Syzygy Sailing

A week or so ago while sailing from Airlie to Townsville, Justin and I saw about 20 dolphins all jumping and playing at the bow as we cruised along at 7 knots. It was a lot of fun to watch. I had never seen that many at the same time around the boat. Here are some pictures.

Our first three dives were off Bait Reef, 30 miles from the Airlie Beach, on the outer section of the Great Barrier Reef. Here the water was clearer than near shore. Bait Reef stays entirely under water.

Our first dive was at night, a disconcertingly amazing experience. Never really knowing where you are, or what is just outside the beam of your torch is eerie. We were surrounded by a school of 3 to 5 foot long tuna. They would dart into the light and just as quick burst away. They would playfully dart into the light, come right up next to you, and then quickly burst away and after five feet they would be out of the light.

Second up was a wall dive. A sheer vertical wall took us down to 90 feet; Justin sunk to 100. From there we meandered and drifted along the wall, slowly making our way shallower and through gullies and overhangs and swim throughs.

Third was a shallower dive around what are called the Stepping Stones, seven pillars that vertically rise from 15 meters up to within 1 meter of the surface.

We then had to unfortunately leave Bait Reef without visiting nearby reefs, as a front moved in bringing with it 25 -30 knot winds. The winds whipped the water across the reef and made for a terrible place to hang out. Bobbing and swaying, we labored to get the dinghy out of the water and make for calmer anchorages.

At Hook Island, we dove the Western tip of Butterfly Bay, an enjoyable outing, where Justin spied a small shark.

We then dove on the eastern side of Manta Ray Bay, unfortunately spying no Manta Rays. The season for them is May through September, but we haven’t been lucky enough to catch a glimpse of one yet.

The west side of Pinnacle Bay was next, adjacent to a rock-cliff named the wood pile that begs to be the site of some cliff diving and which I spent an afternoon scrambling and doing a little climbing on. An awesome 10 foot roof crack juts out over the water; a better climber than me would love having a go at it. I just admired it and wished I was a better climber. This dive was a bit disappointing with respect to fish, coral and visibility, given it’s hype in various guidebooks. It did have, however, some fantastic coral formations, huge overhangs, deep slots to swim through and a couple of tunnels. I spied one tiny tunnel with a sliver of light coming through it. I motioned for Justin to come check it out and jokingly hand signaled for him to swim up it. To my surprise, he took me up on it and started to gingerly make his way through. Soon, his fins had kicked up a cloud of dirt as he angled up and through. I ascended along the coral watching bubbles filter up through what seemed to be an impenetrable mass of coral. Justin was nowhere in sight. I then crested over a hump of coral and there was Justin, his upper body poking out of the end of the tunnel, as he gingerly twisted and squeezed through the last, tightest spot.

Finally, we dove the eastern side of Pinnacle Bay, around the Pinnacles. This dive, combined with the previous one, are supposed to be the best in the main islands of the Whitsundays. On both, as in most dives in Australia, I continue to be disappointed in the visibility. Live coral was also not particularly present on this dive, but formations within the coral were. High narrow slots abounded, two in particular were reminiscent of the slot canyons of Utah, 8 feet wide, 25 feet high slices through the coral made for fun exploring. Another big highlight was seeing the 6 foot long turtle. I immediately thought of Finding Nemo as it glided along in the current. I saw a Moray Eel, a disgusting looking creature. And I nearly had to adapt a fish; an angel fish, sometimes accompanied with his three friends, swam within 10 feet behind and around me for over 20 minutes of our dive.

Huge thanks to Brian on Furthur who has been filling our tanks for us. Diving and hanging out with him and Susan has been a great time over the last five days.

This post backtracks and refers to events that happened on May 2nd.

We left Middle Percy Island noon on May 2nd. Anxious to get to the Whitsunday’s, famed to be the best sailing grounds of Australia, we had spent only one night on Middle Percy, a beautiful though nearly completely deserted island. It’s one claim to fame is a hut with various sailing paraphernalia from the last 50 odd years. Every boat it seems, leaves a little artifact and quite a collection has built up.

Anxious though we were, the wind was not so in a hurry. With both the drifter and jib up we slowly putted along on the glassiest of seas barely breaking 2 knots. We already knew we were in for an overnight sail, and so I didn’t feel like turning on the engine.

We spent the time in various ways.

First and foremost, Justin cracked a beer at precisely noon to celebrate our speedy passage making.

spent some time grinding on our new (for a second time) anchor windlass handle. A welder in Bundaberg charged me an obscene amount for a new handle and then attached a piece that was 50% too thick to fit into the windlass. Alas, I discovered this 50 miles away at Lady Musgrave when we tried to anchor. To date we’e made do with our dilapidated rusting back-up until now. No more. With no rocking and no boats around, I set about to grinding.

Justin made me lunch.

We relaxed with more beers at two in the afternoon, a gentle breeze at our backs, enough to keep us cool, but not enough to push us any faster than 2.5 knots.

Justin played some video games.

And finally, I set about to thinking how I could rig up the hammock. I normally set it up on the forestay, (the wire holding up the mast in the front of the boat) but since the jib was rolled out, this wasn’t possible. See pictures below for my set-up. As I lazily swayed in the hammock, drinking a beer and watching the water meander underneath me, I may or may not have thought about how things couldn’t get much more relaxed.

This post backtracks some and talks about events that happened April 21st to April 25th.

The first truly tropical awesome place that we’ve been to since Justin arrived was Lady Musgrave Island. It is at the southern end of the Great Barrier Reef, a mere 30 miles offshore, 50 miles from where we sailed from Bundaberg. A tiny cay of sand and trees 600 yards wide juts up out of the ocean with a small two mile wide fringing reef surrounding it. The Tuomotus, where I first joined the boat were similar (though this was even smaller) and as I wish I could have spent another month there, I was in love with the place before we even got there.

The entrance through the coral reef was rumored to be blasted out with dynamite years ago by guano harvesters. Goats were introduced on the island in case of shipwrecks. Jonny would be glad to know they have since been eradicated. I was nervous entering the coral ring, the pass felt extremely narrow, much narrower than anything in the Tuomotus or anywhere I’d been. Running aground here would be disastrous as it would mean impacting and potentially sinking on hard, sharp coral, not the soft forgiving sand I’ve hit twice now in the last month. I had left the drifter pole up after pulling the sails down and I swear it seemed like it’s 20 foot length was able to overhang the obvious shallow edge of where the pass had been blasted out. Nerve-wracking, but we made it through.

Inside was beautiful glistening water. The Pacific Ocean crashed all around against a ring of fringing reef that, save the tiny cay, remained just two or three feet underwater. The water was brilliant turquoise and blue. We relaxed. We snorkeled. We spear-fished. We meandered around the island. We lazily swung in the hammock.

Our spear fishing adventure was short. I bagged one smaller sized fish within a few minutes. Justin then said he had spied a bigger fish. I asked if he wanted to take a shot at it. He dove down to within three feet of it… the fish didn’t budge… and then Justin surfaced without firing. He had forgotten to undo the safety!  Back down he went, the fish hadn’t moved an inch, and with one shot from three feet away, one-shot wonder Justin bagged what is easily the biggest fish that someone on Syzygy has caught. King’s to Justin today!

Justin, however, doesn’t really eat fish, so I spent the next two hours trying to gut and clean them. My fish only produced a small amount of meat, but Justin’s… Justin’s provided two beautiful large fillets. He gamely tried a few small bites of what I cooked up, but in the end sided with Ramon for dinner that evening. I dined on fish in a lemon butter sauce, fish in a sweet chili reduction, and fish teriyaki. Thank you Justin!

We are currently at Airlie Beach, a super popular backpacker stop, on the mainland across from one of the most popular sailing grounds in Australia, the Whit Sundays. Justin and I went out on a Tuesday night and didn’t make it back to the boat until 2:30 am. Fun times were had. Lots of beer, super-sized Jenga, dancing in the streets. Huge hangover on my part.

And in homage to Greg Sutera, Justin brought the 2-step to Australia.

Australia is a nanny state, the state of Queensland being the worst. They have government regulations for everything. You aren’t allowed to work on your own refrigeration system and you can’t buy refrigerant you could get at any auto store in the States. You need a license and certifications to be hired to make espresso. Australia won’t let you refill American approved air scuba cylinders. Doesn’t meet their standards. To serve alcohol you have to take a mandatory four day course. Its the law that you have to get a specific scuba diving physical before you can take a scuba diving certification course. And Australians seem to love it. They seem to love following rules. And are aghast at the notion that maybe government doesn’t need to baby their citizens. Everyone drives the speed limit.

One aspect, however, of the nanny state will please my parents, even if it is annoying to me. Boats are required to check in with the Coast Guard as they move from one Coast Guard region to the next. This happens about every 10 miles. I’ve heard boats checking in with Coast Guard just to move from one side of an three mile wide island to the other. You are required to give your origin, destination and approximate arrival time, boat registration number, number of people on board, We have dutifully checked in with the Coast Guard as we have travelled north. Other boats have told us they found us particularly humorous when we would call for a particular Coast Guard, only to have to switch to calling for “Any Coast Guard in Range!” Our VHF it seems is not particularly powerful.

Here is Justin having some fun. Doing his best Australian voice impression and checking in with the Coast Guard.

Romeo that.

This post pertains to events that happened June 9th.

Justin and I went diving on a wreck called the ex-HMAS Brisbane just outside of Mooloolaba. ‘Ex’ because she’s sunk. HMAS is her Her Majesty’s Australian Ship. Justin was our dive master for the trip based on his getting certified more recently, three years ago, than I, fifteen years ago. He also paid for the permit and listed himself as dive master. He also has a dive computer. I have yet to figure out how mine work.

The ex-HMAS is quite possibly the best first wreck dive you could do. It was purposely sunk to create a reef and a dive site. Large panels were cut through the sides to allow easy access all throughout the ship’s interior. Justin was hesitant before diving about going through the interior; going inside a real wreck can be a serious endeavor. Once we were down though, and right next to the eight foot wide cut-outs, I found it irresistible to not meander through and motioned that intent. What a cool experience.

We almost were unable to do the dive, rough seas gave us fits as Justin tried to motor up to the mooring while I tried to snag the mooring with the boat hook. At one point, we had to execute a boat hook overboard, when I had snagged the mooring but was unable to hold on as the waves pushed us away. The boat hook was ripped from my hands. Justin did a few circles around the hook before finally closing in. We retrieved the hook and managed to secure up. And glad we were because it turned out to be a fantastic dive.

Here are a few pictures.

This post backtracks a bit and talks about events that happened April 4th-8th.

It’s easy to write about fun things that happen, like in the next few posts to come about scuba diving a wreck or Justin imitating an Australian accent over the VHF to the coast guard. It’s harder, much harder for me, to write about screw-ups or flaws in my captaining. When Karen was writing about the trip, however, she was bravely honest and up front about when things weren’t going well and how she felt about it. So I’m trying to take some inspiration from her here.

Justin was at the helm as we approached a channel that would hopefully take us to a better anchorage. Though I would occasionally give him course corrections, Justin does a fine job of it and I was watching our course on our computer charting program below decks. Our original anchoring location seemed too exposed and the weather forecast said the wind would pick up. We had already seen two squalls blow by us earlier in the day where the wind had jumped from 10-15 knots to 30-35 in a matter of seconds. The water depth was 15 feet, which for Moreton Bay is quite good as half of it seems to be a minefield of sand bars. We were 100 yards away from a buoy that marked the channel. And then we abruptly slowed to a stop. We had run aground.

Since we had run aground in Fiji, I at least had an idea of what to do. In Fiji though, the water had been perfectly calm and it was a beautiful day. This time however, the situation was compounded by a nasty little wave chop and an impending storm on the horizon. I was desperate to get free before 30-35 knots of wind starting knocking us around and creating waves that would pound on us some more. As it was, each choppy wave would lift the boat slightly and set it down back on the sand with a small shudder. I dreaded feeling a much larger shudder if the approaching storm reached us.

I started racing around the boat, mimicking exactly what Matt had done when we ran aground previously. Dinghy into the water, outboard on, fuel attached, kedging anchor out. Justin quickly asked what he could do, and my mind raced as I tried to balance thinking about what I was currently doing, with the effort to explain to someone anxious to help but unfamiliar with the boat, unfamiliar with where items are, and unfamiliar with what we might need.

Just before speeding off in the dinghy to set the kedge anchor, I explained to Justin he needed to start cranking in the winch once I had dropped the anchor. Unlike in Fiji where we tried going forwards and sideways to break free, I had decided to pull us sideways and backwards. It seemed probable that it only got shallower moving forward. As he winched madly away, putting an prodigious effort into cranking the line in as fast as possible, I raced back to the boat and with snorkel mask on, dove down to try to see what was going on and pray there wasn’t any rocks around. With less than five feet of visibility, I couldn’t even see the bottom from the surface. Diving down to get closer to the keel, I thankfully saw there was only sand. I could also see the boat lifting on every wave and coming back down. It was unnerving.

Back on the boat, Justin and I swapped out every two minutes cranking in the anchor line on the winch. It was like sprinting with your arms, and in two minutes I would be out of breath and exhausted from cranking.  As Justin kept cranking away at a now extremely taunt anchor line, I turned on the engine, hoping the water intake wouldn’t clog with sand. The low depth alarm on our depth sounder went off, freaking me out; I had never heard it sound before. I revved the engine in reverse, nothing happened. Justin and I swapped out; cranking the winch could only happen in the low gear now, straining will all one’s effort. Back at the helm I put the engine in reverse again; we slowly started inching backwards. We were free.

For a denouement, we struggled for 30 minutes to retrieve the kedge anchor, so stuck in the sand it had apparently become. it also started raining and the wind picked up. I was glad to be away from being grounded. Once free, Justin justifiably was ready to smile, laugh, and enjoy the fact that we and the boat had emerged unscathed. For myself, with adrenaline still coursing, I could hardly talk and wanted only to get to the anchorage we had previously passed on. An hour later, at anchor I slumped into the nav table with a beer. Mentally exhausted.

Justin kept saying afterwards, we gotta blog about it. And while I agreed, I knew part of me didn’t want to. I didn’t want to admit to a deficiency on my part. I didn’t want Matt to be worried about losing confidence in my ability to captain Syzygy.

A couple of days later we punched a hole through one of the polycarbonate windows that wrap around our dodger. Another error in captain-hood on my part, I wasn’t insistent enough to Justin to pull in the boom all the way to centerline before jibbing. The boom came over harder then it should. The boom is sheeted, moved in and out, by the main sheet line. The main sheet runs through blocks which are on a traveler. The traveler can be moved from side to side by the traveler line. The shock load from the boom coming over harder than it should caused the traveler line to break one of the pulleys it was attached to. The pulley snapped off violently into the polycarbonate dodger window and punched a hole through. Fixing this will probably be expensive and a huge ordeal. I was more upset with myself at this event than at running aground. At least when we ran aground I thought our location was fine and was telling Justin to stay on course. Here, I knew better. I knew the boom should be further to center before jibbing. I knew better and just didn’t insist to Justin that he needed put more effort into winching in the boom. He was tired of winching and asked if it was enough and if he could stop. I let him. I shouldn’t have and I knew it. I berated myself as captain and my lack of leadership.

A week later, I e-mailed Matt, almost sheepishly, intro-ing with the line, ‘well I suppose I should tell you…’  I felt like a student handing in a final exam, embarrassingly mumbling to his favorite professor that he hadn’t studied well enough and had done poorly.

I’m hoping I can do better in the future.