Cocos Keeling Island 

The first leg of the three part passage across the Indian Ocean has been achieved.  Left Darwin in the afternoon of Monday 13 August and arrived at the Cocos Keeling Island 15 days and 3600 kms later after a wonderful trip. I so love the challenge of sailing solo in this great big sea.

This is the story of my passage and my jottings I made along the way.

My lady and I eventually left Darwin after receiving the electronic navigation charts in the mail on Monday morning. The afternoon departure was against the tide and the wind, but I was determined to get out of the harbour in daylight. For the next few days the wind was very light or non existent. And, as is my wish, I hate wallowing in the sea. Makes me feel like a fisher person who is prepared to suffer for the sake of catching fish. I turned on the iron lady and motored slowly into the west.

I quickly got into the swing of sailing around the clock. In addition to rationing the food, I also had to ration my music and DVD selection. The “day in the life of” can be seen below.

A day with Dusty Springfield

Today Dusty is my artist of choice and I am listening to her greatest album “Dusty in Memphis”. The lyrics are about loving, heartache and heartbreak.

The songs remind me of when I was a boy and listened to albums over and over again to learn the lyrics. I would always wonder about those love songs and how good it must be to be in love and to spend the night together or do a little California dreaming.

This was my day on Thursday 16 August 2007 with Dusty and selected lyrics from the songs on this album.

So much love
So much love, more than enough to last the whole night through and its all for you.

Sailing on your own the day starts at midnight and finishes at midnight 24 hours later. You start a full day cycle. The night may be dark but it is just as exciting as the day. A little sleep here and there. Eat when you are hungry. A roast at 3 in the morning. I have plenty of time to plan the midnight feast and just as much time to eat it. Checks on the navigation, the sails and the rigging are made. Listen to the BBC World Service, watch a DVD and read another book about a lone sailor. The night is yours.

Just a little Loving
Just a little loving early in the morning beats a cup of coffee for starting your day. Nothing turns the days on more, really gets the day going than a little loving from someone like you.

As the morning draws near you look out to see the first signs of a new day. You see the dim light on the horizon and the sky gradually filling with a deep rich blue. The shortwave radio repeats the same news story you have heard for the 10th time. You are feeling tired but you know something special is about to happen.  You can turn off the radar that you have been looking at all night.  The navigation lights are no longer needed and you know that with dawn you will have a sleep for an hour or two, then coffee.

I don’t want to hear it anymore
I don’t want to hear it anymore, let the talk end and the heartache begin.

What do you say to electronic technicians on the satellite phone about your navigation gear that is not working properly?  “It is not working properly” and they will give you the reasons, excuses but at the end of the day “It is not working properly”.  This is the heartache, the insecurity of not being able to fix it yourself and not knowing if it will ever be fixed or you will just be left with an explanation.

Don’t forget about me
It’s your life to win or lose again – but ha don’t forget about me now baby.

As a solo sailor you can quickly become absorbed about yourself. Sure it is up to you to do it all. That is the thrill. Planning ahead and thinking of alternatives and what ifs. There is no pressure. If you want to think about the problem or look out to sea and meditate for an hour, so be it. You have no appointments or deadlines. What you do have is the time to savour the experience. I will not be sailing this part of the world again so I want to enjoy and treasure the moment. It is time to reflect on the people in your life.  Those that have helped me get out into this sea.  More than the guys and girls that fixed the boat. They were only a small part of it.  It is the likes of my dear friend Neil Oakes who over lunch one day at the Royal Oak Hotel in Balmain said why don’t you get on with it and do what you really want to do. It sounds like the bleeding obvious but perhaps you need someone to tell you that you can live your dream. You do not forget that moment.

Just one smile
Just one smile doesn’t mean love forever. Just one smile makes my life worth living.

Sundowners in the early evening. Sitting in the cockpit having a chardy and a little selection of hors d’oeuvres watching the sunset.  The red ball quickly drops over the horizon. In the orange light on the water a pod of dolphins appear out of nowhere. They travel back and forth on the starboard side of the boat some twenty feet away. They do not come and ride the bow wave today. I am excited; I jump up while still tethered to the boat and I climb up as high as I can to get a better view. I smile and thank them for coming.  It was them and me in this big sea. What a joy. The same joy as the smile of your mother when you have made her happy by just being in her presence.

No easy way down
Now you are standing alone there is no easy way down. When there is no one to break your fall and lead you home.

I never feel alone and I don’t have imaginary friends. I have too many real ones. My day is too busy sailing and living in this little capsule. The wind increases in strength and you rejoice. Then it drops off so your run the engine to charge the batteries. You listen to the VHF radio waiting for Australian Customs Coast Watch aircraft to call you up and buzz you at a low level.  Today they didn’t ask the same questions they have been doing.  Instead the operator said it was a lovely day and hoped I was enjoying myself and, by the way, am I still heading for Cocos Keeling Island via Ashmore Reef. It does not take much to give me a thrill.

I can not make it alone
I just can’t make it by myself. You know how proud I am. There is something in my soul that will always lead me back to you.

The night has come back again. Tonight I sailed between two natural gas platforms in the Timor Sea - Challis and Jabiru.  They climbed out of the night like two small townships both with bright yellow flames surrounded by white lights in the middle of the black ocean. You may know their names from the news and remember the huffing and puffing by our Foreign Minister Alexander Downer and what appeared to be a selfish greedy stance he took over sharing the wealth with East Timor our neighbor and one of the newest nations.  Remember the Sydney Olympics’ opening ceremony when the half-a-dozen athletes and officials from East Timor entered the stadium?  We were all so happy for them.

The day finishes and starts again, the loop and the promise of a new dawn. How good is that?

First stop Ashmore Reef ended up a non-event, well almost.

Sorry beach volleyball is off love

Saturday 18 August 2007
Off Ashmore Reef, Timor Sea heading into the Indian Ocean.

What a bugger the sea is too rough and the wind too strong so I gave the visit to the reef a miss.  Land and I, let alone reefs, never seem to get on well. At least I know myself.

The Australian Customs boat Tridon was at the reef and the Captain was happy to put a smaller boat into the water to guide me through the reef to a safe mooring. I am sure it would have been a lot calmer and a lot of fun but the thought of getting to the reef and all that is involved in a big sea and wind made the other option of heading west in open water a better choice. What a shame as I had all my DVDs ready to swap.

The decision was also easier after what had happened last night. Yesterday the wind came up at last after several days sailing in light breezes. I was hooting along so the sail area was reduced as I wanted to slow down and not arrive at the reef in the middle of the night. Late afternoon I hove to, which is where you set the boat up to drift while the boat rides very peacefully in the wind and sea. All was going well through the night until I realized that instead of being 20 miles away from the reef I was being blown directly onto the reef.

With only a mile or two from the reef action was required.  I worked hard to get away from the reef with the wind howling and the sea getting bigger both the elements were forcing me to disaster. Survival and sailing skills kicked in plus the thought of finishing up on a reef heightened my senses. Sails were adjusted and I took to the wheel to nurse the lady away from the reef. My mind was racing, my stomach churning and my nerves forced me to reach for the bucket.

Eventually I was four miles off the reef and away from danger. Again I set the boat up to drift and this time she had the entire Indian Ocean to play in. Totally exhausted I took to the bunk for some sleep but I was up and down all night just to make sure all was good.

With day break and rather unwell I had given up all thoughts of the reef visit.  The weather report I received from the customs boat the night before indicated that the 30-40 knots, or 48-64 kilometer, wind would drop this morning to a good workable strength. This did not happen, the forecast had changed and the wind was blowing just as hard.

Now I am heading west in big sea and still a strong wind. I have a little sail up about the size of granddads handkerchief and hooting along.  Estimate that I should be able to reach Cocos Keeling Island some 1500 miles or close to 2,000kms away in about 2 weeks. All good again.

Raising my spirits was a phone call from my cousin Pat Warnick in Brisbane who was cooking a very pleasant lunch. I was now hungry and made do with a can of cold baked beans locked away in my bunk.

Heading west

The wind continued to blow from the east, south east at 10 to 20 knots.  That is champagne sailing. Spent hours trying to set the lady up to sail at its best. Eventually worked out that she likes to sail on a broad reach instead of having the wind come directly from behind.  That meant I zigged-zagged my way across the ocean averaging a healthy 6 to 7 knots doing about 130 to 160 miles a day.

Everyday is just like the day before and at 9 in the evening I would work out how I was going. That is, how far was I was from Darwin, how far to get to Cocos Keeling Island, how many miles I had traveled and what was my average speed.

A normal activity was listening for an alarm.

Alarms

When you hear an audible alarm you very quickly leap out of the bunk and head for the navigation station is to see what it is and if you should worry.

It is 5pm Tuesday 21 August an alarm goes off and the chart plotter is flashing a sign “Dangerous target”. The AIS, the automatic identification system has found two ships close to me. I am in the middle of this great watery paddock in the Indian Ocean.  Two cargo ships are passing close by. I now know that I am also in the middle of a shipping channel. A little like being on the medium strip on a highway trying to get to the other side.

What amused me were the names of the ships. The Eternal Island is traveling south at 15 knots now 2.4 miles in front of me. This is a cargo ship, 560 feet long, 90 foot wide with a draft of 5.6m. It is on its way to Geraldton in Western Australia. The alarm tells me we are 14 minutes 15 sec before collision.

Behind me is the Treasure Island a similar size ship heading for Tonda in Japan. It is 13 miles away from me.

You know the song “Islands in the sun that is what I want”. Well in fact I am heading west directly into the setting sun. Was it Kenny Rogers and Dolly Parton who sang that song?

Alarms can be your best friend or an annoying neighbor that keeps coming over to your place.  When sailing on your own you need lots of alarms. There is an alarm to tell you the bilge is filling with water and the bilge pump is not doings its duty.  That has gone off a few times.

The radar has an alarm that tells you if any boat has entered your safety shield that you have set up around your boat. In this case if a ship enters the shield some 5 miles ahead of me it goes off and keeps going off.

The AIS device tells me if a large ship has come within 6 miles of me and gives me details of where it is and where the ship is going and most importantly if and when it is going to ram me.

Other alarms tell me when I am off course plus more alarms to tell me when the alarms are not working. I have a few of them at the moment.  The satellite phone is not working very well at the moment and the alarm tells me that it has lost the satellite. Very careless of the phone in my opinion.

There are alarms on the engine and a gas alarm if LPG gas leaks into the bilge. The autopilot has several different alarms to tell me if it is tired of steering in the direction you want or does not want to go the way you would like.

The best alarm is the one in your head. After a while you tune in to your boat, the wind and the sea. You hear every unusual sound. They always mean a problem. Yesterday I searched the boat for what was making the sound of metal creaking together every time the autopilot moved the rudder.  I had my head down lockers looking at the hydraulic ram that steers the boat. I had the cabin floor boards up looking at the engine compartment.  I gave up and put the kettle on for a cuppa. To my excitement I discovered it was the stove rubbing against the stainless steel wall at the side of the stove. I celebrated the find with a nice cup of tea, a Bex and a good lie down.

Your body gets familiar with the motion of the boat so when the motion changes you are up to see what has happened.  This could mean the wind has changed or increased in speed or the sea has increased in size.  I have found the body to be a very accurate alarm.  Perhaps there is a sense of survival involved.

The daily routine

The most common question people ask is what do you do at night? You just keep sailing as you did in the day with the exception that you try not to do any running up to the bow or making any major sail adjustments.

Do you wash? I have become very conscious about keeping clean. I produce about 20 litres of fresh water a day using the desalinator when I am running the engine to charge the batteries.  This allows me to have a hot shower after my morning sleep. I decided not to shave for a few weeks to see if I could grow a beard.  I have so few hairs on my face it was a non event. I look like I have emerged out of the forest in South America.  I have now committed to shave every couple of days. I feel so much better. A hair cut is very much needed. If my hair gets any longer I will have to use a comb which I do not own.

What do you eat? I eat well. If the weather is good I have a long brunch with muesli and canned fruit and bacon and eggs on toast topped off with a couple of coffees. Being a Balmain boy I do miss a strong flat white. I try to have one good meal a day.  Meat and 3 vegs. One of easiest meals is to do a roast with baked vegetable and surprise peas.  Nuala taught me how to cook in oven bags and I must say a tasty meal can be prepared with gravy using the juices.

A salad with tuna or corned beef, cheese, pickles, beetroot and cucumbers plus fresh tomatoes generally make up another meal.  If the weather is not good baked beans and a can of Stag beef and beans become the diet. Snacks throughout the day are fresh fruit while it lasted, nuts and party favourites lollies.

How do you let people know you are safe? I decided that I would ring Nuala on the satellite phone early every morning to give her my position and I receive the latest weather update from her that she has checked on the computer. It is all over in about 60 seconds but it wonderful that my mate does it for me and I have the very latest weather report.

How do you do your washing? A large bucket in the powder room collects the water from the shower and if cloths need to be washed they slop around with water liquid for 24 hours then rinsed off and hung out to dry.  The truth is you have very little to wash. Every day the temperate is 30 degrees so I do not wear any clothes except for a very wide cloth belt to hook the safety line onto when I leave the cabin. If I have to go up to the bow I put on a full safety harness.

Flying fish – why do they fly?
A lot of time is spent sitting in the cockpit looking out to sea.  There is very little to look at. The aquatic world’s contribution to flight is the flying fish.  A squadron of flying fish takes off into the wind, back around and glide just above the water with the wind then drop back into the water often some 100 yards away.  Why they do it, other than because they can, has yet to be found out.

They range in size up to 25 cms and there is no shortage of them. They have long fins that open out to be like little wings as they fly. During the day you see little fish jumping around the bow of the boat like insects.  In the night they glow as they fly. A special sight and hours can be spent gazing out into the night waiting for the next performance.

Every morning you have to do a patrol of the boat throwing back the fish that have jumped onboard through the night. Attracted by the mast and cabin lights they hit the side of the cabin with a thump and flap around for a while.  Lying in your bunk I often felt a person was walking around the deck.  I was not inclined to go and save them in the night.  The idea of scrambling around the deck in the night is not a good idea especially in a big sea. I hoped the next wave that broke over the boat would wash them overboard instead of me.

They seem to find themselves in all parts of the deck and it is important to find and remove them before they smell and the search takes on greater importance.  The other morning when adjusting the mainsail I noticed a fishy smell on my hands. To my surprise I found a large fish in the bottom of the rope bag where you stuff the mainsail rope.  Obviously for a couple of days I had been stuffing the rope into a fish that had landed in the bottom of the bag.  It was quickly removed and a complete wash down took place.

I had read about these fish in many ocean voyaging books.  One bloke would collect them in the morning and fry them up for breakfast and feed the remains to his cat. Having been brought up as a good Catholic where you always had fish on Friday I have been fished out so there is little chance of replacing my muesli for flying fish. 

And very little happens

Day after day you can see no signs of human life but when you do it is exciting.

The red and green bird

It is 3 in the morning the alarm on the chart plotter has gone off. A quick dash from the bunk showed me that I am about to be molested by a 600 foot cargo ship.  On closer examination there were six ships approaching me from both the north and south. Obviously I was again in the middle of the second shipping channel that goes up the side of Western Australia. Ships heading north to Singapore and those traveling south to Albany and Port Headland.  I am sailing due west for Cocos Keeling Island. It was as if I was about to be interfered with by a group of tyrosine young men in the middle of George Street on a Saturday night.

I turned on all the navigation lights including the Christmas decorations. I want to be seen by all and leave them with no doubt that I too was out in the middle of nowhere playing with these big boys.  I have them on the radar and the Automatic Identification System (AIS).

I am then on the radio. “Neptune Express this is sailing vessel Bowtie Lady. Good morning to you sir, I am currently 9 mile directly ahead of you heading directly west and would like to pass in front of you.” This ship is doing 20 knots or 32 kms and I am only going 8 knots or about 12 kms.

“Bowtie Lady this is the Neptune Express I will alter course to pass you on your port side”
I thanked the ship’s officer for altering course. The ship did alter course and passed me only a fly shit away.  I could smell what they had for dinner.

Back to the radar and the Morning Star, another massive cargo ship is heading north to Singapore and would run me down in 12 minutes if I did not alter course which I did without hesitation.

Again back on the chart plotter and the radar and 3 more ships are heading north and south.  It was a bit like traveling down the Hume Highway in the middle of the night with a group of semi trailers in convey – ha good buddy.

I am on deck surveying the scene searching for the ship’s lights. I look up to make sure the tri-lights on the top of the mast are shining brightly. This light shows red, green and white.  Jason Smith the wonderful marine electrician had installed LED lights so bright that can be seen from the moon.  Sitting on top of the mast was a bird. Half the bird was shining red from the port light and green from the starboard light on top of the mast.  She was happy as Larry. I was impressed that in such a rough sea this bird was able to land on such a small area.

The drama with the cargo ships continues.  I called all of them up on the radio to make sure they know where I was and to know exactly what I was intending to do to avoid them. And through all of this the bird happily sat there looking down at me as I flashed the torch on her. I was so impressed with this bird and happy to have her company for the night.  After they all left me I went back to bed and ready for the next alarm. And the bird she sat there till morning.

Reaching Cocos

I had been calculating when I should arrive at the Cocos Keeling Island. Some 3 days before I thought I would arrive in the middle of the night and I was prepared to sit out at sea for the night about 60 miles away and make landfall in the daylight.

The wind plus the sea rose and I realized if I sailed hard I could reach the island in the afternoon the next day, a day earlier than expected. So I went for it and the excitement of reaching land saw me clean the boat and tidy up.

Unfortunately a little more cleaning than expected.  Brunch was disturbed when the munchy crunchy muesli ended up on the cabin floor. As I was looking disgusted at the mess the freshly brewed coffee, now feeling a little lonely, joined the mess on the cabin floor. Yards of paper towels were used to clean up the mess and I started brunch all over again. At lunch the pickled sliced cucumber slipped off the galley bench and onto the floor.  By now I was even more disgusted with myself and my inability to prepare food. Another clean up. To top off the day a bottle of beetroot took to the floor with the lid flying off at impact. I was almost in tears. I sat on the floor and ate the beetroot off the floor knowing the floor could not have been cleaner after the previous clean ups. The cabin looked like a murder scene. Red beetroot juice went every where and after the final clean up I settled down to eating a can of corn held closely to my chest as I tucked myself into my bunk.

At three in the afternoon with only 3 miles to go the island a group appear on the horizon. I had been sailing in waters up to 6,000 metres.  All of a sudden the depth was only 50 metres which seemed so shallow. I rounded the outer island and headed to where 8 yachts were anchored off Direction Island, a most beautiful spot.

I was so excited I started singing the greatest hits from South Pacific, well at least the first few lines.  As I approached picking my way though the coral reefs I suddenly realized I was rapidly running out of water. I turned the lady around and headed back the way I came in to regroup and have another go. I had read and re-read the guides and notes to see where I was going wrong. To my great delight Fitz a fellow yachty came out in his rubber ducky and guided me through the reefs to a perfect anchorage only 60 feet off the beautiful white sandy beach with coconut trees and lush vegetation. A perfect setting to finish a wonderful passage.

I am so lucky and I give thanks to all for being allowed to have so much fun.