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Expedition Preparation
I finished reading "Into Thin Air". What a great book, though I am not sure it’s the one to read just before you launch into a major adventure like ours. It is a very sad account of how Rob Hall and 11 other climbers lost their lives in a storm that engulfed Mt Everest. It shows how things can go terribly wrong despite divine expertise and planning. All told over 150 people have lost their lives at the Auckland Islands in a little over 100 years.
November 29 A VESSEL AGROUND IN THE MORNING
CAN RUIN YOUR ENTIRE DAY. I don’t know who wrote this but November 29 was not a happy day for Murihiku Expeditions. BlackAdder had been damaged by a rogue wave and would not be repaired in time for our expedition. We were now without a vessel. On Sunday morning Liz young phoned to give me the details All was not well with John. He was still stuck with BlackAdder grounded at Slipper Island and was unlikely to make landfall for several days with heavy seas pounding the East Coast.
December 1 BLACKADDER’S MISFORTUNE
On Dec 1, care of a land line to Slipper Island, I had a long
conversation with our skipper, John. Just for background, in the Auckland area there were about 30 boats damaged during the same storm and in the previous
two weeks there were two serious yachting accidents off our Northland Coast causing loss of life. The incidents had involved experienced sailors on well
equipped vessels.
BlackAdder was out for an annual fishing trip that John timed to give the boat some sea weather, before the Auckland Island trip. BlackAdder hadn't had been to sea for several months while John completed his new house. John was as keen to refresh his hand as he was to test the boat. Knowing that a storm was approaching John decided to head for Slipper Island on his way home. Slipper Island is enroute to Tairua, BlackAdder's home on the East Coast of the North Island.
John says they had had a few splashes on Friday Nov 29 and were reefed and running when a wall of water hit them from behind. The swell was lying on BlackAdder's port quarter and the wave that hit them was a doubled up version of the average 6 metre swell but it had formed a breaking wave. John said the force was unbelievable. He grabbed the helm and hung on. He was wrenched off the wheel and traveled to the extent of his harness where he was jerked to a stop. At this stage BlackAdder had rolled to about 110 degrees so John was clear of the railings and rigging. Apparently John had eight crew on board, two of which were flushed from the cockpit into the cabin when the wave hit. I presume the rest of the crew were either similarly harnessed like John or where caught by surprise in the cabin. As you may have interpreted BlackAdder was lain over on her starboard side which, most unfortunately, is where all of her electrics are. This includes the less essential microwave, video and TV, but more importantly the SSB, VHF, GPS, chartplotter, weather fax, sounder, radar and the electrical switch board. (John's cockpit holds 4.3 cubic metres of water by my measurements. So even if only one cockpit full of water went below that is a reasonable addition to ballast and would certainly be enough to submerge all the electrical instrumentation as John reported.)
BlackAdder, now a little sluggish, righted herself and John was again behind the wheel. John now back to compass and cell phone sailed for Slipper. All night they tried to get the motor started. Ironically it had earlier been starting itself with electrical shorts but eventually with contaminated fuel as a result of the knock down, the injectors got choked. The injectors were bled however the injector pump and starter then refused to cooperate. The starter was removed and fixed but the injector pump still remained a stumbling block.
At this stage BlackAdder was in Stingray Bay, and was attempting to anchor. After deployment of a 60lb plough anchor, BlackAdder started dragging toward Watchmans rock. John says without a motor they could not winch in the 100m of chain to reset it. At mid day still blowing 60 knots they slipped the Anchor and beat away to the north of Watchmans rock. Short tacking they made their way up into Slippers Western shore and dropped their second anchor a 30lb plough with 20 metres of chain and 100m of rope. This anchor also dragged and the crew exhausted from short tacking the boat throughout the afternoon had decided to beach BlackAdder in South Bay. They tacked right up into the teeth of Mania Reef to get enough run to make the beach. It took three attempts before Black Adder finally wedged herself up on the sand. The third time Black Adder finally beached in middle of the bay. With no trees in the vicinity to tie up to, a foray onto the island during the late afternoon produced a tractor that had been acquired from a local farmer. It was used to "moor" the boat against the next high tide. John and 3 crew stood watch overnight while the rest of the crew took haven in a local farmhouse. The next day (I presume the farmer required his tractor back) a dead-mans post was dug into the sand as a temporary mooring. The storm had passed by Monday and BlackAdder was refloated and moved to a mooring in South Bay. The crew were airlifted back to waiting jobs via helicopter early afternoon. Unfortunately beaching had damaged BlackAdder's rudder and there was a big shiny patch on the bottom of the steel hull were sand action had removed anti-fouling and paint. There was no question that she would need to be towed home.
Tuesday the swell dropped enough that the Tairua sand bar became passable. A fishing vessel came out to assist BlackAdder home. In the finish the repairs to BlackAdder included replacement of almost all the electrical equipment and wiring, an overhaul of the injector pump, rudder realignment and steering ram repair. The rigging needs to be examined for stress fractures and the hull needs a coat of paint. Of course we all send our best wishes to John with his unenviable task of both missing our expedition and returning BlackAdder to her former condition.
December 5 IS IT REALLY MY BIRTHDAY?
Today was my birthday and probably the first time that someone had to remind me. Wow I am now 31 and I feel like a grown up. Maybe that’s why I am having memory troubles. It was also the first time my sister forgot by birthday too! Clearly we are all really busy with our target in site. Despite the boat being a problem everything is continuing, dive rehearsals, food planning, sorting out gear. To be honest I am writing this entry in hindsight. I can’t even remember what we worked on!
December 7 WE DON’T HAVE A BOAT BUT WE HAVE WEB PAGES
My old friend Ian Boswell now a director of Clearfield Software was instrumental in helping me to set up a web site. He allocated one of his workers Mark to help us work out what we needed and the end result looks really good. I can’t speak highly enough of these guys. Well anyway today I spent a few more hours working with them to get some of the materials they need. I know I am a bit of a bottleneck as far as getting stuff to them but they are very understanding and supportive particularly since I don’t have a boat! Anyway hope this all ready soon so everyone can see what a superb job they have done.
December 8 QUICK UPDATE
We are still trying to find a replacement vessel. Unfortunately with Christmas charters largely booked it might add $10,000 onto our budget to get a suitable vessel. This is a real pain so late in the piece. It is not easy to find a vessel equipped to go to that part of the world. You have to have a pretty damn good boat. I have a few leads so hopefully we will have this sorted soon. I think the crew are getting anxious. If we can leave by Saturday from Auckland then we are still on Schedule. I have to say that it has been quite an experience to get so much help from so many people in respect of finding a vessel. It is no easy task but with all the help we are getting I am sure it will only take time. I spoke to the owners of an old navy patrol boat called Takapu. They have started a business in southern waters. Ironically this is the same vessel that Dad skippered around the New Zealand coast during one of his navy postings. Anyway they said it took them 4 years to find a vessel suitable for the type of charter work they wanted to do. Not sure I want to pass that on to the crew.
December 10 DIVE NIGHT
Every Monday and Thursday night we have been driving to the Henderson dive pool to test diving equipment for the expedition. In the conditions we may
find at the Islands even moderate sea state requires you to be very familiar
with your gear. We will be kitting out in a confined space on a rocking boat.
We need to be sure we don’t get our gear mixed up but most of all we need to
make sure we don’t lose stuff over the side. Thanks to Apollo we have a lot of
new gear. Simple things like how do you hold on to a scooter, a canister
underwater light and the boat all at the same time have to be sorted out.
Everything has to be a system because there is not much time to think on the
spot when the boat is rocking around and gear is all over the place.
AVI - Paul testing a scooter(2.4MB)
AVI - Julie testing a camera(2.6MB)
Steve has been working out attachments for a staging bottle so if necessary we can do some deep air dives. A staging bottle is a second dive bottle that attaches to your person to give you reserve air for dives that require you to make decompression stops on return to the surface. Testing the underwater cameras is fairly crucial too. We don’t want either cameras that don’t work or cameras that leak. Everyone practiced using the cameras by taking photos of each other and sometimes of not much! We have plenty of volunteers to test out the underwater scooters. You can speed around the pool at a speed of 4km an hour which doesn’t sound much but you really have to hang on! It is also possible to tow people in pairs but we found that quite hard in a current.
Actually I have to say the best thing for me is the drysuits. Not only do you step into them fully clothed, the buoyancy is so well balanced in them that you can hang perfectly suspended in any position. Horizontal, vertical or at 45 degrees. With most suits people talk about vertical inversions where the air in the dry suit gets trapped in your feet and you start heading to the surface in an uncontrolled assent. That doesn’t happen in the Apollo suits. They are really quite amazing. Many other suits use leg weights to keep the feet down but this wasn’t necessary with my suit either. I think Steve was amazed also. He was so impressed that he told me he had originally planned to sell his suit to help him with his university studies but after testing it out he wants to keep it.
December 12 PRE-EXPEDITION PREPARATION by Steve
Well, I arrived in New Zealand from Canada on Wednesday morning just in time for the second day of the basic GPS course being run by GeoSystems New Zealand. Julie, who attended the first day got me up to speed on the stuff I missed and made sure my jet lag didn’t get the better of me on the second day. We learned about the PRO XR data logger which gets the information from the satellites, how to create a data dictionary in the GPS software Pathfinder, assembling all the pieces together and set up the antenna and a roving unit. An overview of the GPS and GIS (Geographical Information System) systems really helped my understanding of how they can work together. We did lots of field work, and learned different techniques for recording positions. This stuff is really cool and will be a tremendous asset to the expedition. They can record positions accurately to within 50 cm, and by using some special techniques, the positions can be even more accurately recorded. I also did the advanced course. We focused on setting up our own base station, advanced data collection techniques, and methods for coping with various problems such as being underwater, for example when we dive on wreck sites at the Auckland Islands. The course was a great learning experience for me. We still have more training to do in respect of how to set up the Base Station on the Auckland Islands. The Base Station sits at Pillar Rock (50 31’ 02.36578" S 166 13’ 40.82856" E. This changes by about 40 mm per year) and we can work out the error that local satellites are transmitting so we can remove the significant error deliberately built into the American satellite system.
December 12
Great news! I am talking with a boat owner in Nelson. Everything sounded good. I have to sit down and work all the calculations based on the boat’s specification. How fast it travels, how far we have to travel to get to Auckland Islands return from Nelson. This will tell us how much diesel we will need taking into account that we will use wind power as much as we can. We also have to do our calculations on our electricity requirements and water use. We have big electricity demands with all of our electrical gear. We have powerful camera lights for underwater work, underwater scooters, a couple of laptops plus all the navigation gear. Not all of this can run on 12v so we need 230v power also. 230v is produced from a small petrol generator. Ultimately we will make most of our electricity from fuel. We need to calculate how much petrol we need to drive the generator, the dive compressor and the outboard and make sure we have enough space to store all the fuel. And of course money calculations too.
Yes we have it! It will work. We have a 60 foot ketch which has been to the Islands before. I will have to check the spelling but she is called Waitane pronounced Why-tahn-ay. We know she is equipped to do the job. I will not be able to keep to our schedule though. We gain a few days by leaving from Nelson instead of Auckland, but overall we will lose 4 days from our schedule. Other than that the only impact was on our budget. We do have some bits and pieces we still have to hook together to get email working but I think we can work that out. We sail from Nelson (top of the South Island) on Dec 18. Awesome! Everyone here is really excited. A huge relief.
Plans are going really well. These days are really busy but things are all coming together. I managed to sort out the money. I lucked in on some stocks which I managed to sell to get some quick cash. We still have a couple of major items we have to sort out but so far I think we can do it. Everyone is excited and I am tired. Dad has noticed and keeps asking me to get some sleep. I am getting plenty and it’s not just me. Everyone is working hard to test gear and I think we are all just as tired. There is always so much to do but we keep knocking things off the list. It would be unachievable without all the hard work every single person is putting in. At the moment my sister is annoyed with me over the food because I told her a week ago that I was sure our boat would have a freezer. And now it seems that we don’t. That is a huge last minute change to the menu and it’s the second time we have reverted back to having no freezer. We looked at buying one yesterday but the cost rules that out. Anyway gear is piling into our small store room down stairs. That has to be a good sign.
December 18 PREPARATION FOR SEA
We spent the last two days preparing WAITANE for sea. (Waitane is a Maori name that very loosely translates to God of the Water. From my memory Tane is the king of the Forest in Maori folklore and Wai stands for water). For many of us it was our first trip to Nelson and our travel to Wellington overnight by a well packed rental van had gone without hitch. A small unplanned detour was taken by the car carrying the crew when a turn was missed just before Wellington but we all made the Cook Strait Ferry on time. The passage on the new Fast Link Ferry was very comfortable. Julie Ooi and Steve left in Wellington to visit the Institute of Geologic and Nuclear Sciences to get a briefing on how to set up the GPS Base station once we get to the Auckland Islands. They caught up with us in Nelson later in the day.
We had little problem finding Waitane amongst the other yachts. She was the only ketch close to sixty feet. The first thing that stood out was the wide flared bow and a nicely stepped cabin profile that looked very seaworthy. There were some guys sitting on the deck talking. We were all excited and I just couldn't wait to get out of the van. I introduced myself and found Roger to be one of the guys on deck. He was very friendly, and despite being a bit guarded about letting us have his boat, he was also keen to see it put to good use. We later found that it had been sitting idle for sometime. Roger was still unloading excess gear off the boat as we started to load our gear onto the fore-deck. We did the usual semi-detailed tour of inspection and then Roger left us to it. It didn't take us long to find our first few problems. She had no navigation lights. No stern light, spreader lights or masthead lights. The aft compass light was also missing. That was just the start.
In the middle of stowing food and equipment from the rental van we ducked out to pick up Suave from the Nelson airport at 8pm and Julie Ooi and Steve who arrived a few minutes later on the bus from Nelson. Everything had worked out like clockwork so far thanks to my sister's excellent last minute work sorting out transport. After collecting the crew we stopped at the warehouse to get some plates and cups. The boat only had fine crockery on board which Roger had taken off with good reason since he knew where we were headed. As we approached the boat all aboard were keen to lay eyes on the object of all our recent effort. They weren't disappointed.
Steve and Mike got the forard cabin. Julie Hulford and Julie Ooi got the cabin on port side just forard of the saloon, which was opposite the head and shower. Dad and I claimed the big aft births which both had regular single matresses on them. In reality we would be rotating through these aft births while we are at sea according to the watches. We tucked snugly into bed around 2200 (10pm) very tired after driving the length of the North Island the previous night.
The next day we had many problems to fix on the boat, the lights for one. We need all sorts of small bits and pieces and the crew made several trips into town. We stowed much of the excess gear plus items we had removed from the boat (like carpet) into Brent's warehouse. Brent was another local who could not have been more helpful. He was a boatbuilder with a big shed that he used to work on several boats including his own launch. In between loads to the shed I detoured into a Barber shop to get a haircut before they closed. I don't know what we did all day but it was over before I knew it and I was as pleased as anyone to get to bed. I just remember we had great food and my list of things that needed fixing seemed to have grown.