Gif Hammar in the South Pacific

PHOENIX home page: http://www.sv-phoenix.com
Photos: http://www.sv-phoenix.com/trippix.php
Notes: http://www.sv-phoenix.com/tripnotes.php

UPDATE MAY 5, 2009

Special Dispatch for PYC

PHOENIX is now back in the northern hemisphere after spending the better part of two years south of the Equator. It seems strange to see the latitude on the chart plotter increasing as we go north. We're in the Caribbean, St. Thomas to be exact, making final preparations for our trip back to the continental US.

One of the big reasons people give for going through the Red Sea and dealing with all of the mess off Somalia is the weather around the Cape of Good Hope, but you really miss the big game. Although there are times when it's really windy, the forecasts are pretty good and, with few exceptions, safe harbors or anchorages are fairly readily available. Planning to go around the tip of Africa means paying attention to the southwesterly gales, particularly between Durban and Port Elizabeth. The Agulhas Current flows southwesterly between those two ports and if you have a strong winds from the southwest, the seas kick up very quickly. We had a couple of strong southwest gales while we were in Durban (one with sustained winds over 50 kt), so we watched carefully to find a three day weather window that would allow us to make the transit to East London or Port Elizabeth.

While in Durban, we rented a car with our friends on CHRISTINA (SE) and headed up to the game parks in Imfolozi and Hluhluwe. This trip and the one we did from Port Elizabeth were highlights of our time in South Africa. It's an amazing feeling to have huge wild animals all around you. We had a decent sail from Durban down the coast and as we approached East London, the forecast looked like it would remain settled enough for us to continue on to Port Elizabeth. There were three of us heading south at the same time and, except for the last few hours where we had 20 knots from the west - right where we were heading, there wasn't much exciting about that leg. One interesting thing about marinas in South Africa is that they don't use pilings to secure the floating docks; they use chains and sometimes the chains break. We saw that happen in Durban and the yacht club said the same thing had happened the week before in Port Elizabeth.

From Port Elizabeth or PE as the locals call it, we headed to Mossel Baai for a few days, then continued on to Simon's Town in False Bay. Mossel Baai was a neat little town that had some ancient petroglyphs and the only north facing beach in South Africa. Cape Agulhas lies between Mossel Baai and False Bay and is the southernmost point of Africa. We had a nice east southeast breeze at about 15 knots as we passed the cape. The next morning, we headed in to False Bay and the wind quickly built from 15 to 35 knots. We furled the genoa and put the 2nd reef in the main and were flying toward the yacht club at 10.5 knots. It was a challenge to drop the main and motor into the yacht club, but we finally made it in. The wind was a steady 40 with gusts to 45 while we were mooring. We thought things would ease off at night, but the wind kept up like that for the better part of the week. False Bay Yacht Club was a great place with friendly people, and we couldn't beat the price of about
$3.00 per night.

On Saturday 20 Dec, we planned to move from FBYC over to the Victoria & Alfred (V&A) waterfront in Cape Town. It's not very far, but you finally round Cape of Good Hope and False Cape on the transit. After all the hype, we had very light winds for most of the trip and ended up motoring for quite a while. The wind obliged by picking up as we arrived in Cape Town. We stayed in Cape Town until the start of the Governor's Cup, the race that took us from Cape Town to St. Helena. As part of the race package, we stayed for the nine nights at the V&A without cost. The Governor's Cup started on 29 Dec and we were off like a herd of turtles. It was almost dead calm at the start, but Patty did a great job keeping the boat moving as I ran around the deck tweaking all of the sail controls. The wind filled in a bit and we rounded the weather mark well ahead of the competition. After almost two weeks of sailing, including more than eight days with our big asymmetrical spinnaker up 24 hours a day, we crossed the finish line first., about a day ahead of the next yacht.

We stayed about two weeks in St. Helena enjoying the island, the local people and the crews from the other yachts. A couple of days after leaving St. Helena, we arrived in Ascension Island and stayed for three days. We had fun exploring an island that doesn't exactly encourage tourism, but has a really interesting history including being the location for the garrison that protected Napoleon while he was exiled on St. Helena. We also happened to be there near the beginning of the turtle nesting season and were able to see the turtles laying eggs on the beach and swim with them during the day. It was a really great experience. From Ascension, we headed directly to Tobago, roughly 3000 NM to the northeast. It was our second longest passage of the trip. It was also one of the slower ones since we had to cross the ITCZ (Doldrums).

In Tobago, we were treated to Carnival at full volume. The costumes were amazing and we could feel the music on the boat. From Tobago, we went south to Trinidad and met the yachting contingent that comes down to the Caribbean for the winter. Chaguaramas has lots of good facilities and some people stay there all season. We headed north from there, after getting repair parts and mail, and made our next land fall in Grenada. Our plan was to stay there only a day or two, but the alternator packed it in and we had to wait for a replacement before heading up to Carriacou. Grenada has all of the hustle and bustle while Carriacou has all of the relaxing beach cafes and restaurants. After a couple of days there, we had to head on to the BVI to meet up with Patty's sister.

The BVI is nice because the islands are close together and there are usually several places you can anchor on each island. The locals are friendly and nearly everything is available (for a price). They use US$ and it was the first time since Galapagos that we received dollars from an ATM. In a week, we were able to visit Tortola, Peter Island, Virgin Gorda, Anegada and Jost Van Dyke. We opted for some of the quieter anchorages and had a relaxing time. We spent another week in the BVI working on our rescue diver certifications before heading to the USVI to meet friends from the Port City Amateur Radio Club (PCARC). We took them around St. John and we had an enjoyable time snorkeling and visiting some of the ruins of the sugar plantations.

After saying good bye to them, we headed to Antigua and Barbuda to try to catch up with our Swedish friends on CHRISTINA. Originally we were going to meet them on Barbuda (we anchored off the 11 mile beach and had it mostly to ourselves), but our e-mails crossed in the air and ended up sailing over to St. Barth's to meet them. We followed them over to Sint Maarten after a couple of days. Luckily we arrived in Sint Maarten on Monday and could visit the chandleries on Tuesday. I say luckily because Wednesday, Thursday and Friday were Carnival, the queen's birthday and Labor Day.

We're now back in the USVI preparing to head to Culebra, Grand Turk and then arrive in Palm Beach. It's been quite a trip.

Giff & Patty Hammar onboard PHOENIX
 

Update November 16,2008

Special Dispatch for PYC

PHOENIX has passed a couple of additional milestones since our last update.
The first was passing longitude 110E, which is the halfway point for our
voyage. That occurred after we left Darwin, Australia. Our second major
milestone was completing our transit of the Indian Ocean. Besides the
shorter distance across the Indian Ocean, there are fewer places to stop and
the distances between them tend to be greater.

Planning for an ocean crossing takes quite a bit of effort, particularly
when you don't know how long it will take or how long you'll stay at a
particular place. Some places we knew that we could not get any food and
others we knew that it would be limited and expensive - you don't have any
idea of how limited or expensive. We found out.

Darwin was the last port where we had people that we had been sailing with
for months. Nearly everyone in our "cruising class" was headed up to
Indonesia and thence to the Red Sea. Those who weren't going to the Red Sea
were planning to stay up north for the cyclone season and cross the Indian
Ocean next year. We picked up a whole new group of cruising boats, started a
new net and headed west once more. Darwin was a good place to reprovision,
so we stocked up on non-perishable food items for our
entire trip across the Indian Ocean. We took on as much fresh food as we
could and we headed out.

Our first stop was Ashmore Reef, about 550 NM from Darwin. It wasn't on our
original itinerary, but it only cost us one extra mile on our trip, so it
made a lot of sense to stop. The Australian government maintains about 15
moorings at Ashmore so you don't have to anchor and risk digging up the
coral. There are three islands, but you can only walk on part of one; the
rest is part of the nature preserve. We anchored in the outer mooring area,
but there wasn't much difference in protection between
the two. There were no permanent pennants on the mooring buoys, so we chafed
through two lines before we got the right combination of chain and line.
After three days, we were ready to leave. We did get a chance to go ashore
and snorkel in the lagoon and it was good to spend some time with our new
cruising boats for a couple of days. The coral was in really good shape and
the water was extremely clear; it was really windy while we were there so
boarding the dinghy was sometimes challenging.

Our next stop was Christmas Island, after about a 1000 NM passage. If you're
going across the Indian Ocean, this is one of the places we recommend.
Flying Fish Cove is where the main settlement is, but it is extremely deep.
The whole cove is a nature preserve, like 70% of the island. There are five
moorings here, plus the huge moorings for the ships. The phosphate mines are
still in operation, so phosphate ships come in every two weeks or so.
Smaller cargo ships call at Christmas Island to bring
supplies to the 600 permanent residents. The diving here was really good
because the water was warm and clear, there were lots of fish and it was
really close to our mooring. The wall here was really impressive, as were
the mooring chains with 18" long links. Ashore, the attractions were the
walking trails and red crabs. During the crab migration, some roads need to
be closed because of the volume of crabs. The pictures were impressive; it
must be awe inspiring in real life. Fresh fruit and vegetables
come in on the plane on Monday, so most of the island turns out to the two
or three markets up by the airport to get the best selection. It's quite
something. Everyone on the island was really friendly and it was usually
only a matter of a couple of minutes for someone to stop and give you a
ride. After a week, it was time to move on.

Five hundred NM further west, we came to Cocos (Keeling) Islands. It's
really an atoll and would be a prototypical set of tropical islands. There
are three distinct areas to the atoll, but everyone seems to get along quite
well. Home Island is where the original settlers built their houses and
today is where the Muslim community is based. There aren't really any cars
on West Island, but there are lots of four wheel ATV's. It seems a bit
incongruous to see a woman in flowing dress and scarf come out
of the grocery store and jump on a four wheeler and zip off down the road.
West Island is home to the airport and the "white" community. This is the
site of the WWII airbase and is where the people from Australia come to
live. There are more services here than on Home Island, but it is harder to
get to. The third major island is Direction Island. When the first
transoceanic cables were installed, it was a link station. Today it is
uninhabited except for coconut crabs, rats, jungle fowl and the odd
sea bird. This is where the cruising community hangs out. The "yacht club"
is an open shelter where visiting yachts make a nameboard and hang it up for
posterity. A picture of ours is on the web site. The anchorage was really
nice and we ended up staying for 10 days. We explored the islands, swam and
socialized. It was great to relax for a week or so (we had to do a couple of
small boat projects). It was hard to pull up the anchor, but we had many
more miles to go.

Our next stop was about 1500 NM further west and closer to the equator. If
we thought that Cocos was remote, Chagos was really out in the boonies.
Except for the people at Diego Garcia, the US/UK military base, Chagos is
uninhabited. The Soloman Islands are absolutely gorgeous. There are signs of
human impact on most of the islands. Up until the 1960's, this atoll was a
copra plantation with about 300 people. Since then, cruisers called these
islands home until a couple of incidents imposed stringent
rules on all visitors. The jungle has reclaimed most of the permanent
buildings and pretty much wiped out all signs of temporary habitation on the
other islands. We had fun fishing in the lagoon, exploring all of the
islands, particularly Boddam, where the plantation building ruins are
located. It's still a pretty wild place and we had one squall with 50 knot
winds that lasted for two hours. That was the one where one of our cruising
companions went aground and lost the boat. For the better part
of a week, we shared the lagoon with one other boat. It was a really special
place. After nearly two weeks, it was time to go.

From Chagos, we headed southwest to Mauritius, about 1400 NM down the track.
Under British rule, Mauritius and Chagos were part of the same
administrative district. After the Brits evacuated Chagos, they moved the
people (mostly contractors) to Mauritius. In the late 1970's Britain
separated Mauritius and Chagos and the Mauritians voted to become
independent. After Chagos, Mauritius was quite a change. We pulled into Port
Louis and stocked up on fresh food. The waterfront around the marina is
about
10 years old and nicely appointed. We did a little exploring and a lot of
boat repairs. Grand Baie is the tourist spot on the island and we took a day
trip up there to see what it was like. It wasn't as nice as the places from
which we had come. We were anxious to move on, but didn't want to get to
South Africa too soon, so we decided to do a quick overnight sail to La
Reunion.

La Reunion is much more beautiful than Mauritius. The marina gave us the
first week free, but each week after that was about 200 Euro. We took four
days and headed into Cirque de Mafate for some strenuous exercise - a bit
more effort than we expected. The cirques are the three cones of the extinct
volcano that created the island. They subsided and created the large craters
we see today. There are no roads into Cirqe de Mafate, so the only way to
get supplies in is to carry them on someone's back
or by helicopter. Going into the cirque is almost like going back in time.
Everyone walks and the pace of life is much slower. It was really cool. We
stayed in gites, which are small guest houses that have two to 12 people per
room. Usually you have a community dinner and breakfast. We brought our
breakfasts and had dinner with the group. Every day, we met a new group of
people. This was one of the highlights of the trip.

Our next transit was billed as one of the most challenging as we approached
the South African coast. The Agulhas Current is like the Gulf Stream near
Florida. It moves pretty quickly and if the wind opposes the current, the
seas get very steep very quickly. The other rough area is just south of
Madagascar where the bottom comes up very rapidly. We avoided the southern
tip of Madagascar by staying 150 NM to the south and avoiding the shoaling
areas. Halfway across the Mozambique Channel, we ran into
a near gale with winds in the mid-30's against the current. For eight hours
or so we were doing snap rolls and getting pounded with water. Fortunately
the wind abated after dark. The final 30 miles or so were a bit of a
challenge because the wind had moved to nearly dead ahead, but very light,
so we ended up motoring against the current (surprisingly) for the last
couple of hours. Durban is quite a change for what we have visited since
Panama. With 3.5 million people, it is significantly larger than
Papeete, Auckland, Darwin and Cairns.

The next few days will see us traveling through the African bush looking for
big game. In four months, we should be across the Atlantic and making our
way up the Windward Islands. Stay tuned for more.

Giff & Patty Hammar onboard PHOENIX
 

UPDATE 4/22/08

Special Dispatch # 3 for PYC

 PHOENIX has passed the halfway point from New Zealand to New Caledonia. We're motorsailing at the moment as the wind is hovering around 5 knots. It's quite a change from the heavy winds and seas when we left Opua on Sunday. The trip to and from New Zealand is the most challenging for most circumnavigators and we got our fair share on both passages. I'm not naive enough to think that we won't have challenges on future passages, though.

 Since our last update, we have sailed up along the east coast of North Island and explored Great Mercury Island and Great Barrier Island. We really enjoyed getting out and hiking around on the different islands. I'm surprised by how few of the other cruisers in our "class" strayed much further south than Whangarei. Getting out and meeting the local people has been the most rewarding part of the trip. You don't really get a sense of the country until you spend a lot of time with the people who live there. On the other hand, you never know who will turn up and knock on the hull.

 The morning we pulled in to Tauranga after the trip up from Wellington, we got a knock on the hull and there was Piet Hanraets, who raced with us on PHOENIX as well as EXUBERANT and MENTAL FLOSS. His mother lives five minutes from the marina that we were in. Within an hour of pulling in to Opua, Sandra and Wally from PYC showed up. They are visiting BAHATI, a Maine boat, and waiting for the transit up to Vanuatu. We first met BAHATI after we had completed our Panama Canal transit. It's a small world.

 The offshore islands in New Zealand are great places to visit. Many of them have significant areas set aside as parks or nature reserves. In spite of its detractors, DoC (Department or Conservation) has done a pretty good job of keeping trails marked and passable. There are trails on nearly every island. Some islands you can't go on, but DoC probably has trails on them, too. Motuara Island in Queen Charlotte Sound is a nature reserve and one of the few areas in New Zealand that doesn't have rodents.

They made a concerted effort to get rid of them so that several species of native birds could be reintroduced. They have nesting boxes for the blue penguins and we were able to see two chicks in one of the boxes. Motuara also has saddlebacks, an endangered bird that has dull orange patches on its wings that resemble saddlebags (hence the name), and kiwis. We couldn't see the kiwis because they're nocturnal and you can't be on the island after dark.

 Great Mercury Island was quite different. Roughly half of it was set aside for farming, or more accurately, grazing for sheep and cattle. The other half was tree farms. Visitors were welcome to freely access the fields and beaches, but were prohibited from going into the forest. Some of the natural forest area was on extremely steep grades and you wouldn't want to be there anyway. The other areas were tree farms where the local pine trees were planted. As we walked around the island, we met with one of the locals who gave us permission to go into the Forbidden Forest. The forested area was in stark contrast to the open pastures and it was nice to follow the path less trod (and not have to keep a constant eye out for animal droppings). There were only three other cruising boats in the cove, but we were far enough apart that it felt like we were the only ones there.

 Great Barrier Island had been a hot spot for kauri harvesting in the late 1800's and early 1900's. By 1940, nearly all of the big kauris had been logged and the industry shut down. Kauri trees are extremely big in diameter and tall. The largest one on record is 17m across, I believe. The grow to be thousands of years old and have a very straight trunk. In those ways, they are like the redwoods in the US, except that the kauri is a hardwood. It's very strong and rot resistant, which makes it a good wood for building boats and houses. Fortunately the trees are now protected and there is an active planting program in progress. One trail we hiked took us past two remaining kauri dams (of seven) on the way to the highest peak on the island. The views from the summit were great, in spite of the heavy cloud cover.

 Next stop for us is New Caledonia, then Vanuatu, two fairly small island nations on the western edge of the South Pacific Ocean. As you get ready for the summer cruises, take advantage of your ability to visit islands, even if they are close to home. Go ashore. Visit with the people who live there. You won't be disappointed.

Special Dispatch #2 for PYC

Patty and I left Portsmouth, NH on 15 Oct 2006 and arrived in Annapolis, MD on 28 Oct. It's hard to imagine that we have been away from New Hampshire for over a year now. We made intermediate stops in Marblehead, MA; Onset, MA; Block Island, RI; and New London, CT. All of the anchorages were quite empty and people were closing things up, just like our club. We had some pretty good winds (15-35 kts) and some excitement when we passed a tug and tow approaching the Bay Bridge on the way into Annapolis.
The night watches were very cold and we had frost on deck in New London. We waited for the house to sell and waited, and waited, and waited. It finally closed on 23 Feb, thanks in large part to Judy Wright.

We stayed in Annapolis until 4 April helping Patty's parents. Since we were late leaving, we planned to sail direct from Annapolis to Panama. A huge low off of Cape Hatteras (featuring 50-55 knot winds and 15-20 foot seas) forced us to divert to Norfolk for Easter. The Saturday before Easter, we awoke to light snow and howling winds - temperatures were record lows. We left Norfolk on Easter Sunday with 25 kt northwesterlies, which eased off to the teens as we crossed the Gulf Stream. The Gulf Stream
crossing was really calm and it was great to make it into the warmer air and water. We made pretty good time to Panama via Cape Hatteras, Cat Island Passage, the Windward Passage, and Navassa Island. Just south of Navassa, the wind really slowed down and we motored quite a lot until we were about 200 NM out of Panama, then it really kicked in again. We arrived in Panama on 23 Apr and took a side trip to the San Blas while awaiting our Canal transit. The San Blas Islands, particularly those that are
uninhabited, are really a great place to visit. We really started to get into the cruising mode in Panama. We met a number of people who sailed west with us and we met later down the track.

Andrea joined us on 3 May, we picked up two more crew and headed through the Canal on 6 May, finishing up on 7 May. That was an impressive trip. I had gone through the Canal twice on big ships, but that doesn't compare to doing it in your own boat. On 6 May, we went through the northern set of locks with two other boats. PHOENIX was the middle of the raft so our line handlers didn't have to work too hard, except to supervise the line handlers on the other boats. The night of 6 May was spent on Gatun
Lake. The crew was up early on 7 May waiting for the transit advisor and we arrived at the first of the southern locks around noon. This time, we locked through in two groups of two. The Canal was astern of us around 1400. We spent another week in Amador waiting for our visas for French Polynesia. We left on 11 May bound for the Marquesas. Two days out of the Galapagos, we ran out of propane and pulled in there to get our propane tanks filled. We also spent some time seeing the sights and getting
more supplies.

On 25 May, we left the Galapagos. We could have spent a couple of weeks there, and some of the people we met did, but there were other places we had to go, too. The transit to the Marquesas was long, or at least it seemed that way to us. It took us 17 days and 20 hours or so, but we had slow days (126 NM) and fast days (227 NM). About 200 NM from the Galapagos, we ran over a long line and had the panga rush up to us to help us get free. They were really happy that we stopped and waved us on our way
after they had cut the line. That was one of the slow days. On one of the fast days, we hit 18.5 knots surfing down a big wave in 25 knots of wind. That was really exciting! The first stop was Fatu Hiva on 12 Jun, a really stunning island, particularly after seeing nothing but water for almost three weeks. Next on the agenda was Hiva Oa where we picked up Patty's sister and her husband. From Hiva Oa, we went to Ua Huka, then on to Nuku Hiva. The best waterfall was in Fatu Hiva and the grapefruits
in the Marquesas are absolutely huge. The islanders on Ua Huka were the nicest we met in the Marquesas. Driving the mountain roads on Hiva Oa and Nuku Hiva was quite an experience.

We left for the Tuamotus on 28 Jun and spent the next 10 days diving and visiting islanders. In Apataki, we spent three very relaxing days with Assam and his extended family. They farm the black pearls for which the Tuamotus are famous. All of the sailing guides talk about strong currents in the passes for the atolls, but it wasn't any worse than a strong south wind against a regular ebb tide on the Piscataqua. From there, we went to Rangiroa for some excellent diving. Sadly, we had to move on to
the Society Islands. Twenty eight hours after leaving Rangiroa, we tied up at the Quai des Yachts in Papeete. We officially cleared in and out, then headed for Moorea, Huahine, Raiatea and Bora-Bora. The islands and fringing reefs were stunning, but also very busy. The Societies are the most developed for tourism, but you can still find locals who are willing to talk with you and show you "their" island.

Next stop was the island of Rarotonga in the Cook Islands. It was quite a change in climate (cooler) as well as life style. The dance and drum competitions were outstanding - we wish we had been able to see more. This was the first time we didn't anchor out since 6 Apr and it was nice to be close to the other cruisers. Besides real supermarkets, the local market was close at hand and had good prices. We also hiked across the island on a trail that went across a knife edge ridge (very impressive).

After a week, it was time to move on and we headed to Niue. We had a great time there, too. The Niue Yacht Club had just reopened and the locals were proud to show that they had overcome the cyclone in Jan 2004. Another important feature of the yacht club was the ice cream stand that was part of the galley. There was a crane on the pier for lifting the dinghies out of the water so they wouldn't get damaged in the surge. That was the only place to do that so far on our trip. The limestone caves and
arches were immense and exciting to dive into.

Tonga was a three day sail from Niue. We started out in Tongatapu, in the south, so we could get mail and Andrea's camera. We spent a few days at 'Atata diving the reefs to the west and saw some really great coral. After a week or so, we moved north to Ha'apai and spent time in some of the least populated cruising grounds in the world. Cruising was very nice, the diving was better and the whales were the best. The humpbacks were breaching, spy hopping and pec and tail slapping the entire time we
were there. When people talk about uninhabited South Pacific islands with palm trees, wide sand beaches and warm, clear water, this is the area they had in mind. After 10 days, it was time to move north to Vava'u and meet up with some of the people we had met at earlier islands. Vava'u is a more compact cruising area: you can reach any anchorage from any other anchorage in less than four hours. You tend to relax and spend time enjoying the reefs and scenery. There was a lot of time for community
meals and socializing on the beach. After almost six weeks (!!!), it was time to move on to Fiji.

After spending four months on islands that had at most 10,000 people, coming to Fiji was quite a change. Tonga has a population a bit over 100,000 for the entire chain while Fiji has over 775,000 inhabitants. The vast difference in the number of people was quite a shock. We did our thing in the city and headed out to the Yasawa Group where there aren't as many people. Almost every island has at least one village on it and local custom dictates that you visit the village chief and give him a present
(usually a half kilo of kava roots) and he allows you to visit the village and basically relax. Diving wasn't quite as good as Tonga, but the water was warmer and there were more fish. The Yasawas are a great flat water cruising ground. Anchorages are usually a few hours apart and the islands are quite stunning. We'll head to New Zealand around the end of the month.