5/29/2013 0 Comments Managing on our own! Being on the boat alone
For two months, while Peter was away helping Mark McRae (from Southern Ocean Sailing) to deliver Kwela from Albany to Auckland, the children and I remained on board Argos. A few of you have asked us what it was like being ‘left behind’ and how we managed on our own. I could never have imagined this scenario. Could never in my wildest dreams have foreseen being on board a boat with two of the children, going about our everyday lives while Peter was away, and if I had been able to picture it I might have laughed at the notion of being responsible for Argos by myself for so long! As the skipper of the yacht, Peter is very fond of proclaiming that while I see to the everyday affairs of keeping us all clothed and fed and comfortable, he is responsible for keeping the boat afloat – no mean feat apparently! In his absence I needed to fill his shoes, without removing mine! I am happy to say that during the time Peter was away we only had a few significant struggles. Ever since leaving Albany we have had a niggling problem with our internal power supply. We were tied up safely at Esperance in WA when our problems began. We had just arrived, just connected our power supply and were in the middle of making a very welcome cuppa, feeling thrilled, exhilarated and exhausted all at the same time. The kettle had barely boiled when the power turned itself off. A bit of adjusting and it was back on, plugged into another outlet. The next day the same thing happened and an electrician came down to the jetty to take a look for us, announcing that there was a short somewhere, probably on the jetty and not to worry. He also took a look at our power inverter on board and suggested that it might be causing a problem but mid-passage we decided to manage rather than wait in Esperance to get it attended to. So we set off again. Along the way we found that we could plug into shore power so long as we had turned off our 110 power first - if we didn’t we blew the shore power outlet. Clearly something was wrong but we learned how to manage it. The issue sat hovering while we sat waiting for Peter to begin the house build, not causing any more problems…..until of course a day or two after he went away! Until that point, whenever we were on shore power although we turned off the 110 system, it still charged from the batteries. But not once he left. We noticed just a few days after we returned from dropping him at the airport in Canberra, that the lights and pumps that worked on the 110 system were sounding ‘tired’, as if they needed a good rest, and the lights very dim. There was a moment of anxiety when I knew that it would be some weeks before Peter would be back and able to look at it, and in the meantime we would need to figure out how to manage. Some of the pumps are of course essential – like bilge pumps and the pump that operates our water supply. With the help of the children, I rigged up an alternate light system, running from the power supply that Peter installed in Albany that feeds directly from the shore power. With this we were able to access enough light to not need to use any lights that ran from the 110 power. This meant that what power was available on that system would be conserved to operate the essential pumps. The 110 power seemed to be charging from the solar panels, feeding into the batteries, and so on good sunny days we had enough power to keep the pumps going, and on rainy overcast days, less so. But we survived! We had to rig up a few lights, develop a system of turning everything non-essential off and put into place alternatives wherever we could. Towards the end of the time Peter was away we began discussing getting the problem properly looked at by an expert, once we had some income, and found an appropriate person here in the Bay. We are close to being able to get this started! What a relief! The other thing that gave us trouble while he was away was managing the yacht in bad weather. Thankfully for the most part the weather was fine, but there were moments! Several moments! Where we are tied up, in this marina, we are very snug and comfortable. The only time this is not so much the case is when there is a particularly high tide associated with a big swell. Batemans Bay marina is renowned for being affected by tidal surge which we experience significantly being at the end of ‘line’ and close to a wall. The tidal surge enters the marina, moves along past all the boats, hits us last and then bounces back off the end wall and hits us again, but meantime the next tidal surge is coming the other way! It can get a bit rocky! At low tide it is negligible, but at high tide stronger and coupled with big swell it can be quite rolley. Needless to say we had some periods with big swell while Peter was gone, and usually at night. Normally in such tides Peter will get up periodically and check the lines, adjusting them to give us less bounce, making sure we are sitting as comfortably as possible. It fell to me to do the same and many a sleepless night was spent on deck untying ropes, waiting for the right moment when the surge abated to quickly tie her up tighter. It was sometimes cold and of course wet (why do tidal surges need to happen when it’s raining???) and often I missed the timing slightly and was left holding onto the rope for dear life as the surge bounced us around, thankful and relieved when I had the rope secured again! But I got it done. During the last week of Peter’s journey, as he was approaching Auckland, we were hit with a few days of gale-force wind. This as luck would have it coincided with a period of very high tides and big swell on the ocean. The combination of these factors meant that we were rocking and rolling and being blown about by the wind for a few days. The children and I had taken down the awning in anticipation of bad weather earlier but the weather forecast indicated that the wind was going to die down by the mid-afternoon – we were already through the worst of it. We were inside, watching a movie when we heard an unusual sound. Instantly we turned off the TV and popped our heads outside, dismayed to find that a massive boulder we were tied to at the bow had been yanked completely off the rock wall and had rolled down into the water, with our mooring line firmly attached still. We were bobbing about like a cork at the bow and hitting into the jetty as if we were not tied up at all. Happily Adam, one of the local shipwright’s was attending to his own yacht nearby and had felt the gust of wind that had wrenched the boat and tumbled the rock, and as quickly as we had a new rope ready, he was helping to tie us back up temporarily. The only rope we had to hand was an old halyard line, and not, in my opinion, strong enough to hold us, so after checking that we were secured enough for the moment, we raced up to the local chandlery and bought enough new mooring line and some chain to adequately hold us in the wind. We returned immediately and discovered that the halyard line had already snapped in the wind and that the yacht was again bobbing around in a completely unsatisfactory way, and hastily got the new line ready. What a bonus Liam’s obsession with knot tying is when you need some good strong knots tied! He had bow-lines done in a flash and we had the chain looped around another boulder, tied to the new mooring line, and in addition, two ropes holding us like a springer-line to a point further back, to take some of the shock out of the bow line. We were riding much more comfortably. Our attention then turned to where we had been bouncing up against the floating jetty beside us. Sadly the rubber edge was being ripped away with every nudge and it was clear that before long it would be pulled off completely. After checking the weather updates and learning that the tide was receding but the wind now predicted to hold on for another half day at least, it quickly became an essential job to repair and or replace the edging. Earlier I had tied the edging back on with a rope – not sure what else to do, but this was not going to be adequate in the surges we had or with the increasing wind. I stood and looked at the jetty for a while, thinking of options. In another spot in this marina where we were similarly affected by big surges, we had rolled an old truck tyre that was stored in a corner of the ship yard over to the boat. Peter had been able to lift the monstrous thing into position and lodged it between the jetty and us, tying it securely in place. I knew that somehow we were going to have to do this. But imagining how was the challenge! Erina and Liam ran off to fetch the tyre. It took a while for Erina to wheel the massive thing over, scratching herself badly in the process on the steel protruding from the rim, with Liam running alongside opening gates and trying to lend a hand where he could. Eventually the tyre was lying beside Argos. The next task was to get the tyre into the water, wedge it between the jetty and us and tie it up securely. Have you ever tried to lift a truck tyre I wonder! Those things weigh a ton! And I knew that I had only one shot at it – if I couldn’t get it into position the first time it would fall down into the water and I would never be able to lift it back up once water got into it. Liam to the rescue again! He helped me tie ropes to each side of the tyre, securing one to a post on the jetty, close to the bow, and the other we looped around a cleat on the other side of the jetty, ready to tie off securely the moment the tyre was lowered over the side. It was a delicate operation, and one I knew I had to succeed in, or we would start to hit the concrete edge and rip the bow to pieces. I had to get it done. I’m not sure where the strength came from to lift the tyre, or to hold the rope while Liam and Erina secured it, but somehow we did it. As the surge took the bow away from the jetty we slid the tyre into position, our timing was spot on, and as the surge brought the bow back to the jetty the tyre wedged itself onto the corner and we got it tied tight. Now as the surge brought us close we had the tyre between us and the corner of the jetty and no damage was possible. Erina and Liam amaze me in such situations, willing helpers who act quickly and don’t hesitate to do unpleasant and difficult things. While the children went below to get cleaned up – had I mentioned that the tyre was also black and filthy? - I sat on the rock wall and watched for a while, making sure everything was tight and secure and that the dance Argos was doing in the tide and wind and surge would not cause any damage – once I was satisfied, it was definitely time for some tea! Twenty four hours later the wind had died down and the drama of the day before seemed like something that had happened in a dream. The movement on board had reduced and if the tyre hadn’t been visible outside you would never have known anything had happened. It’s like that with weather – one day’s storm is another’s blue sky, but we all learned something that day. Not having Peter to rely on made us have to be more resourceful. Thinking quickly and coming up with a good solution was essential, and everyone helping get the job done kept us safe and we got through the difficulty with no damage. We had done it! It’s lovely having Peter home, knowing that in a tricky situation he will have all these skills and knowledge, and capacity to deal with things, but his absence provided us with a great opportunity to see that we too could keep the boat afloat! Now he is home we are quite clear whose job securing the boat is, but the truth is, we know we can do things we would previously have thought were out of our league – we have I suppose grown in our own capacities!
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5/26/2013 0 Comments May 26th, 2013I've been here before - many times before but it's all different to me now - nothing looks quite as I remember it - though I suspect that what has really changed is me and how I see things!
I'm at the Sydney Writer's Festival - an event that has been something like a mecca for me over the last 5 or 6 years. I came here for the first time in around 2004 to hear a writer speak whose book had given me hope that I might, like her, one day be free of the shackles and shadows of abuse. I left that first festival awakened - not only had I met Alice Sebold but others who inspired me as much if not more, and suddenly I found myself in a world I felt at home in, a world populated by people like me with all manner of stories that were out in the light for others to see. But it has been 3 years since I last came and it is true to say that little in my life is as it was the last time I attended. What struck me first, as soon as I walked past the entrance onto the wharf where the festival events are held, was the wharf itself. The festival is held at Walshe Bay in the old wharf buildings near The Rocks area of the city of Sydney, and at the Sydney Theatre Centre. Usually the first thing I would look for when I arrived would be the buildings, the cafe, the venues. Yesterday the first thing that caught my eye was the lack of bollards on the wharf and how hard it would be to tie up a boat here! Oh my, I thought, it would be tricky coming in here! I noticed how much chop and roll there is in the water of the harbour itself and how many waves were caused by the ferries rolling past and thought how rolly it would be to be moored here, and how tricky it would be to get on and off Argos if, instead of driving myself up through the picturesque Illawarra region, we had sailed in instead! I had arrived by car but brought my inner sailor anyway! It is true to say that I am not the same woman who last attended the festival with this name! I come now in a different guise and I see even these most familiar surroundings through different eyes, with a completely different perspective. I come now as a sailor with experience, a sailor who has crossed the Great Australian Bight, I am no longer the single mother of eight children but I come now as the recently re-married woman who bought a yacht to delight her husband, and I come as a blogger with a following and a paid writer with an audience. I look at everything now through different eyes. It has been such a perspective shift. I have always been fascinated by the idea of change, by the metamorphosis of the caterpillar into the butterfly, with the idea of being reborn, but these ideas have, in the past, belonged more in the spiritual realm, had more to do with these big metaphysical ideas, these huge ideological shifts and changes. It fascinates me today how I seem to bring my sailor-self with me everywhere I go and I know that this is a shift of a different order - it's about identity as much as it is about change, that in trading bricks and mortar for hulls and decks I transformed in a different kind of way. The writers festival still inspires me, feeds me, nurtures my desire to use words to convey ideas bigger than themselves, but now I find that the things that once were my sole focus have taken second place to things that are more immediate to me - things of course of the sea. Sydney Harbour, on a grand scale is breathtakingly beautiful and I have thought so for years but mine is no idle admiration now - my thoughts are of us actually sailing in here in Argos and what that will be like. My thoughts are of what it will be like to sail in through the Heads, to sail past the opera house and beneath the coat-hanger, as Peter always refers to the harbour bridge, to find places to drop anchor or pick up moorings or even jetties we can tie up to is suddenly a reality in the not-too-distant future. This year, this time around I find myself sitting between sessions, sipping my latte beside the water, perched on ancient wooden beams checking out the height of the tide, the amount of swell present, watching the skies and thinking about where the low pressure system is. I glace around as a motor boat speeds past and scoff at his hurry, recoil as his wake causes waves to lap near me! I am as mesmerised by the water as usual, but for wholly different reasons this year. And I am amused and amazed as I think about how much life can change in just a few short years. I have more stories now than ever before and happily the means now to tell them. |
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September 2017
Our life aboard Argos has been seriously challenged this year with the surprise departure of our skipper. As a writer, diesel mechanics and the complexities of many aspects of Argos’ on-going maintenance are way beyond me! We would like to see Argos continue to sail and eventually hope to use her to offer support, encouragement and a break to people who are struggling in their lives. Any on-going help towards maintaining Argos would be greatly appreciated and enable us to achieve this goal.
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