After
an unplanned extra week in the UK trying to sort out my house that
was trashed by the tenant, I survived the 2 day flight from the UK
over to Auckland via Heathrow and Hong Kong by the grace of a good
book, good documentaries and lots of free gin and tonics.
I
arrived in Auckland two days before my official “joining day” so
I could try to get over some jet lag and catch up with an old friend
from my time at Oxford University (Rene). I flew in at 0700hrs local
time and Rene picked me up from the airport. She insisted that I stay
awake for the entire day and marched me through some of the best
sights in Auckland. I was really pleased that she helped me to
immediately getting into the new time zone and it was great walking
through one of the parks and art museum. We walked up Mount Eden
which is one of the volcanoes that rises out of the city of Auckland.
From the top you can see other volcanoes rising up like green sea
mounts through the grey blanket of the city that stretches from coast
to coast. In the evening, we went to see a local Church perform a
musical version of “A Christmas Carol” at the theatre in the
heart of Auckland's CBD. It was very cleverly produced, with amazing
dancers and singers and the only time my jet lag overtook me and I
started doing the “nodding-dog” routine was in the moments of
darkness between scenes.
Auckland CBD from Mount Eden |
The
next day Rene had to work, but this gave me time to organise the gym
equipment that I had posted ahead of me and I got on a local bus with
a step machine in one hand and a mini cycling machine in the other
and headed to the ship. It was great to see the Lord Nelson
again and hugging all the crew I remembered just how much they have
become my family.
Before I walked back, I spend 3 ½ hours at the nearby maritime
museum where I learned all about Maori boat building, the immigration
of early settlers and the science behind the America's Cup boats. The
highlight was definitely the exhibition on Sir Peter Blake who had
coached the New Zealand sailing team to win and defend the Americas
Cup and who went on to become a Pioneer in Environmental and Marine
Conservation.
I
joined Nelly the next day where I was immediately thrown into the
chaos that always occurs during maintenance periods on board. We were
incredibly busy in the engineering department. Lots of outside
contractors were on board doing big jobs such as changing the fuel
lines on the two main engines, renewing the main engine computer
control system, fixing the AC unit etc. In the midst of all this
there is the routine stuff, minor faults and maintenance jobs that we
have to keep chipping away at. This included dealing with a massive
hydraulic fuel leak from the forward Capstan that occurred when we
had to shift the ship to a nearby mooring. The Capstan is a large
winch used to pull in mooring lines and we have three on board, one
forward and two aft. When we were tying back up alongside it starting
spraying out hydraulic oil all over the deck and I heard a yell off
“get the spill get to the fore peak” and legged it in their
direction to deal with the damage. It turned out that we had to take
the capstan apart and send it to a specialist hydraulics company to
stop the leak....not a quick job when the hydraulic lines and painted
fast onto the metal Capstan and the the Capstan itself weighs a
tonne!
View along Auckland coast during one of my morning runs |
The
voyage crew for STW 6 (Sail The World 6- the voyage around the
Southern Ocean to Ushuaia) eventually joined and the next day the
enormous food stores order arrived so that it took all of the crew
most of the afternoon to get it all on board and stowed away. This
stores order included a load of soft drinks that I had to sequester
into one of the unused black water tanks under the bar. This involved
opening the hatch in the floor of the bar, sliding down into the
space, climbing over a pipe to the starboard side, wrenching open the
metal hatch to the tank and climbing inside the 2 foot by 1.5 foot
opening into the dark tank space so I could pull bags full of drink
cans in on top of me and store them “neatly” in the tank....Hot,
heavy work, made easier by the grace of the lovely Nelly team.
That
night I was lucky enough to meet up with another long lost Kiwi
friend who I lived with when I was 18 years old! It was great to
catch up over a beer and give a mini tour around Nelly....It
gives me comfort to know that even if I haven't seen someone for 11
years, I can still meet up with them and put the worlds to right as
if my teenage years were just yesterday!
Looking back towards the ship and Auckland CBD, 5 miles into a morning run |
In the
mean time, the parts that we need to mend the back stay still hadn't
arrived. This was a major problem and was the only thing stopping us
from leaving Auckland. The back stay is the wire that supports the
mast, so we can't sail without it- especially not in weather that we
are expecting to see in the Southern Ocean when we get close to Cape
Horn. We were all constantly hoping that this equipment was going to
turn up, but delay after delay kept occurring and every morning
meeting turned into ground hog day as the Captain explained that we
would have to remain in Auckland for “one more night” whilst we
waited on the back stay....Night mare. However, we were all trying
to make the most of being in Auckland and the freedom that comes from
being alongside. I enjoyed my ~10 mile morning runs along the coast,
night time photography sessions with Marcin (the 2nd mate)
and the nice coffee and sushi bars that could be enjoyed in the
evenings.
Accompanying the second
mate (Marcin) on a night filming session
|
My
mother has an expression “just put today down to experience”
that basically means: OK, so
today lots of things have gone wrong and you've done lots of stupid
stuff, but hopefully you have learnt something from it. On Thursday
19th
December, I had one of these days. The morning started like every
morning alongside in Auckland. After my morning run and breakfast, we
had the morning meeting and I did the daily engineering rounds along
with some other fairly routine work (fuel transfer, light switches,
fixing leaky radiators etc.). I then climbed onto the galley roof to
sort out the fan vent into the hot galley which had been incorrectly
installed. This ended up costing me a whole load of skin off my
finger as I fought to get the metal sheets into the metal
slots....Ouch. The Chief had to leave the ship for most of the
afternoon to get parts so I was left with a massive work list that I
slowly made my way through. However it seemed that every time I
started something, I had to stop for some reason or another, or the
job ended up being much more involved that I had anticipated.
For example, one of the jobs was testing the water tight doors. These
are big steel doors that you close and open by pumping a hydraulic
lever (which is pretty tiring when you have to pump it shut and pump
it open). I did the two forward doors before I was reminded that some
people were trying to rest after their night watches so I moved to
the aft door between the mates cabin and the aft section of the ship
and gave the sleeping cook a heart attack as he leapt upstairs
thinking it was a fire alarm! (Sorry cookie!)....So I gave up after
three doors. I then started to dissemble the holder for the chart
room lift remote to find that someone had bent the bolt so I had to
hack saw it off in two places before I could take it to the workshop
where I discovered that it was going to be a much longer job
requiring hack sawing lots of old metal and doing some sort of
finishing on it.
In the mean time the Chief returned with the new lamp parts so I
started to prepare to climb to the top of the fore mast to replace
the broken port side mast head lamp with a new LED lamp. I knew that
this would involve; cutting wire, breaking up the old lamp holder,
wiring in the new LED lamp and attaching it to the lamp holder so I
packed a tool bag full of all the stuff I needed and attached it to
my harness along with a radio. However, half way up the mast I
realised that the wind had picked up, my fore arms were already
hurting from pumping the water tight doors and I was feeling really
off balance from my anaemia (fairly standard monthly thing) and the
heavy tool bag on my back. This dropped my confidence and made the
process a lot slower, but I still managed to get right to the top of
the mast where I was faced with the damaged light. To have my head at
the height of the masthead light I had one foot in the tiny rope
ladder (which tapers off into a size only just big enough for one
foot at this height) and one of my arms wrapped around the top of a
back stay wire to keep me secure.....This left me with little balance
and only one hand for wiring.....Hmmm. I had to give up and climbed
back down feeling pretty annoyed that I'd wasted all that time
climbing with nothing to show for it but (more) sore arms.
On climbing down I was reminded that I did actually have spare lamps
on board so I should have just changed the lamp even if I couldn't
replace the whole light for an LED system...Arghh. So, I started to
prep to go back up when I remembered that it was my turn to clean the
PC (permanent crew) heads (toilets). I did a deep clean on one and
had bleached the second one when I walked back in to find the top had
blown off the Solway valve at the back of the head so that sea water
was gushing up out of the system. I tried to stem the flow with my
hands but only succeeded in getting completely soaked, so I legged it
outside to grab a wrench to operate the local shut off valve. I ran
passed the Medical Purser who looked slightly concerned to see me
running past with a massive wrench dripping with sea water. I
couldn't hold the water back at the same time as trying to wrench
open the access to the local shut off valve so I went back outside
again and asked the Bosun to help. She tried to stem the flow whilst
I again tried to open the access for the shut off valve and failed-
getting wetter by the second. Instead I chose to run around the ship
desperately trying to remember where the main Sanny sea water pump
shut off valve was....I knew that I saw it every day but completely
blanked on where it was (old age creeping in I fear!) I found the
Mate and he joined me in rushing around trying to locate the valve
until the Chief appeared about 5 minutes later and pointed to the
little switch in a hatch that I open every single morning as part of
rounds....Arghh! I returned to the heads to find a line of people
bailing out with buckets. Incredible! If nothing else, this little
exercise illustrates the amazing Nelly team where everybody is
always willing to help and we are never too far away from a bucket!
Also, I will never forget where that seawater pump shut-off switch is
again!
As the evening drew in, I completed the repair on the heads and
collapsed in my cabin for 30minutes with a glass of wine. I couldn't
believe how exhausted I was! I had vaguely planned to do a 20 mile
run after work, but I could barely stand up let alone get up to
marathon pace! I managed a little walk down to the shops for some
more supplies and to play the piano in the Seafarers Mission, but
that was it! ….So much for the glamour of the sea hey?!
That night, the deck department worked late getting the back stay up
so that we could leave and start on our epic journey.
We left Auckland on a beautiful sunny morning with clear blue skies
and the water as flat as a mill pond. It was great to be on the move
again with the wind playing in the rigging. To leave the berth we
have to deploy our little boat “the Dotty boat” so that we can
leave a mooring party on the show to release the lines when Nelly
slips off. The Dotty boat then picks up the mooring party from
the shore, comes alongside Nelly and the mooring party climb
up the rope ladder. The Dotty boat is then winched on board and swung
onto the galley roof where it is stowed. However, this time there was
a problem with the winch so the mate, second mate and team of bosun's
mates stayed on the roof to try and sort it out.
The next moment a large bang was heard and the Dotty boat had swung
vertically on the winch so that her bow was nearly touching the
surface of the water and her stern was up at the top of the winch.
The Captain called for engines stopped (which I did immediately) and
made sure that no-one was hurt. Everything had been completely safe
so everything was fine and nothing was even scratched. However,
looking back off Nelly's stern the Captain noticed a little
red plastic square bobbing off in the distance- a petrol can had
fallen out of the boat and was floating in the water.
We treated this as a man-over -board drill and turned Nelly around
to retrieve the object whilst the Dotty boat was again lowered into
the water. The Captain took Nelly within a few meters of the
petrol can and the Dotty boat crew did the rest- a very successful
“rescue”!
As well as the man-over-board drill, there are a number of other
drills that we have to perform each voyage to ensure that the
permanent crew all remain sure of our roles and that the voyage crew
know what they need to do in an emergency. One of these is an
evacuation drill. We had done one of these alongside in Auckland
where we got all the voyage crew to dress in their warm kit and don
their immersion suits (as they would in the Southern Ocean in the
event of an abandonment). We did another on our second day at sea and
I was really impressed with how quickly the crew were able to be
ready in all their gear.
It was nice to get back into the “at sea” routine and I managed
to start working down my ridiculously long job list. This included
finishing manually pumping close and open the remaining 3 water tight
doors. Everything worked well and I finished off by making sure all
of the moving parts were greased and good to go. The next day the
voyage crew had one of their “happy hours” (when they spend an
hour cleaning the ship from top to bottom) and one of the
over-enthusiastic cleaners decided to clean off all the grease from
the water tight doors and proudly announced to me that he had
“cleaned off all my mess from the doors”....D'Oh. Actually he was
very sweet and it was very funny, but it did mean that I had to spend
some time re-greasing all the doors.
Now I am at sea I have started my “deep ocean” phase of my MDS
(Marathon des Sables) training which includes stepping on a mini step
machine that I brought myself to use in the engine room. I have
positioned it on the “Mezzaine level” so that it is stuck on the
grating about the port main engine between the main engine exhaust
and the boiler. I try to use it every morning and every afternoon
before dinner and I sneak into the engine room in my gym kit with my
ipod head phones stuck underneath my big green ear defenders and try
to balance as the ship rolls from one side to the other and pitches
up and down with each passing wave. It's usually around 30 degrees
centigrade in the engine room so I soon have sweet pouring down my
face and I probably look like a complete idiot....But what's new?
Training for the MDS in the Engine Room |
On the third day at sea I managed to step on my little stepping
machine for 2hrs 15mins in one day and I was amazed at how much I was
sweating- to the point that I felt quite sick of dehydration by the
time I got off.....although the cork screw motion of the ship
probably didn't help that much either :-S It was a reasonably rough
day at sea which made it pretty difficult to balance on the stepper
so I had to hold onto the rail on the mezzaine part of the engine
room and step with my back and knees constantly slightly bent to take
the impact of the large waves and sideways rolls.
We spend three days sailing to Napier so that the Voyage Crew could
test out their sea legs and so we could have Christmas day berthed.
For me it was particularly enjoyable being in Napier as I was able to
get some last minute runs in past beautiful Kiwi fishing villages and
along the beautiful volcanic beaches.
View across the wetlands during a morning run in Napier, New Zealand |
We had a wonderful Christmas and we made sure that although we
couldn't “deck any halls with boughs of Holly” we “'Hollied'
the deck with boughs of joy!”. We had carol singing on the fore
deck, midnight cake making in the Galley, bucks fizz on Christmas
morning with our salmon and scrambled eggs breakfast and Cookie Dave
produced an amazing 3 course Christmas dinner for all 47 people on
board. Brilliant! There was a lovely atmosphere on board and although
we all thought of our loved ones back home, I was grateful for being
able to spend Christmas day with the crew who have become my extended
family and best friends.
After a last inspection by customs, we cast off for the Chatham
Islands on boxing day, where we stopped for 24hours We were obviously quite a sight as we came alongside in strong winds and half of the population (of 200 people) came down to see us. I spent the morning up the top of the main mast changing the rigging light then I joined most of the rest of the crew who had invaded the local hotel to use the wifi!
Tonight, myself and the Chief Engineer will be doing a BBQ on the quayside which is always good fun for all involved. We hope to be able to stay alongside until tomorrow morning but this berth is quite weather dependent, so if the wind gets up too much, we might have to leave in the night and take to an anchorage. I'm hoping to be able to do a morning run here before around 6 weeks at sea so fingers crossed the wind is kind tonight and we stay alongside!
We will have the 32nd of December (yes, the 32nd)
at sea as we cross the International Date line and work an extra day
in 2013 before celebrating the New Year on the other side of the
line.
When
we slip our berth here, it will be for the last time for 6 weeks as we
strike out for Argentina via the Southern Ocean, Cape Horn and the
Beagle Channel. It will be a tough crossing for everyone (and the ship)
so please think of us in the coming weeks as we rock and roll through
the Southern Ocean in our tall ship.
Please keep me training as we sail on into the New Year and donate
at: www.justgiving.co.uk/Tam-at-sea
See you in 2014!
See you in 2014!