Tuesday, 11 February 2014

Sailing the Southern Ocean and Cape Horn: Chatham Islands to Ushuaia

Up the mast doing wiring in the Chatham Islands

 At the Chatham Islands I had to take advantage of the last opportunity to do alongside work until we reached Argentina- which was such a long way away that it still seemed like an abstract concept. So I climbed to the top of the main mast to the mast head lights where I changed the old lamp system to a new LED lamp. This was great fun, although trying to cut and crimp wire whilst balancing in a harness and bracing your knee against the 30mph winds is never easy!

The Chatham Islands have around 200 inhabitants and the berth was very exposed to the oncoming wind so after the entire ship decanted into the only pub on the island to use the wifi for a few hours, we quickly had to move off the berth and spend the night at anchor. I was really disappointed about this as it meant that I couldn't do my final land run before the long stint at sea...But at least I got some exercise climbing the mast a couple of times.


Bosuns Mates working on the deck house roof
On the first day at sea in the Southern Ocean I had to investigate the wiring of the galley hot plate range. The heavy swell meant that I ended up sitting in a bath of lamb fat (that was leaking out of the Combi oven) and I was periodically pelted with potatoes that kept flying out of the bucket on the wash board above my head. In fact, I spent a large amount of time working in the Galley in the first week at sea and it was commented on that I spent nearly as much time in their as the cooks assistants! But there just seems to have been a steady stream of galley jobs; water boiler lever, galley lights, fridge lights, oven wiring, toaster element.....All in a days work ;-)

Working in the fridge
We had new years (hogmany) at sea and I started looking back over 2013. I realised that I started it in the middle of the Indian Ocean and now I'm going to finish it in the middle of the Southern Ocean! In between I have been in the Andaman Islands and India, Wales, London, Scotland, Canary Islands, Azores, Malta, Southampton, Vietnam, Denmark, Helsinki (Finland), Australia, Tasmania, New Zealand and the Chatham Islands....Not bad for 365 days really! :-)

Shortly after the spate of galley jobs I spent 4 days marching through big services on all four engines (2 generators and 2 main engines)- one a day, interspersed with taking tours around the engine room that was enabled due to the uncharacteristically beautiful flat weather. It is always really hard to know what to say about the machinery in the engine room as I know that I find it much more interesting than it probably really is so I have to try not to talk too much! However, the crew seemed genuinely interested and pretty much every one took a tour and asked lots of questions.

 
The Cheif and I working on the fire alarm system in the Chart Room


The days are started to become very routine (although my job involves dealing with different challenges every day). All on board slowly accepted their new reality of living in this small space in the middle of the ocean. It's a strange thing really, but one that man has been doing since we first took to the sea. I think the attraction to a life on the ocean is quite a romantic one. We all yearn to get away from the complications that arise from our modern day living so the idea of having time to simply think and stare out at the ocean or up into the night sky is really attractive. However some crew quickly realise that doing this for a long period time on a day-to-day basis has the secondary effect of making you realise how small we really are in this big blue world.

It is ironic that people say that they are “running away to sea” when, in fact a lot of problems can be exacerbated by life on board. This is certainly showing true for some of the voyage crew living in the fo'c'sle who came to get away from the annoying habits of family and are instead having to live in a very confined space with the annoying habits of their fellow crew. Maybe this experience will give them perspective on the habits of those back home and make them more patient.

Relaxing on the bow after work and looking up at the sails


As entertainment, some of the VC have been giving talks in the lower mess every other afternoon. Once of these talks was given by a gentleman named JR, an ex-para, who spoke about his involvement in a Quadrathon between Brighton and Gravesend in the UK in the early 80s. It was amazing to hear about his training and preparation for the event- what an inspiration! He was obviously in a completely different league from me in terms of fitness and training, but he stressed that his psychological preparation was as important as his long training runs.....I will take solace in this as I do my meagre step machine training every morning!    

Long voyages certainly change people. Usually for the better. I know that I have become much more laid back, which is nice because I used to be a chilled out person, but somewhere between the territorial army and research applications I lost the ability to allow things to be out of my control. Now a days, in my off time, you can generally find me sitting with a book or writing music. This more relaxed world view is particularly useful when the engine room alarms go off and I am suddenly faced with a gushing pipe or a machine that needs to be switched off immediately....More haste, less speed, and breathe.

I think I have mentioned before that I am one of the fire fighters on board Nelly. Actually I am #2 in a two man team with the Bosun (Leslie, on this occasion). We had a few fire drills during the voyage which I always enjoy. I think its so important to practice life saving drills until they are second nature to all involved. For one of the drills we had to don our kit and drag the hose down into the starboard fo'c'sle. As we moved through the lower mess smoke started to appear (signs saying “smoke were posted on the pillars” so we had to crouch and crawl to the water tight door that had been closed to try and contain the fire in the fo'c'sle. We used the water hose to cool the door and I had to pump the handle to manually crack open the heavy steel door so we could start hosing inside the fo'c'sle. As I pumped the door more and more, Leslie spotted a casualty lying on the floor. It was life over limb so I ducked under Leslie's hose and dragged the casualty out by her ankles and back through into the lower mess. I started to pump the water tight door shut again in an attempt to contain the fire and save the ship before we took the casualty back up to central command at the main mast, where the Medical Purser took over. The drill continued as we were asked to enter a second time to do some boundary cooling and continue to fight the fire from the outside. We then mustered the whole ship and simulated an abandonment to finish off the exercise. It was great to go through all the motions and pumping the door reminded me of the first time I ever wore a BA (fire fighting) kit...

I was 13 years old and on my first RAF cadet camp in RAF Brize Norton. We were taken to see the RAF fire fighters and they chose me (the smallest girl there) to put on all the kit. Once I was kitted out they told me to run to the other end of the hanger and back. So I did. They were all so shocked that I could do it that they didn't tell me that they were joking until I had run back puffing and panting in the summer heat of the hanger!


Fire Drill (I'm on the left and Lesley, the Bosun, is on the right with the hose)
On one of the (many) occasions during the voyage when I had to do a 250hrs service on one of the generators I found an unfortunate blockage in the oily bilge pump. I discovered this when the Port generator decided to throw up on me instead of allowing me to pump dirty oil out of it's sump into the bilge pump pipe. Of course the pipe flew off with the pressure and the resulting spout of oil went down the front of my overall so that the oil ran down my chest, stomach, leg and eventually pooled inside my right boot...Nice.  

In general, things for the first half of the Southern Ocean were just “swell” i.e. The ship was constantly rolling! The sea swells were enormous with long fetches that Nelly fitted into perfectly! It made walking around (and doing anything) involve pin-balling off the bulk heads so we were all covered in bruises and exhausted from not being able to sleep as Nelly attempted to throw us out of our bunks on each rogue wave. 

However, we had lots of good runs where the wind picked up to gail force and kept us a little bit more steady. Obviously this meant that the deckies had to think about the stress on the sails etc. But I was just happy because the reduced rolling and steady heel (sideways angle in the ship) meant that (on those gail-fed nights) I knew which way to have my head during in my bunk to avoid getting a head rush. In comparison, on most nights Nelly just rolled l both ways to about 40 degrees which meant that either way I lay I spent half the night nearly standing up and half the night with my head below my feet (...stupid badly orientated cabin!!)

Working with the Bosuns Mates in the sail locker


I spent a couple of days involved in lots of little “5 minute” jobs that ended up taking me most of the day (due to lack of spares or added complications) and this is always really frustrating. These jobs included a leak in the AC system, a fault on the fire alarm sounder wiring and a broken light switch. The AC system involved cutting and grinding out a new pipe connection, cutting new hose and re-fitting the system. The fire sounder wiring fault took a day of fault finding, checking all the fire alarms and bells, and achieved the square root of zero as everything continued to work fine but the fault light always re-illuminated about 30 minutes after resetting the alarms. The faulty light switch involved a 2 hour search for parts that turned up nothing useful and I ended up re-wiring the whole thing with a plug and socket from the lamp itself as I didn't have anything else I could use! 

On the 16th January I had (another) birthday at sea. But this was different. This was my 30th birthday.


30 had always been a big milestone for me and I had a “list of things to do before I'm 30” pinned to my wall since the age of 14. As it happens, I have accomplished 80% of the list! Which isn't bad considering; a) what was on there and b) that I have been adding to it in the last couple of years. I spent the evening of the 15th January wallowing in self pity because, well, I'm not exactly where  social expectations would like me to be at the age of 30. (Sorry mum, still no grandchildren on the horizon)....But then I thought about it and decided that no-one expects to be on a tall ship in the middle of the Southern Ocean, surrounded by Albatrosses on their 30th birthday! Actually, I'm pretty lucky and I've experienced some amazing things in my life that I wouldn't have missed for the world.
Surrounded by Albatrosses

As it happened, the day itself was really productive in the engineering department (once I got over the embarrassment of the crew singing at me during morning “smoko”). After a morning of “bitty jobs” I successfully re-wired the engine room fire alarm (which had been an issue for a few days) and then I identified the fault in the internal phone system and got that working too....Happy days!
So....here's to the next 30 years!...
 
2 days after my 30th birthday- at the top of the fore mast in the middle of the Southern Ocean doing some more wiring
Life on board can easily become monotonous especially for the watch keepers. (It is less so for us engineers where every day is a new challenge with new broken things and different maintenance to do). However, JST is run for the voyage crew so we have a couple of tricks up our sleeves to add interest and excitement into long voyages. One particularly involving game is the “murder game” where everyone is given a person to murder, a murder weapon (random object) and a place. Unfortunately my schedule meant that I completely failed to carry out a murder before I was killed myself (on the aft staircase, with a hair dryer) but the game played on for a good 5 days before a single victor could be named! On top of this we have had regular sea shanty sessions, the famous “egg drop” competition (where watches have to design a case that they can put an egg in, and throw from the top of the mast as far as possible (within the ship) without breaking the egg) and various card games etc. On top of this we had weekly Sunday services and celebrated every birthday, anniversary, day that ends in “y” that occurred to keep up morale and have an excuse to eat cake! (….So much for my “pre MDS diet”....Ah!) Actually, I was amazed to discover that the two married couples on board both met on previous Nelly voyages (as one couple celebrated their 18th wedding anniversary and their 20th anniversary of when they met)....Very cool.

After 35 days at sea we were all settling in for another evening on board Nelly with a quiet anticipation knowing that the next day we would be crossing the infamous Cape Horn when suddenly over the tannoy we hear “Land Ahoy!” For a second nobody moved. Disbelieve. Not wanting to hope. We had all become desperate to feel solid land under our feet and to be let up from the incessant rolling of the Southern Ocean Swells so even a distant sight of land would be amazing....There was a sudden rush up the stairs into the frigid air to follow the line of pointing fingers. The Captain had sighted it first.

I had just got out of the shower but I still raced into the chill to glimpse the most amazing “grey blur” I had ever seen! ….Land....Running along a dirt track...New Zealand seemed like a different lifetime  and even the Chatham Islands a distant memory. Was it really only 35 days ago? 

CAPE HORN!
I woke up on the morning of the 1st February to find an empty bar and walked up on deck (as I do every morning) to see Cape Horn off our Starboard beam....And, if you believe it, we were completely becalmed! It seemed completely unreal standing in a t-shirt with a cup of tea in hand and staring at the illusive Cape Horn from a Tall Ship that was wallowing on a Southern Ocean that could have been called glassy apart from the long swells that caused Nelly to continue to roll in a lazy manner. 

Nelly´s chart table at Cape Horn
Nelly becalmed at Cape Horn
We took advantage of the calm ocean to carry out a man-over-board drill. It was great to get out in a little boat again and going through the man-over-board routine made me really nostalgic for the RNLI lifeboats that I work on back in the UK. But, it was lovely to be off the ship for a bit (even if it was to get into a smaller boat). We took the opportunity to take some photos of Nelly alongside Cape Horn which have come out really well. Plus it meant that, whilst Marcin (the 2nd mate) was taking the photos I was able to helm the boat and put her alongside Nelly. 

Me at Cape Horn!
After that I had a real giggle in the afternoon. I had to do a quick repair on the toaster which I tried to rush through before the MOB debrief, but in the end I did the repair half before and half after the meeting so I forgot to tighten a couple of screws which meant that the elements dropped down. So, when I plugged it in at the galley, it shorted and blew up a little. I sighed and took it back to the workshop and thought nothing of it.

Suddenly the Chief comes running up to me as the Cook had reported that his oven was off and there was no water. Then the bosun came running up and said that the aft heads wouldn’t flush …..The Chief and I ran into the engine room to do some head scratching and the Chief noticed that one of the main breakers had switched off on the circuit board so everything was easily reset and worked immediately (much to the relief of the cook who was in the middle of preparing dinner!) It turns out that when the toaster blew up it tripped its little breaker (which it shares with the aft heads sea water pump….go figure) and this then tripped the main breaker on the circuit board (for what ever reason)....*sigh*
Ofcourse all I could think of was that Nelly was saying:

Well…if the toaster isn't working then I don't see why I should have to do anything!” 

After passing the Cape, the calm seas and fine (if cold) weather continued  for a few days until suddenly we were woken by the Captain announcing on the tannoy “All hands on deck, we need to wear ship after a sudden wind change”. The day then continued as “normal” with various things breaking (washing machine, lamps) and normal maintenance needing to be done (bar stock check, sewage plant cleaning). After lunch Marcin was on watch when a squall suddenly filled in bringing over 30 knots of wind on a fully canvassed Nelly! He quickly called all hands and I followed the on duty watch onto the deck to help take down some sail and reduce the high angle of heel produced by the gail. Whilst still letting go of the main halyard, I heard a tannoy for “engineer to the chart room” and found the engine room alarms sounding for a bilge alarm. I ran down to the engine room to locate the offending bilge and (as usual) found the sail locker alarm going.....*sigh* ….cue bilge diving. 

The Chief joined me as I pulled out numerous ladders and sails to inspect the bilge where, surprise surprise there was no water. Once again, something had shifted in the sail locker during one of the violent rolls and wedged itself under the bilge alarm float. 

Anyway, it was fantastic to be back in “Southern Ocean conditions” as we continued to head North to try and reach the latitude of 50° South. The sunsets were stunning and (whether it was our imagination or not) it seemed to warm up again the further we went. However, the Northerly sail couldn't last as the winds eventually turned on us and we only reached 51° South before having to do a U-turn. We turned in light winds and fired up the engines on the 6th February to make sure that we made enough speed to get to Ushuaia in time for the pilot. 

It was great to have the engines running again although the excitement was soon lost as the alarms started to reappear and the noise in my little cabin increased 50 fold. The sail down the Beagle Channel was magical. Surrounded by wind capped mountains, green hills and little islands that I have been reading about during my down time on the voyage. How amazing it must have been for the first explorers to suddenly find themselves in this beautiful landscape after the vast expanse and loneliness of the Southern Ocean.

Sailing through the Beagle Channel

We arrived safely in Ushuaia after a difficult berthing was made to look easy by our amazing Skipper. We will be here for a week carrying out well needed maintenance before the month long sail down to the Western Antarctic Peninsula. 

I'm sorry that this blog entry is so long, but there was a lot to say as, well, I just sailed the Southern Ocean and crossed Cape Horn in a tall ship!! :-)

...What a long, strange trip it has been!


First night run in Ushuaia