January 2012

Dear Friends

Finally, I am making up ice blocks, getting all of Taleisin’s gear back on board. If the weather folks are right we should, as you read this, be off for some long delayed sailing. “La Niña, the water circulation in the Pacific is definitely warmer than usual. These lows are what you’d expect from a La Niña event,” that’s what the meteorologists say. “The pits,” that’s what all our friends are calling the constant rain and wind we’ve been having. Since early November, the weather down here in New Zealand has definitely been unusual. Summer, celebrated along with Christmas and New Year, plus school holidays for children, has been a wash out. For us it has meant the spring refit which should have taken two weeks, got started in November and didn’t get done until this week when we actually had two dry days in a row. That’s more than two months to add a fresh coat of varnish on her spars, scrub and antifoul her bottom, finish a few simple upgrades and repairs on deck. But, even though we haven’t actually been under sail the past weeks, we have still been involved in sea-lore, our minds filled with talk of faraway places through heartwarming encounters with new and old sailing friends plus work on a new DVD project. (The DVD program we are working on is called, Cost Control While You Cruise. It is based on the seminar we presented at the Annapolis boatshow. Tory Salvia of www.thesailingchannel.tv is doing the editing. With luck there should be a finished program in about two or three months.)

This is an American built Hacker Craft, lovingly restored for Chris Dickson, the very successful New Zealand racing skipper. He has a home here on the island, and a boathouse for the Hacker too. That’s him calling out to us from the middle cockpit, that’s his father as – well, Father Christmas.

Japan, all three cruising couples agreed, Japan was probably the most exotic place any of us had sailed to. We were seated around Alvah and Diana Simon’s table in Whangarei to celebrate the arrival of the new year. The two of them had been in Japan just two years before during their voyage through the Solomon Islands, and onward to the Aleutian Islands before returning to New Zealand in Roger Henry, their 36 foot steel sloop. We’d been joined by Noel and Litara Barrett who had sailed to Japan in 1976 during their very first years of cruising on Masina, a 38 footer Noel built. In 1978 we had completed our circumnavigation on Seraffyn using Japan as our staging point for the voyage across the North Pacific to Victoria, Canada. As we each told tales of our own personal experiences in a land where foreign tourism is not a major influence, where the majority of signs are in Kanji symbols which make even reading a street map a challenge, I was surprised to learn that little seems to have changed for visiting cruisers. “I couldn’t get over the warmth of the welcome we had,” said Diana. “We learned there were only about a dozen foreign cruising boats arriving in all of Japan three years ago. Friends who are there right now say there are even less this year.” Litara said there had been reports of another foreign flagged cruising boat when they were there but like us they’d not met one non-Japanese sailor during their stay. So foreign flagged yachts then and now are definitely like magnets to Japanese sailors. This makes meeting local people easy. “The fun sense of humor, that’s what I loved,” I commented, telling a story about the young cruising sailors who took a train from Tokyo to Yokohama every Tuesday night to join us on board Seraffyn at the tiny sailing club nestled between big storage tanks in the overwhelming commercial Yokohama Bay southeast of Tokyo. Each of us had been made welcome by local fishermen, sailors. Each of us would like to go back to these waters.

2. Just for fun, we joined sailing friends for the boxing day (Day after Christmas Day) races at Ellerslie near Auckland. It’s a big deal, everyone dresses up, so did we.

After Japan our talk meandered through many countries over the next hours, but when I look back at the two days we spent with Di and Alvah the five hours when Noel and Litara added to the mix, what stands out most boldly is, we talked of destinations, we talked of sailing, sailing conditions, good anchorages. But rarely was the conversation laced with more than an occasional mention of equipment, electronics or radios. Noel, who works as yard manager for a large yacht repair yard in Whangarei, summed this up. “It’s a lot harder for these modern sailors to get away because they feel obligated to add so much equipment to their boats,” Noel said. “Then they have to keep it going. Too bad they didn’t get a chance to sail when all of us started out, then they’d be able to judge what they really needed for themselves.” Noel and Litara have been twice around the world, first on an engineless boat with no radio and just a sextant, then on Sina, their current 53 footer with Engine, GPS and simple radio gear so it is not just people like Larry and I who urge would be cruisers – avoid the trap being laid by cleverly worded equipment adverts. (While we were in Whangerei Alvah had just finished putting his book, North to the Night on Kindle. I really enjoy his candid writing style, reading the book is like being right there with Alvah – his story definitely convinced me I didn’t have to spend a winter north of the Arctic Circle.)

3. Yes, its all about the racing and with the help of my friend Helen Schmuck – a sailor and a horsewoman, I only lost 8 dollars though I bet on every race.

Our time with those four felt a lot like being in a quiet, out of the way cove somewhere along the cruising track sharing drinks and talk with true sole-mates. A few days later, back at our home base I was laying out sandwiches for my Godchildren (children of a cruising couple who settled here in New Zealand) on the deck during one of the few days with sunshine. I heard “Hello, anyone home?” This newcomer introduced himself, pointed out into the anchorage where his 32 foot wooden Tahiti Ketch lay and said, “I brought you a small gift because you answered some questions when I sent an email many years ago.” Doug Marsden, a builder and Netsuka carver and his wife Nikki Porteau, a specialist who works assisting recovering mental patients into paying work are two Kiwi’s from near very windy Wellington They had completely rebuilt Karie L then done a lot of local cruising. Then they decided to take a year off regular work and explore their own country. Doug set up a miniature carving studio that fit into his navigation station (complete with a dust extraction fan.) We had never before heard of the Japanese art of Netsuke – the carving of miniatures that were originally meant to serve as toggles to hold clothes in position. Over the next three days came to appreciate the intricacies that have made these toggles real collector’s items as we exchanged visits on board Taleisin, on Karie L and in the dry confines of our cottage. Nikki and Doug have enjoyed their year so much they have figured out a way to extend their wandering for at least another year. As they described the nooks and crannies they have discovered along the way, some of them only 200 miles to the north of us, or 50 miles to the south, I am eager to get away – if only – as I said at the beginning of this newsletter, the weather would settle in and really pretend to be summer.

4. It’s also about the fashion – including prizes for the best dressed women and men with really nice prizes and amazingly detailed outfits

Fingers crossed, I’ll put provisions on board tomorrow. Destination – downwind which gives us a dozen fine places to visit whatever the wind may be. (For those of you who live in southern Australia, hope we see you at the Geelong Wooden Boat Festival between the 8^th and 11^th of March. It’s being hosted by the Geelong Yacht Club.)

May your La Niña year bring the kind of weather you really want.

Lin and Larry

5. This is Doug and Nikki on board their very comfortable classic cruiser Karie L.

6. These are a few of the carvings Doug happened to have on board. They are corved from bone, wood and some are then cast in bronze. His work is mostly in a gallery in downtown Auckland.