I flew down to Hobart on the 30th December 2004, my head glued to the
plane window. I wanted to get a look at the coast line I was about to
sail up, and maybe catch a glimpse of Rollercoaster from 30 000'. I got
a good look at Babel, Flinders, Cape Barren and Clarke Islands, and a
fair chunk of the Eastern Tasmanian coastline. I didn't see any boats
though, or if I did they were too small to recognize.

Did a bit of the touristy thing in Hobart, wandering around town,
meeting locals at the pubs, going to the markets. Had a New Years drink
in Australias' oldest pub, the Sail and Anchor (the next day it was to
be closed down to be turned into a block of apartments. Thanks to the
Heritage Trust the facade will be retained, but not the heritage.) Then
went down to Constitution dock with a bottle of vodka to watch the
fireworks and to go from boat to boat making a general nuisance of
myself to all the crews of the boats that had already come in.

Rollercoaster didn't arrive until the evening of New Years day, after
six days, six hours and fourteen or something minutes. They had holed up
at Eden for thirty hours to shelter from a storm. Chris reckons they
could've weathered one night in the gale but not two, so they chose to
rest. As it turned out, all but a dozen of the fleet kept going only to
end up retiring. 57 of the 116 entries didn't get to Hobart. (As with
all other aspects of life, good seamanship includes knowing your
limitations.) Skandia, the multi-million dollar Maxi-Yacht with the
flash new cantilevered keel was under-engineered and the hydraulics that
controlled the keel broke after launching itself off a big roller in
Bass Strait. With no ballast to hold her steady the boat had to be
abandoned, forty minutes later the keel feel out and she capsized.(Ha!
Ha!) As Rollercoaster was sailing past Flinders Island they heard on the
VHF radio that Skandia was under tow into the township of Lady Barren on
Flinders Island on a 250m tow-line, they looked up just in time see the
smaller for'ard canard keel ahead and had to tack to miss it.

Chris was the only crew member from the race that did the return trip.
There was also myself, Klara, a pretty 21 year old English girl that has
done her yacht masters and crossed the Atlantic (but still has trouble
tyeing a bowline), Thor, a Norwegian that did a basic sailing course,
through Sydney Uni, were he studies English, and finally John, another
Englishman, that had raced with Chris a couple of times, couldn't swim
and wouldn't lie straight in bed. Experience was sorely lacking on deck.
We had two watches of two crew. Klara was head of one watch, I was head
of the other, Chris was master and commander, navigator, sail master,
chef, and helmsman when all hands were needed on deck. I made John my
first mate (for lack of a better term) as I had just shared a room in
the hostel with him for a couple of days and didn't want to share the
bunk with him while we alternated through the watches (as soon as he
entered a room his bags would explode leaving all his gear covering
every available surface.)

We ended up leaving Hobart at 10pm, Monday 3rd. Chris chose not to round
Tasman Island, instead we passed through the town of Dunally via the
Denison canal at 6am (toll for the swing bridge - one dollar and one can
of beer) then through a series of channel markers in Blackmans Bay.
Chris thought to use this time to run the crew through some training,
setting up the first and second reefs on the main. Chris was at the
helm, yelling orders to the crew, I was standing beside him, calling the
depths and direction to the next marker. "2m...1 point 6...1m...point
5..." when just as we were shaking out the second reef we ran aground.
Not hard, just a jolt that made a grinding hiss as the keel struck sand.
We were well inside the marked channel, the marker was 20' off our
starboard beam. In hindsight I think I should've been up front looking
for the shoals, not relying on the ultra sound. Fortunately some
fishermen came along soon after as our attempts to pole off the bar
using the spinnaker pole were unsuccessful and the tide was rapidly
receding. The fishermen had a twenty foot aluminium dinghy with a 60hp
outboard, however, after fifteen minutes of trying to drag us off the
bar with a line from the bow were thwarted, Chris thought to pass them a
halyard from the masthead and drag us off sideways. Once clear I stayed
at the bow calling the lay of the channel.

An hour later we were in open water, Thor and John were below decks,
green as the shores the lubbers had left behind. Chris was worried that
we might have to set them ashore as he didn't want to take them across
the Strait in that condition. The first night was pretty hairy, long
watches at the helm for both Klara and I. The sky was clouded over,
there were few town lights on the horizon, almost nothing to give you
any sense of direction, just the compass, the windex and the wind on
your face, with the waves coming out of the blackness off the starboard
bow trying to turn us aside. Chris was all for pushing us to the limit,
to see how much we could handle, before we entered Bass Strait. Thor or
John didn't surface again for twenty-four hours, once they had managed
to keep down some sea-sickness pills.

The following day and night were mostly uneventful, or at least my
memory of it is. I recall John and Thor finally surfaced, tentatively. I
got John to take the helm during our watches in the day as much as he
was comfortable with. I figured if he didn't get the feel of the boat
he'd be of no use to anyone, as he didn't know anything about setting or
trimming the sails. At first I couldn't even go below long enough to put
the kettle on before he would be calling for me to come back on deck. He
managed to learn quick enough, provided he had a landmark to steer by.
He realised he needs glasses as he could hardly see the needle or the
numbers on the windex and instruments.(Of all the useless, slack-arsed,
tale-bearing, present-seeking, double-poxed, lily-livered lubbers to
show a hand.) By this time I was as much for breaking him as Chris was
to making us.

By our third day we were approaching the north-eastern most tip of
Tasmania, our first real experience of the waters of Bass Strait, a 20NM
stretch between Eddystone Point and Clarke Island. We had been listening
to the Bureau of Meteorology forecasts on the VHF three times a day,
there was an intense low pressure system passing over the Great
Australian Bight, winds of up to 50 knots were kicking up the waves from
the depths of the Southern Ocean.
" Securite, Securite, Securite, All Ships, All Ships, All Ships, A
Strong Wind Warning is forecast for the South Eastern Tasmanian coastal
waters, please be aware that wind gusts may be up to forty per cent
stronger than the averages given here and waves may be up to twice the
height..." droned the announcer.
The big rollers had started, three to four metres in height but a good
fifty to a hundred metres between the crests coming from the west, a
slow steady rise and fall in the swell with smaller one and two metre
waves that could come from almost any other direction. Chris had no
intention of sending us into the Strait with those conditions, so we
made our way to Lady Barren, a small fishing town of less than a
hundred, hidden between Cape Barren and Flinders Island.

Our approach to Flinders Island took us over four nautical miles from
shore, to avoid the Pot Boil Shoals. A pod of dolphins came to play in
the bow wave as we headed back towards the shore, then following a
series of five different leeds (a couple of marks on shore, one set back
from the other so you must line them up to be in the channel) we finally
made it to harbour by early evening, a dog-legged pylon jetty, with a
crane for unloading the ships. There were several yachts seeking shelter
there, as well as a few fishing boats. The crews of the other yachts
were all really friendly, lending us some long lines and helping with
securing ourselves onto every other available point to wait out the
gale. After a few brief introductions to our new neighbours we had
dinner and then all went to bed by 9:30, exhausted. I slept a solid
eleven hours that night.

The next day was a difficult one for me. I had chosen to use the trip as
a starting point to stop smoking. John had also stated his intention to
do the same, but had caved before leaving Hobart (The yellow-bellied,
double-crossing, weak-willed, skirt-chasing, arse-kissing son of mongrel
dog. Klara also smoked and John was keen to do anything to get in her
good graces.) While we were at sea it was easy enough, there was plenty
of things to keep my mind and hands occupied. However once on shore,
with nothing to do but wait, we soon found ourselves in the only pub in
town, drinking beer, and playing pool. I couldn't stand it, I found
myself obsessing about cigarettes, so I left. I set about trying to find
something, anything to do.(Which should also in part explain the length
and detail of this letter. I still haven't had any cigarettes, and try
to keep busy at all times.) I was Filling water tanks, fuel tanks,
pumping out the bilge and searching for the leaks that filled them, and
when I'd done everything I could think of on our boat, I was helping the
local fishermen moor up, and unload. By the end of the day, one of our
neighbours, in a yacht called Andante, noticing all my activity, called
me "the busiest man on Flinders Island" and invited me over to join
their crew in a few drinks. At least none of them smoked.

Those guys were in port when Skandia was towed in, they told me that the
owners had ordered the hull to be stripped bare of anything that would
come off. The fridge had been washed out while it was floundering
capsized at sea. The mast had snapped off while they towed in into port,
the rigging dragging along behind, all the sails and fittings and bunks
and everything had been taken out and dumped at the tip, the locals in a
scavenging frenzy. The crew of Andante had scored some of the sails,
they were going to make place mats for the Tamar Yacht Club in
Launceston. Then the hull was loaded onto a barge and sent back to the
mainland.

We ended up staying at Flinders Island for 39 hours. Chris had set
deadlines as to when we should leave several times. He wanted to sail
out to Babel Island, out to the north-east in the lee of Flinders and
weather the storm there, the other crews saying he was crazy. The
deadline would come, we would check the wind speed, thirty five knots,
gusting strongly, and he would set another time.

Midday Friday it started to ease off, by now the wind had shifted around
to the south-west, a reasonable ten to twenty knots of pressure on the
stern, the ideal position to push us straight across Bass Strait and
towards the coast of mainland Australia. I'm not sure if it was the same
pod that we saw days before, but as we left the Pot Boil behind a group
of dolphins came and started to play in our bow waves for what seemed
like over an hour. We dropped the Genoa and set the Spinnaker, and they
were still there. In the end I could recognise a couple by the scarring
on their backs, I was laying down on the foredeck, head over the bow,
watching them come up in pairs, two on the port, then two on the
starboard, surface as the crest of the wave overtook us from behind.
Then they would come alongside, swimming on their sides, so I was
looking them eye to eye, not three feet from the bow of the boat. They
were having so much fun it was impossible not to laugh at their play.

We had taken in the spinnaker at sunset, then brought in the main to the
second reef. With the big rollers throwing us about and the crew still
unhandy at their tasks these two simple tasks took over half an hour. If
we had been forced to do it in a sudden squall I wonder what might have
happened. It was dark by the time we were finished. That evening the
clouds had come over again, this time there was no shore, so there were
no stars and no lights to guide us, or give you any sense of which way
was which. The wind and waves were coming in from the stern and if the
wind pressure dropped we found that the boom would swing about with
every rise and fall of the boat, so we tied on a preventer, a line that
secured the boom as far over to the port side as possible. We snapped
the preventer several times that night, as the wind passed from behind
the mainsail after a moments lack of concentration at the helm.

Our watch system was set as two on, two off, three hour shifts from 6am
till midnight, then two hour shifts midnight to 6am. That night we all
slept in full wet-weather gear, boots and all, ready to be on deck in a
moments notice. John and I had the easier of the two graveyard shifts,
only having to cover 2-4am. I must have ****ed him off though as the
next morning John requested to Chris to swap watches with Thor. He had
had the helm for only fifteen minutes and already jibed a couple of
times, I was trying to explain to him that even if you can't see the
instruments you should at least still be able feel the wind on your
face. He complained that he didn't want to learn how to sail by a
sextant.( The stupid, slow-witted, back-stabbing, soft-skinned,
ne'er-do-well.)

So he couldn't see and he couldn't swim, couldn't keep his breakfast
without medication, couldn't handle or steer a boat by night, couldn't
set, trim or reef a sail, couldn't bend, hitch, or splice a sheet,
couldn't admit it until he was pressed and didn't want to learn how.
No-good, Lying, Lubberly, Leech.

Saturday was begun in the midst of Bass Strait, the meeting point of
three major currents. One from across the bottom of mainland Australia,
where the roaring forties build up the waves as they cross the Great
Australian Bight, another from the Southern Ocean, coming up the
Tasmanian east coast, and the last the current that travels down the
Australian east coast. This conflux is what makes Bass Strait such a
notorious stretch of water. We were fortunate, the sea wasn't angry that
day, only mildly annoyed. The recent storm had built up the waves from
the south-west into big slow rollers, with the occasional freak wave
peaking at most to six metres. With the Island State of Tasmanian to our
south-west the land was sheltering us from the deeps of the Southern
Ocean. By late afternoon we had sighted land ahead, and were rounding
Gabo Island, near the Victorian-New South Wales border.

The preventer was broken a couple of times again that night, but with
light houses and towns to offer some guiding light maintaining course
was easier, offering a focal point in the blackness. This night I began
to share my watch with Thor, and so my watches became a quieter,
regulated affair. Thor, not being obsessed by the sound of his own
voice, was happy to sit and wait. As we had agreed to take turns at the
helm for half hour intervals, I found he kept watch of his watch on his
watch during his watch. Maybe it was the literalness of an English
student, maybe his viking blood, I'm not sure, but he would wordlessly
sidle up to the helm, and wait for an opportune moment to hand over the
wheel.

Thor was at the helm, at about eight in the morning that Sunday, when he
started calling out in such an animated manner his that his accent made
it difficult to understand him. I finally gathered that there was
something obstructing our course, and looking forward I saw some shapes
floating in the water about fifty metres, dead ahead. Now hidden in the
trough of a wave, now briefly visible. I called for Chris to come up and
once he had I got another brief glimpse. The first thing that came to
mind was that they were Dugongs, though I knew that that would be
impossible this far south. There was four of them, big grey rounded
backs about six foot across, with a smaller rounded lump at the front
and no visible dorsal fin, they were laying side-by-side, with less than
a foot between them. Thor had turned us up into the wind a few degrees,
so we would pass them on our port side. By now they were not more than
five metres from the port bow, when suddenly the water around them
started to churn and foam. I saw two of them spray as they exhaled
before their dive, the head disappeared and a small dorsal fin passed
over, then they were gone.

Fortunately we had a satellite phone hooked up to a laptop on board.
Chris got on the net and checked out some whale-watching web-sites.
Sleeping together in pods on the surface, small dorsal fin set right
back, don't show their flukes when diving; three strong signs to
indicate that they were probably Minke whales. Chris also looked up
Sunfish, John had sighted a fin the day before, and had decided without
any further evidence that he had seen the mysterious and elusive
Sunfish. I'm still dubious. (John had seen a bunch of Cuttlefish shell
floating on the water and remarked that he hadn't seen them skoal like
that before, and they usually had more "fleshy bits", making out like a
real Marine Biologist, Chris told him that they were transparent in the
water.)

Sunday was a relaxed day of cruising up the coast within sight of the
shore. The low pressure system that had created the storm had passed
across the Tasman and now the wind was coming from the south-east, and
veering further east as the day went on. The afternoon saw a suspension
of the strict drinking discipline we had adopted, (one drink,
per-person, per-day, per-haps. The per-haps being determined by the
prevailing weather conditions.) We were allowed three drinks as we
cruised along in a light eight to ten knots, occasionally dropping off
so we had to motor, then picking up again, always trying to maintain at
least five knots of headway.

We arrived in Sydney harbour midday, motoring in as the wind had almost
dropped right off. The harbour was calm and quiet, and as we passed
Watsons Bay we were greeted by two of the Fairy Penguins that nest near
Manly. The whole trip had taken six days, fourteen hours. A whole eight
hours longer than it took them to race it. Of course we could motor in
the calm, and we had ideal conditions after Flinders Island. We had just
sailed four hundred nautical miles in a mostly steady fifteen knot
sou'westerly. Chris was a bit disappointed that we didn't get a chance
to experience some of Bass Straits notorious conditions, but I wasn't
all that fussed, I had had a good time.


Kirk van Koeverden

What a great story! Kirk, thanks for posting this! And congratualtions
on quitting smoking... very tough to do but worth it in the long run.

Kirk van Koeverden wrote:
...snip for brevity...
So he couldn't see and he couldn't swim, couldn't keep his breakfast
without medication, couldn't handle or steer a boat by night, couldn't
set, trim or reef a sail, couldn't bend, hitch, or splice a sheet,
couldn't admit it until he was pressed and didn't want to learn how.
No-good, Lying, Lubberly, Leech.


I get the impression that you don't like this guy.

Fresh Breezes- Doug King

I agree with Doug..great story. I really like these stories
posted to the news group. Besides being a good sea story, there
are usually lessons to be learned.

It would seem to be a good idea, if possible, to take a crew
and boat shake-down sail lasting 4 - 6 hours, preferably in sickning
rollers on a broad reach....then decide if one could live
with the crew at hand. I, for one, have sailed for a week at
a time with people I'll never sail with again...mainly the drunks,
and those who don't have much experience and are determined not to learn.
Of course those were sailing classes, and I had no say about shipmates.

A mini-story: A friend and I were to depart a harbor on the California
coast. My friend had been in and out of this harbor several times.
I'd noticed the day before on arrival a red buoy a quarter mile southwest
of the breakwater entrance. Further on was a green buoy. I'd looked at the chart,
and saw that the red buoy was the mate to a green buoy denoting the
prefered channel for a northwest arrival, and the green buoy (with a
corresponding red one further south) marked a channel for a southwest arrival.
It was apparent that either departure route was about the same
distance-wise/time-wise to gain open ocean, odd as that may sound.

I asked my friend what course he liked to depart, and he indicated
he wanted to go between the red buoy to the north, and the green
buoy to the south. That didn't compute too well, and looking at the chart
again showed why. Those two buoys not only helped define the two channels,
but also defined the ends of a long reef, parts of which would dry, since it
was an ebb.

When I pointed this out to my
friend, his response was that he'd seen other boats go that way. On closer
questioning, he admitted he'd only seen local power boats go that way.
I told him that if he was determined to take that route, in a Catalina 36 with its
rock-grabbing keel, he may as well set me ashore, (yep, a mutiny)
because I wouldn't sail across (or into) a reef with him. Things got a bit heated
until it dawned on me that he simply couldn't read a chart!
So I cooled down, gave him the short course in chart reading, and he became
convinced finally. Needless to say, I did the nav work from that point on, and
we got along great for the rest of the cruise. Since I'm a new sailor, I did learn
a lot from him about boat handling in the open ocean. (12 foot swells look HUGE
to a sheltered waters sailor grin)

I'm curious that you had so many preventer problems...how was it rigged,
and what type was it?

Norm B

On Sat, 26 Feb 2005 12:14:50 -0500, DSK wrote:

What a great story! Kirk, thanks for posting this! And congratualtions
on quitting smoking... very tough to do but worth it in the long run.

Kirk van Koeverden wrote:
...snip for brevity...
So he couldn't see and he couldn't swim, couldn't keep his breakfast
without medication, couldn't handle or steer a boat by night, couldn't
set, trim or reef a sail, couldn't bend, hitch, or splice a sheet,
couldn't admit it until he was pressed and didn't want to learn how.
No-good, Lying, Lubberly, Leech.


I get the impression that you don't like this guy.

Fresh Breezes- Doug King

DSK wrote:
What a great story! Kirk, thanks for posting this!

Thank you.
Your account of your delivery trip from Florida inspired me to do the same.
I've been emailing it to so many of my friends that I was worried my ISP
might begin to think I was a spammer!

engsol wrote:
I agree with Doug..great story. I really like these stories
posted to the news group. Besides being a good sea story, there
are usually lessons to be learned.

Thanks.
After rereading it a couple of weeks after I wrote it, I realise that
it's a bit incoherent in places. The story was written over a period of
a week or more, coming back to it, rearranging it, cut and pasting here
and there. I should have proof-read it better, there's alot of
background information that I assumed my friends would know, so I didn't
include it in the account.

Just for the record, the race was the 2004, 60th Sydney to Hobart.
The boat is a Sydney 32' called "Rollercoaster".
You can check it out on;
http://rolexsydneyhobart.com/yacht_d...ceEntryID=4749

And congratualtions on quitting smoking... very tough to do but worth
it in the long run.

After nearly three weeks back on shore, in my "normal" life, I fell back
into the habit. Writing the account kept me preoccupied enough for one
of those weeks.
Ironically John has himself since quit.

So he couldn't see and he couldn't swim, couldn't keep his breakfast
without medication, couldn't handle or steer a boat by night, couldn't
set, trim or reef a sail, couldn't bend, hitch, or splice a sheet,
couldn't admit it until he was pressed and didn't want to learn how.
No-good, Lying, Lubberly, Leech.

That's the most commonly quoted paragraph in the story, and one of my
favourites. Spent hours on that one alone.

I get the impression that you don't like this guy.

It's not that I don't like him, just tired of the garbage that comes out
of his mouth.
I'll admit I took some pleasure in coming up with the curses, with some
inspiration from C.S.Forrester and Patrick O'Brian.

"Of all the useless, slack-arsed, tale-bearing, present-seeking,
double-poxed, lily-livered lubbers to show a hand."

I'm curious that you had so many preventer problems...how was it rigged,
and what type was it?

The boat didn't have a regular preventer as such, it was just a sail tie
that had been looped around the boom, aft of the vang, then attached at
the base of a staunchion.
On a cloudy night, no stars, no moon, no sign of the shore, nothing to
give you any sense of direction, add to that some big rollers coming in
from the rear starboard quarter, pushing the stern over one way as it
approaches, then the other way as it passes. All these things put
together make steering a steady course a little tricky.
Imagine keeping your eyes closed and steer according to the direction of
the wind on the back of yourneck.

I should point out that I myself am no well seasoned sailor, but am
handy with a line, thanks to scouts/venturers, abseiling since I was a
little tacker, and working in theatres for years.
I've been racing with Chris for the last 18 months, aboard a Cape 31',
day-sailing, both inshore and off, on a weekly basis. I'm light and
reasonably agile, so I've become his foredeck man. But I don't get to
steer or trim the sails as often as I'd like.
I do enjoy all the action up on the foredeck though.