Sydney to Hobart

Out the back of the Wooden Boat Centre, on the Huon River, Tasmania

We’ve entered the calm after the Christmas storm. Alex and I are home alone, with our various offspring accounted for (in Morocco, in Laos, camping, working or recovering from work – take your pick) but not present. We have a fridge full of Christmas ham and sweet leftovers and our house is scented with fresh pine needles and November lilies. Lovely. Who cares about the weather?

A southerly buster came through last night, and for the next few days, if the forecast is right, there won’t be much joy for southbound sailors. We watched yesterday’s start of the Sydney to Hobart race from the water - not on Kukka but on our friend Wayne’s deep sea fishing boat (the spectator event favors a boat with a big engine). We followed the fleet out through the heads and then (throwing fuel consumption to the winds) kept up with the race leaders as far as Botany Bay. What a blast to pace the maxi yachts Loyal and Wild Oats as they sliced through the water at about 14 knots in a light north-westerly breeze. The crew lining the rails knew their moment in the sun would be short though. By the time Wayne turned his boat back towards Sydney, the horizon to the south was filling in with towering cumulus clouds. I’m much too much of a softie to go ocean racing, but I’ll follow the race progress on-line and cross my fingers that by next weekend every competitor will have arrived safely in the Derwent and be perched at the bar of the Royal Yacht Club of Tasmania or the Shipwright’s Arms (aka Shippies) Hotel.  Either would do the job nicely. 

The Shipwright's Arms, Battery Point, Hobart

We were drinking at both these establishments just a week ago with a couple of Sandy Bay locals, John and Ange, lately of S/V Nada. Alex and I fitted in a quick trip to Hobart before Christmas, partly to catch up with John and Ange whose company we’d enjoyed so much in Vanuatu and partly to see the crew of Pelagic which has increased by one since Mike, Alisa and Elias sailed into Sydney harbour to see us and the New Year’s Eve fireworks a year ago en route to Tasmania.

Mike, Alisa and Eric

Mike and Eric

Baby Eric (above) was born in Hobart in very late April (or was it May?), and we thought it was high time we made his acquaintance, brought his big brother some new books and topped up our friendship with his parents before they moved on again.  Mike and Alisa are people you don’t want to lose track of. They're onto something good - each other, and a very immediate sense of what being alive adds up to and how to play that against the odds. You learn that stuff in Alaska, I believe.

Elias and his pony make the summit of Mt Wellington

Elias plays with Eric on Pelagic

Pelagic is on the market, and after a nearly a year of doing short-term house-sits around Hobart, Mike and Alisa are desperate to get onto their next boat. At the moment, it has to be steel, but.... what boat search does not involve as many twists and turns as an episode of The Wire (yes, we are watching the second series, and no, you may not call us any evening this week)?

Ange buys pink-eye potatoes at a rooadside stall for Christmas Day

I like to uncover a new place slowly.  I'd never been to Hobart before, and  it might have been enough to be introduced to the town by friends, both local and imported (as well as through writer Peter Timms' nice book on Hobart, kindly passed my way by Kathy Bail).  But Tasmania, as everyone knows, is more about about country than town. John and Ange took matters in hand  and drove us out for the day so we had more to rave about when we got home than the abundance of Hobart's second-hand bookshops, the headiness of its gardens (who ever knew that fuchsias could grow so abundantly and lusciously?) and the excellence of the bread and coffee at Jackman and McRoss (pictured below).

We headed south, following the ins and outs of the d'Entrecasteaux channel and then up the Huon river valley to the Tahune Air Walk.. How I wished my dear dad had been with me as I tried my best to identify various wondrous trees from high above the forest floor. A farm forester’s daughter ought to know better, but she doesn’t. She still has to read the labels on the bottom of the turned bowls at the Salamanca market to tell myrtle from sassafras.

The Huon river from the Air Walk

John and I drop coins onto the Wishing Tree

We chanced upon a sheep's milk producer called Grandvewe - heaven on tasting toothpicks. I left with yoghurt, curd and hard cheeses and a book on cheese-making.  I couldn't get enough of the ample expanses of the d’Entrecasteaux channel. Its colours reminded me of New Zealand, of course. In comparison, the mainstay cruising grounds for Sydney sailors, Pittwater and the Hawkesbury river, much as I love them, seem cramped and crowded. At Franklin, on the Huon river, we stopped by the Wooden Boat Centre, a small operation with a very strong whiff of an oily rag about it. The Sydney chef Tetsuya is having a classic motor yacht built there, and. I'd bet that his commission is probably keeping the place alive right now. I felt an odd sadness running my hands over the silky Huon pine planking of his boat, knowing from the blurb that its permanent home will be Pittwater. Silly I know, but that seems to me like keeping an exotic animal in a suburban backyard. I'm beginning to develop strong feelings about boats.

Tetsuaya's boat under construction

She'll look very like this when she's finished

Idyllic conditions

When you are on a boat,  there are several very satisfying measures of progress. You can track how far you’ve sailed in terms of miles covered, or in hours out from port, or in the change of latitude and/or longitude. Even if, at the end of a day’s sailing, you put down the pick in an anchorage which wouldn't have been your first choice at the beginning of the day, there’s always the satisfaction of having arrived safely.

Back on land, I cover a lot more distance, and much more quickly than at sea, but I don’t have the same simple – or is it simplistic? - sense of progress. I now struggle to keep a course in a way I never did during the cruising season, and on some days I make embarrassingly heavy weather of what, to an objective observer, must seem the most idyllic conditions.

People talk dreamily of going with the flow, as if nothing could be more pleasant or desirable, but in reality, we’ve been taught - and conditioned - to drive ourselves forward, to resist the current, to swim against the tide.  I’m a city girl, and in the city, if you go with the flow you get washed down the storm drain.  I’d like to think I can profit from, not to mention be grateful for this much gentler, and relatively stress-free period of my life, with its unlimited room for turning. I don’t know why the feeling of drifting, or of going around in circles, should be as unsettling as it is. What I do know is that there are days when I pine for the straight forward satisfaction of a job well done, or Progress Made. How very Protestant!

These next few months look like being a waiting game. First, we wait for some interest in Kukka, which could come sooner, or it could come later. She is now with the Sydney broker Windcraft. She’s also featured on several local and international boats-for-sale websites including Yachtworld and, thanks to Agnes, the popular Swedish site Blocket. She’s more than ready to meet new admirers, with no part of her having escaped Alex’s fastidious attention. While I was in New Zealand, he and Bertil solved a superficial wear-and-tear problem – suffice to say that when a man is thrown across a cabin in a gale, something has to give and in this case, it wasn’t just the man.  She’s even got new fender covers (I think the skipper was right not to wait until I felt the urge to run up replacements on the sewing machine – though I remember how intrigued he was last year to learn from a crafty woman on a Clipper launch of how she saved megabucks by making her own fender covers from the chopped-off legs of cheap over-sized track pants.)

I found myself looking at Kukka differently on my return from NZ, not just because absence freshens the eyes, but also because I’d been looking closely at another boat….Grace, the HR46 for sale in Auckland. Grace is a beauty too and, given the right circumstances, I would be more than happy to spend the next few years living aboard her. The immediate questions I had have been answered – 46 feet isn’t too big, and the bed in the aft cabin is perfect. Buy! No, wait….she’s on the wrong side of the world, we haven’t sold Kukka yet, and did someone say something about money? Ah, details…mere details.

Time Out

A full moon cycle has passed since we've been back. This morning when I set out along the path which traces the shoreline around Iron Cove, I noticed our old friend above me, barely white against breakfast hour blue, and already on the wane. By the time I turned for home at the Haberfield canal, she'd dropped down into the western suburbs.
A son has announced his engagement. Another son has finished his undergraduate studies. Yet another son and a daughter flew out yesterday, he to meet a girl in Spain and she to Vietnam and beyond. Agnes writes from Sweden. "Why are people living so far north at all? It is SNOW   !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! outside and COOOOOOOOOOOOOOld!" The world expands and contracts with the seasons, and time is slippery, very slippery.

Dave and his fiance Pauline

The tomatoes I planted out three weeks ago have doubled in height already, while the rest of our small garden - our lemon and lime trees, herbs, rambling roses and sundry rampant climbers - is making a rapid recovery from its winter of much neglect. Passionfruit and grapes are ripening on their respective vines, strawberries are growing in pots. The second vegetable bed is planted out solely in salad greens. Snail paradise.

I am leaving the garden in Alex's hands for 11 days while I am in New Zealand. I am going to stay with my mother in the country, play with my sister and my friends in the city, go to the beach house which hugs me tight and see a man about a boat. Ah, you say! Her name is Grace, and she's 46 feet long. It's that last bit which interests me most (it goes without saying that she's Swedish). What does a boat that big feel like when you are on board her? Just right, or overwhelming? Alex is happy to let me go ahead to find out. He's looking forward to recovering his solitude.

Getting down to business

Readers of this blog know that Kukka is for sale, but the Rest of the World doesn’t yet. That’s about to change, we hope.

Alex has done all the hard work (it was ever thus). Having got the boat looking a million dollars, and shown it to a broker, he sat down yesterday to create a For Sale website which piggybacks on this blog. It’s listed under Links. Check it out - it covers everything you’ve ever wanted to see or read about our boat (probably too much for those of you who are only marginally interested in the marine hardware side of our life, but bear with us). We hope it will pop up in places where people like us are searching for the kinds of boats which we like. Beautiful Swedish models.

Kukka 's lovely lines on display at Coffs Harbour marina

Our Swedish buddies on Panacea, Agnes and Bertil, are heading back home for a few months. They've offered to help us advertise Kukka on the Swedish trading site Blocket. Knowing what they do about Malo’s reputation amongst Swedes as the most desirable of their bluewater cruising yachts, they advise we pitch our campaign at Swedes (and other Europeans, for that matter) who want a shortcut into the Pacific. The Pacific is the drawcard for northern hemisphere sailors,  they say, and if they can bypass the dull old Atlantic and the dramas of the Panama Canal and get straight into this beautiful backyard of ours in a well-equipped, classy Swedish boat, then why not?

Our biggest challenge ironically will be to attract the attention of local buyers. Malo is a small boatyard with no profile in Australia compared to Hallberg Rassy, the biggest and best known of the high-end Swedish boat manufacturers. In fact, we understand that Kukka is the only Malo in Australia. We were lucky to find her here, but now we’ll need luck as well as good management to sell her.

So, the campaign to find Kukka a new owner begins. How quickly she sells will depend on our broker doing his job well (more on that once we’ve signed on the dotted line), but internet search engines have their own mysterious ways too. Alex of all people knows that. Over the years, he’s spent hundreds of hours scouring on-line boat sites - doing boat porn, as he calls it. I gather he’s not alone, and that boat porn soaks up (or does it feed?) the frustrations and desires of many other shore-bound sailors. May they ogle long into the night, and discover the delights of Kukka sooner rather than later! 

Manipulating Montaigne

Why continue with the blog now that we’re home? What’s the point?

I started a blog in anticipation of going to sea. I didn’t look beyond the adventure. I didn’t want to.

If the world were made differently, I would want to still be at sea now. But the trade winds don’t blow all year round. In the southern hemisphere, the tropical cruising “off season” is from November through till March, which is when cyclones reliably rip through the Pacific and the top of Australia. Cruising people we met were mostly intending to be in a port situated below 25 S by early to mid November (our insurance company insisted upon it). A few people were heading north rather than south, planning to hole up in stifling hot, windless equatorial places like Malaysia and Borneo. Either way, these next five months are pretty much a dead zone for cruising unless you’re lucky enough to be in NZ or Tasmania. They’re when yachties haul out and fix up the boat, re-discover domesticity and the charms of family and friends, balance the exchequer, and ….what else?

I can’t answer that yet. The city used to supply everything I needed. It doesn’t anymore. There’s something I’m missing. I’ve listened to other yachties talk about how they splice together their sea and shore lives, but there’s some piece of the puzzle I haven’t quite laid my hands on. Sometimes I think the answer is as banal as finding a new hobby (the squirm factor is high –needlework has come to mind, and sadly, I’m not joking). Alex seems happy to fill a lot of his available mental space with boat paraphernalia – if he’s not sprucing up Kukka, he’s looking at boat websites, talking about boats, dreaming or reading about boats. I’m not so much. I can go part of the way, but not all the way with him.

What I need to figure out is how to make these next years work better for me in the “off season”. Bread-making alone will not suffice (though I’m experimenting with spelt flour today…). My children need me to keep out of their lives, and my previous line of work doesn’t excite me any more (being “over work”, rather than over-worked, is a tricky thing to explain, and not something to shout about at my tender age). So, I’m going to co-opt the blog for my own mid-life exploratory (read, if you will, self-indulgent) ends, in addition (of course) to retaining its original nautical flavour.

The appeal of blogging, as opposed to writing a self-indulgent book like Elizabeth Gilbert’s Eat, Pray, Love is that you can throw as many words and pictures into the “blogosphere” as you like, and while no-one may be the much the wiser for your efforts, the resources you use are trifling.

Yesterday I took three crates of non-fiction books, leftovers from my working life, to a second-hand book shop in Glebe. The dealer took about half of them (mostly, for the record, books about feminism and religion) and offered me a cash payment of $6 or a credit of $120 to be spent over the next 12 months. I didn’t flinch. I took the credit.

I didn’t have the will or the energy to hawk my the rest around (finding a parking spot near a second-hand bookstore has to be the worst part of the exercise). I understand the economics of the publishing industry which is now like any other. Product depreciates sharply once it leaves the showroom (sorry, bookshop). I drove home and tipped my books into the paper recycling bin. It hurt. I’m a book lover, and from a generation which still has trouble thinking of books as disposable product. But I needed the shelf space…for different books.

Over the past few months I’ve been reading a selection of Michel de Montaigne’s essays, the earliest of which were published in 1572. I occasionally pause to absorb the incredible fact of such wise, witty and provocative prose being available to me, a 21^st century reader. Books are great, aren’t they, and the written word is the stuff I can do least without, but I reckon if Montaigne were alive in 2010, he might have been a blogger.

Listen to this: “Let the man who is in search of knowledge fish for it where it lies; there is nothing that I lay less claim to. These are my fancies, in which I make no attempt to convey information about things, only about myself.”

And this: “I freely state my opinion about all things, even those which perhaps fall outside my capacity, and of which I do not for a moment suppose myself to be a judge. What I say about them, therefore, is mean to reveal the extent of my own vision, not the measure of the things themselves..”

My Penguin paperback edition of Montaigne is a 1957 translation by J.M. Cohen which is still in print – there’s a turn-up for the books, as my dad would have said. I doubt that Montaigne thought a lot about how his work would be preserved. He just wanted to satisfy an itch – to know himself and through that prism, to arrive at some of life’s truths. At 40, he had a medal cast which was inscribed with the question, “What do I know?” He first retreated from public life at 38 to read and write. Luckily for him, he’d inherited a big country house in the Dordogne, and he devoted one of its two towers to his library. Now you can see why we need a bigger boat – or why Alex might be encouraging me to continue with the blog. Grandiose dreams are not his exclusive preserve!

All the photos above were taken by Alex at this year's Sculpture by the Sea exhibition which opened shortly after we came back to Sydney. The sculptures are set up beside the ocean path which runs from Bondi to Tamarama beaches.

A plot twist

A lot can change in a week.

In Coffs Harbour last Wednesday morning, all that mattered to us was the weather. I got up early to check the latest BOM charts, forecasts and overnight observations. The wind was still coming from the south, but it was light, less than 5 knots. If we left soon, we could motor until it backed to the east and then the northeast....That was what we talked about over breakfast, I remember. It was a crisp clear morning last Wednesday, a lovely morning.

Today I was woken early by the clang and clatter of rubbish trucks on Darling St. It didn't occur to me to go to the BOM website. I could see the sun was shining and I knew from the radio that it would rain later on - which it has. I haven't thought about the wind, either its strength or its direction. Other things are bothering me - like how tired I am, for example. It's not just that we've been physically active, taking loads of stuff off the boat and re-organising the house and garden. I'm finding that "normal" activities like conversations around the kitchen table with more than one other person or driving to the supermarket exhaust me, chafe my tender nerves. Embarrassing, really. Yachties live quietly - not unsociably, but quietly. Re-entry into city life, I remember from last year, knocks you about. Thank goodness for the kids (Claudia, above, seemed genuinely delighted with her Vanuatu island dress). They forgive us our oddness, I think.

Panacea is tied up just along from Kukka in our marina for a few days, and Agnes and Bertil are watching our metamorphosis from yachties to city slickers with some amusement. "Look at you, you're are wearing a skirt, and nice shoes, and a jumper that won't keep out the wind," Agnes told me this morning. Yes, I opened my wardrobe and found these clothes, and masses of others, in it. But I haven't yet had a haircut. When that's done, most outward traces of the woman I have been for the past five months (the woman below, coming home from the sea) will be gone.



Pity.
I like being that woman. She'll make another appearance, but it won't be for a year or so. We've made some decisions which will keep us off the water for a while.

We have decided to put Kukka on the market.

Why?

Well, it's complicated.

These past two wonderful cruising seasons on the east coast of Australia and in Vanuatu have given us a taste for the cruising life. We want more, much more. We want to go further, and for longer.

Kukka is a very very fine boat, and we love her to bits. We'd gladly go anywhere in her. She sails like a witch (Alex's phrase) and she's so well set up now that when we dropped by the comprehensive ship chandlery in Noumea, neither of us could think of single thing we needed to buy (and believe me, we were in the mood for shopping after several months away from the temptation of retail honeypots),

However, she presents a couple of issues for us. The most important is the bed in the forepeak (V berth, is its correct name) and the way it works, or rather doesn't work, with Alex's creaky back.


Alex was last in the queue when spines were handed out, or so he says. His back (which was operated on 20 something years ago) is chronically stiff, and from time to time it gives him serious grief. In Vanuatu, for example, he twisted it lunging for the wind generator p0le when it popped a bolt (we were under sail at the time). He manages his pain in a common male way, by slurping back painkillers and anti-inflammatories, and retreating into himself. He spends a lot of time on a mattress. But on Kukka, though the mattress in the marital suite is very comfortable, the space up there is awkward and painful for him to climb into when his back is wracked with muscle spasm. It's easier for him to rest and sleep on the sea berth in the saloon (he stayed there for four weeks after the wind generator episode). While we could adapt and improve other things on Kukka to help him in bad back times (for instance, we could install an electric winch in the cockpit), we can't change the configuration of the V berth. It is where and how it is, and for most people that would be fine. It is for me, but I like to sleep with Alex!

If we're going to change boats because we'd like a different bed, we've decided we could also do with a bit more space. Not a whole lot, but an extra two to five feet in boat length would give us appreciably more volume down below without adding much to the degree of difficulty of sailing and maintenance. I could have a bigger galley. I'd like that. And if we're going to buy another boat, why not do so in Europe. and start our next adventure from the Mediterranean? You can see how this idea took root quickly once the seed was sown.

We're not quite sure how we're going to market Kukka yet. She's a rare bird in this part of the world, and we need to make sure she is seen by those who appreciate the quality of her build. Obviously, we need to tidy her up after this voyage. We'll get on with that soon, once we've surfaced and stabilised after re-entry.

Watch this space, as they say.

Homecoming

My eyeballs are scratchy, and I'm really not sure what the state of play is with the skipper. There's a minimum of conversation on Kukka today. We're home, or as good as, and that takes some getting used to.

We're tucked in behind North Head, at Store Beach. We know this pretty cove like the back of our hand. It was a favorite family lunch spot during the many years our sailing was confined to Sydney Harbour by the twin responsibilities of raising children and earning a living. The swaggering boys on their over-sized plastic powerboats and the day sailors steamed in at about 11 am and now, as the sun falls out of the western sky, they're pulling up anchor and heading back down the harbour. That used to be us. Now what are we?



We made our break from Coffs Harbour shortly after noon on Wednesday. There was next to no breeze, but a promise of northerlies to come. That was good enough for Kukka and for Panacea (pictured above with one of the many usual suspects prowling the east coast). On the basis of a southerly change forecast for Saturday evening, we agreed to bypass the stopover at Broken Bay and sail straight through to Sydney. If that meant arriving at night, so be it.


Panacea, a Najad 39, is a pretty yacht, very similar in style to Kukka, though with more freeboard. We kept pace with her most of the way, give or take a couple of miles. Here she is en route - we love to photograph our friends' yachts, knowing what pleasure it will give them to see themselves in the mirror.

We came in through the heads at 2 am under a full moon. I'd like to say it was unbelievable, romantic and so on, but the truth is that Alex and I were a bit frazzled (understatement). So today, we're lying low. The city is there, we can feel it as well as see it. Panacea, all bright-eyed and bushy-tailed, came alongside this morning for a chat before setting out down the harbour. For Agnes, who hasn't been to Sydney before, the prize for coming this far south was always going to be sailing past the Opera House. She couldn't wait any longer to claim it.





For us, picking up the lines on our marina berth means the end of the voyage, or rather, the end of this voyage. That can wait until tomorrow.

Whaling and gnashing

How many times have I wished the weather were otherwise! This morning I sit at the computer with my cup of tea, looking over my shoulder at a perfect morning with a bare whisper of wind and clear blue skies. Kukka creaks on her mooring lines as she moves back and forth with the turning tide. It’s time to be gone from Coffs Harbour, but this damn weather has us boxed in.

There are two weathers, you see. There is what’s outside, and then there's what’s on the BOM (Bureau of Meteorology) website which I crawled out of my warm bed at 6.30 am to check. It wasn’t beyond hope that the cold front would have sped up overnight, was it? If I didn’t look, I wouldn’t know, and if I didn’t know, then perhaps we would miss another opportunity to go…

For five days after we got in from Noumea, we stopped ‘looking at weather’ - by which I mean, the regular monitoring and endless conversation about weather charts and forecasts. We settled into the loveliness of being still. What did it matter if it was blowing a gale outside? We weren’t going anywhere, and it was snug inside the boat (Swedish boats have wonderfully decadent diesel heaters). One very rainy day we went to the movies in Sawtell. A couple of mornings we had coffee and breakfast out. I stopped making bread because there is an interesting bakery in Coffs (K-pane Artisan Bakery). I walked up Muttonbird Island (pictured below) to watch the whales in the distance. Whales, in my experience, look much, much better from a distance.

But then on Sunday, we felt the tug. The rain had blown over, the sun was shining, and we’d thawed out in all senses. We had had enough of stillness. Just a short 230 miles of coastal sailing from here to the safe-as-houses refuge of Broken Bay, and from there a mere day sail to Sydney. Let’s do it! We pulled up the weather charts and decided they looked good to go. So we told the marina office we were leaving at dawn the next day, and paid our bill. Then, for goodness sake, we went ten-pin bowling with Panacea (Alex, below, had a style which out-classed us all)). Too easy, as Australians say.

What was I thinking? When have we ever been able to move down – or up, for that matter – the Australian east coast without paying our dues to the weather gods? On Sunday night, as if some malevolent sprite were monkeying with the BOM forecasting tools, what had been a sweet-as-pie forecast turned mean-mouthed and sullen. Winds blowing from the south were predicted down the coast the following day. Add to that a southerly swell of 2 metres. Oh no, said Alex. No way we’re sailing south into southerly winds and a southerly swell. We canned our departure. And then, as if to spite us, as the day progressed, the wind blew harder and harder from the north-east. I could have cried from frustration.

With hindsight (who needs it?), we should have gone on Sunday morning, as the yacht below did.

We’d have had two days of strong north-easterlies and slipped into Broken Bay just ahead of this pesky cold front. But we weren’t thinking weather on Saturday. I was flat out like a lizard in the weak spring sunshine, deep in the stranger-than-fiction lives of The Mitford Girls. Alex was pottering, doing boat jobs, his favorite. We’d relaxed - and we’d skipped our devotions to the weather gods. We hadn’t been watching their shifting shapes, following their bulges and their ridges and their toothy menace. We deserved to miss a turn, in other words. Sailing – or rather, long-distance cruising (for what we do is different from day sailing, and has nothing in common with racing) - is a game of patience. The weather always wins but if you are patient, you can take a few points off it. Did I mention that patience isn’t my strongest suit?

So today I’m back to my familiar agitated, pre-voyage self. The next BOM weather chart comes out mid-morning, and the four-day charts appear between 2 and 3 pm. Those are the ones I trust most because a human being, as opposed to a computer only, has had a hand in producing them. The way things are looking, we won’t get out of here until Thursday. Wednesday at a pinch. We’ve got to wait for this next cold front to pass through. In usual run of things, it will be followed by north-easterly winds flicking down from the next high. You see how boring I become when I’m ‘looking at weather’? The Mitford girls wouldn’t have stood for it! But there’s no easy ride for the neglectful sailor. You have to earn your fair winds.

It's a wrap

Yes, we're home and hosed, done and dusted - and I'm struggling to hold onto the last wisps of elation, the magnificent (emotional) high that you ride into port on after an ocean passage. Here's how I remember the final two days, the ones we'll file under 'rite of passage'. First, take a look at this dial.



You'll notice two bits of information. The needle points to 120. It means we were sailing with the wind at 120 degrees on our port side. Very nice angle. Lovely angle. The digital figure reads 44.4 knots. It refers to wind strength - not "true" but "apparent" wind strength. To get true wind strength when you're sailing with the wind behind you, you add your boat speed. In this instance, we were travelling at 6 to 7 knots, so the wind was over 50 knots. Not so nice. Not so lovely. But the very fact that Alex was able to take a picture a few minutes later (the clever electronics system archives maximum wind strength for a limited period) means something too. I had gone down below to get the camera from its secure spot. It was possible to move around the boat. He had balanced in the companionway for long enough to retrieve the figure and push the shutter button. That means we were sailing in a comparatively controlled fashion, in big winds and over walls of water. It's almost impossible to take a good picture of waves - they always flatten out - but here's our best attempt to capture the size of the swell. We'd been warned it would be over 5 metres. It was.







We took five days and 20 hours to sail from Noumea to Coffs Harbour. That's quick. However what we felt so proud of on that first night in port, when we toasted our achievement with fine Tasmanian champagne, was not our speed but our boat and the trust we have developed in her. For about 36 hours (on days 4 and 5) the easterly winds flicking off the edge of that fiendish high pressure system kept up their howling assault. I could tell how hard the wind was blowing from its sound just as soon as by looking at the instruments. A sustained gust of 35 to 40 knots batters your senses. "Shut up," I shouted at the bully wind, more than once. By contrast, I didn't need to look at the dial to know when there was a "lull". Yes, only 25 knots. Blessed silence.





For her part, Kukka kept her course, on a reasonably even keel, taking the awesome swells in her stride and allowing us to sleep, to eat and to maintain our sense of humour and make considered decisions. Sure, she slipped up a few times, the technological prowess of the autopilot overwhelmed by the volume and motion of liquid mountains. The confusion, rather than the height of the seas were her main problem. Very strong winds whip up waves on top of the swell, and they also set up cross currents which catch a boat broadside and throw her - and her personnel - about. It's quite something to be sitting behind the wheel eying off a wall of water which is foaming level with the lifelines (the stainless steel wire around the edge of the deck) and feel its impact as it slams into the hull and sends the boat spinning. The worst of these side-kickers lifted me off my bottom and tossed me into the bimini - not far, because almost immediately I disabled the auto-pilot, stopped Kukka from rounding up further and hand-steered her back onto course before re-engaging the autopilot. That wave threw Alex out of bed (we had no lee cloth up, the angle of the boat being so constant that there was no danger of rolling out). Thankfully, with one exception when the cockpit was awash, these troublemakers didn't wet our feet.

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Alex has never sailed his own boat in seas like that before. He'd never had to make the kinds of decisions he made on this passage. From my perspective, he didn't put a foot wrong. He trimmed the sails so that the boat had enough momentum to keep going forward and yet not so much speed that she lost control. We carried a main and a jib, both very heavily reefed. There were a few times when she rode down the face of a big swell and the speedo spiked, but mostly it was steady as she goes.

Night time was more difficult because there was no moon, and in the total blackness all you could pick were lines of white foam. When the gale first blew in on Sunday, Alex contemplated sleeping in the cockpit during my night watch. But after we'd been going a few hours, after 35 to 40 knots had become the norm, he saw how well Kukka was keeping her course, and he put his trust in her and in me. He went below to sleep, and I decided not to wake him when my watch was due to end. He'd hardly slept in the previous 16 hours. "I'm too wired", he said when I suggested he go below during the day. I, surprisingly, have overcome a life time of sleeping incompetence, and have become a reliable cat-napper. He slept for five hours at a stretch that stormy night, and I jollied myself through my extended watch much as I imagine a long distance runner does, giving myself a goal, then pushing it out. I was bundled up in wet weather gear, boots, beanie and harness, and tethered and alarmed and god knows what else. We're very particular about our safety on Kukka. There really wasn't much to do except keep concentrating. Kukka was doing all the work, but if she slipped up, I had to be ready to take the helm and/or let out the main.



What Alex feared most was breaking gear (the picture above is Alex contemplating the size of a wave with definite damage potential). He told me later that he really began enjoying himself when he realised that while breakage was possible it was not as likely as he'd feared, given how well Kukka was coping. As for me, I was mesmerised by the sea. You cannot imagine how beautiful such huge swells are, especially when they begin to split open at the crest and for a second or two the light shines through and exposes a blue as breathtaking as that of lagoon water. But while lagoon water laps soft, and warm, this open water crackles like ice, cool and hard blue, like Bombay Sapphire gin. Above the swell, tireless seabirds swooped and circled on the wind eddies. I don't know anything much about birds, but they were quiet company, our only company out there. We saw no other boats until we reached the shipping lane off the Australian coast, and it wasn't until we were coming into Coffs that we met dolphins again.

The most dangerous place on the boat was down below if you were on your feet. We don't have a return bench in the galley, and on port tack, it was very hard to keep your footing. There's not enough to hang onto. I have bruises in many soft places. Alex however took the biggest beating. He was standing braced against the galley bench when one of those evil cross-waves struck, and threw him hard against the nav station,dislodging some fine joinery in the process. Ouch!

We took enormous amounts of water over the boat. Alex has just today discovered deepish water in the stern lazarette (storage area). Water had entered through the lazarette cowl ventilator which he had left open and angled, as it transpired, to our weather side. But inside we stayed dry. Only a few drops through the centre hatch above the saloon when a monster wave dumped on top of us - and Alex blames himself for not changing a seal he knew wasn't quite right. Otherwise, nothing. No buckets, no damp bedding, no soggy books. Got to love those Swedish boat builders. "It's like a nursery down here," Alex told me, as he peeled off his layers in preparation for sleep. Toasty warm it was, and best of all, quiet. "Has the wind stopped?" he asked. I checked the dial, just to be accurate. 30 knots. Not really stopped, per se.

By Monday afternoon, as Bob McDavitt had predicted, we began to notice that the "lulls" were lasting longer, and we were picking up some great current which pushed us south. Here we are very early on Tuesday morning (below) and, yes, there it is, ahead and to starboard, the coast of NSW.





Fast forward. As I mentioned in the previous post, the entrance to Coffs Harbour was running a big swell for our arrival. Volunteer Marine Rescue advised us that waves were breaking across the entire entrance and that we should look for a pattern in the sets before we attempted to enter. Alex was a surfer before he became a sailor. He surfed up and down the east coast for about 15 years. He knows about patterns and sets. As he lined up Kukka between the breakwater and Muttonbird Island, I admit I was anxious. The surge around Muttonbird was fierce. The waves were crashing ugly against the breakwater too. The entrance suddenly loomed, very narrow and very immediate. I looked behind, calling the breaking waves like a sports commentator. He chose his moment, and we were through. Then there was a big wave breaking behind us and we were off, riding its white water - Alex saw 14 knots on the clock.





Agnes and Bertil from Panacea were on the marina courtesy wharf (pictured above), waving madly, as we came into the inner harbour. It was so good to have friends who'd been tracking our voyage there to take our lines. Agnes brought us bread and ham, knowing that we'd have our fresh food impounded under quarantine regulations. Last night, they joined us for dinner on board Kukka, and we opened the bottle of Veuve Cliquot we'd kept chilled since Noumea. We celebrated friendship, and Swedish boats (their Najad 39 is pictured below in an anchorage we shared on Pentecost, Vanuatu), and life on the water, for better and for worse.



We're out of the worst of the weather, but Coffs isn't a big harbour, and even today there's spray billowing over the breakwater. We're waiting for weather - again. Monday and Tuesday look good at this stage for continuing south to our second home, Broken Bay (or Pittwater, as we call it, though technically we don't go into Pittwater proper but into the Hawkesbury River). Our plan is to stop there for a few days, to let ourselves down gently before we go through the heads of Sydney harbour and in doing so, return to our other life, our city life. There are big changes afoot for Kukka once we get home, but more of that another time.