Cape Town to Melbourne Wks 1 and 2: John Ridgway Save the Albatross Voyage 2003-4
Created | Updated May 8, 2006
The Voyage Story by John Ridgway
LEAVING CAPE TOWN - DIVING SOUTH
Date: Saturday 25 October 2003
Up at 0530 for the last hot shower. We sailed on the dot of 0900. WNW gale in the confines of the Royal Cape Yacht Club: a bit of a test. Flashing daggers slashed head ropes as we sprang backwards into the huge dock lined with tankers and powerful deep-sea fishing boats. Hit nothing but hoped nobody was watching all the same.
Reaching the wild sea, a huge whale surfaced not ten yards away, encrusted with barnacles. I looked into its eye “welcome to the Big Time!” it seemed to say.
“Message from the Yacht Club!” called Nick called from the doghouse, as I wrestled the bow up a 20 foot swell, “are we going back?”
“No!” I shouted into the 40-knot breeze, we were barely making half a knot forward. “Never go back!” I grinned at pale Trevor, his smart red and white ocean racer sailing suit streaming water.
This is the Main Event, we’re in the war-zone now. It is 25 years to the day since Marie Christine and I sailed this boat out of here, heading for Auckland on the 1977/8 Whitbread Round the World Race.
Anyway it was a dreadful day, all six of us were horrifically sick. I must go and lie down.
Date: Sunday 26 October 2003
Rather too close to the west flank of the notorious Agulhas Bank. We must head due south until we reach 38 South. Then we can turn S.E. for Marion Island, the first of the Patagonian Toothfish grounds, where we hope to enlist the support of licensed fishing vessels in our hunt for pirate boats. But that’s still over a thousand miles away. The wind eased and the sea calmed down a little. Grand to see the great Albatross again! Grey Heads, Black Brows and Yellow Noses, they were all about as if to encourage us on toward their Southern Ocean home.
Everyone managed to keep some food down and a bit of laughter returned to the old ship. It’s a bit strange, MC and I know Igor and Trevor well enough, but we’ve never met Quentin before. Nick knows none of them. They’ll take a while to settle in and after all, they do make up half of the total crew. We’ll be alright soon.
Date: Monday 27 October 2003
Still bumping along on a sea with plenty of white-caps. So repairs to our health, achieved yesterday, are failing again today. 'B' Watch (Trevor and Quentin) was rather quiet. Trevor (62) the seasoned Foreign Correspondent who has sailed a lot with us, smiles a little wanly when Marie Christine calls him "Treasure". Quentin (33), tells us he is more Politician than Birder. Small, wiry and hyper-active, he spits out words like machine gun bullets. A GreenPeace Team-Leader in the South Pacific, Quentin has played a big part in getting our “Save the Albatross Petition” going. In the couple of weeks before we sailed from Cape Town, he had travelled from Fiji to his home in Australia and swiftly on, to multi-meetings in Europe. Arriving in Cape Town only a day or two before we sailed, he immediately set up key meetings for us, including the filming of ‘Virgen del Carmen’ the pirate ship registered in Willemstrad, in the Dutch Antilles. Now he's finding it difficult to settle down into the 24-hour rhythm of a year-long voyage. This old boat is nearly as old as Quentin, we must help him feel welcome and at home with us.
Date: Tuesday 28 October 2003
The glass remains high and the wind holds good. While the giant ocean slumbers, we continue tip-toeing south, down the longitude fence, into the fearful Southern Ocean . Should I tell the others how awful it's going to be? The skinning cold and lurking fear: “If it gets much worse, we're going over". But this is just the defeatist talk of an old man. Six of us, with all the modern gear - Furling sails, Doghouse, Auto-Pilot; surely we'll find it easier than Andy Briggs and me on our 203-day non-stop trip round the world 20 years ago with those three shivering months in the Southern Ocean. I thought you were supposed to forget the nasty things in life. Then, I was 12 years older than Quentin is now. He has a good power to weight ratio, for a Powder Monkey.
Maybe the surest form of education is the nose in the way of the slamming door. I love a bit of spark. Only dead fish swim with the stream.
During daylight hours we try hand steering, in place of the Monitor wind-vane. This allows us to press on a bit and the noon-to-noon run shows a respectable 160 miles.
A Wandering Albatross lands nearby, folding its huge wings and looking-on approvingly as we pass by.
Date: Wednesday 29 October 2003
440 miles south of Cape Town now and gently reaching across a light sea under full sail. Cape petrels, White-chinned Petrels, Storm Petrels and a small flock of Antarctic Prions all join the throng.
What fun it is to be completely immersed in something, together with some of my favourite people in the world. To be old enough now, to realise this really is the main event. So much better than meeting up with old chums and talking of things past.
We are sailing across a smooth, vastly empty sea. Still in high pressure, our barometer shows 1024, while off to the South, the nearest low is 960, a fall of 64 points.
As you can imagine, there is an air of expectancy. The three Watches have come together very well. Trevor, a gentleman reporter since the age of 16, spends 8 hours of day and night, alone on deck with dynamic, astute Quentin, who's half his age, a sometime opal cutter and climbing bum and long-time GreenPeace operative. They'll get to know each other pretty well.
Long thin Nick is going well with exotic Igor (40), part Peruvian, English and Russian, who I've found to be a most agreeable travelling companion these past 17 years. We've been on many trips in the jungles of Peru, kayaked round Cape Horn and sailed to Antarctica together.
Marie Christine and I are in our usual. I feel so much better since the Root Canal treatment for my left lower jaw.
Between us, Nick and I run the sailing, ably helped by the newcomers.
Towards dark, a flock of Icebirds appeared, all of a flutter, welcoming us as we headed southeast. Whales were seen in the distance and a small brown seal or sea lion was seen on three occasions
Date: Thursday 30 October 2003
The 97th day since leaving home and we are shrouded in dense dripping fog, only a handful of birds have found us. The wind begins its familiar anti-clockwise circle, turning from east through north-north-west, so Nick and I are in a quandary about using our twin headsail rig, poled out on either side; I’m not in favour, we need maximum manoeuvrability just now.
Light following winds reduce our speed and so we are generate little power from either our excellent Ampair towing generator or the marginally less effective Ampair wind Generator. Therefore over the day the automatic Fischer Panda Generator switched itself on and off for eight brief sessions, each of 12 minutes, to keep the voltage up to transmission standards. But even so, Nick was unable to transmit at all either on Sailmail HF or Iridium. This sends him into paroxysms of frustration. However he was able to pick up a report of a sixty-foot high iceberg to the north and a bit west of us. Steering in the fog sharpened a bit on hearing this.
Date: Friday 31 October 2003
Sea conditions: Reaching across growing following sea, some whitecaps, cold.
Bird sightings at noon: Cape petrels, White chinned Petrels, Storm Petrels, Small flock Antarctic Prions, Black browed albatrosses, Royal Albatrosses
Marie Christine and I came creeping up on Watch at midnight, to find Nick and Igor were in high spirits- they were off to their bunks for four hours!
The crescent moon was just setting over our stern and we were heading a little south of east with a steady breeze at our backs. The sea was smooth, the horizon a sharp and clean line strangely lit in the south west, far from the influence of the fast sinking moon. I settled down to review the log and continue worrying about our course. Marie Christine, well-wrapped , was outside checking for any sign of ships.
"Come out! Come out!” her head ducked into the Doghouse, "You'll never believe it!".
"Icebergs!" I thought, wearily.
But it wasn't. The whole southern sky was bathed in light, deep red to the east, palest green to the west. A splendid introductory showing of Aurora Australis. Sometimes you can feel small and vulnerable out here.
It was quite different in the morning. Sunny and blue to begin with but by eight o'clock a Front of black cloud came rolling up from the western horizon. I rolled the mainsail into the mast but was too slow with the No.2 Yankee on the bow.
The rain roared in, streaking the sea with white foam. The two of us resumed forty years of team-building: me at the wheel trying to avoid shouting instructions, herself whirling on the wing, trying to avoid screaming defiance. Both still failing.
Anyway it was exciting, the dial showed top gust: 59.4 knots. Decibels un-recorded. Un-mimsy.
Date: Saturday 1 November 2003
320m miles WNW of Marion Island and reaching across a moderate following sea, it’s much colder now with a few Black-browed and Wandering Albatrosses, occasionally we are visited by small flocks of Antarctic Prions.
"Sailing directly toward a clean sunrise, with an astounding perfect rainbow behind us, just before 0500", Igor wrote in the Log, slipping along at a silent four knots they passed close by a resting albatross and were amazed at its bulk.
Nick has finally solved the Iridium problem but he looks ten years older. It seems Auntie BBC has been doing a spot of house keeping, completely obliterating us, but forgetting to tell Nick.
All six of us meet in the Saloon for lunch, the only time we can all get together. Above us, Trevor is peering out of the Perspex dome. Quentin, the other half of the duty Watch, sits in wet oilskins on Nick's Communications Centre seat, which can be wiped dry. The rest of us sit on Marie Christine's Cape Town-washed cushioned fabric seats. We have plenty of fuzzy ideas about what to do if we meet a pirate fishing boat - let's see what we can make of it. Here we are, 100th day out from far-away home and juggling ideas about pirate locations by satellite with 3 bureaucrats in 3 cafes on 3 continents at the end of their 3 tiring weekends. Maybe ware getting a bit testy,
Date: Sunday 2 November 2003
The barometer fell 5 points in 5 hours and by dawn the wind was rising as Nick and Igor gybed the boat onto the port tack. I reduced sail through the morning until we were running under a scrap of yankee in WNW Force 9 (41-47 knots). It is not appropriate for me to be explicit at this time but we are closing on the fishing grounds and await final details for a rendezvous with a licensed long-liner. Unfortunately we have had to commit our course towards a general location already indicated and must hope for confirmation as soon as the weekend is over.
Conditions worsened all day and people became quiet and thoughtful. But Trevor did his best to enliven things with his almost-sonnet to our final banana.
Sailor’s Lament
“Call me bugler, root-toot-toot,
Time to make our last salute
To our ocean-going fruit –
The succulent banana.
More than a fruit –
A parcelled kiss,
Sunshine on our breakfast dish.
Now they’ve gone we all shall miss
Our beautiful bananas.
So call the bugler, root-toot-toot
Time to make our last tribute
And stand and say ‘Goodbye old fruit’.
Our sunny friend, banana.”
In the middle of the Roaring Forties now and it’s good to see how everyone is responding to Reality. Breaking waves filled both cockpits at various times and cold, cold water got into annoying places. Poor Marie Christine had a bad day in the Galley with everything flying about and ‘unscheduled events’ wrecking timings for both lunch and supper.
Though I’ve kept a diary of every day for 46 years, writing like this, in a continuous email for public consumption, in the present, is a new and unsettling experience for me. Quentin sometimes hears what I’ve written! It’s read back to him over his satellite phone, by his girlfriend in faraway Sydney. Scary, man! It’s quite unlike writing a book, when hindsight plays such a large part.
We are all a bit ragged just now, as we approach one of those situations where hindsight is probably going to be used in a few days time. There’s nothing like the sense of fun I feel in times like these: we’re all fully Alive.
We need two things: Firstly, from the distant bureaucats, we need confirmation of a different RV position downwind, with a licensed fishing boat. Secondly, we need the weather to ease. Both are very possible.
ALL CHANGE - LOSING THE SELF-STEERING
Date: Monday 3 November 2003
Tooling around in 100% cloud cover, with a westerly gale blowing us ever closer to Marion Island.
At three in the morning, with the most inexperienced pair on watch, the sacrificial tube on the Monitor wind vane steering gear broke, leaving its stainless steel rudder, trailing behind us on a thin speckled Spectra safety line. Trevor immediately disengaged the Monitor and switched on the Raymarine Autopilot. By the time Nick and Igor came on at four, the Monitor steering rudder had parted company with its safety line at the manufacturer's staple. We proceeded under the autopilot. "Two wheels on my wagon!" muttered Marie Christine: only Nick, MC and I knew what a truly miserable effect this would have on our lives. “And still we’re rolling along!”
And then our luck changed – firstly, the South African authorities phoned Quentin: the legal South African-flagged Japanese long liner is not southwest of Marion Island after all, but northwest: not 69 but 200 miles and due east of us. And secondly, by another stroke of luck, the wind was building from the west.
Then, as if to adjust, the pendulum swung the other way. Just down off watch, I squirmed my way into the after heads for a welcome wash and shave, where a decidedly unhappy chattering was coming from the slim grey computer box on the bulkhead a couple of feet from my left ear. It wasn’t exactly smoking but I could see the Autopilot drive was done for.
This is a bit of a teaser. We have to shuffle the cards a bit. With the boat surfing on winds gusting to over 50 knots, the tumbling waves were sweeping the decks and leaping hungrily into both cockpits. “One wheel on my wagon!”
Reduced to hand steering only, Quentin, Nick, Igor and I took hour-long tricks at the wheel. Both Marie Christine and Trevor felt they couldn’t trust themselves to manage the wheel, so they began a new support routine up in the doghouse, each working three-hours on and three hours off.
Heading into this familiar Southern Ocean night with the inevitable broaching, we seem rather far 'Up the creek without a paddle'.
Fairly long creek: 4,500 miles to Melbourne.
Date: Tuesday 4 November 2003
We are now crossing the Marion Ridge. Far below us, the ancient Patagonian Toothfish (White Gold) dwell. The sea is confused, humped up in massive swells.
It’s pitch dark and I’m alone at the wheel. I’m exhausted and a bit scared. The stern rises and the bow falls. It’s as if I’m peering straight down the veined marble wall of a building, searching for the pavement below. Then, with a rumble of thunder, the wave breaks round my shoulders and we surf forward, squealing on bed of compressed air. But not fast enough for the wave, which races on down either side of the up-ended boat in a v-shaped wall of brilliant white foam. Slowly the bow staggers up, shaking the decks free of the sea. We seem to slow, almost to a stop. There’s some trembling in my stomach.
This is no time to have aboard people who question the tactics. We have always pushed on. Sometimes, when the bow hangs 60' near-vertical below me, I wonder what will happen if the stern topples ahead of the bow. It’s called pitch-poling. I've never done it - others have.
But with the coming of the daylight, the wind eases and soon we are reaching along on a lumpy sea. There are plenty of birds about. Ice birds, Cape Pigeon, Sooty, Storm and White-chinned Petrels abound and occasionally a huge Wandering Albatross swings by. It’s mop up and return to our normal three-watch system routine, we are left pondering the old axiom – “what ever you are doing there is a better way to do it - if only you would look for it you might see it”. There’s plenty of room for improvement for the next gale.
“Hello Koryu Maru 11. Kochira wa 'Ingurisshu Rouze Sikkusu' toh iuh yotto desu. Eigo ga dekiru hito o musen ni dashite kudasai”.
From five in the evening until midnight we take turns at calling our message in Japanese, over the radio. Especially Marie Christine - maybe a female voice will evoke more response in the wilderness. At home in the suburbs of Melbourne, Nick’s wife Tomoko has translated into phonetics our request to speak to the neutral bird observer aboard a nearby 43-metre South African flagged Japanese longliner. But eventually we had to send a different message “Sorry we couldn't make contact, Tommy, thanks all the same”.
We've been chasing our tails round Marion Island for three cold and miserable days and nights now. Surely, if these people were really serious, they'd be calling us, keen to display their adherence to Regulations. But this is all about big money isn’t it? It’s not about birds. Perhaps the best chance for the birds is for the boats to clean up all the fish and go home to the breaker’s yards, just as they have in the Northern Hemisphere.
Soon the World population will double yet again and the next gold rush will be for plankton soup.
Disappointed we head east across the fishing grounds, carving a needle-thin swathe across hundreds of thousands of square miles of freezing empty ocean. I'll need all my customary good luck to find a pirate.
PRINCE EDWARD ISLAND
Date: Wednesday 5 November 2003
A beautiful moonlit sail from midnight to 0200. Nick and Igor did an extra hour at the wheel 0400-0700, so I wouldn’t have to steer 4 hours on my own. But 0700-1000 turned out very gentle, so Marie Christine was able to steer for a good part, as well as get through all her stuff for the day in the galley.
Great rafts of yellowy brown kelp were floating by like expired octopuses and this brought birds a plenty. We passed four big Wandering Albatrosses, chatting together as they bobbed on the almost calm sea, one had a pink patch on the back of its snowy white head.
"Land Ho!" cried Quentin at 1315, thus winning the second of his four prizes (the first whale, off Cape Town), and now the first land (Prince Edward Island). Competitions for the other two prizes are expected to be announced after Quentin has won them, this is more of a pity than it seems because the prizes involve chocolate.
Prince Edward Island, positioned just 15 miles NNE of Marion Island, gleamed brightest snow white in the clear air, now only 35 miles away on our starboard beam.
But as night came on a gale sprang up from the southeast and soon the snow was gleaming on us too, drat it! Early Christmas.
Here we are roaring along amid snow and hail and Euan Dunn has just phoned to tell us that South Africa has ratified the Agreement for the Conservation of Albatrosses and Petrels. Good on 'em.
Dear God! Why can't they agree to a 200 mile fishing limit around Antarctica and be done with it, before it's too late? The reason for this it seems, is that since Antarctica belongs to no particular country, it cannot have fishing rights. What kind of a world is it?
Date: Thursday 6 November 2003
The glass dropped 6 points in 2 hours. In the early hours of the morning, Nick and Igor blinked into the darkness. An ESE gale, dead on the nose. As the snow drifts deepened in the cockpit, they set a scrap of mainsail, lashed the wheel down to leeward to lie a-tri (Nick speak) and retired to the shelter of the Doghouse.
Marie Christine and I were coming the other way: clambering up the ladder to take over from them. The wind generator was going like a banshee and the snowflakes attacked the window like a plague of moths trying to get at the dim light inside. We two were more than happy to stay indoors, waiting for the Low to pass. So throughout the night we drifted north at a couple of knots, away from Marion Island
At 0400 the Fischer-Panda wheezed into life, alerted by the radar's voltage drain. It had already started automatically ten times in the previous 24 hours but now - after barely a ten second run – it coughed weakly and died.
Another life changing moment had come. Lack of electric power would put us back into the dark ages.
Can you imagine life without computers. Quentin who before now has been has been accused by foreign governments of working for the KGB, is never more than half an arm's length from his secret agent's black box and go-faster earphones. Nick's hyper-super-long fingers would cease their endless fluttering across the waterproof keyboard. His quasimodo hunch could wither and his screen-blank eyes might flicker back to life.
Unless we tame the Panda we will become Vikings, strapped to the wheel.
By dawn the glass was rising 3 points an hour and by 0600, the masts were shedding their coats of snow, which made dull explosions as they came thumping down on the deck. With the thaw, the wind swung to the south-west. Marie Christine and I rolled out the full Staysail and half the Mainsail and the old boat lurched forward at 7 to 8 knots. We bore on toward the next couple of fishing grounds, surrounded by a cloud of maybe a hundred pale grey Icebirds. This is the Life.
Poor Marie Christine has a sore elbow from the steering, so we'll have to juggle with the Watches.
Nick and I got the Panda to start and this added to the sunshine but at the end of a great day's sailing, it failed again. 'Worrying about it won't fix it' muttered gallant Nick, wearily, after his third attempt at starting. 'Let's have a go in the morning!'
Date: Friday 7 November 2003
Bird sightings: Wandering Albatross, Royal Albatross, Black Petrels, Sooty Petrels, White Chinned Petrels, approx 50 Prions
Reaching at good speed across a light sea, Marie Christine tried a new contortion at the wheel and her elbow pain eased. Just in time, we need all hands on the steering now. Rolling eastward we crossed two fishing grounds, 300m miles due west of the dreaded, uninhabited Crozet Islands which belong to France. If we are wrecked on Isle de Cochons the pigs will probably eat us.
The triumph of the day was bleeding the Panda diesel fuel system and hearing it cough into life. No words can express our relief.
Each of us now spends long periods alone at the wheel. It's 14 days since we left Cape town but few of us would really be able to guess the exact day or date. Life is geared to gales and it seems the fourth is nearly upon us.
I keep thinking that our aim is to prevent the needless slaughter of the Albatross. At the wheel there is plenty of time to watch these great birds and I wonder if we are really achieving our aim.
Just before nightfall a huge adult Wandering Albatross came swinging closer and closer across the bow. 12 feet of banking snowy white underwing, crystal clear in the golden rays of the setting sun. It looked so plump and warm and at home; when I die I'd like to become that Albatross.
Now go on to the story for the 8th to 21 November 2003 or back to the Contents page.
