Month: December 2014

First Days in Oz

December 27, 2014

After getting tied up…

And after a very thorough quarantine inspection…

We were tied up and officially in Australia…

We’d arrived in a new, strange, and very flat land…

A land with beauty…

A land with boat parts!…

And new food (like this French toast with ice cream – and flowers on top!)…

Great coffee (couldn’t wait for a picture to drink it!)…

New land – new birds, yay!…

New strange birds…

We’re definitely not in Kansas anymore!…

Let the fun begin… with this seafood feast, arrival dinner with two other cruising boats…

Bundaberg, a nice little town, is 25 minutes away by car…

Pot luck Christmas dinner with Spion Kop and Apogee. Seems, with cruising, wherever you go, you have family!…

And, oh yea, wildlife that want’s us dead! We were warantlessly attacked by this spur-winged plover.

We’re in OZ!!!

December 22, 2014 at about 7 pm local time

We made it. We’re in Australia. Well, not officially as we won’t clear customs until tomorrow morning, but close enough.

Passage: 5 1/2 really nice days. One really sucky day (today). More soon, when we’ve recovered from the last 20 hours.

(OK, now you’re wondering what happened that made it so bad and now you won’t be able to sleep until you know. Nothing happened really, just 20 knots on the beam gusting to 27 knots. Rough, confused seas. When you quantify it, it doesn’t sound so bad. When you live it, you wish you hadn’t!)

Passage Brain Exempt: Trigonometry?

December 22, 2014
 
Please read “Passage Brain?” below first.
 
Is it possible? Is trigonometry exempt from passage brain? I wasn’t even going to try, but I just figured out that, right now, we have two knots of current pushing us north.
 
We’re doing 6.1 knots. We’re steering 20 degrees further south of our course line to hold our course. 6.1 x sin(20) = 2.oh something. Now, granted, it took me a little longer to figure this out than normal. I started thinking about it when I was on my last watch and gave up. After 6 hours sleep, the solution came to me.
 
And let me insert a little bitching here: we have the latest and greatest in Simrad electronics onboard and it doesn’t calculate current. Stupid! (Maybe the developers had Passage Brain?)
 
Are there other things that are exempt from Passage Brain? I don’t think there can be many ’cause right now, I don’t feel like I could think my way out of a paper bag. After an afternoon and night of sails banging around (wind mostly behind us and an unfriendly sea) and being knocked on our side (unfriendly sea again), I am tired and I want to go home! (Don’t really know where that is anymore though.)
 
Anyway, at present, we’re 50 miles off the Australia’s coast. After we turn at the top of Fraser Island (Sandy Cape), we have about another 50 miles to go to Bundaberg. With luck, and some diesel fuel in addition to continued wind, we might make it before it’s totally dark. That’d be a day ahead of schedule. -Rich

Passage Brain?

December 21, 2014 on passage from New Caledonia to Australia
 
Two plus two is… let me see, no, that’s easy. I can still figure that one out. But I filled up our fuel tank from jugs yesterday. Eighteen gallons plus thirteen gallons… let me see, 8 + 3, so I’ll have to carry the one, so that’ll be thirty something… 8 + 3 is 11, so it’ll the sum’ll end in a one… thirty carry the one is 41 gallons! Wow, wait, that ain’t right!
 
I get passage brain, even on nice passages like this one. Simple mental tasks get very difficult for me. You’d laugh if you could hear what goes on in my head when I try to figure out our ETA. “Let me see, today’s Monday, and 46 hours from now’ll be… what day is it again? Let me start over.”
 
I’m sure there are some kind of standardized tests I could take before and during a passage. I’d love to quantify my mental degradation. Am I the only one this happens to? (Did I already do a blog post about this? I can’t remember.)
 
What’s the cause? Is it being rocked, shaken and slammed for days on end? Living at a 20 degree angle? Lack of or interrupted sleep? Altered diet? Atmospheric gluten? Would some drug prevent it? I know alcohol doesn’t – I’ve tried that. I think some research money is justified here.
 
It’s not right (I used the word “right” instead of fair because right now, I can’t remember if it’s f-a-i-r of f-a-r-e!). There are times when I could really use my brain during the passage and it’s out to lunch. I just hope that adrenalin is a cure for the syndrome (PBS?), and in the event of an emergency, my brain will function adequately and do what’s needed.
 
I’m writing this while about 200 miles off the coast of Australia, approaching Bundaberg – well in the throes of passage brain. It’s been a good passage and we’re racing along with the wind at about 15 knots on our stern quarter. Bob McDavitt has done a brilliant job for us on this passage – predicting our weather with precision and clairvoyance! At the rate we’re going, we’ll be in Monday, maybe before dark (but I could be figurin’ wrongly.)
 
(Note: any typos here are the result of afore mentioned syndrome!)