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Sailing

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Fiji – Yasawas

17o11S / 177o11E Yep, the blue “jerry cans” are diesel fuel.  Proper fuel docks are few and far between out here and you need jerry cans to fuel up in most places.  Also, fuel was outrageously expensive in French Polynesia and clean fuel will be hard to find in the more remote islands of the Marshall’s and Gilberts.  We’ll replace these two-year-old “temporary” jugs picked up for a song in Panama with nice new ones when we’re back in NZ.  Then we’ll cover them with Sunbrella so the sun doesn’t ruin the plastic.  With 200 liters in jugs and 500 liters in our main tank we’ll have a motoring range of around 1200 nm in light air.

Sitting in a rolly anchorage in southern Yasawas.  Went for a quick snorkel with Rebecca when we arrived.  Dead coral in the shallow areas but there lots of drinking coconuts on the beach!  There might be decent diving on the outer reef that protects the anchorage but the winds are forecasted to pick up tomorrow and we’re moving north this morning to find a more protected anchorage.

Our radio propagation has been so terrible lately we’ve been lucky to just get simple messages through. Because of solar activity really screwing up the HF bands, there has been stiff competition during the few hours the window is open to the states. Of course, I’ve gotten lazy about checking for other periods of good signal and was in the routine of 4-6PM emails just like everyone else. Oh well, increased solar activity is fairly rare (assuming that was the problem) and only lasts a few days. We’re back in business with long emails and weather data downloads.

Navigation – Continued

We are currently using MaxSea Navigator, version 7.7 to be more specific. I know their website shows a much later version but this is what was available at the time. I don’t think the user interface is as nice as Cap’n Voyager but the charts cover the world, are accurate and the program understands the 180E/180W dateline.

We’ve resisted the trend towards integrating all of the navigation devices into one big network. Even if we could ignore the cost of upgrading a bunch of equipment to a common baseline we probably still wouldn’t bother. What we want are rugged units that are simple to operate.

At our Navigation Station, we have:

An old, reliable Garmin 128 GPS with an external antenna.

A Datamarine Log that records nautical miles sailed – both total mileage and a re-settable trip log. The total mileage reads 26,971 since we sailed out of Houston in ’94.

A Datamarine Depth Sounder – the serious Offshore Model that reads down to 1000 feet rather than the more typical 300-foot units. Reefs and atolls seem to come straight up from the depths, particularly in the Pacific, by the time your 300-foot depth sounder sees the bottom you’re very close. While our friends stand well offshore moving along a coast we can come in closer and run just outside the 100-meter contour line catching Mahi Mahi and Yellow Fin Tuna that hang out there.

An ICom IC-706MKII Ham Transceiver and SCS PTC-IIe combination that’s used for all our voice and digital communications – daily boat nets, email, and weather downloads.

An Elecraft K2 Transceiver that’s a homebuilt, ham transceiver. It was built for fun and meant to be used in playing with Morse code. Still, with both voice and morse capability, it’s an able backup to the Icom ham radio.

Yet another ICom radio. This time an IC-M800 SSB transceiver came with the boat. It isn’t even hooked to an antenna since I like the Ham radios. A third backup might be excessive but I thank the previous owner of Enchante’ for buying such a nice radio.

A JVC AM/FM/CD player with a nice set of bookshelf speakers down below and a waterproof set in the cockpit. Rock and Roll is an important part of the 02-0400 watch!

There are a few other odds and ends like the critical Hella fan, the brilliant Alpenglow florescent light (absolutely the best light made for boats!), clock, barometer and a 7-day recording barometer.

When running near shore a Dell laptop is strapped down and turned towards the companionway to the cockpit. It takes GPS input and displays our course and track as we move along a coastline. Paper charts for the area are always at hand in the chart table. Offshore we put the computers away and use paper charts and a written position log to track our progress. This watch log is kept on sheets of yellow legal pad that are thrown away at the end of a trip. To us, keeping a formal log would be much like our land-based friends recording the details of their trips to the office or grocery store!

Cockpit Instrumentation is very straightforward:

A Garmin 152 GPS (with an external antenna) presents all the navigation information the helmsman could need without having to go below. It also backs up the GPS at the Nav. Station and displays an all-important clock so I know just how many minutes are left before I can wake up Karen and get to bed!

A depth display repeats the Datamarine Depth Sounder.

Two very simple Datamarine instruments display Apparent Wind and Boat Speed.

A traditional Ritchie magnetic compass, balanced for equator latitudes.

A Ritchie Fluxgate compass.

A brand new Fruno 1833 Navnet Radar with a green CRT and a 32-mile range. It uses CMap cartridges and it can interface with a fish finder and chart plotters; it has all sorts of bells and whistles – even a remote control. We bought this unit because if we wanted a powerful radar not one of the cheaper, low-powered units. However, we use it simply as a radar with no CMap or other toys. Okay, we have connected the cockpit GPS (Garmin 152) so the radar displays our Lat/Long, Course over Ground, and Speed.

We’re delighted with our old Neco Autopilot that Amel put in his boats. This is a very strong, simple unit that just keeps on working. It was Built when autopilots simply steered the boat to a heading and it doesn’t have a clue what a GPS unit is much less how to talk to one. We turn the heading knob to a bearing, sometimes adjust sensitivity for sea conditions, and “Max” steers on that heading turning the wheel with a big electric motor hooked to the wheel with a chain drive. Everything is installed below and stays nice and dry. We have a complete second system onboard as a backup. The autopilot steers 99% of the time. We touch the wheel when anchoring, getting underway, pulling into a slip, etc. Other than those times we’re simply not interested in the tyranny of the wheel.

Carl Strange Avatar
Carl and his wife Karen set-off on a journey around the world on-board their sailboat S/V Enchante. Along the way, they had a lot of adventures and in Aruba, a new member of their crew was born. Now a family of three with Rebecca’s birth, they sailed the Caribbean and the Pacific experiencing life along the way.

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Fiji – Saweni Bay (Navigation)

Navigation – What we use on S/V Enchante

Briefly on electronic charts.  We carry a full complement of traditional paper charts and have the appropriate set readily available at the Navigation Station for the area of the world we’re cruising.  More and more however we rely on electronic charts for route planning and plotting while moving near to shorelines.   The program CMap, sometimes running MapSea as an easier-to-use interface, is the most popular charting program in this part of the world.  It uses seamless, vectorized charts that cover the world on two CDs so it’s not necessary to buy expensive “chart kit” CDs for various areas.  Cap’n Voyager, Visual Navigator, and every other program I’ve had a chance to play with completely fail when planning a route across the E/W dateline.  With the exception of CMap/MapSea, every charting program refused to draw the roughly 1000-mile route from Tonga to New Zealand.  The program insisted on routing you eastward from Tonga, traveling completely around the world to arrive in New Zealand.  The other problem is the limited availability of charts for the “chart kit” type programs.  CMap/MapSea has become very popular and has very accurate, usable charts.

For redundancy, we have two GPSs always installed and running.  One at the Navigation Station and one in the cockpit.  The electronic charting program is interfaced with the GPS units so it can plot our position on the computer and we can upload waypoints of planned routes.

And, yes we carry a couple of sextants – a cheap Davis model and a more proper metal one.  We also carry sight reduction tables and an almanac.  Once in a rare while, I dig everything out and run a series of star sights.  After two or three days I get back in the swing and my calculated position starts getting close to my always-accurate GPS fix.  Lightening strikes and complete electronic failure aren’t unheard of on cruising boats. 

While we don’t go nuts with formal logkeeping when well offshore we do regularly record our position, course, and speed.  We can comfortably fall back to a completely paper-based navigation routine using celestial while well offshore and resorting to taking bearings when approaching land.  You’d be surprised how many boats are out here without a clue about navigation other than entering waypoints in their GPS and following the little pointers.  We know of nine boats that were lost last year because they ran onto reefs.  Two of them completely misread their position and the lights while making evening approaches to Papeete, French Polynesia and this is one of the best marked and lit approaches you’ll ever see.  Another ran into South Minerva Reef because they drew a line from Tonga to New Zealand on their electronic chart and didn’t realize their course crossed one of the most famous reef systems in the South Pacific.

Carl Strange Avatar
Carl and his wife Karen set-off on a journey around the world on-board their sailboat S/V Enchante. Along the way, they had a lot of adventures and in Aruba, a new member of their crew was born. Now a family of three with Rebecca’s birth, they sailed the Caribbean and the Pacific experiencing life along the way.

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Fiji – Saweni Bay

17o28S / 177o24E

At least I hope we have left the west coast of Viti Levu and are snuggly anchored on the tiny island of Waya in the southern portion of the Yasawa group.  No cities, no streets, and fewer day charter boats the further north we go

Communications – What we use on Enchante

REbecca Strange on the Radio
Rebecca Calling Out

Long-distance cruising boats need long-distance radios.  VHF works for harbor and anchorage communications but its line of sight and limited to 10-15 miles even with mast-mounted antennas.  Up until the mid-80s or so cruising boats had Ham radios because commercial Single Side Band Radios (SSB) were much, much too expensive.  You took the Morse code and written exam and talked around the world for free.

SSB radios got cheaper and Morse code never quit being a pain so more and more boats started using SSBs  Only commercial, frequency-controlled radios can be legally used on SSB frequencies.  Typically these radios are electronically, restricted to the SSB bands and frequencies.  Ham radios cannot legally be used on the SSB frequencies and are electronically restricted to the ham bands.  However, Ham radio operators consider themselves radio experimenters and the helpful manufacturers make it trivial to disable the frequency restriction allowing the radio to transmit on any frequency.  I would be shocked to find a Ham radio on a cruising boat that hadn’t been altered to work on both Ham and SSB frequencies.  When pressed, the ham can point to the regulation allowing any form of communication in an emergency.   In reality, the bands are poorly policed, especially internationally.  For instance, there is a legal requirement to identify the ship station by radio call sign such as WB5ABC.  The great majority of boats simply use their boat name.  I would have to dig out my license to look up my Ship’s Station License.  In the real world, I am “Enchante“.  Ham frequencies are more disciplined and there I am known by my ham call sign.

For voice communications, it hardly matters if you install an SSB or Ham radio with the band restriction disabled.  Ham does give you access to a more formal system of “nets” stateside.  For instance, the Ham-operated Pacific Seafarers Net meets nightly to track boats traveling in the Pacific.  This is a friendly net that runs a formal roll-call of boats underway.  If you declare yourself underway you are expected to check in each evening.  Should you miss a couple of evenings, the net will get seriously “interested” in finding you.  If you are within a day of your destination, they’ll let you slide a couple of days assuming you are sleeping like a log after a long trip or tied up with Customs/Immigration procedures.  However, if your last report had you well offshore or you miss more than a couple of days the net will begin to alert authorities and ultimately will initiate a full-fledged search.  Hams check into this net knowing it is a lifeline should something go wrong.  A more informal SSB net has a much more relaxed attitude about “missing” boats and the daily operator will typically shrug your absence off with something like, “Guess they forgot”.  I suppose I prefer the more formal Ham approach when traveling far offshore.  On the other hand, most of the useful information about cruising areas, island check-in procedures, problem-solving “why does my starter make this noise?“, and general boat-to-boat chat is carried out on the SSB bands.  Hence the popularity of modified Ham rigs.

A huge advance in communications for cruisers started in the mid-90s with the introduction of Email via Ham radio.  Although it was painfully slow in the beginning, the ability to send and receive email brought new life to Ham Radio.  The software and hardware were developed by Hams for Hams.  Being Ham radio the software and shore-based service are completely free.  Of course, these guys aren’t dummies and quickly recognized a commercial market was needed to service all those boats with SSB radios since it’s perfectly legal to charge for services on these frequencies.  All of a sudden boats can send and receive mail daily instead of waiting for the three-month, bulk mail delivery that contains more junk mail than letters. 

Hams get email communications for free all around the world.  SSB users pay an annual fee and are allocated something like 15 minutes daily.  For a complete description check out K4CJX’s website or search for SailMail.  This mode of communication is advancing quickly.  Last year I could download weather faxes for fixed areas of the ocean.  This year I can download animated, wind, and isobar computer models for a multi-day forecast over any area of the ocean I’m interested in.  This is a huge improvement in forecasting weather for a voyage.  While anchored in Fiji I can request a five-day forecast extending all the way to the SW corner of Australia.  By watching the winter fronts developing over the Tasmanian Seas I can pick a decent departure time and not get clobbered by a cold front during the 1000-mile voyage to New Zealand.  At least that’s my plan ;-).

There are many sources of information on radio installations.  Being a ham I sometimes like to play around with different antenna designs.  Most boats install insulators on their back stays to electrically isolate a long piece of wire.  They run an antenna feed line and use this long portion of their backstay as an antenna.  I can’t understand doing something silly like breaking up such an important piece of standing rigging with insulators and spending a bunch of money to do so.  If one of those expensive insulators breaks you lose your rigging.  I ran a separate length of 14-gauge wire from the stern of the boat to the top of my mizzen mast.  The ends of this antenna are electrically isolated from the rig with two $1 egg insulators and a couple of short lengths of string.  The lower portion of the antenna is tied off at the rear end of the solar panel mount so the antenna doesn’t run right alongside the back stay.  This antenna works great and I don’t have to worry about compromising my rigging.  My 14-gauge wire (or an insulated backstay antenna’s feed line) leads through a deck fitting and connects to an automatic antenna tuner tucked away in a back locker.  Again, lots of information is available on recommended lengths of antennas and installation.  Like everyone says it is vitally important, and a royal pain, to install a good ground system.  Karen and I spent days running 3″ copper straps.  Now we have tied together an external cast-iron keel, fuel tank, engine, solid lifelines and other odds and ends.   The more connections we made the better signal reports we received.

Icom IC-7100 multi-band radio
The Icom 706MKII is no longer available but a new alternative is the Icom IC-7100

Finally, my Ham radio is a small little Icom 706MKIIG connected to a matching Icom automatic antenna tuner.  The radio is modern enough to support digital communications and happily mates with the popular SCS PTC-IIe radio modem upgraded to PACTOR Mode III.  All of this jargon can be cleared up by visiting the mentioned K4CJX website.  Basically, my Dell laptop is connected to the radio modem which, in turn, is connected to the radio.  Dell runs a free email program (AirMail) that sports the familiar email interface.  Airmail also knows how to control the radio modem and radio to send and receive messages.  Traveling in the South Pacific we have a wide selection of Ham stations in the States, New Zealand, and Australia.   The same software and SCS modem can be used with a variety of radios – check the web.

Carl Strange Avatar
Carl and his wife Karen set-off on a journey around the world on-board their sailboat S/V Enchante. Along the way, they had a lot of adventures and in Aruba, a new member of their crew was born. Now a family of three with Rebecca’s birth, they sailed the Caribbean and the Pacific experiencing life along the way.

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Fiji – Malolo Lai Lai Island

017o45S / 177o14E It’s easy for cruisers to get trapped for weeks and weeks at the Musket Cove Yacht Club, Fiji.  The first step on the slippery slope is picking up a mooring and opening a charge account.  Then you tune your VHF radio to channel 68 and start getting involved in daily activities.  Our six-year-old daughter quickly made friends with a very nice seven-year-old girl on another yacht.  The nearby family resort has a children’s activity center with games, shirt painting, a swimming pool, hermit crab races, island crafts, and on and on.  Our days were filled with shuttling the two girls between the two boats and to activities on shore.  Homeschooling was put on hold since the girls had plans from morning to early evening. 

While the kids were having fun the parents were enjoying the convenience of charging supplies and the local store, picking up wonderfully fresh bread for the bakery and arranging evening BBQs and the outdoor bar near the end of the dinghy dock.  The famous “One Dollar Bar” at Musket Cove had been a cruisers’ hangout for years.  While the name and drink price have changed to “Three Dollar”, the bar is still crowded most evenings.  Several BBQ pits are stocked with wood daily.  You bring your meat and side dishes, build a fire, grab a table with your friends, pick up plates, silverware, and condiments at the bar, order a couple of beers during dinner, and return all the dirty dishes when you are done.  Everything is free except for the $3 drinks ($1.50 US) so it’s a very cheap, enjoyable way to spend the evening meeting other cruisers and exchanging information.

After two weeks at Musket Cove, we headed over to the west coast of Viti Levu and the delightful little town of Latoka – the Sugar Capital of Fiji.  Again a resort offers free access to it’s beach as a dinghy landing and the local bus service provides cheap rides to the market.  Here we’re stocking up on fresh vegetables, and meat and filling up on diesel for an extended visit to the remote Yasawas.  The only downside to this area is the murky water and the ash settling on deck from the burning of the sugar cane fields after the harvest.  Three days here will be enough!

I’ve managed to do all of two dives here in Fiji.  Everywhere we’ve visited the water has been murky or the coral dead.  The outer reef at Astrolabe might have been beautiful but the winds blew 25 knots all the time we were in the area and dinghy rides were restricted the our island anchorage.  Other boats have said the water in the Yasawas is clear and the diving nice.  Perhaps I can get in a quick 98 dives over the next few weeks?  How’s the 100 dive challenge going?

Carl Strange Avatar
Carl and his wife Karen set-off on a journey around the world on-board their sailboat S/V Enchante. Along the way, they had a lot of adventures and in Aruba, a new member of their crew was born. Now a family of three with Rebecca’s birth, they sailed the Caribbean and the Pacific experiencing life along the way.

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Fiji – Mamanuca Islands

We’re currently enjoying life at the famous Musket Cove Yacht Club.  Basically, cruisers hang out next to a nice resort.  I suppose we’re all part of the tropical scenery for the resort guests so management doesn’t mind having us around.  Besides we pay a modest mooring fee and buy beer at the bar.  This is my first “yacht club” membership.  Lifetime membership costs $1 Fiji (50 cents US) but to qualify you have to have sailed at least 1000 miles from a foreign port.  No burgee or T-shirt to buy but they do carve your name, year, and yacht name in the beams at the fancy restaurant.  Look for ours when you come through.  From here we’ll head to Vanuatu or New Caledonia before heading back down to New Zealand for the next cyclone season.

I finally gave up on my old Windbugger and replaced it with a new KISS generator built in Trinidad.  More power, brushless motor, fiberglass case and all new parts.  What a treat to have something new on the boat.

Our combined power generation is the wind generator, five solar panels (18 amps with the sun directly overhead), a shaft driven alternator (10-15 amps) while sailing, and a 190 Amp alternator for the house batteries.  In the trade wind belt, with days of continuous 15-20 knot winds and bright sun through scattered cumulus clouds, a typical output from the KISS wind generator is 8-10 amps and, during mid-day hours, solar provides 12-15 amps.  Our Grunert refrigeration and Spectra water maker are both 12 volts and we can sometimes rest at anchor for days without running the engine for charging. 

Of course, there are plenty of days with no wind and solid overcast skies when we run the engine for one and 1/2 hours.  The four liters of diesel consumed gives us a cold ice box, solidly frozen meat in the freezer, and 24 gallons or so of very fresh water.

Our water heater works by circulating engine cooling water.  I’ve seen systems with electric elements and know boats that shunt extra power from wind and solar into making hot water.  After a couple of days without running the engine we resort to a more basic solar heater – green, 2-liter soft drink bottles laid on the back deck.  They get plenty hot after a couple of hours.  The only problem is getting around to taking your cockpit shower right after your sundown gin & tonic.  If we wait too long and the heat quickly leaves the bottled water.

The Spectra water maker continues to work well.  It truly produces 16 gallons/hour drawing only 16 amps.  I definitely prefer the flexibility of a 12-volt (or 110-volt with generator) over mounting the high-pressure pump to your main engine.  The flow rate of the pump, and subsequent system pressure, depend on the RPM of your engine.  With a belt-driven system, you have to decide if the water maker is going to run at idle or motoring speeds and size the drive pulley accordingly.  With a 12-volt (or 110-volt) system you can run the system whenever you have sufficient power.

We have been relaxing in Fiji and enjoying some of the local entertainment.  shipped home a kava bowl and some carvings.  There’s also a few bundles of kava in the forward head and a bag of ground stuff somewhere on the boat.

Carl Strange Avatar
Carl and his wife Karen set-off on a journey around the world on-board their sailboat S/V Enchante. Along the way, they had a lot of adventures and in Aruba, a new member of their crew was born. Now a family of three with Rebecca’s birth, they sailed the Caribbean and the Pacific experiencing life along the way.

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Fiji – A New Cruise

30 July We finally arrived in Fiji chcking in in Suva the capital of Fiji.

According to the Lonley Planet…

Fiji was once known as the ‘Cannibal Isles’ and its people were believed to be fierce and hostile; a recent history of coups has done nothing to dispel this notion in the minds of some travellers. Despite this, Fiji is beautiful, it has a pleasant tropical climate, the diving and snorkelling are superb and it has excellent facilities for tourists, whether they are on a tight budget or indulging in the luxuries of a plush resort.

Fiji has a unique history in the Pacific and today it is an interesting blend of Melanesian, Polynesian, Micronesian, Indian, Chinese and European influences. For nearly 50 years, until the military coup of 1987, the indigenous people of Fiji represented an ethnic minority in their own land. Fiji was the trade centre for the South Pacific during the 19th century, and the British claimed it as a colony in 1874. During the century or so that Fiji remained under British colonial rule, tens of thousands of indentured Indian labourers were imported to work on sugar plantations. Indigenous Fijians, however, managed to hold onto their traditional rites and practices – mekes (narrative dances), bure (house) construction, kava ceremonies, tapa-cloth making and pottery( Courtesy www.lonelyplanet.com)

Suva, Fiji Fiji’s capital, is on the south-eastern coast of the big island of Viti Levu. While Nadi, in the west of this island, is the tourism centre of the country, Suva is interesting as the country’s political and administrative centre as well as the major port. Suva and its urban surrounds are home to half of Fiji’s urban population, and it is one of the South Pacific’s largest and most sophisticated cities, housing the University of the South Pacific, the fascinating Fiji Museum and many interesting colonial-era buildings. It’s a multicultural city with many mosques, temples, churches and cultural centres. The Roman Catholic Cathedral (1902) is one of the city’s most prominent landmarks.

The waterfront area is very interesting, and the Suva Municipal Market is a must-see for visitors for its exotic fruits and vegetables, kava, fish and seafood, and spices. It has an exciting multicultural flavour, with vendors selling brightly coloured Indian sweets and savouries, and fruit drinks from glass tanks. (Courtesy www.lonelyplanet.com)

We relaxed and explored some of Suva including the National Museum. But our days in Suva have been marked with almost constant rain so we have decided to move on to Bega just 20 miles away.

Fijian Fire Dancer

14 August We spent a few days anchored in a well protected bay along the south coast of Viti Levu, one of the big islands in Fiji.  The locals strive to keep their traditions alive and we enjoyed several meals and evening times with them.  After learning a bit of the Fijian history in at the museum in Suva it was nice to find a group honoring their past.  When they were traditionally dressed and painted it was easy to imagine the young men as warriors.  However they were universally friendly and we weren’t overly worried about being a main course for dinner.

Carl Strange Avatar
Carl and his wife Karen set-off on a journey around the world on-board their sailboat S/V Enchante. Along the way, they had a lot of adventures and in Aruba, a new member of their crew was born. Now a family of three with Rebecca’s birth, they sailed the Caribbean and the Pacific experiencing life along the way.