Day 7, 27th Jun 2018, Pos 36 – 13N, 152 – 45E Daily Run 163 nm. Weather, Breezy and Sunny.
Yesterday the wind dropped down to zilch, so on went the engine for 14 hours until the early hours of today when the wind started to pick up. With the engine running at 1500RPM, it doesn’t use much fuel, less than 2 litres an hour, but with the 3 knot current we make about 6-7 knots SOG. We have about 1 days supply of fuel we can play with if the wind drops again, the rest I’m keeping for emergencies and for docking.
We are sailing across the top of a high pressure system, and although this makes for lovely weather and calm seas, it does little for the sails. Today we are further south than this time yesterday, this feels wrong, but it suits the weather patterns we expect, there is a strong low coming our way but passing further north. Mostly we are here for the Kuroshio current, the West Pacific version of the Gulf Stream. I downloaded the latest position of it yesterday over the SSB Wefax and was surprised to see it was really close to us, it had moved from a week ago when I last checked, and it meanders south a bit before turning North. So I decided, given the light winds, that we would motor along the path of the current. The Japanese charts shows it stops abruptly around 160E but in reality I think it swings north to north east and joins up with the Aleutian current. I’m hoping this coincides with our change of course. Part of the reason for going east and not following the shortest route to Seattle from Japan is the typhoon season. Typhoons also want to go to Seattle and seem to take the shortest route up the coast of Japan following the great Circle route before curving away East into the Pacific and weakening, getting whacked full on, offshore by a typhoon is going to make my diet coke far to fizzy for me, so we are heading east, in order to put ourselves as far away as possible from the typhoon path. As it stands now, we are in a good position, given that it will take a few days from the creation and announcement of a typhoon, to it reaching us, and given that within a few days we will be beyond the normal reach of the typhoons, we are relatively safe.
Statistically we have gone from around a 2-3% chance of meeting one, to much less than 1% I would guess. So going east with this current helps get us into a safer place, but also lifts our speed massively. Yesterday we managed 163 nm which is good for no wind and the engine running quite slow.
Damage Report: Not a lot to report, however the plan to leave the spinnaker pole hoisted backfired, I went up to move it out of the way this morning and as I was man handling it, the up-haul attachment snapped, the pole, and it’s a heavy thing, came flying down, went over the side, but didn’t get far as there are so many attachments to it. It was quite a shock, it happened so quickly and could easily have had someones eye out 😉 Anyway, the wire strops from each end of the boom meet around a stainless steel ring in the middle to where an uphaul rope is attached. The wires had chafed through, one completely, the other close behind. For some reason I had thought that wire on steel would be quite chafe proof, but not so. The wire should really have been in steel eyes. I have rigged up a solution that should work, but for now we are sailing close hauled so it’s not needed. I have attached 2 pictures showing the problem. All in all I think the pole setup is a disaster, I wanted to change it all in Asia, but it’s impossible to get the fittings there unless you have them shipped in. It’s all going over the side at the next port we reach! We have a lot of birds following us and circling us, I said they looked like seagulls but a bit grey, Kathy thinks the might be more exotic and that they may have been offended by my common reference. They circle the boat constantly and are growing in number. I wonder if Hitchcock did this passage? Today I will have a go at fixing the water maker, however as the wind/waves/speed increase on this close hauled tack, delicate working gets less likely. Kathy, in between her proper watches, as apposed to my alarm clock based system, continues to provide excellent food and today we may finish our last (freshen in the oven) baguette. My Philippine bought Edam cheese, although a bit hard is very tasty.
I assume everyone realises we have no web access so I can’t see or respond to any replies to the blog, but don’t let that put you off, we look forward to reading them when we reach our destination.
Paul Collister
Author: paulcollister
Day 6, 26th Jun 2018, Pos 36 – 23N, 149 – 25E Daily Run 145 nm. Weather, Breezy and Sunny.
Day 6, 26th Jun 2018, Pos 36 – 23N, 149 – 25E Daily Run 145 nm. Weather, Breezy and Sunny.
Weather forecasting is proving to be impossible, Yesterdays predicted flat calms turned into decent winds on the port beam, and have stayed that way for the last 20 hours or so. I think we are under the influence of a high pressure system now, hence the stability, sunny skies, and quite calm sea. We have only been ambling along at 5 knots, but today that picked up to 6 and then the current appeared again at 3 knots giving us a healthy daily run of 145 nm On the good news front, the batteries coped easily running the auto helm through the night. I switched it to a less aggressive setting which might have helped a bit. I also made 20 litres of water yesterday while it was nice and calm, we currently make the water into 10 ltr Jugs and then decant them into the tank, that we we have better quality control, also I haven’t finished the plumbing yet to eliminate the jugs. On the bad news front, at some point in the night during Kathy’s watch the auto helm lost the plot and decided to take us in 360 deg circles, I power cycled it several times, as this sometimes helps, but that made no difference, then while I was pondering, it just started working again. Kathy was happy to assume we were all ok now, I’m wise enough to electronics to know that this a problem that will return soon enough. However I also know it’s most likely going to be due to a bad connection or a dry joint somewhere, something I can probably find and fix. The other bad news is that today when I tried to make more fresh water, the machine failed to produce any. Again, I know this machine inside out and I’m pretty sure this is down to an air lock or restriction in water flow somewhere, nothing too serious, but we don’t really need it as we carry plenty of water, I will get onto this job later.It was reluctant to start yesterday, but when I bypassed the raw water filter and turned the pressure bypass switch on, then reversed the process it was fine. We had a fantastic sunset, moonset and sunrise last night and this morning. The sea is lovely and clear here and yesterday I spotted a huge plume of water shoot out of the sea only 50-100 metres away from me, this was a classic disney style whale water spout, sadly I didn’t see the whale. I expect we will see them soon.
I sent emails to a few family and friends but got no reply over the last few days, this may be because I had the wrong address in the reply to field, could you please reply again using the myiridium.net email account I have.
The engine has been off now for the last two days, and with our average speed higher than I expected, I think our 6 week voyage may only end up lasting 5 weeks. We dread turning up in America and having to throw away food we didn’t get to eat, like some of the nicer cheeses, saying that, I’m off to try some Edam I got in the Philippines.
Paul Collister
Day 5, (12:00 25th June 2018), Pos 35 – 52N, 146 – 40E Daily Run 176 nm. Weather, Calm and Sunny
Day 5, (12:00 25th June 2018), Pos 35 – 52N, 146 – 40E Daily Run 176 nm. Weather, Calm and Sunny.
Yesterday was meant to be very calm all day according to the forecast, however within a few hours of posting the blog we had strong winds from astern, The sea was a bit more stable and we took off like a rocket, we were doing 7 knots over water at a minimum, and we had a good 3 knots of current, by 18:00 the waves were big and the wind was in the high twenties, so we were belting along, averaging about 9 knots over ground, often registering 12 knots on the GPS as we were pushed by the waves. Kathy thought it was a bit too much, but I was happy as when I rechecked the forecast, it had it right now, and the weather was going to peak that evening. Also with the waves and wind being strong, but steady on the starboard quarter, the motion of the boat was quite gentle and reasonably predictable. Of course there’s always one massive wave that comes out of nowhere and sends something flying inside the cabin that you didn’t expect. I have now packed the wooden spear away in the quarter berth were it won’t be bothering Kathy again. It actually started to die down around midnight, but the big waves continued until the morning. Im glad it was dark last night, as when I could make out the waves they were big! Now we have a calm (ish) sea, and a gentle 6 knot breeze, we are making about 4 knots over ground (SOG). At the 12 hour mark, we had done 110 miles, setting us up for our first 200 mile day, but the light winds of this morning stopped that happening, instead we managed about 176nm
Casualties of the night:
1. Wind vane self steering system, the wind vane course control chain was stiff, I didn’t realise this and when I tried to turn it the chain snapped. I thought I had a spare, but don’t. I have managed to fabricate a link using the middle of a SS rivet and bending it to the right shape, however it’s not great and I think there is something else amiss with the system that caused it to jam. On the plus side, it’s only the course control, the system will steer itself, just maybe not to where we want to go. We do have the the electric autopilot, but that uses a lot of electric, and I don’t know if it will work in a heavy sea at night when we only have batteries. For now we will run with a mix of the two. 2. Genoa sheet. We had to gybe in the night and in the pitch black I didn’t see that the genoa sheet on starboard was rubbing on the lifeline, this has rather scuffed it, no big deal, but I need to be more careful in the dark to check everything.
All in all another test of the boat and it did reasonably well. Right now I have my clothes hanging out to try in the first decent sunshine we have had since leaving. Something has started generating noise that is making HF reception difficult, we found a decent signal from BBC World service last night on their East Asia service and ascertained that England still had a chance to get through to the next round, but we are yet to hear the result. We sit here with our little union jack flags on sticks eagerly anticipating the results (not really).
Paul Collister
Day 4, (12:00 24th June 2018), Pos 35 – 20N, 143 – 16E Daily Run 126 NM. Weather, Calm but grey.
Day 4, (12:00 24th June 2018), Pos 35 – 20N, 143 – 16E Daily Run 126 NM. Weather, Calm but grey.
Yesterday saw a tropical depression develop out of nowhere, and become a low pressure of 1004mb, with winds of up to 35 knots travelling at 35 knots towards us. First it was heading North, then East, then East North East. Trying to avoid it was pointless. We had about 24 hours notice via the weather reports, but the predicted track changed so much I think it would have been down to luck if we had missed it. So yesterday morning I spent checking everything was lashed down well, and preparing for the gale. The winds built through the afternoon, until we had 20 knots on the starboard beam, we were now racing along under a small amount of staysail (maybe 50%) and nothing else. Then the wind veered and dropped to next to nothing, and the sea calmed. I hoped for a minute that that might be it, but looking at the latest forecasts, I could see the centre of the low was very close to us and we could expect a bashing from it again shortly (now 1002mb from 1012 a few hours earlier). soon enough the wind picked up, then quickly switched to the port quarter, then onto the port beam. Now the waves picked up and we were being tossed around a fair bit. Too much to do anything really. I brought the sail in as it was constantly flapping around with the boats violent lurches from leaning right over to port, then to starboard, all the time heaving up and down. The rain was quite heavy now as well, so we battened down the hatches , as they say, fired up the engine and retired below. Kathy had already managed to serve up some wholesome pasta with a tomato sauce, before things got too bad. We have got reasonably good at stowing now, so little escaped inside. There were no ships around out here, some 50 miles offshore, so a quick glance at the AIS and radar every 30 minutes provided some assurance. I did spot a big shark during this, I wondered if he knew something I didn’t? Later in the evening when we were really getting thrown around I smelt diesel fumes. my fear was that we had a leak in one of the jerry cans strapped to the side of the deck. We have 8 in total, giving us a reserve supply of 80 litres. It was too rough and the half moon did little to light up the night, so I decided to ignore it for a bit, but the smell got worse so I donned my wet weather gear, and with the help of two safety lines, I worked my way forward to the cans which are opposite the mast on each side. Sure enough the lashings had come undone and 4 cans were lying on their side, one of them nearly empty. I guessed right away it was the one with the faulty air cap, I had fixed temporarily. At this point I found out just how slippy wellies can be on a deck covered in diesel, why had it decided not to rain during this incident! Anyway, I shouted to Kathy to get the deck lights on and power up the wash down pump, and to pass me the washing up liquid. I then re-secured the cans, squirted soap everywhere and scrubbed the decks. My sincerest apologies to all the sea life who thought the water tasted a bit off last night. It won’t happen again. By 4 AM this morning the waves had reduced enough that we both got some sleep, and now they continue to diminish. My forecast tells me we have a deficit of wind planned for a few days, I wouldn’t mind a break from the wind or waves, but feel a bit like a sitting duck here with gale force winds able to come out of nowhere and still very much in the typhoon belt. Hence we are still burning up fuel trying to get as far east as possible. It’s interesting how back home in the NW of England, we see all the weather systems arrive, mostly across the Atlantic as fully formed lows and highs, whereas here and further south is where the weather is made, and then delivered, in this case, over to the west coast of America and Canada. It was reassuring to get through that last blow without any real issues, the waves were big and the wind was in the low 30’s so things can be a lot worse, but we handled that quite well. I’m less bothered about what we might meet on passage now. The worst of it is the waves right now, they are hitting us from the port beam, the starboard beam, astern and sometimes a few big random waves will whack us, making the motion of the boat a real pain. … 2hours later… As I’m posting this, the sea has calmed greatly and we are flying the Genoa and making 5-7 knots Easterly without the engine. All is good again.
Paul Collister
Day 3., Pos 34 – 52N, 140 – 51E. Daily Run 163NM. Weather, dreary.
Day 3., Pos 34 – 52N, 140 – 51E. Daily Run 163NM. Weather, dreary.
I’m pretty sure we found the Kuroshio current last night, our speed shot up by 3 knots for a long time. Sadly I drifted too far north last night but we are back in it again getting a 2 knot lift, making our speed 6 knot+ most of the time. The wind has gone again, but we had some fine sailing yesterday and into the evening/early morning. We made a daily run of 163NM which is great, but we had the engine helping for 15 hours, we will have to stop using that in a few days with just enough left for our arrival and the odd emergency.
Japan is behind us now, although not far enough as far as the weather goes. Out of nowhere a low has developed behind us and is deepening and heading our way. We can expect a gale with winds in the 30-35 knot range and waves up to 4 metres. My watch started at 4AM today, sunrise was just after that, and I started preparing the boat. I went around the deck making sure everything was tied down well and couldn’t chafe, chafe being the number one problem on a passage like this. I also rigged up a rope / stay leading forward from the spinnaker pole, and one leading aft so I can keep it in position. I will be leaving the pole out all the time on this passage as it’s too much of a flap to hoist it up the mast and get it down. I also gybed the pole in anticipation of the expected blow.
I transferred 60 litres of fuel from cans on the deck to the tank, this being how much we have used in the last few days leaving Kushimoto. It’s better to have the 60kg (approx) deep in the tanks below rather than on deck, from a stability point of view. Earlier a huge downpour passed over us and brought a little headwind, but not enough to do much with. I am keeping north of the path of the depression and hoping to pick up a bit of wind from it, but it will either miss me or run me down, we shall see. Everything else is going well, the boat is working 100% as planned, all systems seem good, and we won’t see land again now until we get across the pond. We might not even see anymore ships. There is one crossing our bow now, but at 4 miles away he is hidden in the mist/fog. Kathy had fun on the midnight watch as many ships where just drifting around, making 2 knots in the current while waiting to enter the Tokyo bay area I suspect. The AIS shows them pointing one way but heading another, which is confusing.
I haven’t quite got used to the fact that the passage has started, but now Japan has disappeared out of site, and won’t return, I think it’s very much a wysiwyg situation now, just sea and sky for many weeks. I think there should have been a big sign in the ocean somewhere that said
Welcome to the North Pacific Services available in 4300 miles Conditions “OK to Rubbish” Have a nice trip
Kathy thinks she will do a weekly blog. We will move the clocks forward tomorrow, so that the sun rises and sets at a more reasonable time. Now we have the power to set whatever time we like on board. I’m not sure how this works with the international dateline, some strange logic in my head says things will only be ok if we cross it at midnight! Normally we would change the clock by an hour for every 15 degrees of longitude we travel, but Japan is on such an odd timezone, that won’t work.
Paul Collister.
Day 2 , pos 33-51N, 137-57E, daily run 118 NM
Day 2 , pos 33-51N, 137-57E, daily run 118 NM
We left Kushimoto in calm grey weather, but had a nice send off by the local tourist office lady who brought a journalist from the Kushimoto local newspaper. After the interview we were presented with a bag of presents, so sweet. We motored away for a few hours until the wind picked up from astern and we rolled out the Yankee sail, in no time at all we were making 7-9 knots with a 25 knot tailwind, plus the waves started to build, reaching 3-4 metres at times, I hoped this wasn’t an omen, because it was quite intimidating. Kathy sill managed to produce a lovely diner of hot soup and a fresh warm crusty baguette. We pounded through the night but by sunrise 4am, the sea had calmed, by 9 it was very calm and we were motoring again. There’s a lot of shipping here as we are passing close to the main Tokyo route and the main great circle path from Asia to the west coast of America. The sea was calm enough for me to drop the Yankee sail and replace it with an old Genoa I had repaired in Thailand in preparation for this passage, the logic is that I don’t want to ruin a nice new performance sail on a downwind passage where basically any old rag, if big enough would do the job. As it turns out, swapping headsails on deck in a Rolly sea is not something I’m going to be making a habit of. It was so difficult, I almost went over the side at one point. Poor old Ellen macaurther who was doing this three times a day on here solo round the world voyage, and much bigger sails too. Enough for now, will try to update every day after my 12:00 log entries.
Paul Collister
We are off today
We have checked the forecast, and everything is good for a departure today.
We just need a quick run to the shops to buy a stack of fresh food then we cast off our lines and head for the USA.
Yesterday was fun, it turned out we had to go to Wakayama City to clear out, they were very helpful, but it was still a 3 hour trip to their office by train, and yesterday the tail of the typhoon passed over bringing massive amounts of rain, Kathy was soaked through, as was her now defunct laptop. We were dismayed to see all the trains back delayed by 1 to 2 hours, but pleased when ours turned up just 15 mins late, however it wasn’t ours, it was one from a few hours earlier, also delayed. I asked and was told by a passenger it went to Kushimoto, but it only went half way, so we were left in a station 100 miles from the boat in torrential rain with all trains cancelled. Eventually Japan Rail (JR) provided a bus that got us back around 21:30 so it was a long day, just to get a stamp on a bit of paper. Still it was less painful than checking in.
We plan to leave before 12:00 in order to get far enough offshore to have passed the main shipping lanes and be clear of the fishing nets, we will be heading east to seek out the Kurisho current, this is like the gulf stream, unfortunately, it has taken a u turn just here, but by going east I hope to connect with it soon, it will sweep us up to the NE and across towards the Aleutians for a week or so. The forecasts are excellent now, we might be becalmed a little in a few days time, but I don’t trust the forecast that far ahead, but the general theme of the highs and low pressure is working out well for us.
So I am off now to get 100 eggs, I wonder how many I will break in the bicycle basket, answer on a postcard to, bedraggled and hungry, somewhere near Seattle, USA.
PS I will try to get into the routine of a small post each day on the sat phone, but our position should be available from the link above or here
Paul Collister
Detained by the Police!
When I was a kid, my parents always said if you have a problem when out and about, ask a bobby, that’s a policeman for those outside of the UK, or not born mid last century! This might have been partly because my dad was a bobby for most of his working life, and any bobby I asked for help, was likely to know him, and might even know me from the police Christmas parties, or the various police cricket / sport activities I was dragged along to as a kid. However I would not offer such advice to anyone in Japan.
Why? well our plans are evolving, and right now the typhoon season has brought strong winds that has affected our departure date and location, rather than heading towards Tokyo and checking out of Japan there, or in Coshi, East of Tokyo on the coast, we may well leave from here, Kushimoto. We have everything we need for the passage now and the supermarkets are great, so we can stock up on fresh products without any issue. However Kushimoto lacks an Immigration and Customs office, so I need to find the nearest one, get a train there and get our passports stamped with an exit visa and get customs clearance so we can check into the USA. So how to find out where the office is, the Internet was no use, everything led me back to a number in Osaka I should phone, but I was reluctant to try this as they probably won’t speak English, and we don’t have a phone, so it would have to be on Skype. I asked at the tourist office, where the lady spoke great english, but she could only guess that the next big city might have one. So I thought the police might know, they have a big office here and must have relations with immigration so they should have some idea.
So I popped into the local station, telling Kathy I would be back in a few minutes so we could head off on our bikes and explore the promontory which is the most southern point on Honshu Island, more on that later. The police in the station spoke no English, so we were off to a bad start, after a lot of gesturing I thought I had got my point over, but they didn’t seem to have any ideas, I tried to leave but they asked me to stay, I had shown them my passport, and explained I needed a stamp, fairly easy to do on the gesture front, fairly easy to misunderstand as well, it seemed, as another officer, there were now 6 on the case arrived and took my passport, he seemed to be quite excited about this, and all 6 were on their mobile phones. I pronounced that I had to leave and not to worry, but they wouldn’t let me go. After an hour of them calling people, I was handed a mobile phone and spoke to a translator they had enlisted. He needed me to answer questions, how had I arrived in the country, was I alone, where was my wife, how much money had I brought into the country etc etc. I was a bit pissed off by now and asked why he needed to know, but the phone was taken off me and I was told to wait; another 30 minutes of watching them all phone people, more questions about my status as a traveller, then somebody shouted July, July , No June. At this point most of the police disappeared, leaving this younger detective to call the translator, who explained to me that in fact I hadn’t overstayed and everything would be ok as long as I applied for an extension before the end of July, another month away!
It appears they had misread my visa as expiring in June, not July and had me down as a criminal for overstaying my visa, given the state of crime here, I might have been the biggest criminal they had encountered in some time, and this would surely make the 6 o’clock news! Once it became apparent they couldn’t read a visa stamp properly, and to be fair June/July are western words, but to be fair to me, it was a Japanese immigration office stamp, so they should be able to work with the police to get a system that works, they all looked a bit embarrassed and most of them snuck away, leaving the young detective to ask me to wait a bit longer. I wasn’t really in a good mood at this point, it felt like I had been there for hours, but knowing how hot they are on manners, I waited a bit longer, only to be rewarded with the number for the Osaka branch, which I already had, and a request to call them on Monday when they were open!
I returned to Kathy, with one of my better excuses for being late!
So tomorrow I will phone Osaka, and I expect we will be told to visit the office in Wakayama City, a couple of hours on the train, but probably a nice day out.
Weather Fax (WEFAX)
Just a bit of info on Weather fax, forecasting and typhoons.
Right now we are ready to leave, with good winds from the right direction, we should reach the Juan de Fuca strait in the USA within six weeks, but we could be out there for longer if we don’t get the wind. At this time of the year we have two main concerns, one is leaving Japan, as typhoons (the Asian name for Hurricanes) arrive frequently, this is perhaps the worst area in the world for typhoons, and combined with strong ocean currents from the Kuro-shio current, we have to time our departure so we can get a few hundred miles offshore, and as far East and North as possible to escape the typhoon area and get into the favourable currents. The other concern then is to get the right course for the wind. In the North Pacific, much as in the North Atlantic, the weather consists of a series of low pressure systems travelling from West to East. These are sandwiched between high pressure systems on the artic and equatorial sides. The trick is to ride along the bottom of the lows around about 35-40deg N, then halfway across, head NE to our destination. Wander towards the centre of the low, and the wind may be too strong, wander into the highs and the wind disappears. If you end up at the top of a low you will have strong headwinds and an uncomfortable ride. Things are running a little late this year and the lows and highs aren’t where we want them to be, but the typhoons are around, we have had two since the end of the rally. Once we leave we won’t have internet, just a very basic email connection via our sat-phone. We can download weather forecasts and try to steer based on that, but we also have weather fax, which we can get over the HF SSB Radio.
I have included some pictures below that we receive.
The above pic is annotated by me to show our location.
Below is the path of the Typhoon that is now downgraded and passing us
Here you can see the typhoon has become a normal low, still with strong winds
The technology , or rather the protocol is analogue based using tones, much like early modems did, and has been around for many decades, but it’s amazing how good the quality is as you can see from the rather cute testcard they have..
These are free to receive and I use a program called FLDigi on the MacBook to decode the audio signal int pictures.
Right now it looks like the current typhoon has been degraded to a gale, and it has now taken on the standard form of a low pressure system with a cold and warm front, we will wait for it to pass us by on Monday/Tuesday, and jump onto its tailwinds as it heads ENE and follow it away from Japan. So Wednesday 20th is the current ETD.
Here are some pictures of us leaving the Ichimonji Yacht club we just received from them.
So until we get our clearance from Immigration and customs, we wait here hoping the weather behaves as predicted. I took the emergency tiller I made to a local workshop in the docks here and they welded it up for me, they did a lovely job, and wouldn’t accept any payment for it, but they seemed to appreciate my very low bow in return. On the bowing front, I noticed people bow to each other when on the phone, seems a bit superfluous to me, but must be similar to how I would nod in agreement to someone I was talking to on the phone. Interesting all the same. I have painted the tiller to stop it rusting and fitted a wooden extension to get the full length out of it. I was disappointed, but not really surprised that when I painted a completely smooth surface of new steel, a smoother surface you could not wish for, I ended up with lumps and ridges, brush hairs sticking out and bits of metal unpainted. Painting continues to be a challenge for me.
Paul Collister
A quick update from Kushimoto
Just a quick update. We are now at the start of the typhoon (hurricane) season here in the western Pacific. Weather forecasting is excellent, so we are not too worried, we waited in Osaka for a typhoon to pass by, many hundreds of miles offshore, then hitched a ride on its tail, down to Kushimoto where we are now waiting in a harbour, which is also a typhoon shelter, very safe. The typhoon that passed allowed us to sail here with following waves and a wind behind us of over 20 knots all the way, which is fine when it’s behind you, but the big ships we passed going into it where crashing into the sea, making waves splash 100 ft or more into the air from their bow. We have been waiting for a low pressure system to pass otherwise we have to deal with 30 knot headwinds, this should have passed by Monday and we would be setting off then, but today typhoon Gaemi was named, down by Taiwan and is heading our way! The forecast says it is becoming an extratropical low, which isn’t something I fully understand (yet), but I do know one of them was involved in ‘The Perfect Storm’, one of my favourite storm books. So we sit here and wait, Kushimoto is a sleepy fishing town, but has great shops and claims to have the smallest museum in Japan. We only have Kathy’s expensive 3G phone internet , so we can’t use it much, hence I send this report via our Satphone, without pictorial illuminations.
Paul Collister
Preparing for the Ocean
From the fishing port of Boze-Jima, we motored over towards Osaka, where we had a berth waiting for us at the Ichimonji Yacht Club (IYC). A few weeks earlier we had helped a Japanese yacht tie up next to us in YugeShima during the rally, we got chatting and the skipper was keen to know our plans, when I mentioned I fancied visiting a big city like Osaka to work on the engine and provision, he was excited as Osaka was his patch and he quickly whipped out his phone and called the commodore of a club which he knew provided a couple of visitors berths. This turned out to be one of the best bits of luck we had had so far. Ichimonji Yacht club is situated in a slightly barren area, just in between two large bridges on a sort of river/canal area.It’s a long quay, and the club has put out about 40 pontoons for their members and built a clubhouse on the quay.
The location is actually fantastic as it sits just 30 minutes from either Kobe, Kyoto or Osaka using the local train service. The nearest shops are a short cycle ride away, and we were provided with free bicycles by the club to use at our leisure.
The club members are fantastic people, so kind, generous and most helpful with everything we could want. They have built a lovely club here, the buildings are very ‘homebrew’, but provide toilets, showers, laundry room, Bar / Kitchen, club room, office, free fast wifi and a great well equipped workshop.On arrival the Commodore, Vice Commodore and the treasurer sat me down to explain everything, we could have free electricity and water, could use all their facilities and we could stay as long as we liked, however it would cost 300Yen / day ($3 or £2), next we were informed that we would be guests of honour at a party they were throwing for us on Saturday, and they would be very pleased for us to attend. It was all a little overwhelming, they really were going out of the way to make us welcome. When they asked if we had any food or drink preferences, I wondered how they would cope with a vegan and a tee-totaller, but they took that on board without any issue.
So we settled into a week of relaxing around, shopping, sightseeing and doing some boat work.
When the party came around, we both had to make a little speech to the few dozen club members who were there, then food was served, it was mostly cooked by the commodore, on the quay and was fantastic, Kathy thought it was the best veggie meal she had had in a long time, but I expect she will elaborate on that more.After the food, which kept coming and coming, we retired to the clubhouse where the members produced many bottles of whisky and proceeded to have a good time. It wasn’t long before the karaoke machine came out and we watched with great amusement each of the members present murder a great classic.
To be fair, some of them actually sang really well. One of the young ladies present explained to me that I had to sing as well, as this was a Japanese custom, and it was not possible for me to opt out, as everyone seemed to be having such a good time it would have been silly not to join in, however I was surprised when Kathy joined me for a rendition of “Hey Jude ” after I had destroyed the song “Yesterday”.
The reason for all the beatles songs was that every time anyone asked where we were from, i.e. Liverpool, then the next words ushered were always “Ah the Beatles”, so they kept selecting songs from their repertoire, not something I would have chosen myself, but at least having heard all their songs at least a million times, I knew the words. We can’t have been too painful, as we got a good round of applause.The next day, several club members came to help me fix the engine and to run me around town, looking for copper washers and other bits. On one such trip, one of the club members bought me a present, some special soap he said would be great for cleaning the cushions in the boat, which made me feel bad about how dirty they had gotten. Keeping things clean is not one of my strong points. Today the commodore dropped of a bag of luxury biscuits as a gift, we have had so many gifts since we have been here, and we really don’t have much to offer back. I donated my new starter battery to the club, it’s only 4 weeks old, but surplus now I have bought the 5 deep cycle jobs.
We spent a day walking around Osaka, we had gone primarily to get my iPad and MacBook fixed at the apple store, they were good, as usual, but it turned out the great deal I got on extended warranty for my new iPad in Malaysia is applecare, and I had thought it was applecare plus. In the UK you only have one type of applecare, as you do in Malaysia, however I now know that the one in Malaysia excludes the accidental cracking of the screen that is standard elsewhere, do Malaysians do a lot of screen cracking? Getting apple to fix it was going to cost the best part of £300, so I declined, knowing I could get it done elsewhere for less than £100, also the MacBook proved to have a screen fault according to their testing, so I might have to have a new one which would make the battery replacement costly, as it turned out they returned the laptop to me the next day with a new battery, and I dropped off my iPad into a “Smart Hospital” for overnight repair.
While we were in Osaka we visited a few megastores and walked around the street markets. It’s a very impressive city, most of it being rebuilt after the Americans flattened it in WW2. I visited the peace museum and saw the horrific devastation caused by the allied bombs. Many accounts in the museum from people, often children at the time, made you appreciate what horrors ordinary people have to go through when there is a war, totally helpless to do anything about it. Photographs show most of the city as a flattened mass of rubble.
Kathy will no doubt write about our visit to the cat cafe, where we got to neck a cup of coffee in record time while stroking a cat, all for a bargain £10 each 🙁
Yesterday we headed over to Kyoto, once the capital of Japan, with the old imperial palace. We visited the Kiyomizu temple complex, saw lots of young ladies dressed up in Kimonos, this was my favourite temple so far (not just because of the young ladies), it had a great atmosphere, despite the throngs of tourists there.
Later we walked around the old part of town where modern day Geisha girls learn their trade in special schools, and can often be seen scurrying around the streets, however we didn’t see any, just a lot of old buildings along the banks of a lovely river. Dinner in a falafel place then the express train home.
Today, I stripped down the binnacle to get access to the steering chain and throttle/gear lever. I oiled the chain and checked everything was good, two of the screws I replaced last time were rusting, so they can’t have been SS so they were replaced again. Losing the steering is one of my big fears and if the wheel steering fails we have an emergency tiller we can use, or we would have if I hadn’t lost it somewhere along the way. Yesterday I found a piece of box section steel in the local hardware store and mangled it into a tiller replacement in the workshop here at the IYC, it’s not brilliant, but I think it will work. I just hope we don’t have to steer by tiller for 6 weeks.
Earlier I was summoned to the club house where the vice commodore wanted to show me all the ports we might visit on our way out of Japan, he had thoughtfully brought charts and phone numbers to help. If I understood Mas, the club Treasurer correctly, the VC was previously a commercial pilot and had taken many aerial photographs of Japan and was an expert on the ports around the country.
After we had worked out some good ports we can visit or have as emergency refuge ports I asked how we might get a load of groceries back from the supermarket tomorrow, I was hoping for a taxi number or delivery service, but instead I was told a club member would take us there and bring us back in his car, and what time would I like to go! I tried to refuse their generosity, but they would have none of it, so tomorrow we are off shopping to fill a car with provisions, to give you an idea of what we will get:
48 * 1 litre bottles of fizzy water
several litres of wine (boxed)
48 cans of zero% beer
60 eggs
Loads of Kitchen & Toilet roll
The rest of the supplies we have been ferrying back on our bikes over the last few weeks.
Now we plan to leave on Tuesday morning, around 6AM and do a day sail to Ao Port, then a day sail to Kushimoto, from there a three day sail to Chosi, arriving on Saturday or Sunday next weekend, there we refuel, take on water, buy some fresh food, check out of Japan, and weather permitting hit the big seas.
Paul Collister.