- Date: May 1, 1987
- Location: Cairns to Samaria, PNG
- Subject: Crossing the Coral Sea to Samaria, PNG
Dear WaterFiary:
OK, we made our crossing of the Coral Sea from Cairns to PNG, and our trip was NOT FUN, NOT PLEASANT or ANYTHING I EVER want to do again. It was SO terrible, that if I could have had a helicopter come get me, I would have given the helicopter pilot all of my life savings ($526.46) and all of my art supplies and anything else he wanted.
How could something be SOOOOOOOO bad, you ask?!?. I will tell you all the gory details……
Day 1: April 27, 1987:
It started out great. After we cleared customs in Cairns Harbor, we left port about 11 am. Before we left we had a big breakfast and then cleaned the galley up and stowed or put everything loose in the boat away. You have to make sure everything is secured or lashed down or the stuff will slide, roll, and smash into other things on the boat, when the boat is moving all around. I had all my art supplies and books stowed in my cabinets and in the swing net by my bunk. I also had the job of making sure everything in the head was stowed: toothbrushes, toothpaste, hair products, lotions, soap, towels. The head looked so clean and tidy, like no one used it. I also latched the head door so the door wouldn’t open and close and be banging all the time. It is very annoying to hear things bang around down below while the boat is sailing. Mom says it is also dangerous so we have to do our best to get things in “sailing, ship-shape”.
Mom took care of the galley. She put away all the dishes, stowed the pots and pans in the oven and bungeed the stove door closed. She also put all the spices away in the pantry, and made sure all the big plastic containers of dried food were lashed down under the galley table. She double checked to see the cabinet doors were latched closed and secure. I never realized how much stuff comes out of storage when we are anchored, and it needs to be put back into storage for sailing.
Capt was busy on the deck. He pulled “Ding Dong” up onto the foredeck with the help of Brian from Sunshine and Whiskey and they lashed it over my hatch. I can still open my hatch to get air in, but it is now very dark up in the forward berth. OK by me, better sleeping. Capt also turned Sacha-B into a cutter rig. This means he added a small forward sail, behind the headsail. This new, smaller sail is called the staysail. When I asked him why he did this, Capt went on and on and on……….the only thing really understood is the staysail will make the boat more comfortable in big seas, and if it is too windy to use the headsail, we still have the staysail to keep the boat moving forward, and somewhat stable. That answer was good enough for me, though Capt assured me he would tell me all about what was happening with the sails when we were underway.
Brian, Tracy and Hannah from Sunshine and Whiskey were at the marina dock to help us cast off and waved good-bye to us. Grandpa Pete and Bryan from Gangemi, and Melinda and her parents from Onaway were also there as a cheering squad, as was Brian and Ivy from Tikani. I was a little sad to say good-bye, but also very excited to FINALLY be leaving. So, we left the Cairns Harbor with “Mr. Gardner, Sir” (the sailboat engine) on, just to get out of the traffic lane. Toni and Craig from Mollemok were also sailing and accompanied us for about a half an hour out of the harbor, as if they were our escorts. I think they were going to Fitzroy Island for a few days, but they plan to meet up with us in Papua New Guinea, a few weeks. Can’t wait to join up with them.
As soon as we got settled, Capt set the sails and turned off the motor, and we had a smooth, beautiful sail. We were flying. We also had the autopilot on, which is a machine you hook up to the helm (steering wheel) and it steers the boat to whatever compass direction you set. It’s a pretty cool invention because when it is hooked up, you do not have to steer the boat all the time, the autopilot does the steering. Imagine if you had a car that just drove itself all the time! You could just sit there and read while the car was driving itself. Of course, we had to always keep watch and make sure we were going in the right direction and also to make sure there weren’t any boats that we might hit. Capt said we also need to keep an eye out for whales. I thought he was kidding, but he was dead serious. I do not want to hit a whale, but I would like to see one or two.
It was pretty easy sail for the rest of the morning and into the afternoon, and we all sat in the cockpit together, with our yummy chili and cornbread. Some time in the late afternoon the autopilot broke!! Capt tried for hours to fix it, while Mom and I stood at the helm and steered the boat. It wasn’t so bad. Meanwhile Capt also tried to hook up the wind vane, which is similar to an autopilot but not as sophisticated. The wind vane is not run by a machine like the autopilot, but basically physics using pulleys, gears and a wind paddle to steer the boat, GUESS WHAT?? The wind vane didn’t work either. Noone is sure why because before we left Cairns, Capt tested and tried both the auto pilot and wind vane a few times and they seemed to work fine, and we used the autopilot to sail to Fitzroy Island for Easter Weekend. So for the rest of the day we had to take turns steering 2 hour shifts. The waves were behind us, so the boat ride was relatively smooth and flat and the boat did not heel much. Mom and I went to bed at 11pm. Mom got up around 2 am to take the 2 to 4 am watch while Capt got a bit of sleep. Then Capt got up at 4am and started his watch.
DAY 2: April 28, 1987
I woke up and low and behold, we were on the east side of the Great Barrier Reef, in the ocean. I mean, really open ocean that had huge waves and troughs. Capt said all the sailing I had done before was in waters that were to the west of the Great Barrier Reef, so those seas were protected from the open ocean, but now in the ocean the waves were so big and spread out. It was cloudy all day, so we weren’t sweltering in the direct sunlight. I was a bit seasick, so I spent most of the day in my bunk, reading or sleeping, or I would lay in the cockpit and keep the steerer company. Lucky for us, Mom made all the lunches before we left, so we just had to grab the plastic picnic box and not fuss with making food. Capt made his thermos of tea and drank it non-stop. That night I stood first watch with Mom from 10pm to 12 midnight, while Capt grabbed some shut eye. The night was so dark. There were no lights from any land, because we were not in sight of land. No lights from other boats because there were no other boats. And no lights from the moon and stars because it was cloudy. It was just us, in the middle of the ocean, swoosh, swoosh, swooshing along. I went to bed around midnight and fell asleep to the sounds of the waves and the creaking of the headsail sheets (ropes).
DAY3-April 29, 1987
I woke up really early, almost dawn, because the boat was pounding into the waves. I could hear the anchor banging around against the anchor plate and plenty of sea spray was coming under the dinghy and through my hatch. I hated that I had to close the hatch because I like the fresh air, but had to close it and screw the battens tight to keep the water out. I figured I should get up, but the wind was howling and the boat was bouncing all over the place. It was scary and crazy. I slowly climbed out of my bunk and tried to walk to the back of the boat to go out to the cockpit, but it was so rough I mostly crawled to the saloon, bouncing from one side of the boat to the other. When I got to the saloon, I saw Capt sitting at the inside wheel, and Mom sleeping on the floor around the engine cover. I thought to myself, this can’t be good. Capt said good morning to me, like he always does, like nothing was wrong or different. He just said that we were now sailing into waves and the wind was blowing on the nose, that’s why it was so rough, like riding a wild horse. Just as he said that, the boat smashed down into a huge trough of a wave and all the rigging began to shake and the mast was vibrating and the boat was shaking. The crashing noise was so loud I thought for sure the mast got broken. Capt just looked at me and said, “I guess it is time to turn on “Mr. Gardner, Sir” cuz we are getting nowhere fast!” The big smash woke Mom up and she jumped off the floor. Capt just said, “Morning, darlin! please take the wheel and steer it at 280⁰ I am going to take some sails in and turn the motor on.” I knew my job, which was to go to the cockpit and keep an eye on Capt-while he went forward and reefed the sails. The rule on Sacha-B is, if anyone has to go on deck for any reason, someone has to be watching, just in case a wave knocks them overboard then we will know and start the man overboard activity. The other rule on Sacha-B is NOONE is allowed to go overboard!
The sails were reefed (made smaller) and Capt turned “Mr. Gardner, Sir” on and we began to motor to PNG. The good thing about having the motor on is it moves the boat forward and fast. The bad thing is it is LOUD and hot. Sometime during the night it began to rain and the wind picked up. It felt very stormy, hot, muggy and stormy. We spent the rest of the day in the saloon, because it was too dangerous to be in the cockpit to steer from the outside helm. It got so difficult to steer that Mom and Capt took 1 hours turns at the wheel. Whoever was not steering was laying on the floor with me, bouncing all over the place.
When we had to pee-we took a bucket over by the chart table, closed the curtain if we could and peed into the bucket. Then put the bucket outside in the cockpit. It was too rough and dangerous to use the head and pump it out. Every hour or so, Capt checked the sat nav (GPS) to make sure we were going in the right direction. We mostly ate saltines and stuff from the picnic box. This day went on FOREVER….. hot, humid, bouncy, rainy, windy, scary………I did not enjoy this.
Day 4-April 30, 1987
The seas were still rough, confused and sloppy. The waves were still huge, the motor was still on and we were slowly creeping our way to Samaria, the port of entry in Papua New Guinea. Mom and Capt still did one hour on-one hour off of steering. I could tell they were getting tired. About 10 am a HUGE, GIANT wave, called a rogue wave, hit the boat on the starboard side. After a while of sailing, you kind of get used to the waves and the wind and the motion of the boat, and can almost guess how the boat is going to move. But this was a very unexpected wave from an unexpected direction, and we could see a wall of green water wash over the entire boat! It felt like we were under water. The wave hit Sacha-B so hard that it knocked Mom off the couch and onto the corner of the engine block cover. She let out a loud howl, but said she was ok, just surprised. Later, I could see the nasty black and blue on her hip. Ouchyyy. I must have looked scared cuz Capt said, “Hey-guess what? That was your very first green monster wave!! Congratulations!” After the huge monster wave, we heard some glugging noise from the aft cabin-so Mom bounced and wobbled her way aft to see what was going on. Above the noise of the wind and motor, I heard a big long steak of “colorful language” aka cuss words, so I knew something bad had happened in the aft cabin. The rogue wave ripped the aft hatch open and dumped tons of seawater into the cabin-all over the bed, into the closet and of course on the floor. Probably 2 inches of water on the floor and soaked into the carpet. Mom closed the hatch and Capt said, “It’s just water, we will take care of it when we anchor.” Mom looked relieved that she didn’t have to think of a way to fix it now, when the boat was rocking crazy and she had to take her turn at the wheel. Capt also saw later that day, that the rogue wave ripped the spray dodger around the transom (aft part of the boat), completely off. I felt like we were falling apart.
About 4 pm, the waves settled down and the wind died down, and Sacha-B was fairly level. So it seemed the rough sailing was over. We began to head into shallower water and noticed some land, islands and waves breaking on the reef . Mom was the first to notice the land and yelled “Land-HO!” Capt turned on the radar and using his navigational chart, we slowly picked our way along until we found a somewhat protected area to drop our anchor about an hour after the sunset. Capt was happy to not be traveling at night, when we could not see where we were going. I noticed there were no lights on the land.
I was so happy to be still and flat and quiet. I was not so happy when I tried to go to bed and found my bed was soaking wet from the rogue wave, the bed in the aft cabin was also soaking wet. We decided to just make a bed on the saloon floor but all of the sheets were also wet from the rogue wave. It looked pretty bad until Capt finished is first 20 cups of proper tea, he had in days and made us a bed on the saloon floor out of the couch cushions, pillows, and the crushed velvet curtains that normally hang between the aft cabin and the chart room, and the set of curtains that hang between the galley and my bunk. It was a cozy little nest and we were snoring away in 2 minutes flat.
Day 5-May 1, 1987
I woke up to galley noises, and yummy galley smells. I did not eat very much the past few days-mostly saltines and water, so I was really hungry and really happy when I smelled bacon and saw Mom making French toast. Capt was in the cockpit-drink his 8th cup of tea for the morning. He called me out to have a look. We were facing a beautiful island about 200 yards from us. The island was a very steep hill covered with palm trees and other lush looking tropical plants. There wasn’t a beach, or any people or houses that I could see, but the water was deep and beautiful blue and so clear and clean that I could actually see the anchor and chain lying along the white sandy bottom of the sea. There were also some tropical fish hanging around the anchor chain.
We had the best breakfast ever. Then we all took a long hot shower and had to use the curtains for a towel to dry off. Even though the inside of the boat was a wreck, we pulled up the anchor and made our way to the little town of Samarai to clear customs.
All the bad stuff of sailing for the past few days seems like a very bad dream-a very bad dream that I don’t ever want to have again…….ever……never ever!!
But here we are in Papua New Guinea! The real adventure starts now.
