Turning Around

On May 5 we sent a note to our son. The key message was as follows:

 

“We are sending you this note before we send out the general note to the gang. You should be the first to know.

 

We are not continuing on the circumnavigation. It is all explained in the next note we send.

 

We are safe, we are happy, but we have had some experiences that are telling us ‘head back’, and so we are.”

 

 

IT ALL STARTED OUT SO WELL:

 

On May 1, we headed back to Pototogat after our productive nine days in Teluk Bayur. It was a good trip - a slow but steady 20 hours. We had a couple of squalls (I had 33 knots of wind with rain & lightning on my night watch) but we were prepared ... only a bit of headsail flying, which we then wrapped up tight. We had the motor running while we were making water (which we couldn't do in the not-so-clean harbor of Teluk Bayur), which made things a bit easier.

 

We then got busy getting the boat and ourselves ready for offshore: taking the dinghy motor off, tightly securing the dinghy to the davits, putting away breakables, running jack lines (to hook ourselves to when we leave the cockpit), putting out our MOB sling and horseshoe, checking the contents of our ditch kit (what we'll take with us if we have to leave the boat in a hurry), digging out our foul weather gear, and so on.

 

The dinghy motor off the dinghy, securely mounted to Cankata.

Darrel waterproofing the canvas.

 

Airing out our seldom-used foul-weather gear.

 

We had a wonderful two months in Indonesia, slowly working our way south and enjoying fine weather, but now we were at the starting line of our crossing of the Indian Ocean. 

 

Our May 3 email:

 

Darrel is in the water, scrubbing a bit of scum off the hulls of CanKata so we'll glide through the water better.

 

We decided to head off from here, Pototogat, since it is lovely and calm and good for doing our preparations.

 

We have set up the starboard berth (no more sleeping together until Rodrigues, sigh) so that whoever is off-watch and napping is easily accessible by the helmsman.  The laundry is done, all the safety equipment is at our finger tips, our EPIRB has been tested, our strobe lights are attached to our life jackets, the sea-sick meds are on the kitchen counter, and our flag has been tucked away. A basket of raisins, crackers, ginger cookies, chocolates and peanuts is sitting on the table, in case the helmsman gets peckish.

 

A good drying day.

 

 

 

Not ticked off: Secure all books. Ha! We have Kindles now. No more books to go flying across the boat (which they seldom do in a cat anyway).

 

As soon as Darrel dries off, we'll be underway.

 

Another email later that day:
 

 

LATITUDE: 02-13.37S

LONGITUDE: 099-10.76E

 

Above is our position at 1000 UTC. We are moving slowly at 3.8 to 4.0 knots.

 

The winds are calm, the swell is gentle, the sky is clear, and we were thrown a good-bye bash by about 100 dolphins, just as we were leaving. They didn't come very close ... seemed more interested in a school of tuna.

 

We have taken off our exterior sun shields (to protect them from severe wave and salt exposure) and now the boat is good and hot ... 40 degrees most of the day. Good thing we're not trying to keep meat frozen.

 

When we left, I asked the captain if we needed to maintain an average speed. "No", he replied, "time is on our side", which got me singing that fab Rolling Stone song, which prompted me to put on some music. I put "TIME" into the media player search engine and got 214 items with "time" in the title, album or artist. We got a great selection, including "Best Singles of All Time" (was Agadoo really a best single?), "Timeless - Hank Williams", "It's Time" by Michael Bublé or Mick Bubbles as an Aussie friend calls him, and "Now is the Time" by Alanis. We heard songs ranging from a track off JC Superstar to "As Time Goes By" to (unfortunately) "Christmas Time". It was a good way to start our journey, with time on our side.

 

 

Leaving Indonesia in our wake.

Out our port: nothing to see but sea.

 

Our navigation system showing 2366 Nm to go!

 

 

Our May 4 email:

 

LATITUDE: 02-17.32S

LONGITUDE: 099-13.40E

 

Well that was a false start.

 

On our 6:00 p.m. radio chat, yacht Green Ghost said they were very worried about the bad weather coming. After sign-off, Darrel immediately tried to get another, more recent "GRIB" (the weather information we get via our HF radio) since the GRIB we had received earlier that morning did not show any bad weather. It took a very long time to get connected (one of the main Ham stations for this area is currently non-operational), but Darrel eventually got the GRIB and he saw what they were worried about. Yikes. A big system was showing up on May 11 and we would be in its path if we continued. So we stopped the boat and hovered in the same area so we could get another weather report the next morning to get a better idea of how strong the system was and in what direction it was heading.

 

At 600 a.m. Darrel got another report after numerous tries and saw that in the area of 85E - 90E and 05S - 12S there were winds up to 80 knots and waves up to 9 metres directly in our path.  So we will not continue, but rather head back to a safe anchorage to get more detailed information via internet, and to wait until there is a better weather window to go.

 

We are sailing as much as we can (we averaged less than 1 knot/hour overnight) to conserve precious fuel, so will be crawling around in these light winds. I am NOT complaining about these light winds.

 

We are having a heck of a time with our radio stations, finding it very tough to get a connection to get weather information.

 

(P.S. It is said to be bad luck to start a passage on a Friday. Hmmmmm.)

 

The GRIB showing the weather system

Following our track back as best we can in light winds.

 

Our May 5 email:

 

LATITUDE: 02-01.04S

LONGITUDE: 099-34.50E
COMMENT: Once again at Pototogat

 

We had a very slow sail back to our protected anchorage. And now we have internet access, so we can get LOTS of weather information.

 

The forecast for the bad weather system seems to have calmed down considerably, which is very good news.

 

HOWEVER ...

 

Before we even got the updated weather information, Darrel and I had a discussion about what had happened out there. (Captain Ron: "If it's going to happen, it's going to happen out there.") It was frightening for both of us, especially when we couldn't get HF radio reception to receive our much-needed weather information.

 

Now, before I go on, I'll tell you about my level of fear. I have often been asked, "Aren't you afraid?" (Usually a woman asks me. Darrel never gets asked). My truthful answer has always been "No", and I go on to add that driving a car on the highway or going on a chair-lift in the mountains is much more frightening for me than sailing the big seas.  But I knew that could change. At one time in my life, I used to love riding behind Darrel on his motorbike, and even sometimes (but seldom) went with skimpy summer clothes and no helmet. One day, a vision of me falling off the bike and sliding face first across the highway popped into my head, and I was forevermore afraid to ride on the motorbike.

 

Something similar has happened to my view of sailing the high seas. When it occurred to me that we would eventually get a good weather report and then head out again, I got a very sick feeling and every single cell in my body wanted to cry out "NO". When I confessed this to Darrel, he responded very honestly that he wasn't keen on heading out again either. There seem to be a number of forces indicating that it is not the thing for us to do.

 

So we are heading back to Thailand. It will be a while before we get there - September or later - because we will probably leave CanKata in Langkawi, Malaysia when we go to Canada this summer.

 

We are both happy with the decision. We would have loved to continue, but we are both getting warning signals that are telling us to turn around.

 

Just after we made our decision, we received news that an important information weather/radio net that we would have used closer to South Africa has been shut down! I believe we really weren't meant to do this crossing.

 

 

Relieved to be far from that nasty weather system.

 

At this time, Darrel and I would like to thank all the wonderful Indonesians we met for their warmth, friendliness, hospitality, and helpfulness. It is a beautiful country – especially Sumatra and its many islands.

 

We’d also like to thank yacht Erica, Kevin of yacht Helena, Daryl of yacht Bintang, and the 101 Anchorages within the Indonesian Archipelago guide for extremely helpful information on cruising along the west coast of Sumatra.