and down kept getting caught. It turns out someone had tied a huge bowline which was way to big to fit through the pulley. I’m amazed we ever managed to raise the sock past that point. So I lock stitched and whipped the line into a lazy splice. Hopefully that will do the trick.

Before:



After:
 

*As in, cause a boat moment.

A few photos of Livia & Estrellita 5.10b at anchor for our collection.