Travelling with boxes part 2...

It was with heavy heart that we had to finally succumb to our plan to leave Impetuous in New Zealand. We'd put it off for the last five months but now the weather was getting wintry and our visas were on the cusp of expiration.  Once we'd chosen our place and yard we set to; getting Impetuous ready for immanent abandonment.  Most of the windows got rebedded and all manner of varnished teak prettiness got covered in rosy red jackets.  Impetuous is now adorned with multiple Fez'.

Though she's mostly stood up extremely well to what we've thrown at her this last 15 months, the interior oiled walls were looking rather forlorn.  The problem started whilst crossing from Panama when not having any sprayhood (dodger) meant that whilst we were thundering along at 8 or 9 knots the occasional wave would break over the boat and soak the interior which was left open for ventilation. This then got much worse when we hit colder climes and suffered from condensation.  Both these things will be resolved in time.  We plan to make a sprayhood on our return to Impetuous next year and improve our insulation and add a heat source before we go to the next cold country.

We've still got three more windows to pull out and rebed when we get back.  

The Marlborough sounds was a pretty area to stop and do some work.  We still moved every few days.  A short sail, a little fish and a change of scenery is a great refresher.  The walking and foraging was brilliant too.  We managed to find a few dry days and so gave the mast a light sand and two more coats of varnish.  It was very pleasing to see how well the varnish has held up.  Keeping on top of it this way should mean that a strip down won't be necessary any time soon.

So then it was time.

We raised our anchor for the last time, got pulled out by the Waikawa marina travel lift and put up the road in Clint's yard.

We managed to get our rental down through negotiation to half price and we think she'll be nice and safe there.

Then it was time to set off again, travelling with boxes.  Of course we still don't have any proper cases or bags for the plane.  The bits and pieces we want to work on and fix from the boat, and tools to use on the boat in England all got crammed into cardboard and wrapped up in tape.

We hitched a ride to Picton where we caught the ferry across to the North island.  Then we hopped on to an overnight bus to Auckland.  We just had time to visit our one remaining friend in Auckland whilst most had already headed North towards Fiji or Tonga then got the bus to the airport.  Then it was just a matter of a flight to San Fransisco, then another onwards to London before a bus to Bath.

A little dazed and confused after 65 hours travelling we staggered off the bus and round the back of the train station with our boxes to be met by our good friends Nic and Becs.  It took a little while for the news to filter down into our addled brains that the 8 month old baby Becs was holding was in fact theirs.  They had kept his whole existence a secret from us and everyone had been sworn to secrecy.  What great news to be welcomed back with!  And just the start of learning what has been going on and what has changed since we've been away.

We bought return flights from New Zealand so we are booked to return to our Impetuous voyages in March 2016.  Our plan in March is to do some minor work on her including building the said Sprayhood, explore the Marlborough Sounds a little more and visit the Abel Tasman and Nelson.  We will head North when the cyclone season is over around May towards Tonga, Fiji, New Caledonia, Vanuatu, Papau New Guinea and then on to South East asia.  There is a lot of sailing to look forward to.  

Until then our main priority here is to finish fitting out our narrowboat 'Seth' so that he can be a) a more comfortable home for us whilst in England working and b) hopefully be rented out so that someone else can enjoy him when we go away again next March.  In the mean time we will also seek remunerated employment, though with the beautiful British summer breaking out all around us, we're in no rush!

We plan to carry on writing the blog whilst we're here in the UK, though we're going to be busy so it won't be too often.  If you'd like to hear whenever we post an update rather than having to check the site, you can enter your email address in the space on the right.  As far as I know you won't get any spam from this; blogger will just send you an email of any new posts we publish and you can unsubscribe easily by following the link at the bottom of the email.

We have plenty of stories we never managed to get around to telling from our travels and we may also write a bit about our lives here in England.  If you'd like to hear more, feel free to get in touch. It's always nice to find out that we're not just talking to ourselves!

Budget Bonanza

It's a topic many blogs broach and people often wonder about so we thought we'd toss our hat into the ring.

On Impetuous we don't have a budget as such. We just try to make our money last as long as we can whilst having what we value. Though we did try to guess how much we might spend this last year and made that our goal to save up whilst we were in England. As we've been sailing for a year now I thought it was high time we work out how much it really has cost us.

We rejoined Impetuous in the third week of January 2014. Between then and now (the end of January 2015) we have spent exactly £7,829 on living on Impetuous. That's $11,978 (USD), €10,177 (Euros), $15,814 (NZD) or 745,869 Indian Rupees at todays exchange.

Is that a lot or a little? We have mixed views on this. It's less than we'd thought, but we always think we could live more frugally. Lets run through what this year entailed.

We've sailed over 10,000 miles this year. We left Guatemala for Belize in March then had a month in Cuba. We then spent a few months in Panama seeing some of the San Blas islands and Las Perlas on our way out into the big blue. Over three months spent in French Polynesia were a joy; sailing most days and visiting some of each group; the Marquesas, Tuamotus and Society islands. We then moved on through the Cook islands to lovely Tonga before heading down to New Zealand for the cyclone season.

So what were our main expenses?

The Panama canal was a big deal for us and cost us £650 ($1,000). You can pay more but we did it without an agent; standing our own bond, doing the tiny amount of paperwork and avoided hiring help by taking backpackers through as line handlers. It was a great experience for all. The officials were a joy to deal with and we think, on reflection, that it was great value for money.

Checking into and out of so many countries adds up, but we were saved financially by both French Polynesia and New Zealand being entirely free to us lucky Brits. We estimate around £700 (just over $1000) going on such fees this year. We may have had to pay to be in Cuba (around £150) for a month but it was a wonderfully cheap month where we were able to replenish our rum stocks for £2 ($3) a bottle and a roadside pizza cost the same as a roadside icecream; 12.5 pence (20c).

We filled up our diesel three times this year. Firstly we'd left it empty in Guatemala, then again before leaving Panama and lastly in Bora Bora where they offered duty free fuel. We'd had some windless times around Panama and then the Societies particularly while we were trying to show Chris and Jean (Duncans' parents) a good time. We've still got over half a tank left of this. That's £500 ($750) a surprisingly large amount to us; given how much we avoid motoring and rely on solar for all our electricity. The price of fuel was almost exactly the same at all three places, about £2.60 ($4) a gallon.

We use on average a 9kg gas bottle about every 6 weeks, that's £130 ($200) largely used to make an inordinate amount of tea. We've never paid for water though others certainly do sometimes. We only stayed in a marina that one time in Panama ($50 for one night... still spitting feathers) and we paid for a mooring buoy once in Tonga (12 Panga, £4) – then moved to anchor the next day.

This total also includes a fair amount of cash going to the marina in Guatemala where we'd left Impetuous for 5 months whilst we were back in England visiting family and friends, and earning money. This was $110 per month US for an excellent service; a clean boat and monthly email about how beautiful she still was (thanks Burnt key). Whilst still in the Rio Dulce we paid a sailmaker to recut our new main (which had come with the boat but didn't fit). He quoted for the whole job; re-stitching and three new reef points but we baulked at the price and decided a better investment would be to buy some sailmaking equipment and hardware for a fraction of the cost.

About £500 went on the boat; filters, varnish and said sail adjustment stuff. We were ahead on this; though we didn't leave Texas with a finished boat, we certainly left with a dependable one given all the work we'd done on her.

We have third party insurance for Impetuous. At £200 a year we think it's important. If she drags her anchor and ploughs into a superyacht the damage (to it) is covered. Also morally we want it, lest we accidentally injure anyone else. The responsibility for our own health and the boats wellbeing falls to us.

So that leaves about £4,800 (£100 or $150 per week) for flour, fishing gear and fun; pillows, pasta and peanuts; bouncy balls, bacon and beer. Our biggest spending months on these were in Panama stocking up ready for expensive French Polynesia and now we're in New Zealand where our stores are intentionally low and the availability of nice things is high.

Of the people we've met we're certainly at the more frugal end, though some do spend less. We eat really well on Impetuous. If it was a problem we could save money by buying less vegetables, no meat, less olive oil, capers, olives, whole spices, chocolate, butter and milk but we don't want or need to. We've purposefully not estimated the proportion of this total that goes on alcohol... make of that as you will!

What probably helps to keep our costs down is that we always cook at home. We never feel the urge to eat out unless there's something new to learn and it's cheap. In the Marquesas one of the main local favourites is 'Poisson Cru' which we tried at roadside stalls a few times; trying to learn the quantities of lime and coconut in which you eat the raw fish, so now we can have it at home; delicious. About 10 different kinds of dried beans, 3 different lentils, various flours, rice and pasta provide a backbone to an endless variety of meals aboard Impetuous. We love visiting local markets, trying to find foods growing wild and attempting new things; of course this results in plenty of disasters along with the triumphs.

We do every job we possibly can ourselves on the boat. We both share an interest in how things work and enjoy learning new skills even if this means making mistakes sometimes. After spending so long restoring Impetuous we really value the confidence we have in our own work and understanding her simple systems on which we rely.

End of an Era...

With Christmas and New Years' celebrations over...  With last years aim of crossing an ocean crossed...  As friends take their boats out of the water, or spirit them away to marinas stripped of sails thinking of earning some money here in New Zealand or travelling in a different way for a while...  It feels very much like we are reaching an end of an era. And so I realised we are; when I rummaged around to find that we were down to our very last can of American bought tomatoes.

It was a happy day back in February of 2013 when a special offer saw the price of canned tomatoes drop to three cans per dollar at our local store. We had been studying the market for a while where we were working on the boat in Dickinson, Texas and knew that this was the time to buy buy buy.

We knew that there would be places over the coming years where you could expect to pay a considerable sum of money for our staple and we wanted to be sure we would never run out until we could buy them cheap again.

'Can I have eight cases please?' I asked at our local store, 'As I'm buying so many can I have a discount?' (I had to try) 'No way. They are on offer three cans for a dollar, that IS the discount' came the reply. 'You can pick them up tomorrow.'

Cans for us means one thing; tomatoes.  This simplicity is very helpful when the labels come off. Argued there could always be a few odds and sods to be found; maybe an artichoke here, some chipotle chillis there, or a sauerkraut may sneak in... if they're small they may be water chestnuts, but generally all cans we carry and use are tomatoes.  We mix them with beans for chilli or a herby breakfast mix; we use them as a base for many curries, pasta sauces and various soups; and I love to make pizzas whenever we can face the heat of the oven!

Stacked up on the galley side they gave us a real sense of achievement. We had come a long way and the goal was well and truly within sight. We had bought four years prior, what many might have regarded as a wreck of a boat. Though Impetuous was still out of the water, it wouldn't be long until she was launched and we would be sailing off on her. Here we were, stocking up on tomatoes that would last us until we were somewhere totally different.

During the years on Impetuous our 192 cans didn't all rust and no, we didn't varnish them. Before crossing the Pacific we did re-order them, checking for damage. We had a slight list to starboard, in part caused by our food stores, so as we were going to be sailing on a port tack for a month or more, it was time to shift to port anything heavy... Who says cruisers don't think of these things!

It will be with both sadness and joy that we open that last can of tomatoes. An end of an era suggests a loss.  But we will be happy to have crossed an ocean with no shortage of canned tomatoes, happy to have never paid silly money for more supplies and happy not to have died of botulism!   

Pacific passage

We were tearing along; rather than reefing we dropped the mainsail altogether. Slewing about at 8 to 9 knots was not how we wanted to catch our first glimpses of land. Once the main was tied up Beryl (our Aries wind vane) was able to bear off on to a dead run.

Ruth went off to sleep and I got the kettle on. A couple of hours later Hiva Oa crawled out of the dawn like a slumbering dinosaur. Her high rocky craggs becoming visible; Land for the first time in five weeks.

We left Isla Mogo Mogo (Las Perlas, Panama) on Saturday evening, the 14^th June delighted to be heading out into the big blue. There were no nerves; just the exhilarating feeling that finally we were doing what we've wanted to do for a very long time.

We had a beautifully auspicious start; reaching along at 5 knots. Only half an hour out a whale sounded near our boat three or four times. We put two fishing lines out and caught Mackerel on each within an hour; yum... When the wind died down later that evening we were barely drifting along, we were pleased to see that we were still going in the right direction at 1-2 knots, the current was wafting us out.

We were expecting the first leg of our trip to be arduous however, and we weren't disappointed. The sea between Panama and the Galapagos islands is characterised by fickle winds and calms. There is talk of this year being the beginning of an El Nino which may explain why there was even less wind than expected.

Our first two weeks were hard work getting nowhere slowly and at times working pretty hard to stem Impetuous going North or backwards. For two weeks we averaged only 60 miles a day with one memorable day tacking into a light head wind with occasional squalls; out one way and then back, reefing and shaking them out frequently, making a net gain of 10 miles over 24 hours! Not entirely disheartened we gradually edged our way into the Pacific and slipped further in to the enjoyment of ocean passage making, despite the unreliable wind.

It was a welcome juxtaposition from preparing Impetuous for a long passage. Endless provisioning and checks upon the various yacht systems. Stark contrast of the serenity of actually being gone. We read, tidied and relaxed between sail changes and steering adjustments. It did get increasingly frustrating however; after nights and days of rocking on the oceans wave with the sails down, sometimes loosing the hard won miles by drifting up and back; we occasionally decided to motor a little. Slowly, but at least in the right direction.

This lasted until we were a few hundred miles north and to the east of the Galapagos. Little by little a southerly wind developed; the sails went up, the engine silenced for good and we slipped away in to the second part of our crossing; the trade winds.

For the first few days we alternated between one and two reefs in the main, staysail and yankee, our daily runs smashed through their previous poor averages. We expected the pacific to be, well, pacifying, relaxing, steady wind, rolling ocean waves, puffy trade wind clouds and weeks of comfortable steady sailing. We'd pulled in the second reef and still roared along over 7 knots. For almost the next two weeks the reefs were never let out. The yankee was furled at times partially, at others fully as we bouldered along; the lee rail awash as we rolled in the excited sea. We stayed dry, if a little hot inside as the occasional breaking wave would break into the cockpit partially filling it.

As we got closer to the equator we benefited from a favourable current. Our daily averages increased beyond what we thought possible; our record was 192 miles in 24 hours noon to noon. For most of the two weeks we were rarely below the 170 mark. Our tactic of waiting later in the season for the trade winds to fully develop had certainly been effective, if not a little too so.

I'd started peering into the toilet bowl with great interest. We were soon to cross the equator, where upon the water would swill the opposite way on route back to the ocean. For a dyslexic such as myself it takes some remembering which way it swills usually so that one can truly appreciate the change. I even thought of a sentence to help me remember; 'Antipodeans go backwards down the toilet.' As we drew closer I would spend time just curiously flushing away. Well you can imagine my delight and slight surprise when about four miles north of the equator the direction changed. As we edged closer still, I woke Ruth not wanting her to miss out on the celebration. 'We're almost at the equator,' I whispered as I gently rocked her to consciousness, 'and the toilet is already swirling the opposite way!'

Though the first two weeks were frustrating, these next two weeks of tearing along with all sails reefed, were odd. We'd look at each other, 'this is not what I expected'. We'd say. Cowering inside, trusting Beryl to keep us going the right way as another huge wave smashed down on our cabin top. A bit would inevitably find it's way in through the companion way. Our watches were fulfilled by keeping an eye on how things were going from inside. Peeking out to check occasionally, then quickly diving back inside.

With little more than 1000 miles left, there was a gradual slowing. We finally shook out our reefs, opened a few windows to allow some air to circulate and relaxed in to the final stage. We managed to put up the sunshade and sprawled out in the cockpit without fear of frequent drenchings. The sea calmed a little and puffy clouds appeared on the horizon. Our fishing luck changed somewhat too. We had lost several lures to the giants of the deep as well as having some hooks bent straight before we managed to bring our first Mahi mahi on board. With our new ingredient, calmer seas and so boat, we launched with relish into a variety of new meals. Sushi being the first.

Also with the calming of the weather our attitude to the crossing relaxed once more in to the enjoyment of the passage. Days spent relaxing in the shade as the gentle trade wind graced us. No longer pounding along, all the sails were out. We rolled on the left over waves and made a steady 6 knots. As the final days slipped away I slowly realised that I hadn't done any of the tasks I had set myself for the long ocean crossing. I am still only on tape three of French lessons. The Trumpet notes and fingering which I specially downloaded before departure remain on the hard drive of a broken computer as the ocean roll has not been condusive to taking said computer to bits to retrieve the hard drive, broken or not. The list of blog ideas has remained a list. In truth we spent almost all the time doing one of four things; cooking, eating, sleeping and reading.

So here we are. After 35 days at sea we have arrived. Stepping back into the world at the stunningly mountainous and beautifully remote island of Hiva Oa in the Marquesas. We dropped the anchor in the bay and are told the Gendarme doesn't work weekends so there's no hurry to check in yet. We'll make our way in tomorrow, relishing the miles potter in to the village to check our legs still work. 

Another country, a new flag, this time we've got the French flag with the French Polynesian flag below it.  There is a Marquesan flag too but we thought making three would be excessive.