Green Ghost, Blue Ocean

by Jennifer M. Smith

  Inverted, lying on the sole of the cabin head down in the bilge, Nik was able to construct a bypass to the heat exchanger. He also created a closed system for the transmission by joining the output to the heat exchanger directly back to the input for the transmission. He removed the salt water from the system by blowing through the tubing. He rinsed the circuit with diesel first, then added transmission fluid. We engaged the transmission briefly and found that the closed system held, but on inspection we were disappointed to see that the transmission fluid was pink in colour – some salt water remained inside and we didn’t have enough fluid left to flush it and fill it a second time.

  Nik remained distraught over our predicament. In situations requiring mechanical/electrical know-how, beyond a calming influence and moral support, I didn’t have much to offer. He felt the pressure squarely on his shoulders. While he was hand-wringing over unanswered questions, I reminded him that we were not alone. Just like that TV gameshow, we had a lifeline – we had Sailmail. I suggested we get outside advice.

  I began to write e-mails to people we thought might be able to help. To fellow sailors who were more knowledgeable diesel mechanics, we asked if, in a pinch, 15W40 motor oil could be used in the transmission. We requested research from our brother-in-law, writing: the transmission is a BorgWarner Velvet Drive, model number 10-17-012, gear box ratio of 2.57:1. Can you contact BorgWarner and find out how long we could get away with engaging the transmission without cooling? To cruising friends Taffy and Shirley on the sailboat The Road, already at the island of Rodrigues, we asked: Are there repair facilities on the island or should we head straight for Mauritius? Can you put us in touch with the Port Captain? We may need a tow on arrival.

  Our contacts were happy to assist. Our brother-in-law kept us entertained with his wit, writing back: Apollo 13 … this is Houston. I will call the manufacturer and report back. We received plenty of information from our sources, including information direct from BorgWarner, news of a mechanic on Rodrigues, and a contact e-mail address for the Harbour Master at Port Mathurin who was standing by, nearly 2,000 NM away, ready to tow us through the reefs into port when our mast crested his horizon.

  We learned that we could use motor oil to fill the transmission and we could engage the transmission for roughly four minutes without cooling before bad things would start to happen. Confident with our temporary fix, we were ready to sail on to Rodrigues as planned.

  But sail on, we could not. Within a day of losing our transmission we found ourselves on a windless sea. We’d never seen the ocean so flat. It was so calm, I entertained myself by taking photos of my near perfect reflection in the deep blue water, of our speedometer reading 0.00 knots, and of our fishing line hanging limp and pathetic off the stern. A quiet anxiety set in.

  We were going nowhere. Our sails slapped relentlessly. Frustration prevented us from sleep. We reminded ourselves that even if the engine was working we’d be concerned about fuel consumption, but that didn’t mitigate our impatience. We were restless captives, unnerved by the irrational thought: what if the wind never came back?

  To distract ourselves we jumped overboard. With masks and snorkels we hung weightless in the sapphire crystal blue, staring down into shafts of sunlight probing 16,000 feet of water. Small fish sparkled like jewels many feet below. It was another world, both beautiful and forbidding.

  I made a pizza and we sat in the cockpit to watch a movie on the laptop. But these diversions were nothing but a brave front. We were disquieted. We despaired. At day’s end our GPS position indicated we’d moved 30 NM in the previous twenty-four hours. While a one-knot current had been pushing us, thankfully in the right direction, we made only 6 NM by sail. Much like our spirits, our mileage was at a record-breaking low.

  That night I finished reading my book, The Count of Monte Cristo. The last line could not have been better suited to our situation. “All human wisdom is contained in these words: Wait and hope!”

  When the wind returned in gentle seven- and eight-knot puffs we were delighted. Such light air gave us a good boost on the still-flat seas. A magnificent full moon kept us company through the quiet night and we thrilled to see the speedometer flash numbers at us once again. When you’ve been going nowhere, it’s amazing how fast two to three knots can feel.

  We’d chosen to sail a more northerly route after leaving Padang, hoping to find ten to fifteen knots of wind. We stayed at nine degrees south while we made more westing, wanting to avoid the blustery twenty-five-knot trades farther south. Meanwhile our heartier friends on Moonfleet had gone south more quickly, down to eleven degrees before heading west, putting them in robust trade winds earlier in their trip. On our nightly radio schedule, they were reporting winds in the twenty-five gusting to forty range and speed records to boot. In hindsight, we realized that hanging around farther north had put us at a greater risk of being becalmed, a risk we regretted taking now that we were engineless. Perhaps we should have been more aggressive on our southerly mileage. On the other hand, we were glad to be in gentle conditions when the oil cooler failed. Effecting that repair in twenty-five to forty knots of wind would’ve been terrible. In sailing, and in life, every choice you make has consequences.

  On our twelfth day at sea we finally found the trades. Twenty- to twenty-five-knot southeasterlies were upon us together with an endless parade of dark grey squalls bringing rain, rain, and more rain. The seas built to three metres. In the heavier weather, we reefed down and changed the watch every three hours instead of our usual four. We were finally making tracks, chewing up the miles to Rodrigues.

  “Should have bought a catamaran,” the captain grumbled when we learned over the HF radio that our friend, Jimi, had already arrived in Mauritius.

  Nik was happier a few days later when conditions eased for his fifty-first birthday. We were treated to a beautiful sailing day with sunny skies and continued progress on a favourable course, albeit at decreased speeds. I made a chocolate birthday cake, lopsided despite the gimballed oven. The best gift was the sound of the fishing line singing at sunset. Nik reeled in small yellowfin tuna in the fading light.

  On our twentieth day at sea we encountered our first freighter, the first of several we would see over the next few days. The alarm rang out on our AIS, letting us know that a ship, projecting its own AIS signal, was within a ten-mile range. Fantastic technology – you hear it even before you see it. Solar Orion was eastbound on the Durban-Singapore shipping route and would pass with a closest point of approach of 2 NM on our port side. Close enough for photos, not close enough to smell the exhaust – just the way I like it.

  Our spirits lifted with the sign of life and the pleasant sailing conditions had us smiling. As always, in good conditions, it never occurs to me that it won’t last. But dawn came grey, rainy, and miserable and we found ourselves back in unpleasant conditions for two days. We were becalmed again. Three-knot zephyrs zipped every which way, causing a rolling motion and slapping sails. Our wind indicator spun in circles.

  “Maybe we should burn out the transmission just to get there,” Nik muttered, frustrated by our lack of progress.

  “Go to bed. When you wake up maybe there’ll be wind,” I offered.

  But there wasn’t any, not on his shift and not on my next shift either.

  Finally, fifteen-knot winds filled in from the south, the sky cleared, and we were sailing in a consistent breeze on a beam reach straight down the line to our destination. Happiness restored.

  We arrived in Mathurin Harbour, Rodrigues, at eight a.m. on a Sunday morning after a twenty-five-day passage. Nearly as long as our crossing from Mexico to the Marquesas back in 2001. Arriving on a Sunday meant we incurred overtime charges at the customs office, but at only US$66 we didn’t care. It was a small price to pay.

  Because of our Sailmail correspondence with Port Captain Gilbert Mallet, Port Mathurin was expecting us. As instructed we called in on VHF Channel 16 upon our arrival outside the reefs. Despite our inconvenient timing,
the little tugboat Albion came out to meet us with its crew of three volunteer Coast Guard members and Captain Mallet himself. My eyes welled with tears as they waved us good morning and threw us a towline to attach to the bridle we’d already made up. What good people, I thought. What fine people you meet on the sea.

  CHAPTER 24

  Madagascar

  (June – September 2013)

  After spoiling ourselves with a month in each of the two islands of the Republic of Mauritius (Rodrigues and Mauritius) and ten days of magnificent volcanic hiking on the visually stunning (but very expensive) island of Reunion, our thoughts turned to completing the final stretch on the Indian Ocean. Our ultimate destination, Richard’s Bay, South Africa, became our focus.

  In the Mascarene Islands, a new part for our oil cooler had been ordered from the U.S. and after Nik’s expert installation we were good to go. There was only one problem – Madagascar was in the way. Over a thousand miles long and 350 miles wide (1,580 kilometres long, 579 kilometres wide), it was a significant obstacle. We either had to duck under that large island landmass or go over the top. Sailors who choose the southern route are unlikely to stop, mainly because of a dearth of attractive anchorages and an excess of questionable officials at the southern end of the island. A route over the top of the country, on the other hand, provided good opportunities for coastal cruising.

  Madagascar was a destination completely foreign to us. Ranking among the ten poorest countries in the world, known for its corrupt officials and petty crime, it was not a place we’d ever planned to go. If it hadn’t been for a chance meeting in a taxi, we never would have.

  Back in Sumatra, in the small town of Lahewa on Nias Island, we ran out of cash. We rented a taxi with three other cruising couples to make the hour-long drive to the nearest ATM in Gunungsitoli. In the back of the van, introductions were made between sailors and the usual facts were established: which boat were you on, where had you come from, and where were you going. A French-speaking couple said they were headed for Nosy Be.

  “Madagascar? Why there?” Nik asked.

  “We live there,” they answered.

  It was no wonder I hadn’t recognized the flag flying off the back of their yacht.

  “You live in Madagascar?” I asked, surprised. Madagascar? Wow. When you say it out loud, exotica oozes from every syllable.

  “Yeah,” they answered, blasé about their home address.

  No doubt they rued the moment they let on to their Malagasy roots because for the rest of the taxi ride we hammered them with questions. We kept up our enquiries over a shared lunch and continued our interrogation on the return journey. By the time we were back on Green Ghost we had our minds made up.

  A mixture of coast-hopping and idling in anchorages was far preferable to the non-stop mad dash across difficult seas that the southerly route promised. Armed with some local advice and a few anchorage notes from other cruising sailboats, we set out to discover the wonders of Madagascar – a biodiversity hot spot where over 90 percent of the wildlife is found nowhere else on Earth.

  Whales. They were everywhere. And these whales were way too close. It was late August, right in the middle of the humpback whale breeding and calving season. Thousands of them migrate from Antarctica to Madagascar each year, and our destination, Ambodifototra on Île Ste. Marie (now called Nosy Baraha), was one of the best whale-watching ports on the east coast. We’d spotted a few of the majestic cetaceans from a distance. Longer than and twice the tonnage of our boat, from a distance was just fine with us. But it wasn’t the humpbacks that gave me the greatest scare. On our final miles into Île Ste. Marie, an unusual sound made me look up from the book I was reading in the cockpit.

  “Phhssst!” It was the unmistakable sound of a marine mammal exhaling.

  I jumped up and looked aft off the port quarter to see dark shapes disappear under our hull. I kneeled on the cockpit seat, gripped the stern rail, and looked straight down at our rudder. On either side of it was the great bulbous head of a pilot whale. At only half the length of our boat and a tonne or more in weight, they weren’t nearly as large as the humpbacks, but the fact that two of them had decided to take up positions on either side of our rudder was mighty disconcerting.

  “Ho-leeeee shit! You’re beautiful but get away from there!” I said aloud. They did as I requested and moved off without incident.

  “Green Ghost, Tegan,” came over our VHF radio.

  “Tegan, Green Ghost, go ahead.”

  “Welcome to Madagascar! How was your trip?”

  “Thanks, Janet. It was pretty boisterous on the last day, but fine overall. We’re glad to be here.”

  “Good to hear. We just wanted to give you a heads-up regarding check in. The customs official here is demanding US$40 in local currency from every boat. We’re pretty sure it’s graft. He won’t say what the charge is for and he doesn’t give a receipt.”

  “Did you pay it?”

  “We didn’t pay it on the spot because we didn’t have any local currency. He was insistent, so we told him we would have to go to the bank and bring the money to him later. We’ve been to the bank now, and we’re planning to go ashore to make our payment in a few minutes.”

  “I hate this kind of thing,” I said.

  “Yeah, me too. We probably wouldn’t pay it if we were leaving soon, but we’re going to be here for a couple of days, and knowing they have a boat and can come out and harass us, well, we just don’t want to put ourselves in that position.”

  “Yeah, I hear you,” I said.

  “When we’re in the office, do you want us to let them know you’ve arrived?”

  “Sure. Tell them we’ll come to their offices tomorrow morning, if that works for them,” I said, hoping to head off an on-board visit by the officials.

  “Will do. Talk to you later. Tegan out.”

  The news of a corrupt official made our first taste of Madagascar a sour one.

  The following day we checked in with Haven. Over the years, we’d learned that corrupt officials were less likely to make illegal demands when faced with a small crowd. But not this guy – he had balls. Balls and chins – obviously he’d been collecting graft money for years. In a country of underfed people, this customs officer looked like Jabba the Hutt. Money was demanded of us and we too used the excuse that we couldn’t pay a fee until we’d visited an ATM.

  Through the next day we canvassed other sailors in the anchorage. Had they paid the charge? One boat had flatly refused and departed the anchorage the next day. Every other boat had caved.

  The following day we were in town, picking up some vegetables and having a cold beer on the porch of a hotel when Jabba himself roared up on a motorbike that looked like a kid’s toy under his enormous frame. He was unimpressed to see us spending our local currency on cold beer when we still hadn’t thrown cash in his direction.

  “You have been to the bank. You have money. You will pay me,” he demanded.

  His appearance on the scene unsettled us and we caved too. We were disappointed with ourselves for giving in, feeling we’d only reinforced his sense of entitlement, making things worse for boats arriving after us. For what it was worth, in an e-mail to the Canadian Consulate in Antananarivo, Nik reported the officer, but we doubted it would have much effect.

  A spate of thefts in the anchorage at Île Ste. Marie further unsettled us. Our friends on a large catamaran were boarded in the night. While they slept, several items were stolen from their cockpit, including their chartplotter, their VHF radio, and the captain’s shoes.

  A day trip to the tiny Île aux Nattes to see black-and-white ruffed lemurs soured our experience further. Our outing required hiring a manned lakana, a traditional wooden outrigger canoe, to be ferried across a narrow channel that separated the islet from Île Ste. Marie. Settling on a price with our canoe-man and ensuring we were talking about a return fare, we were adeptly delivered to the sandy beach on the far side. When our captain refused payment, insisting we
pay upon our return, I became suspicious. Sure enough, back on the big island at day’s end our canoe-man insisted on double the amount we’d agreed upon. Our paddler made a great show of his dissatisfaction, tucking his hands in his armpits, refusing to take our money while insisting we owed him twice the amount. Voices were raised, locals gathered round.

  I began to get the feeling this was daily entertainment. No doubt his antics often worked, and tourists often paid, either shamed into remuneration in front of the poor locals or frightened into paying by the ever-growing mob of young men. It was an amount no more than C$5, but it was the principle of the thing. Already tired of being viewed as a walking ATM and still harbouring resentment towards the crooked customs agent, we refused to pay. In the end, we gave him the agreed upon amount, leaving our money at his feet, before speeding away on our rented motorbikes. It was an unpleasant ending to a day of sightseeing. Being a tourist in Madagascar was challenging at every turn.

  Not only was the social environment confronting, the physical environment was challenging as well. The east coast is the rainy part of the country and after experiencing several days of showery conditions we were keen to move on, up, and over the northern cape to the west coast, known for its sunny weather and warmer, more tranquil waters.

  It was more than 300 NM to Cape Amber and the straight-line nature of the northeast coast did not offer many places to stop. The entire coastline is a lee shore exposed to the strong southeast trade winds and of course to the swells generated by them. From May until October winds at Cape Amber are high. Our strategy was to sail to Antsiranana (formerly Diego Suarez), 30 NM short of the northern cape, where we would wait for fair weather before rounding it.

  We travelled northbound up the east coast in building conditions with winds reaching thirty to thirty-five knots through the afternoon. There were gusts close to forty and massive following seas. Green Ghost surfed down the face of the waves with our speedometer showing twelve knots at times – something we’d never seen before. The conditions were the most challenging we’d faced on the whole of the Indian Ocean. On one occasion, we were thrown over on our port side so heavily that our life ring was dunked in the sea and ripped off the rail. It seemed we were destined to lose a life ring in every ocean that we crossed.