The Setouchi Rally

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