Pieces of Eights: Tales from the High Seas

Yes I am alive! Despite my lack of blogging I did in fact survive sailing some 600 nautical miles across the middle of the ocean. I have plenty of stories to tell about fighting monstrous sea beasts, trading with spice merchants and drinking with murderous pirates, but I’m sure you’ve all heard those stories many times before so I won’t bore you with those details.

After our departure was delayed by a rather tardy Palauan customs officer we were finally underway around high noon. We headed out of the Malakal bay towards Palau’s west passage and were promptly hit with a pretty solid squall with up to 30 knot winds. While it didn’t last long it did give us a little taste of what we would experience later in the trip.

The rest of the day was fairly uneventful, I learnt the ropes of the boat (literally) and I reeled in a black fin tuna that we had for dinner that night. By nightfall, the seas had increased enough that the constant bouncing around started getting to me. After eating and dividing up the night shifts I thought I’d grab a shower and try and get a quick nap in before my first shift at 11pm. The shower cubicle is rather small and the seas were rough enough that I was physically bouncing off the walls. This didn’t help my stomach at all and I promptly had to locate the toilet, lucky it was right next to the shower.

Somehow I got a little bit of sleep before the first of my two shifts overnight. With the exception of one night we normally ran shifts of 2 hours on, 4 hours off. Tasks for the night shift are; regularly checking for any obstacles in our path, watching the AIS electronic tracking system (and radar), keeping the boat on course, watching the wind strength and direction and adjusting or putting up and down the jib as appropriate.

Despite still feeling sea sick I enjoyed my two night shifts on the first night. In fact the night shifts were my favourite part of the whole trip. I truly enjoyed the peacefulness of sitting by myself up on the deck, listening to music, staring at the wide open ocean and regularly checking the controls.

What became a little tough over the next few days was the lack of a decent length sleep. You’d regularly sleep 4 or 5 separate times in each day. Add to that the difficultly in sleeping in a boat… Imagine your bed quickly rising and falling between your ceiling and the floor in your room. Then add the noise from waves hitting the hull and various typical boat noises; winches, pullies, motors, sails etc etc

But back to #2 two, after getting sea sick on the first night this lasted throughout the next day and only abated late on the second night. Thankfully I was now used to the constant rocking and bouncing around that I didn’t suffer any further from sea sickness.

The next few days continued much the same, we only passed two other boats in the first 3 days, both very large container ships heading towards Palau. Otherwise there was nothing to see at all. Before the trip I wondered if I’d have some sort of epiphany with being in the middle of the ocean but you can only see so far and it’s rather difficult to comprehend the size of the ocean and just how small you are in comparison. The only way you could get any concept was to check the GPS system.

Outside of the shifts and sleeping there often wasn’t a huge amount of time left in the day. I did a little reading but not as much as I had expected to do. We also did a number of maintenance jobs around the boat. I’m now an expert in hatch repair and also am pretty good at scrubbing the decks and washing dishes ;)

We had a day or so with average weather which made it less enjoyable, more so because I couldn’t sit in my favourite chair on the top of the deck during my shifts.

As we neared the Philippines things got a little more exciting, we had to keep an eye out for FAD’s (Fish Activation Device). These are anything from ropes, chains or more complex metal structures anchored or hanging down from a large metal float. These are supposed to help coral and fish grow, but the Philippines are so overfished that everyone just goes and fishes around these devices. So nothing gets a chance to grow or spawn. The biggest issue to us with these FADs is that they often don’t show on the radar and are sometimes painted black. Perfect for running into and smashing up your boat.

As well as looking out for these we started encountering various sized Filipino fishing fleets and huge container ships heading North.

The weirdest encounter we had was at 125 nautical miles off the coast of the Philippines we suddenly noticed this guy on a tiny motorised canoe come up alongside us. At first he wanted some petrol from us, after saying no we continued to see him around us for a while until he again came over asking for water. We filled up his container and also gave him some juice and a pair of sunglasses. He was so thankful he gave us his rather meagre catch for the day. Again he was visible around us for a while longer before coming back a third time, this time I was not sure whether he wanted some food off us or whether he wanted to give us more for the juice and sunglasses. Either way we said no and he thanked us again and headed off. Given how far we were away from the coast and how little he was provisioned with, we can only assume he had a mother ship around somewhere.

After almost 5 days we finally saw land again at the bottom of Davao, down the southern end of the Philippines. We rounded the point late in the afternoon but still had near another 12 hours of sailing up to the marina on Samal Island. We would only run for another few hours before stopping for the night. The biggest concern was running into one of the hundreds of tiny unlit fishing boats crawling everywhere.

The next day we headed up to the marina, the boat was due to be hauled out to have some significant repairs and maintenance completed. Once safely moored we did some more work around the boat before retiring for a hard earned beer.

I stayed only the boat another couple of nights before heading up to Manila for a few days prior to flying home. If I can find the impetus I’ll write a post about my Davao City/Manila experiences.

I thoroughly enjoyed my trip and am very thankful for the opportunity and experience. I don’t think they’ll ever make a true sailor out of me but I’m open to doing another trip like this if the situation is right.