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| "Ming" at anchor in Thailand circa 2003. Photo by previous owner. |
An added advantage - the Chinese officials finally recognise us as the owners and will allow us to leave here at the end of the month, all going well with the weather of course. We are hopeful to leave here on the 31 March to go to the Philippines, then Palau, Manus Island (PNG) and onto Cairns. This should take us 5 to 6 weeks, all going well. The crew will leave us in Cairns and then Peter and I will sail the boat to Sydney.
The last week has been cold and we have only brought with us a small amount of cold weather gear. This is because we are heading for the tropics and we also needed to bring all the gear - clothes, personal items, sailing gear and yes, a bread maker (there are no shops out there and we would not have been able to fit all of it in the freezer). Why not bake it I hear you say - no way that would have used a lot of gas and we need that for cooking. With only two pieces of luggage allowed per person this was a tight squeeze. It's amazing what you can fit inside a bread maker. We have also spent a lot of time obtaining provisions for the boat and lugging them back on public transport, and then a long walk back to the boat. At least that warmed us up and our fitness has improved.
The crew arrived on the 28th March - sails were raised, all lines checked, and one super shopping expedition was undertaken to do the last of the provisioning. At last they were able to do some sightseeing. Finally a trip to the Customs and Immigration office in Hong Kong city and we were officially ready to leave.
Well it was the 31st March and the only good day for leaving for the last two weeks. This is the day we predicted we should leave by - amazing, now if only I could pick the Lotto numbers as well as this. With bad weather forecast for HK in the next week, we had to leave today. So we were all up early to get everything organised. Then we cast off from the marina at Sai Kung, fuelled up at the fuel dock and we were on our way.
So it was the start of our delivery cruise from Hong Kong all the way home to Sydney. Everybody was excited. But there was also a feeling of apprehension, of what awaited us "out there" for Peter and myself, as we had never done an open ocean crossing before.
By the 1st of April, three out of the five of us were seasick. Peter was vomiting at regular intervals while I was confined to a bunk feeling green and wishing I could just vomit or die. Unbelievably, Peter kept doing his shift, pulling in sails and lines, in between this ordeal. Luckily the paid crew kept us going slowly across the South China Sea bound for the Philippines. The boat was at a constant 30 degree heel to starboard whilst it went up and over each and every 4m wave. Then at the crest of the wave you could feel that you were hanging in mid air for a split second before gravity finally took over. Then the boat dropped like a cement block into the trough of the wave below. This sort of made the boat shudder each time and I often thought that the steel rivets would pop out, eventually taking us to a watery grave. After 3 days, 24/7 doing this I resigned myself to the fact that this wasn't going to happen. The boat was going to make it - but was I going to???? It was impossible to walk down below and crawling was for me the safest option. Going forward further than the saloon was very difficult, as non-secured 'softer' items were flying around - so we just closed the door and forgot about that. Getting a drink of water took two people, and cooking was almost impossible. As one hand was always hanging on, it was impossible to perform any task that required two free hands. If you let go you ended up falling onto the starboard side - now part of the floor.
By the 3rd of April we were approached by what we hoped were only fishermen. This was a tense time as we were all a little apprehensive as the unknown vessel approached our boat. Luckily they were only fishermen - at first wanting to sell us some fish (we had plenty), then asking for alcohol (we had none), cigarettes (no), finally we all agreed that some really cold filtered water would be acceptable and they were on their way. They were two days sail off the Philippine coast and the four of them slept and fished on this tiny boat.
At sunrise on the 5th of April we first sighted the Philippines. We knew we were close last night according to the chart plotter but it was nice to finally see land. By 0800 hours we had got a berth at the Subic Bay Marina and took our first wobbly steps on land. Yep, we had survived our first blue water crossing.
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