Author: paulcollister

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

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

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.

Having arrived at a safe place close to the big cities of Osaka and Kobe, I decided to take on the engine repair. Based on the fact that if (or more likely when) I mess up, I can call in the professionals.

The job required the removal of the fuel injector, and trying to figure out why exhaust gasses and fuel were leaking out from it.
In order to remove the injector, I first had to remove the high pressure fuel return lines from all the injectors, so I could get those pipes out of the way. This was easy, the supply pipe for the bad injector was next. A few other bits of engine came off to help with acesss, then I could try to pull the injector out.
I expected this to be difficult, and when I tried, it was just completely seized in, I guess this was to be expected, carbon buildup on the inside is normal. I believe there is a tool to help pull these injectors, but there was little chance of me getting hold of one. I visited a local hardware store to see if I could build something, but I couldnt find a bolt with the right thread to screw into the injector, so gave up. I put the whole thing back together and thought if nothing else I might have learnt how to remove the high pressure lines. Amazingly the engine still worked, and I couldnt see any fuel leaks. So nothing was lost.
Chatting with the locals here at the sailing club, one member with experience of engines came along to help the next day. I stripped it all down again and he had a go at removing the injector, he couldn’t extract it, but did manage to rotate it a degree or two. I had assumed the injector was keyed and so didn’t try to rotate it. I’m very conscious that an injector is a very high precision device and I’m worried about damaging it in any way by using too much force on it. However after the engineer gave up, I continuing to wiggle it back and forth whilst applying liberal amounts of WD40, eventually it paid off and the injector pooped out.

Here you can see the copper washer close up, there is a chunk missing, perhaps 0.5mm deep which I hoped was the cause of the problem. A trip to the local hardware store failed to find anything close to the right size so I need to order the correct replacement. In the meantime I carefully sanded down the washer to make it flat again.

My problem with this approach was that both sides are not parallel now, something I have had problems with going right back to my first days in woodwork and metalwork at school. I tried to smooth down the higher side, but knew I was on a looser as that would give me a round side, so I got it as close as I could and hoped that the compression that would be applied would flatten it out.  I annealed the washer, this should make it more malleable.
I reassembled it all, after a lot of meticulous cleaning of the injector socket, not at all sure if it would work, but it started first time, with no need for bleeding, and the horrible noise that I had before of the gas escaping had gone. The engine was sounding much better, but closer inspection revealed a small amount of gas still escaping from the injector. the seat that the injector sits in looked like it could do with a polish, but it’s very difficult to access. At least I know how to dismantle it all now, and hopefully when I get the new washer I can try that, however I may get a mechanic in when I reach America/Canada and get that and a few other jobs done on the engine.

While here I managed to get a few more batteries from amazon, they had a limit of 3, and I needed 5, now we have 5 new batteries, and from the pic below it looks like I’m praying, probably that I get more than 3 years out of this batch.

I had actually decided to go for Lithium Ion batteries, but they aren’t available here, so I worked out that these 5 batteries came in at about £450, and if I get a couple of years out of them, hopefully technology will have moved on in those two years and I will be able to save that much on the Lithium Ion batteries. At least we have power for the passage and don’t need to worry about that.

I have started an inspection of the boat now, working from the tip of the  bowsprit to the back of the monitor wind steering checking everything, looking for frayed ropes, split wire, loose bolts or anything that might not be 100%. It didn’t take long to find that the block (pulley) that feeds the furling line onto the staysail drum had split and I only had half of the  sheave, which itself had sharp edges and a chunk missing. That explains why I was finding the furling to be stiffer than normal recently. Soon I will climb the mast and do the same checks there.

On the way here I ran the watermaker, however it didn’t live up to its name, as it wouldn’t make water, it seemed to have trouble drawing sea water from the hull fitting, but when I put the maker into bypass mode it drew the water, then switching back to normal mode it continued and we made 20 litres of good water in a couple of hours, so that’s good. We also managed to decant some propane gas into the spare cylinder from Ken, our neighbour in Onomichi last week. so we have gas. We have bought a small portable stove and a dozen butane cylinders, as a backup.

So with gas, water, electric and a much improved engine all fixed, the main concerns are gone. I’m also focussing on the human side of things, like warm clothing, bags of chocolate bars etc 😉 and brushing up on my basic weather forecasting skills.

We have found a massive supermarket just a short ride from here, next to the two massive DIY / Hardware stores, so we will provision fully here, tomorrow I go to the Apple store in Osaka to see about a new display for the iPad (Main Nav device at the helm) as I dropped it the other night, and new batteries for my MacBook, which can’t hold a charge for more than an hour now.

If all goes to plan, we will be ready to leave for the big passage in about 5 days time, so then it’s just a case of working our way east, stopping along the way if the weather changes, then off.

Paul Collister.

 

We arrived into Le Shima early afternoon and tied up in the small sea station (Marina) after being shown a figure of £5 per night, this was higher than the last sea station where we should have only paid 60p per night, but there was no one there to pay. However it turned out to be £5 per metre, with extra for electricity and water, making the total around £70. After nearly paying 60p the day before, I explained to the lovely lady at the reception that I was just a poor old man sailing around the world, and I couldn’t afford such high rates, she understood and wished me well. We left to look for a place to tie up to a wall, but couldn’t find one, I then headed out to find somewhere to anchor, however the volcanic nature of the islands means that it gets deep quickly as you leave the shore, also all of the shallow areas are covered in fishing nets, so you can’t get near them anyway. I saw that there where a couple of other ports within a mile or two, so we motored over to them, the first one I entered was a serious fishing port, and normally they won’t let yachts in, however a kind gentleman in a fishing boat was happy for us to raft up alongside him as long as we were up at 7am to let him out. this was all negotiated via google translate on each of our phones.

This was a fishing port that was doing well, one of many hundreds if not thousands around Japan. It’s not until you get here that you realise how much fishing is part of the culture and daly life of everyone here. The supermarkets and even the 7-eleven local shops all sell pre-prepared meals of fish / sushi as ‘lunch boxes’ along with a huge selection of fresh and cooked fish.

As I have noticed on my travels, a lot of boat owners take a lot of care of the presentation of their boats, others just let them rot away.

Looks like they have an exciting time once the fishing is over

Sadly, I think these machines scrape the sea bed for crabs/lobsters etc, I don’t know much about it, but I understand it’s not a great way to fish as they tend to kill a lot of other marine life in the process.

These two boats have a net strung between them and are moving fast, maybe 10 knots, I have never seen this before.

Also these two boats are towing the bigger boat, and I think it’s more about catching fish than moving a boat, but quite how this works is beyond me, perhaps the big boat has net hanging from it?

Wherever there is fish, you will find these guys.

And of course you need slipways to haul-out the boats for repair, this place has 6 slips, and a big workshop to repair them in.

Anchor graveyard. These anchors aren’t sophisticated, but seem to work ok. They must think me mad for spending a fortune on my Spade anchor, and having it shipped half the way around the world, when you can just weld a load of rebar together.

The big pipe is used to deliver ice blocks into the hold of the fishing boats.

A lot of fishermen take their game very seriously and have used their powerful lobby to try to stop yachting activities in Japan, they often seem to come racing at me when I’m out sailing near their nets. unlike everywhere else in Asia, they rarely wave back when you give them a passing wave, more often they turn their backs on you and ignore you completely. However, thanks to yachting groups here, and the Setouchi rally can count as one, the government seem to be warming to the yachting world, probably as a source of tourism revenue. Since we arrived they have abolished the closed port system, which was quite a pain, I still have to apply to visit ports, but I don’t need to say which ones they are, just my first port of entry, and I get a permit to visit any port in Japan for as long as I’m here.

Saying that, the guys we met in the harbour here were great and very friendly and helpful, as have been quite a few others we met on our travels.

Paul Collister

We arrived in Yuge for the Setouchi the day before the rally began and had a warm welcome from the organiser, “KC” and some other rally participants who were already there. Above you can see the bridge we passed under as seen from our berth on a small pontoon in the town centre. Yuge Town, is a small affair, you can walk all around it in about 20 minutes, it’s very sleepy and although it has a population of 6000, I only ever saw about five people out at any one point.  Below you can see the other rally boats on the pontoon.We have an Australian couple, Ken and Belinda, on the big cat who are just wrapping up and heading home after spending 5 years touring the Pacific islands. We have Rob, a Canadian who has left the rally early to get up to Kushiro ready to sail over to his home town of Vancouver. We have scrapped plans to leave from there and instead will leave from a lower latitude of 35deg North where we hope to ride the bottom of the depressions heading east. It will be interesting to see who gets there first, however Rob plans to visit Alaska on the way and may well stop off at the Aleutians if he is close and fancies a rest. The other boats are all Japanese crewed, and mostly a lively bunch who enjoy their sake. The big motor boat is owned by a successful businessman who is also a sponsor of the rally. He has invited 6 Australians onboard as well, so they are enjoying a level of luxury we can’t quite match on Sister Midnight, I’m not sure our deck wash spraying into the cockpit well would be as good as their Jacuzzi on the top deck. However at least we don’t have to worry about staff here.

Across the island is a lovely bay with a small harbour at the end, mostly used by fishing boats, but there are a few sailboats there too.

The highlight of our stay here was the collaboration between the local technical college, which is a residential school specialising in Marine tech and the rally folk. We all met at a reception and each of us had to introduce ourselves and explain a bit about our past, our boat and our plans. We were supposed to do the is Japanese as well as English, Kathy had prepared a crib sheet for us both and we did a reasonable job of introducing ourselves in Japanese, but I did the bulk of our story in English.
Later we were paired off with students from the college who would look after us during our stay, We had Mai, Yuri and Suzuki. These were all lovely 19 year old ladies from the college who took a great interest in us and our boat. The next day we all headed off for a sail around the bay, I showed them the workings of the boat and each of them had a go at helming for 15 minutes of so. One of their teachers took pictures from the bridge above.

Later that day the students put on a wonderful barbecue for us near the beach and plied us with alcohol and food for several hours.

The next day rained so the bike ride around the island which the students had planned was cancelled and instead everyone went off for an Onsen, which is like a Turkish bath affair, however the Japanese have taken this to a high art form, the bath can only be taken once you are spotlessly clean, you cannot enter the bath if you have tattoos, as this implies you are in some way gang related, and there’s a stack of etiquette just around how you manage your hand towel. As you can imagine we didn’t follow much of this. Still it was a very pleasant relaxing experience.

Yuge has a few shrines and temples and this is typical of those we have seen here.

These are typical fenders used around here, huge polystyrene affairs, often wrapped in cloth, often not, and shredding waste into the sea, most un-Japanese.

The next day most of the rally boats left to explore the area, but we booked into the pontoon for another five days just to chill and do some boat jobs.

On one of our days we cycled around the island and on another we left the island on our bikes via the huge bridge to the next island, then another bridge to another island then across a short pass by boat to the destination island, which had a hardware store (Home Depot/B&Q) and a big supermarket.

So far everyone we have met has been wonderful and keen to help whenever possible.
More boats arrived over the next few days and our neighbour got chatting to us in quite good English, I do admire how hard they try to speak to us in English, especially when we are so rubbish at Japanese, and he proceeded to present us with a gift of a bottle of sake, this has been a common occurrence where we are presented with gifts, and feel awful as we don’t have anything to reciprocate with, other than a lot of bows and Aragatos. This same neighbour was keen to know our plans, and when I explained I had to find a marina near Osaka that wouldn’t break the bank, he whipped out his mobile and started calling around for me. Within minutes he had secured me a place in a yacht club in Kobe, which is quite close to Osaka and I was speaking to the president a few minutes later who explained that they had 3 berths for visitors and that one would become free for me, He would help me find an engineer for my injector problem, they would provide free electricity and water, showers, laundry as well and that it would cost me $2 a day. They also had a couple of bicycles for us to use if we wanted. Apparently this level of generosity is not at all uncommon here. As our Australian neighbour said “you can’t out-gift the Japanese”.
So after a fairly lazy week we slipped our berth and headed south to join the rally again at the small port of Nio on the southern island of Shikoku, the smaller of the four main Japanese Islands. There are nearly 7000 Islands in all here. It was a short 4 hour passage and the main hazard was crossing the shipping lane that ran east west, so we took a long route which took in a few islands and allowed us to cross at right angles. However we had to deal with a couple of big ships also joining the shipping lanes just were we planned to cross. With Kathy manning the AIS and calling out CPAs to me we got across just fine. The wind then picked up and by the time we closed in on Nio we were flying along, close hauled (Sails pulled in tight) at about 6 knots in a 16 knot wind. Once in the marina the wind dropped, and the sun shone brightly, an easy mooring and Kathy was soon sipping her wine while I enjoyed a Asahi Dry Zero beer, I must say the Japanese have got a lot of things right, and there alcohol free beer is the best I have ever tasted.

That evening we were entertained by the Nio Yacht club and the local rotary organisation, we were given free food and drink and then asked to go on stage boat by boat and talk a little in Japanese to the audience and also to sing a song. Oh they do like a good sing song here, of course Kathy has gone white now and I’m checking she is still breathing! In the end I go on stage and make a pathetic apology that we brits don’t do sing song, but I do a bit of bowing and thanking our hosts and just about get away with it.
Our hosts organised some dancing entertainment for us which was Hawaiian themed, a little confusing but very good.

One thing Nio is famous for is sunsets, and the view from the yacht club was stunning, We’ve seen a few now, but this was good.

The next day, (today, Sunday) the yacht club organised a coach trip for us all to the top of a local mountain where we had a fantastic view across the inland sea. Neo sits at the end of a peninsula facing north so we had a great view all the way from the west around to the east. I hope the video below gives a little feel of it, the colours are quite striking. On the mountain we were presented with lunch boxes, something else they love here, and we sat in this lovely spot munching away on all sorts of things I had no idea of, but not for the light hearted, and definitely not for the veggie.

Tomorrow we leave here and we have a few days to kill, I’m hoping that the very recent changes in the regulations here means I will get my ‘go anywhere permit free’ pass tomorrow, so we will wander around the islands before we rejoin the rally in ‘Bella Vista’. Our first stop is to a place referred to as Cat Island!
All the time I am studying the weather systems in the North Pacific and also reading up on weather forecasting. we may be departing these shores for the big ocean in about 3 weeks time, so there’s lots to do.

Now for the boring technical stuff, We lost another battery yesterday, So our house bank of four is now three and our engine starter battery is only just up to the job if the engine starts easily. Given that we have lost two from a batch of 5 the odds aren’t good for the other three lasting long. This is a major problem, I don’t think I can afford to replace them here, the first look on the net for replacements have them coming in at around £800 each and I need 4 to do the job properly. I’m going to get more details after the rally when we get to Kobe, but I’m thinking that we may just have to go easy on the batteries on the big passage and I can get a decent price when we reach America.
Water leak on port tank, Not a lot, but too much for our passage, I have to investigate.
Accumulator Tank, I think this may be failing, it’s been subject to a leak before and is quite corroded, I have been expecting it to fail at some point, its job is to make the water run out the taps more smoothly and also to reduce the cycling on the pressure pump, but I can bypass it if needed, what I don’t want is for it to fail and fill the bilges with our drinking water on the trip.
Rudder clunk. I have just noticed a small clunky noise coming from the rudder / autopilot area when hand steering, it’s only quiet but I need to feel 100% sure about this before we leave.
Gas issues. We have been unable to fill our spare & empty gas cylinder, the other one is about 50% full, or 50% empty, depending on your disposition to such matters, I think we can get across the pacific on this, but not if Kathy wants to bake bread frequently. They use the same type of cylinders here, but for ‘Health and Safety’ reasons, no one will touch our cylinder. I’m still hopeful I can find a back street supplier, but we may end up having to buy a portable camping stove and a few dozen bottles of camping gas.

On a more positive note, the boat has been performing well, all the systems seem to work well, I’m getting better at sailing it, I have messed with the spinaker pole a bit and feel I can handle that now, have even jibed the headsail with it ok. I fitted the new gasket to the eberspacher heater and fixed a hole in the exhaust and now we have been able to heat the main cabin up until it was quite toasty, without gassing ourselves. A few days ago Kathy and I spent a day cleaning the outside, the tropics take a toll on the brightwork, but now she is gleaming again, the boat that is, I managed to slap some varnish on, and also removed the slapped on varnish from the gelcoat from the previous varnishing. I also re-bedded the port chainplates, having done the starboard ones a few weeks back. it took me 6 hours to do that, and it should be good for 5 years or more I hope.

So all in all the boats doing quite well and we are having a great time in Japan, the climate is lovely, cool at nights and quite pleasant during the day.

Pul Collister

 

 

 

Sunday 5th May 6:00 AM

Up early for a 7am departure. It’s Sunday, very quiet and very calm. The skies are clear and we have no trouble springing out of our tight mooring between two big motor boats, all alongside on one long pontoon. We motor out to sea and once we have cleared all the fishing marks/nets, I get the mainsail up, with one reef, as I’m expecting the weather to get quite windy later, and both headsails. We spotted this Hydrofoil ferry shoot past,they go so fast and make no wake, but leave a foaming thin spread of white water behind them, like contrails.

The wind is on the beam and building and soon we are doing a fast 7-8 knots, on calm seas with a sunny sky, what could possibly go wrong. Well more of the same, the wind built and built, the sea soon followed with big waves and then it started to rain. Later we would add fog to the mix.

We were on our way to the entrance to the inland sea, this enclosed mass of water is similar to the Med in that it has narrow connections to the outside ocean, three in fact and although much better connected than the Med, with its single opening between Spain and Morocco, it still has a large mass of water to move in and out on each tide. Consequently the currents that race through the entrance can be quite fast. I wasn’t aware of this when I chose the narrowest entrance to the inland sea, and having arrived in Fukuoka, the nearest main open port to the entrance, I did some research and realised that we couldn’t go fast enough to cope with the worst of the current and would have to time our passage to be just after slack water, when there was little current, and race through with the increasing current. The strait we were passing through is called the Kanman Strait, and is about a mile wide and does a big u turn, it has a big city on each side and is almost as busy as Singapore for commercial shipping. I checked on a web site provided by the authorities here and found that 8am would be our best bet for a passage through, that meant arriving the night before and waiting at anchor.

Our passage there was getting rougher and rougher, and with the wind often hitting 28knots, I now had a double reef in the main, and just the staysail up, and we were still flying along and heeling a lot. I decided to get as close to the shore as possible, the wind was blowing offshore and was a little weaker near the shore, also the sea was a lot flatter there. However there were shallows, rocks, and a lot of concrete constructions to navigate around.  The area was becoming more and more industrialised, and looked like a giant version of Ellesmere port/Stanlow oil refinery where I come from. The air was full of sulphurous smoke from the power station on the shore front. I sailed between wind turbines, and while trying to understand what this huge pylon was that I was sailing towards, about 0.2 nm from shoreI noticed the chart had printed on it OVERHEAD POWER CABLES, crikey I thought, we’re about to be frizzled, or at best, get the electric toaster working for free. The thing was the pylon didn’t seem to have any wires on it, just a mass of aerials, and looking closer to the shore I could see the aforesaid cables going out to some big round structure off to starboard. so false alarm.

It was quite an exhilarating ride, and when we entered the Kanmon Strait at the western end, the sea was quite rough, we turned immediately to starboard into a river / tributary of the strait, which was seriously industrialised, and headed along to a spot I had marked to anchor and wait until the next morning. It seemed too rough there to stay, the wind was making the sea quite choppy, but I noticed a coastal cargo ship and a tug attached to a barge both at anchor where I had my waypoint. I went beyond them, turned into the wind, slowed the boat and decided it wasn’t that rough at all, we sleep through much worse on night watches, and the forecast was for an improvement anyway, so down went the hook in 10 metres of water. Kathy came to help with the anchoring, she couldn’t believe me that I was going to anchor in such a rough sea, but once the anchor was set, and we went below, shut the hatches and removed our soaking wet-weather gear, everything was just fine. We both slept very well, the new duvet we bought in Fukuoka, along with the three blankets works well, how very different from just a month ago.

I was up early, around 6AM and checking on the VHF to see if the harbour master (Kanmon Martis) was issuing any warnings about the strait, looking outside, it was a lot calmer, but I couldn’t see much due to the dense fog. I expected the strait to be closed, but looking on the AIS I could see a stack of ships passing into and out of this end of the channel. By 7AM the fog had cleared and I could see the giant video display a mile away showing the current in the channel, it was flashing 3, then E, then Up arrow, meaning three knots eastward and increasing. I had worked out slack tide to be at about 8AM and 3 knots to be at 9AM, so I was out by an hour or more. I quickly explained to Kathy we had to get a move on. The previous evening I had heard Kanmon Martis announce at full flood that the tide was now running at 10 knots and ships that could not make 14 knots must not enter the strait! Up came the anchor and off we went, we hugged the outside of the marked channel, I hand steered while Kathy spent most of the time at the chart table shouting out AIS Collision warnings to me, several of the ships in the strait we’re entering or leaving the many docks and channels along the passage and we would need to avoid them if they crossed our path. I was very pleased to make it to the bridge, the most dangerous part, in just under an hour, and with 3 knots pushing us along, we shot through, then 15 minutes later we were in the inland sea proper. A place I had wanted to see for many years. Unfortunately during our passage along the strait, the fog and rain returned, this is normal in Japan at this time of year, and so I wasn’t seeing much at all, Kathy maintained AIS watch, and I looked out for small boats from the helm. What disappointed me was the huge amount of fishing buoys/flags we encountered, I presume they have nets strung between them. They are everywhere, and although they don’t present much of a problem to us, due to the underwater shape of our hull with an enclosed propeller, it’s still a fear we might snag one, or have to deal with a fisherman who insists we go around them.  Our charts show lots of Fish Havens, which back home usually is a place where fishing is strictly banned, I presume to allow stocks to recover. Here it seems to be a place where you can fish and string out loads of nets. Interestingly our charts also shows Fish Heavens

I wondered if this was heaven for fish, but Kathy pointed out that with the amount of nets in the ‘heaven’ that it’s more likely where they start their journey to heaven!

From the exit of the Kanman straight we headed over to Nakatsu Harbour, about 2 hours away, arriving early afternoon, sadly I  had forgotten that wasn’t our destination. I had worked out a much better place to stop the previous night, but forgot all about it in the morning. Nakatsu has a small ‘sea station’ which is meant to be a yacht friendly small marina, often just a pontoon and maybe a water supply, but nicer to yachts than a harbour wall. Unfortunately we didn’t have any co-ordinates for it, just a fax number. We headed for the harbour in town, but realised it was way to shallow to enter, so we backed off and headed to a harbour that was shown as being under construction in the chart, several years ago. This was a big industrial harbour, and when we entered it, kathy spotted some yachts at the end, we motored along to them, but they were moored med style to concrete walls, no pontoons. then we saw a pontoon, full of commercial boats, so we turned round, found a quiet spot in the corner of the harbour, behind a breakwater and dropped the hook. very calm and peaceful.

Tomorrow is Tuesday, at least at the time of writing, when we next get internet is another matter altogether, and we have just two more day sails then we will arrive at Yugi Shima, the start port for the rally, we then have two weeks of laid back sailing, and social events, I expect we may have to drink some tea, and I’m not so sure about the naked bathing bit! Then we will start to prepare in earnest for the pacific crossing. I have been reading up on that, and my initial plan to travel 700 odd miles further north may be flawed and that we can leave from Osaka or Yokahoma and get more favourable winds, which also gives us a few weeks extra to relax and prepare the boat and ourselves.

 

Thursday 10th May Update
We have now arrived at Yugi port on the Island of Yugi-shima, the rally organiser was here to take our lines in a lovely quiet and pretty town. We are on a pontoon with water and electricity, unfortunately its 110v USA style, so not a lot of use to me. The journey here was fairly uneventful, except for one strait we had to pass through, underneath a huge bridge, I planned to sneak through the bridge using a route that was quite direct, unfortunately we had a tanker bearing down on us that thwarted that plan, then I had to port controller telling me off on the radio, first for not contacting him, then for not knowing the prescribed route, and finally for not being able to make 4 knots over ground, despite doing 8 knots over water. There was quite a strong current flowing. We have sailed for most of the passages in Japan, but for the last two days it has mostly been under engine, but at least that goes hand in hand with calm clear weather.

 

I have put some charts below showing our cruising area

 

Lots of ships pass through the inland sea, we had constant warnings on the AIS telling us of possible collision risks, where the CPA (Closet point of approach) was less than 0.1 NM

Paul Collister

 

It’s been a while since my last blog, mostly because we have been racing through the islands trying to get to the start of the rally on time. Normally I don’t like rushing, and taking on bad weather because of a deadline is something you shouldnt really do on a boat. However, our 2 week rally was meant to be the exploring bit of our visit here, so I don’t mind the rush, also I’m very much testing the boat before our pacific crossing. If the mast breaks, or the rudder falls off, we have a god chance of being rescued and getting to a port safely, not so in the North pacific, where rescue options are quite limited, out of range from helicopters, you have to rely on a satellite picking up your distress call and a merchant ship in the area diverting to help you. Usually you have to scuttle your boat when your saviour arrives. So I’m happy to push the boat and ourselves on this trip. We will have a few weeks before we depart for the USA to rest and make any lasting alterations we need. So far I have managed to check quite a lot of systems out in real conditions, we have had some very rough weather over the last few weeks.

Before we left Ishigaki we had a bike ride along the coast, It’s very pretty, and also very shallow with reefs extending tens of miles offshore.

I managed to get the boat status changed with customs, from a ‘special’ ship to a ‘coastal’ ship. This means that for the duration of our stay customs don’t give a hoot what we do or where we go. They wouldn’t give me this status because as a special ship, I had to give them my plan for our route, and that included a port that we hadn’t yet received permission to visit. When I wanted to leave they wouldn’t let me because this port on our route hadn’t been cleared. It was quite farcical, as I resolved it by saying I was going to one port, approved, then leaving Japan. they kept asking me if that was true, and I kept saying yes, so they changed my status to coastal ship, I said I might change my mind now and not go to that port and might go elsewhere, they just looked at me and said, we don’t care what you do, you are a coastal ship now. Since then they have ignored me at each port, despite the marina manager or harbour master calling them. Also the coastguard don’t seem interested. It’s gone from the most bureaucratic system ever to the most lax ever!

Kathy will give details of the passages better than me, they all seem to blur into one big battle with the wind. We had some sunny days, but mostly wet and cold. What we did have was wind, and plenty of it, and with the wind we usually got big waves, up to 3 metres often. At one point it was very bad, but everything worked, and we sailed most of the time, hardly using the engine once we left port.

Our first stop after Ishigaki was Yonabaru / Naha on the island of Okinawa, we arrived into a newly built marina on the east coast, lovely people and the manager came out to greet us, for the first time in months we had running water and electricity. Although we hardly need it these days with the solar panels and the watermaker, it was good to go crazy with the shower and leave it running hot water for minutes on end!

Japan has a lot of these guys protecting everything, I think they are called Shiso.

Yonabaru doesnt have a lot to offer, but a few miles over on the west of the island is the big city of Naha, we went looking for a bus to visit and see the castle and markets, I asked a man walking down the main street if he new where the bus stop was, and he insisted that he give us a lift in his car, he took us right to the castle which was really kind of him.

The castle is well old, 15th C I think,

This is a mockup of the layout.

Some nice architecture, disguising the fact that most buildings here on the islands are made of chunky concrete, and tend to be very boxy, designed for earthquakes and tsunamis

The market (above) was great, but everything in Japan is quite pricey, at least compared to what we have been used to, in actual fact it’s not that different to the UK.  Below you can see they have some unusual offerings.

Crime is very low here, people rarely lock up there bicycles, and like below, these cylinders were left on the dock where anyone could nick them, they were there for all our time in town.

From Okinawa we headed up to Miyanoura, a nice port on the island of Yaku-shima, This is a gorgeous island full of wonderful mountains, forests, hot springs, wildlife etc etc. We were running a day late because the previous marina here couldn’t accept us when we planned, due to being closed on Tuesdays! When we arrived we tied up to the only wall we could find, but it was very rough and high, and had a lip that the boat would slip under at low water, so I tied up, took another hit on the cap rail, fortunately on the section I need to replace, but I also lost the bow light (port) when a wave threw us onto the wall. I headed off to explore the port for a better berth and was directed to an inner harbour I hadn’t even seen when we entered by a local fisherman. You can see us on the wall below. We need 6 feet of water to stay afloat, the local fisherman looked worried when I said 2 m water, he shrugged and indicated ‘maybe’. The tide was going to drop by another metre so I took out the lead-line and measured around the boat, on the quay side we had 1.5 metres, on the offshore side we had 3.5 metres, so I figured we might just make it. In the end we didnt touch bottom, but must have been close.

The wall we were now on was much kinder, and you can see below how we rig up the fender boards to protect the boat and fenders

Later on we had a walk around the island, I had planned to hire a car for the day, but we had to leave the next day for Fukuoka, so we didn’t get to see the 3000 year old cedar trees. However we did get to feel the very peaceful mood of the island. Later we found a small funky bar/cafe that did nice food.
One thing I have loved about Japan is the food, standards are very high here, everything tastes amazing, the fruit and veg is the tastiest I have ever had. The fish is so fresh and also very good value, I bought a loin of tuna the size of a small loaf, for about £6.

The trip from Miyanoura to Fukuoka  took three days and nights and was quite rough, the wind was in the high 20 knots, Near gale force and the waves grew to be quite seriously threatening at times.  by now I had the boat prepared, I have been tuning the reefing systems, gybe preventers, jackstays etc, so sudden increases in wind don’t catch me out. 

You can see above at times we recorded 14.1 knots on the GPS, this must be when we got thrown off waves. We had the wind behind us most of the time, this has the effect of making things seem a lot calmer than they are. At one point as I was heading up the companionway to the cockpit when a big wave hit us hard and swung the boat around by about 45 degrees, this caused a crash gybe, this is where the boom flies across the boat from one side to another. This is really dangerous and has been the cause of many casualties on yachts, fortunately my preventers (ropes tied to the boom)  took the sting out of the gybe, but not as well as I had hoped, so there’s work to do there.

On this last leg we saw several shark like fins in the water, and finally for the first time in Aisa, we were joined by some dolphins.

I had put a waypoint in to miss some rocks on the chart, the height of rocks isnt normally shown, so it’s always a surprise to see them towering out of the sea.

Sometimes a fishing buoy will appear out of nowhere, at one point I was pondering how deserted most of the sea was, and keeping a constant watch wasn’t really needed so far offshore when a bloody submarine surfaced about 0.5nm from me. quite a sight.

We passed many islands, often uninhabited, but this one stank of sulphur, so I presume it’s still an active volcano.

The sea was very rough and the wind growing to 30 knots when we arrived at Fukuoka in the middle of the night 2AM, I had hoped to find my way into the marina with the help of the full moon, however the cloud cover took most of that advantage out. We were being tossed around the bay trying to identify the entrance to the marina, you basically have to come off a rough sea and into the marina, I was worried if the wind was as bad in the marina as outside I wouldnt be able to control the boat, never mind finding somewhere to tie up. I had a rough plan of the marina, but it wasnt matching up with what I could see. In the end we nudged the boat in and found it to be quite calm in there, I found an empty pontoon, and at 3AM we tied up and crashed out. I expected to be woken about 8am and told to move, but no, they left us alone, when we woke up around 9:30, I went to the office, they assigned me a new berth, and told me they didn’t need any ships papers, and as the authorities were on holiday due to ‘Golden Week’ we wouldn’t be bothered. Bliss.

The marina above is next to a big wheel, which is part of a huge outlet mall.

Later we went for a walk and found the locals all down on the river at low tide, cockling I think.

Below is the view from our berth, this morning a gang (not sure of the correct collective noun)  of jet skiers appeared Kathy ponders the instructions for the fender covers we make from a kit of tubing and cable ties.

I managed to fix most of the problems we had earlier, the LEDs were rebuilt for the compass, I have bought a new starter battery, and the boom cover has been restitched.
I have the AIS over wifi working reliably now, part of this meant trashing the wifi routers, and I couldn’t get wifi to the outside world working, but now it is, we have good wifi on the boat via the marina.  Moving the aerial on the wind sensor module seems to have solved that problem.

Yet new things break at a pace, the sump pump switch for the shower has failed, both of our toothbrush charges packed in, why?

I tried to get the blog to update with emails from the sat phone, but so far it only publishes the title, not the body of the email, so I will have to post empty blogs with very long interesting titles if I want to update from offshore.

Tomorrow morning (Sunday) at 7AM we leave to head for the inland sea, its about 200nm to the start point of the rally, and we have 5 days to get there, so it should be a breeze. We will be passing through the Kanmon strait, a very busy shipping route, but also one with very fast currents, On Monday when we enter the currents will reach up to 7knots, they also have the effect of pushing you into the path of oncoming ships at one narrow place.  I’m not too worried, I think I have the timing such that the tide will push us through very quickly and the whole passage through the strait will be less than 2 hours, also having sailed up and down the Mersey, I have some good experience with strong tides.

Plans are evolving as we progress, currently I think we will leave the boat in Seattle for several months and return to the UK earlier, I have lots of things I want to do with the boat once we get to the USA, including bringing the mast down for a service. we may return in the new year, do some work, then head up to Alaska or Vancouver for the spring/summer, leaving Mexico till the following year. If we do this, then we have more time for the pacific crossing, and may be able to break up the trip with a stop at the Aleutian Islands, somewhere I have been curious about since I first saw them on a map.

Once again, we won’t have much in the way of Internet access now, Kathy has a SIM with 500mb left, so we need to wait until we find public wifi again. At least now I have the Airmax working well again, I might be able to get connections from the boat.

Paul Collister

I will write more about the trip through the Philippines at some point, but now we are in Japan I wanted to get an update down before I forget it all.

Leaving the Philippines

We checked out in San Fernando La Union on the North west coast of the main Philippine island of Luzon, we had a lovely stop there, a local fisherman rowed out to us in his banca and offered to do any jobs we wanted, he took my diesel jugs ashore and returned with 60ltr of fuel, he also got us 30ltr of drinking water and finally he went to the timber yard for me and brought back two freshly sawn planks I could use as fender boards, I had heard they were a must in Japan. He did all of this with a smile and didn’t want very much for his time. The people there were very poor, they lived in a small shanty like town on the edge of the beach, and although very basic, the people there seemed happy.

It was some 500 odd miles to the southern islands of Japan from there and we called into Basco port on Batanes Island, which was a days sails out of San Fernando. On the way we had an engine problem, it’s only small I think, some gas escaping on the cylinder head, it may be a gasket or the injector seating as that was a problem before. However I don’t fancy finding a mechanic in Japan, or paying his bill. We will have to see. Anyway the winds were good so we hoped to sail the rest of the way. We anchored just into the harbour, and had hoped to get a nights sleep in without any fuss, but the coastguard had other ideas and ordered me to visit him in his office, which was a right pain, as I had stowed the dinghy and outboard away, not expecting to need them before we got to Canada/America. Ashore he went over all my papers and passport and after 30 minutes of questioning I was told everything was fine and now I had to visit the port authority to get permission to stay. Eventually I was back on the boat and checked the weather, using our sat phone. Things were planned to get worse in 3 days time, so I suggested to Kathy we leave now, and try to beat the bad weather, as it was coming our way anyway, so off we went. We didn’t beat it.

Although the first night was calm, early in the evening I smelt a familiar smell, that of a battery gassing, our batteries are sealed and so can’t gas unless they are in a very bad way, I looked at the battery monitor and could see the battery volts to be very low, and given the strength of the smell I assumed things were not good. In a controlled panic sort of way we emptied pots pans, clothes , two bicycles, and much more junk out of the quarter berth, and removed the mattress to get to the battery bank. As I thought one of the batteries had gone into thermal run-away. I wasn’t quite sure where this might lead, but batteries can explode, I wondered if they can catch fire, so I very quickly unbolted the connections to it, and saw the battery voltage rise on the other 3  120AH batteries in parallel with it. I lifted the faulty battery out of its wooden box and let the air flow around it, it was too hot to touch. I think we just caught it in time. Kathy went to bed, and I continued with my watch.

The next morning we put the quarter berth back  together, I replaced the faulty baterry with the engine starter battery, which was from the same batch. A few hours into daylight Kathy pointed out an approaching dark patch, the temperature was already dropping and it was a very grey day, within another hour it started raining then the wind hit us, we were now in the 20 knot range and the seas started to build quickly. I had hoped it was a squall, and the radar seemed to confirm this, yet when the rain passed, we still had grey skies, strong wind and building seas. A few hours later we were being thrown around something wicked.

Not long after this A pigeon landed on the boat and made it his home, shortly followed by four more pigeons.They were all ringed, so presumably they were on their way home.  Kathy loved it, and tried to feed them some nuts and cereal, but they seemed fat enough and all it did was to create even more mess for me to clean up later. That night was difficult, there was no moon and with a cloud covered sky it was black. The wind was on the nose, the waves were about 10ft – 15ft high and we were going north, but a starboard tack sent us SW and a port tack sent us SE, so we were going backwards, and getting beaten up. In the end we tied the rudder midships, left the mainsail reefed and went below for the night. The boat moved along nicely at about 1.5 knots and we tried to get some sleep. At one point a very big wave lifted the boat up and spun us through 90 degrees or more, so that when we hit the water again we were on a different tack, but as we only had the main up we left it like that for a few more hours, perhaps the wind knew best.

The next day was still rough but we could make a little progress forward, during the night the wind sensor failed to work, it’s wifi and often looses contact with the sender, I need to investigate.  Also at one point the auto helm gave up against the seas and decided to send us back to the Philippines, I came on deck, stepping over pigeons to take control but found the wind sensor out, and worst of all the little LEDs that light the normal binnacle compass were out, so I couldn’t read it. In the total darkness, when you can’t see the sails, or the instruments, it’s very difficult to work out the course to steer. Also waves were making it into the cockpit and I had to have my full set of oililies on, and I was feeling cold and damp.I began to wonder what madness had driven me from Malaysia. Of course all was fixed with the help of a torch and a few resets on the wind sensor.

The next day was predicted to be calmer by predictwind.com, our source of satellite weather data. It did calm a little and the pigeons all took off in unison, there were two great big ships on the horizon and I wondered if that was were they were heading.

Soon we were in the lee of Iriomote, a large island we have to go around to get to Ishigaki, and things calmed right down. Kathy sailed us into the harbour were we headed for the best berth that I had been informed of by a local I contacted via noon site.

On arriving at the port, the berth I wanted was full, the berths here consist of huge concrete walls you go alongside, mostly designed for big ships. A man came out and waved at us to go to a space on a nearby wall, which we did, he helpfully took our lines and immediately 3 coastguard (CG) officials turned up and introduced themselves.One was the official I had been in email contact with to notify them of our arrival. Pre arrival notification, along with the 7 page forms you have to send is just the start of a prolonged check in process that takes a day or two. The CG was very polite but also vert very keen that we stay on the boat until formalities had been completed, he even seemed upset that kathy put a hand on the wall. We waited an hour while the CG made phone calls and chatted amongst themselves before we were told we had to move to another berth. Then they arranged for one of the big (200ft) CG vessels to launch a RIB to guide us to the dock next to us, something we could have found ourselves by them pointing to the spot. When we were in the new dock, much more foreboding in terms of concrete covered in barnacles, and also 6ft higher up than the decks on our little boat, the CG men reappeared, they were joined by several more CG staff. A regular occurrence over the next 2 days as we started the check in process. We were told to stay on the boat and Quarantine, customs and Immigration would be along soon. Sure enough they all duly turned up and I had 8 people in the cockpit taking turns to get me to fill in forms, customs, Quarantine and Coastguard. Immigration would be done later at the immigration office. While I was dealing with all of this the tide was dropping. I wasn’t allowed ashore to adjust the lines, and they had tied me off with little slack, I hadn’t noticed at first, but the boat was close to the wall, and some passing wake from a powerboat pushed us hard onto a big rubber fender bolted to the wall and smashed a chunk of caprail off, this is the very pretty wood that goes around the edge of the boat.I pointed this out to Kathy and she went and had a look and came back and told me the bowsprit was smashed up. Fortunately it was only the platform,This was on the replacement list anyway, but I expect it smashed when we slammed down into a wave on the passage. I have sellotaped it back together and hope it will get us to America. I may have to screw some wooden slats over it to make it more secure.

After a few hours they all left, customs did a search of the boat and took swabs from all the surfaces, Quarantine asked the usual question, did we have any dead animals on board, had anyone died on passage, were we ill etc. The coastguard wanted lots of documents we don’t have, Lloyds certificate, gross tonnage documentation, cargo description, last ten ports we called at! Had we ever been to North Korea? Later the Immigration officials drove us to their office were they very cheerfully gave us 3 month visas and drove us off to the port authority were we had to pay our dues for the concrete slab that was ripping our boat to bits. I paid for 5 days as I expected the boat jobs might take a while.

Thankfully by now I had rigged up fender boards from San Fernando and the boat was coping well.

Next we headed into town for some dinner and our first experience of Japanese culture. All I can say so far, things are different here, I didn’t spot a single chain/brand here, so far I haven’t been to a large town aywhere in the world that doesn’t have a McDonnell’s or Starbucks, but I haven’t seen one here yet, no Body Shop, no KFC, no Pizza Hut, but lots of very individual shops, bars and cafes. Kathy will elaborate I’m sure. We found the post office and got some YEN out, wandered around the market, I saw some amazing tuna loins, then found a nice bar that did food and had an english menu, and had dinner.

WiFi is proving difficult here, it’s complicated to get a SIM card, and prices are high, most people rent a MiFI data modem, but that’s difficult for us, I’m going to see if we can get one here and return it up near Tokyo. Until then I’m using roaming on my Malaysian SIM, or we use cafe internet.

I asked the CG today if they could help me get some fuel, this ended up with 8 CG staff all standing on the quay discussing the problem. after 30 minutes they arranged for a tanker to visit and refuel me. However they couldn’t fill my plastic jerry cans due to Japanese law saying cans must be made of stainless steel. They all disappeared and 30minutes later another man appeared saying he would wait until the tanker arrived. Not long after 6 CG people arrived and discussed the fuel situation. Then two guys turned up from environmental  control, they advised that my boat could not be refuelled this way because of the chance of spillage from the deck filling point, given the ‘High Pressure’ from the truck. More flapping, more CG come and go, next a CG with some english explained that I could use my plastic cans with fuel in them to fill my tank and the lorry could fill the plastic cans, something that was  illegal an hour ago. So I went to fill the tank with the 6 * 20ltr jerry cans, when there was uproar about a possible spillage, I showed them I could do it without spillage and they relaxed, until the 4th can, when the boss CG sent a man onboard to monitor my fuel gauge, and as it was showing 3/4 full he told me I could do no more in case it overflowed. I argued and tried to explain the gauge is not linear, and 3/4 meant there was room for another 50ltr, but he got pissed off with me and said he would cancel my request to visit the closed port. We compromised on another 20ltr.

The truck didn’t arrive, but one of the CG took my cans to the petrol station and filed them for me.

After the fuel was sorted I had to go to the Department of Transport to register my intent to visit some closed ports. Basically Japan has several thousand ports, and for many years no foreign ships were allowed into these ports without special government permission, after WWII they opened Tokyo to foreign ships, and later a handful of the bigger ports were opened, like Ishigaki where we are now. However several of the ports we wish to visit are still closed so we have to apply, in person, the the department of transport, in a building out of town for permission. it didn’t help that two of the ports we are visiting aren’t on their list of open or closed ports, so I have been told to apply for them in the office nearer to them when I get there. Customs here have already made me sign a form to say I can get 2 years in Jail and a 2,000,000 YEN fine for going to a closed port without the permit.

We ended the day with a trip to a supermarket a bit out of town which had a fantastic range of fresh food and fish followed by a lovely drink in a cafe with very fast internet.

I just received an email from the CG asking me if I got fuel and if so, can I call into their office to fill out a form for Ships taking on provisions. They like their paperwork here.

To be fair, the officials have all been extremely helpful and courteous, and given the communications problems, I can’t fault them, I think it might help them to see that yachts travel all around the world with very little paperwork, and it doesn’t seem to cause any problems.

Paul Collister