Back at the helm - sailing the Yaghan to Antarctica, Patagonia and the South Pacific

by Martensson, Helene

  Yasawa Island Resort will always be very special to us. It is one of the very best resorts we have ever visited. It is a pity that it is so remote. The only two places of the same standard that we have visited is the small island of Memba (Paul McCartney was there when we were there …) off Zanzibar, and Soneva Gilli in the Maldives.

  Sailing to New Zealand

  On October 4 we flew back to Nadi Airport near Denarau where Yaghan was moored. There had been some wonderful days on Yasawa. When we returned to Yaghan she looked as good as new. Api and his men had done a fantastic job. We were speechless. It is great to see professional people doing a good job.

  We had done everything we wanted to do in Fiji, and we began to study the weather reports to find out when we could leave. We also bought provisions for the crossing, a distance of 1,200 nautical miles, which would take us six days. We did not want to buy too much. When you get to New Zealand you have to get rid of all foodstuffs. We also needed to check out of Fiji. The place to do this is Latouka – the second largest town in Fiji, about ten nautical miles north of Denarau.

  Since we had not found a gap in the weather we did not know when we would be leaving. The easiest option appeared to have been to take a taxi to Latouka and check out there. Other sailors warned us and said it was not allowed, that you had to bring your boat. Still, we decided to try. At the customs office we saw some of our neighbours who had also come by taxi. The check out went well, when they asked us we told them that the boat was “nearby”, which was fairly close to the truth.

  The taxi driver who drove us there and back was very talkative. We had never before met anyone who defended the military coup of December 2006, but this taxi driver was a big supporter. He said that the man who had built up Denarau from bog to city was paying too little rent. In his view, this was something that the military would now take care of. It was frightening to hear him talk. Without knowing a lot about the details I have to say, as a banker, that the man who had rented the bogland must have taken a great deal of risk, and in the end he profited from it. That is entirely reasonable. Looking back, it may seem cheap. If it was that easy, the tribes could have developed Denarau themselves. Later, in New Zealand, we heard on the news that several New Zealand and Australian businessmen had been accused (and beaten up) by the regime on account of alleged irregularities. Insurgents always need to provide a reason for their actions; accusing businessmen of foul play has often proved to be a winner. Of course there is corruption in Fiji, but that does not justify a military coup. It damages Fiji as a nation. A country that has experienced four coups since 1970 can never be said to be safe to invest in. And the fact that they beat and throw foreign investors in jail certainly does not make it any better. All resort owners in Fiji were very concerned about foreign tourists avoiding Fiji as a result of the coup, an effect that was noticeable during our stay there. The EU was also threatening – reasonably – to impose sanctions by cutting their aid.

  When we got back to the boat I continued to study the weather forecasts. The Fiji–New Zealand leg is generally considered to be difficult. When you are about halfway you are so far south that you enter the west wind belts we had not encountered since Drake Passage and the Chilean Channels. Also, this leg covers such a long distance that the weather forecast for the last few days can be a little unreliable. We talked to many sailors who told us that the crossing from Fiji to New Zealand was a real nightmare. It suddenly seemed all right to leave the following day. It was not perfect, but good enough. We would have to motor halfway, and during the last few days the winds would be westerly.

  In the morning of October 6 we left Denarau, Fiji. The sun was shining, and we gently passed through the shallow canal that leads out of the harbour. We rounded Denarau Island, and then we headed south. It felt good to be on our way again. This was the last leg of the first half of our circumnavigation.

  When we came out of the south pass on Fiji and entered the ocean proper, the wind was south-south-westerly. We were unable to stay on course and we beared down to gain speed. It did not matter if we sailed west of the rhumbline since we would be getting westerly winds at the end. It is always hard to sail against the wind. The boat heels and pounds. There was nothing we could do about it, just get on with it. Yaghan was making good headway, as usual, even though there was some discomfort.

  It was getting increasingly colder. During the first two days the water temperature fell by three degrees Celsius a day – from 28 to 22 degrees. The water temperature off Auckland was only 15ºC, so the cold would continue. It was like sailing in Sweden in the summer. We had to put on foul weather gear at night. It had not been this cold since we sailed in South America one year ago.

  After two days of pounding, the wind dropped, and we had to turn on the engine. The sea was still rough, making our high-capacity motor work hard. The waves washed over the deck even though the wind was not that strong. The Pacific is always rough because of the stormy weather that always prevails in the south, which causes uncomfortable swell. After twenty-four hours the wind picked up, but it was head on, so we continued to motor. We were waiting for the west wind to push us along the final stretch to New Zealand. On October 10, my birthday, the west wind finally arrived! It was the best birthday present I could have got. We set sail and continued to Auckland on a reaching course. We were now certain that we would be there on day six. These two final days turned out somewhat windier than we had first expected.

  Occasionally, the wind speed was 30 knots, sometimes more. We often had to reef the main and set the staysail – it was wonderful. Sailing at right angles to a strong wind is a lot more comfortable than dead calm and swell.

  Shooting Yaghan from the Air

  The day before we were due to arrive in Auckland I had an idea. For some time, I had been regretting that we in our films for DiTV had no good external footage of Yaghan. The New Zealanders are mad about sailing, especially in Auckland. New Zealand won America's Cup in 1995 and 1999. Then they lost to the Swiss in 2003 and 2007 since the New Zealand captain – who had won both times for NZ – had gone over to the Swiss team, so, morally, you could say that New Zealand has won America's Cup four times in a row! I thought that if there were one place in the world where they would be good at filming boats at sea it must be New Zealand.

  I phoned Orams, the shipyard that was to service Yaghan, and asked if they could find someone who could shoot some footage of Yaghan at sea from a helicopter about sixty nautical miles off Auckland. No problem. The next day at eleven a helicopter from Tony Monk Film turned up and filmed Yaghan for forty-five minutes in a fresh wind. Just as I had anticipated, the New Zealanders were very competent. The helicopter was equipped with a gyro camera, which meant that the pictures were nice and steady, despite the wind. This was our first encounter with New Zealand entrepreneurship. New Zealand was clearly a country that was completely different from all other countries we had visited over the past year! Everything was done quickly, easily and competently.

  Auckland

  We sailed into Auckland, “The City of Sails”, at noon, October 12. We had covered the 1,200 nautical miles in about six days, which confirmed our estimated speed of two hundred nautical miles per 24-hour period.

  We had informed the authorities of our arrival, and when we got to the customs office a car with customs officials was waiting for us. Customs clearance was not nearly as complicated as we had been told. In fact, it was the most efficient so far. But we had to throw away all the food we had bought in Polynesia. This is quite reasonable. New Zealand's economy is agriculture-based, and they are concerned about the risk of introducing contaminants from other countries. The country's administration is efficient, and all measures that were taken were well motivated. The stupid, high-and-mighty attitude typical of South American officials was notably absent.

  Afterwards we went to Westhaven Marina to find our mooring, which had been pre-booked. It was early spring in Auckland. The water temperature was 15°C and the air temperature
13–17ºC.

  A few metres away from us were the premises of the Royal New Zealand Yacht Squadron, the club that had won America's Cup for New Zealand twice. In 1997, someone broke into the club house and smashed the valuable trophy with a hammer. It was a criminal, but he claimed it was a political statement. Fortunately, the old, famous trophy was later restored.

  We began our usual inspection of the city and started to build up our infrastructure. We would be spending a month in Auckland before flying back home for Christmas and the New Year. It was a fantastic feeling to have completed the first half of our circumnavigation. The 22,000 nautical miles equalled the distance of the “normal” circumnavigation via Panama and Suez that most people favour. You could also argue that, in terms of distance sailed, we had completed our first circuit around the world. We were still happy to have another circuit in front of us.

  We loved Auckland and New Zealand straight away. It was wonderful to be there. Everything was suddenly working. People arrived on time, restaurants were good, food shops were wonderful and you got the quality you paid for. It was heavenly.

  Our only negative experience during our month in Auckland concerns the marina car park. We kept our rental car in a parking lot at Westhaven Marina where there were spaces marked in yellow for cars with permits and spaces marked in white for visitors. We were new to the place and did not take any notice of the colour, so one night we parked in one of the spaces marked yellow. There were about fifty parking spaces and our car was the only one there. In the evening we had dinner at the Royal Yacht Squadron. On our way back we noticed that the car was gone. We thought it had been stolen, so we called the police. They checked the registration and told us it had not been stolen, but towed away. It had been removed because we had used a yellow marked space in an empty parking lot instead of a white one ten metres away. In most other countries the person spotting it would probably have issued a fine. In Auckland, however, towing is privatized and the firms get paid for every car they remove. Even though it must have been completely obvious that we had not realized there was a difference between yellow and white, they had our car towed so they could earn a little money. It should be mentioned that everyone who moors at the marina is entitled to a permit, temporary visitors too, but they had forgotten to give us one. I am normally in favour of privatization, but I think that they went a little too far in this case.

  Getting the Boat Serviced at Orams

  We moved Yaghan to Orams Marine, who were to service our lovely boat, on October 19. Orams is surrounded by one of the world's largest clusters of boat service firms. We wanted to get as much as possible done there since we thought they would have better access to competent specialists than any other place we were passing on our voyage. After sailing 22,000 nautical miles – equivalent to ten years of sailing at home – we needed a great deal done.

  You cannot sail around the world the long way round without a proper service stop. James Cook made sure he made one back in the 18th century. He was unable to do it in New Zealand since the country had no infrastructure at the time. Instead, he did it at Batavia (present-day Jakarta) in Indonesia, then a Dutch colony with many skilled craftsmen. The Endeavour was in a bad state of repair when she arrived at Batavia.

  Our experience of boat maintenance services in different places around the world had not been a positive one. It is almost impossible to assess who is competent and who is not when you arrive at a new harbour. We had an air conditioning pump fixed in Brazil. It was supposed to be “as good as new”, but it lasted a couple of months. It was the same with an alternator we had serviced in Argentina. Moreover, it seems as if the global boat service industry is riddled with companies that, at best, can be called “seventy-five per cent companies”. They do seventy-five per cent right, but the rest is wrong or not attended to at all. Top players in other industries have to do ninety-nine per cent right. Therefore, we were tempted to purchase the best quality that could be found, even at a high price. I must admit, however, that there are many seventy-five per cent companies in Sweden too. The boat industry is lagging way behind the car industry, which no longer works according to the premise that a large number of minor faults are acceptable. Today, no one who buys a car accepts the kind of minor faults that were not uncommon in the fifties. This is still widespread in the boat industry, however.

  Before we arrived we had sent Orams a ten-page list of things we wanted them to do. Everything was to be serviced: the motors, the Fleet 77, winches, rigging, hydraulic systems, safety systems, electronics, through-hull fittings, sail handling systems, propellers, steering, air conditioning, heaters, diving bottles, radar, windlass, the gangway etc. Many things needed replacing because they were either broken or worn. Most important were: the masthead wind indicator, the VHF handset in the cockpit, the log transmitter, all sails, all carpets below deck, bedlinen, fender covers, sprayhood, all sheets, backstay lines, mooring lines, ropes on the crane, jacklines, the Raymarine translation boxes, propeller shaft bearings and rudder bearings. Moreover, the underwater hull needed painting and the paintwork needed to be touched up in places and the entire boat had to be cleaned inside and out.

  We also needed to upgrade several functions. Most important were: a new, stronger mast base, satellite broadband, mobile telephony via 3G, a new alternator solution for the Volvo, better ventilation in the engine room, isolation transformers for shore power, an upgrade of shore power to 32 amperes, a new RIB type dinghy and permanent davits, a digital thermometer and an extra compressor for the fridge, bonding of through-hull fittings, a frequency meter on the Westerbeke, fixed oil change installations on the Volvo and the Westerbeke, stoppers under the toilet seats, towel heaters in the heads, air-conditioning fans for the inverter, new reading lights, a new printer for Heléne's office, moving the small radar from the backstay to a post and new design for the post, a new television set that works as a computer screen, a new television antenna and new apron plates for the bow anchor.

  Since these improvements may be of interest to other cruise sailors, I will describe them in greater detail below. These were improvements we wanted to make after one and a half years of sailing and 22,000 nautical miles. Had we known what we know now, we would have made them before we left Sweden.

  A new, stronger mast heel

  We got an unpleasant surprise when we stroke the mast at Orams. There turned out to be some nasty cracks in the mast heel. The mast is stepped on deck and the heel is made of aluminium. Ever since Drake Passage I had been hearing creaking noises coming from it. I had asked Hallberg-Rassy for advice on what to do. They did not think it was serious, but it was without a doubt the most serious problem that arose on board Yaghan during the first half of our circumnavigation. The mast manufacturer – Seldéns of Gothenburg – told us that it was probably due to a defect in the material. The heel was designed to withstand a pressure of thirty-eight tonnes, which was the maximum load that the manufacturer had reckoned with. Since we knew that losing a mast in Drake Passage would have been fatal, we now wanted to install a much stronger mast heel. We know from experience that estimating the dynamic forces at sea is very difficult. We were not convinced that the problem was a defect in material. We could not rule out – and we were backed up by some of some of the New Zealanders who knew all there is to know about rigging – that the problem was that it was too weak. Seldéns compromised and manufactured a mast heel in solid aluminium instead of a cast heel, like the old one. Castings crack easier. The new mast heel would withstand a load of seventy tonnes, which meant that we were able to rule out any future problems. An old engineer once quite accurately defined the art of engineering as “the art of modelling materials we do not wholly understand, into shapes we cannot precisely analyse so as to withstand forces we cannot properly assess, in such a way that the public has no reason to suspect the extent of our ignorance.”

  Broadband via satellite

  Ever since Yaghan was under construction, we had honoured the principle of doubling al
l important functions, but we had failed to do it all the way. Among other things, we did not have two radar units when we started out; a second one was fitted in Brazil. Nor did we have two satellite receivers (Inmarsats) with global coverage. This caused major problems when the Fleet 77 broke down in the Antarctic. We were forced to sail back across the most notorious ocean in the world without access to proper weather forecasts. Furthermore, we were forced to carry out our repairs in the wrong place – in Ushuaia – which turned out to be prohibitively expensive. I consider receiving e-mail via SSB or Iridium more of a hobby than a form of serious communication. After this, we decided to fit another satellite receiver. We first wanted a smaller version of our Fleet 77, a Fleet 55, to use as a backup. But when we contacted Thrane & Thrane in Denmark we discovered that they were about to launch the next generation satellite receiver, which was a lot faster, smaller and cheaper. The one that would suit us best was the Broadband 250, and the first unit would be delivered at the end of January 2008. It sounded absolutely marvellous. It was nearly five times faster than the Fleet 77, 280 kilobits instead of 64 kilobits. It only weighed a fifth of the old one, five kilos instead of twenty-seven. The antenna was only 30x30 cm, instead of 1x1 m for the Fleet 77 – and it only cost a third of the Fleet 77. We decided to install a new Broadband 250 and put up an antenna on the first spreader. It was possible since it was so small and light.

  Mobile telephony via 3G

  When we started out from Sweden, Ericsson had not yet issued a 3G version of their FCT telephone, i.e. a fixed cellular terminal. We had to make do with the GPRS model. The 3G version was due in autumn 2006, when we were already underway. The 3G version had now arrived, so we installed that instead in order to get access to faster Internet ashore, but also because we could use local SIM cards in the new 3G version.