Japan, it got a lot better

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