We cleared out of Australia today in anticipation of leaving Coffs Harbour International Marina...soon. Perhaps as soon as tomorrow. The skies are clearing, the swell is flattening. The fishing boats in Coffs Harbour (above) may even get a run this weekend. It's a long weekend, and today is Friday. Hence the fast tracking of our clearance. Do you think the customs guys want to be humming and ho-ing about whether we’re going to be leaving on Saturday or Sunday or Monday? No way. So, for administrative purposes, we’re already en route to New Caledonia. And for extra excitement, I've now got my first stamp in my first-ever Australian passport!
We’ve been all over the place this past week with our passage planning. One day we’re thinking it’s all go for the next day, and I cook up a big beef stew and a chicken curry in anticipation of casting off pronto, and then the gales down south move more slowly, or more quickly than predicted, and we’re looking at another three days in port. That's the weather for you.
“The only plan is there’s no plan,” says Captain Wombat (aka Mike Brown), the most experienced ocean-going skipper in our small Noumea-bound flotilla (Wombat of Sydney, Destiny and Kukka). It’s an attitude I find intellectually appealing, but emotionally difficult to sustain. Free and easy doesn’t come naturally to me. I wouldn’t have picked Mike Brown for a laid-back, drifting type either. He served in Vietnam as a US helicopter pilot, and then had a hotshot career in international banking. Alex knows him from J24 racing days and talks warmly of his competitive spirit. Mike likes to keep busy (understatement – he never stops, and as the sun sets over Coffs, he’s fixing up a torn Kukka boat bag before he puts away his sewing machine, one of two he carries aboard his voluminous Beneteau 47.7 First). So how come he's the one who is chilled and I'm itching to move on?
There's a simple logic to Mike’s “the only plan is no plan” cruising mantra. As he explains it, his top priority is to keep Lynn happy. Lynn's the cute Southern belle he married when he was a young blade, divorced, and then married again after a second marriage went bad. If Lynn’s happy, he’s going to be happy, he figures, and vice versa. When they set out from France eight years ago on Wombat, Lynn wasn't a sailor and she said she’d give him two years at sea. I’m guessing the fact that they’re still cruising has a lot to do with her comfort, and his flexibility. Having fixed commitments can force sailors into places they shouldn't be, ugly and potentially dangerous places. We're not into that, but when you've spent all your life making plans (on land) it takes time to drop the habit.
I feel sick thinking about poor little Abby Sunderland lost out there in the monstrous seas of the Indian Ocean. Talk about being in the wrong place at the wrong time. As for her reasons for being there, well, I can only guess at those.
When we got together in 2001 we had a loose understanding that one day, when the coast was clear, we'd go sailing. In 2009 we took our yacht Kukka coastal cruising to far north Queensland and back to Sydney, and in 2010 we went offshore to New Caledonia and Vanuatu. In 2011 we're reluctantly taking temporary shore leave. We've sold Kukka. We have just bought another, larger yacht which is on the hard in the south of France. Our plan is to sail from Europe to Australia over several years. We won't be taking the long way, or making heavy weather of anything, if we can help it. But we'll be seriously cruising.
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