Noserlies: Sailing from Fiji to New Zealand

I’m sitting on the lee side of the boat against the dodger window, reading in the short crescent of shade left by the midday sun. Jade, a worthy 45ft center cockpit Alden-designed ketch is bobbing, not lazily, but also not violently, hove-to against a fresh ‘noserly’ breeze. Coined by the captain, a noserly is a wind that insistently turns onto the nose of the boat, halting the possibility of any forward progress. The direction of this demonic breeze depends solely on which direction one desires to bear. Having sailed south for a week and a day after leaving the fair ports of Fiji on a kind east south-east wind with persistent and improbable high pressure prevailing, blue skies and spectacular sun sets, we have come to a stand still 200 miles north of New Zealand, for 4 days running, stuck in the eye of a noserly.

 

 

It’s hard to tell this story, if it’s a story at all, without laying out the whole history of navigation and describing exactly what tools we have, might have, or should have at our disposal on a 1200nm ocean crossing. But, I guess an abridged history will have to suffice. Most cruising yachts will be equipped with a minimum of a GPS navigation system, electronic self-steering gear, and some form of long-rage communication that enables up to date weather forecasting and if necessary emergency contact with rescue services (SSB, sat phone, EPIRB, etc..).

 

That said there is large spectrum when it comes to how well equipped an average yacht out cruising the oceans will be. On one side there are still folks doing it the old fashion way: no long range radio or satellite phone, just a wind vane steering oar to keep her on course (mechanical self steering gear), and in some (surprisingly not so rare) cases no GPS or satellite navigation at all. On a traditional boat so equipped weather forecasting might be done by observation and onboard measurement. The cloud state of the horizon as well as careful tracking of the atmospheric pressure would be a sure indication that shit was going to get heavy in the next day or so (if you’re interested in the details).

 

On the other end there are cruising yachts (in the 30ft-60ft range) designed and built to be handled by 2 people that will carry all kinds of modern accommodations and navigational equipment: GPS chart plotters with radar and AIS overlay, integrated autopilot with wind following capability and complete boat function control at the helm (on a touch screen!). Such boats are likely to have generators, refrigerators, freezers, king size beds, water makers, hot water heaters, showers, air conditioner, redundant satellite commination devises for daily weather and email, and maybe even an obsolete SSB radio to facilitate casual banter across the ocean. It should be said that these technologies on cruising yachts are by no means new, and have been integrated, evolved, and employed in various ways over the past century. Nor are they rare. Many ‘middle-class’ cruisers, if you can understand what I mean by that, will have some if not all of them.

 

On Jade we are not intentional traditionalists, reenacting the audacious and perilous voyages of our technology-starved progenitors, we are just trying to make it work with what we have. She is not the paradigm of modern sea faring technologies, but she is modern in many respects, having a generator, refrigerator, water maker, and chart plotter (a free app on a tablet computer not integrated into the boat). It is worth noting that she does lack one amenity that might make our current condition less anxious: long range communication. Simply put, we don’t know what is coming, weather or otherwise.

 

We checked the forecast before we left, more than a week ago, and hoped for the best, come what may. The result is that the weather window during the first part of the trip was, as predicted, pleasant, what came next was unknown to us at the start. And what came was this headwind. As a result we have been sitting like a sea bird with our legs in the water, waiting out the weather, for 4 days not knowing when (dare I say if?) the wind will subside or turn to a more favorable direction.

 

 

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Sitting, as we are, waiting, the discussion of our predicament seems to turn to the overall trend of ascending technologies eclipsing old ones. As on board weather forecasting becomes more common, the practical knowledge required to make weather predictions based on barometric readings and cloud states falls by the way side. In its extreme, practical knowledge of the sea state and atmospheric conditions allowed early pacific navigators to populate an entire ocean, from Hawaii to Easter Island and New Zealand. But as knowledge looses its usefulness so dies its use. The rise of celestial navigation, and the oppressive influence of colonial ambitions, has made the Polynesian navigation nearly extinct. And likewise with modern long range communication enabling access to navigation and weather without local observations the use of celestial bodies and cloud formation has fallen to the way side. But what we have lost is an analogue fall-back. Sure people still tote around sextants and trade is shallow understandings of how to avoid an eminent cyclone (if a southern hemisphere cyclone is approaching and the winds are veering clockwise and the barometer is falling, you are on the navigable side and need to sail 135degrees off the wind on a port tack… or is it heave to stern before the wind?), but these skills are in disuse and when the time comes it’s unclear that all the pieces will fit together to enable their employment. Do we have this year’s marine almanac? Does that barometer still work cause it seems like it has been showing 1005 hPa for the whole trip?

 

I asked the captain on the second day of noserlies, several hours into his staring contest with the wind, which he calls, changing the weather with his mind, if we had a barometer. He said that he was going to get one before he left Mexico but it was one of things on the list that just didn’t get done. ‘If you did everything you wanted to do before you left’ he says, ‘fixed every broken knob and obtained every piece of backup equipment you would never leave the dock. At some point you have to just go sailing and hope for the best’. He shrugs his shoulders as if saying what are you going to do, and turns back to the wind, narrowing his eyes in concentration.

 

 

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The dusty red, hard cover I am page flipping is appropriately, or maybe tackily, a collection of very salty sea faring tales from early 20th century America. These men of the sea ventured around the world in various craft, from fully rigged ship, to 25ft cruisers with oil slicks, storm oil bags, and oil lamps, holding on to wood pinned wheels as the tobacco in their pipes was whisked away by hurricane force winds, and sideways sleet. Men are lost over board, heavy canvas sails are hand stitched mid-gale, arms are popped back into their sockets with not so much as a passing mention between vivid descriptions of murderous, monstrous waves, looming and foaming and making the man.

 

I look up from the pages and try to gauge the force of the sea. After reading a chummy 50 year old article describing the history of Beaufort’s wind force scale. I have been trying to use it casually, as in, hey cap, looks like force 8 out there, you can see the streaks are starting to become spindrift. Right now it looks more like force 6, ‘Large waves begin to form, the white foam crests are more extensive everywhere’. The captain has been sailing quite a long time and has his fair share of sea stories: knockdowns, hurricanes, sinking boats and injuries at sea. But this isn’t one of those trips (at least not at the time of writing). Sailing is mostly a pleasant if quiet undertaking that includes a heavy does of reading, cooking and contemplating. But there is this indirect danger, and even suspense, that has settled over Jade and her crew. The fact is, even though the conditions are fair enough, the crew in good health and the ship sufficiently equipped we, as with sailors before us, ultimately we are at the mercy of the sea.

 

When we left we provisioned the boat with enough food for the 10day passage. It could take 8, it could take 14 (or a year if this wind persists), and so we bought enough food to feel secure. Along with the emergency canned and dried provisions we could likely keep eating for the better part of 4 months, and if you include the capacity to catch fish we can maybe eat forever (I’m tempting fate here). We carry 100 gallons of water in the tank as well as maybe 20 gallons on deck in case the tank gets fouled. 10 days in we are not half way through the tank so with a heavier rationing (we have been using the water to wash dishes and such, knowing that we have plenty), we likely have at least a month’s more drinking water.

 

There are a few hiccups that, given a normal passage, would not really hinder us but in imagining the extremity of our condition should be considered. Firstly we lost the generator a week before we left. Without getting into detail let’s just say she swallowed a valve and needs major surgery. Without the generator the water maker won’t work, so new water supplies will have to come from luck and the sky. Secondly the main engine is having trouble, likely a fuel issue, and will only work at 30% power. In flat conditions we can still motor at 5 kn but with any sea state or contrary winds we are functionally engineless. Again, what’s the big deal? People sail around the world without engines and water makers. True enough, and so we sailed on.

 

 

We left Fiji with a printed 10day weather forecast, knowing full well that after 4 days the prognosis could only be counted on for marginal accuracy. The last two days of the forecast were calling for fresh southerlies that seemed, from the small window that we could see through, to be fading going into the 11^th day, though it was not described that far out in the forecast. Taking this as acceptable, given the rest of the trip looked to have favorable winds, we set off. The forecast being unexpectedly accurate we saw the wind shifts, increases, and lulls predicted right down to the headwind on the 8^th day. At first we tacked before the wind heading SE to make up the westerly that we had made over the previous week. Finding our position 60 miles east of the longitude of the Bay of Islands, our destination, we decided to tack back, thinking if we could point 55degrees to the wind we would have a 60% efficiency toward our destination. It would take twice as long but at least we would make it.

 

After a few hours a position confirmed what we expected (since the sun was setting to our port bow we all knew that we were actually heading back north), we couldn’t make any headway toward New Zealand. It took a few hours to settle in but during the midnight watch, after being thrown out of the bunk a few too many times we all decided that we ought to just heave to, that is, turn the boat into the wind, sheeting in the sails and bringing the helm hard to weather so that they fight each other, effectively stopping the boat.

 

So here we are, held just off the stiff south noserly, a building sea punching and slapping the sleeping boat like a boxer sparing with a dummy. The conversation of the crew alternating between weather prophecies and dinner possibilities. How many days will we have to wait out here? It can’t hold, this wind, for too long can it? How can we make eggplant and pasta into something edible, again?

 

There is this strange feeling of nobility and fear in the air, we are able to feel, if just a little, how the seaman of old felt, unable to crawl to a windward destination, no ability but the senses to forecast the weather, just waiting for what will come, be it fair or be it ferocious. Our position is not heroic, or dire, but there is a present if unspoken knowledge that we are on the edge, that we are not safe, and that with one or two changes to our current situation, things could get heroic fast.

 

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Postscript

The wind did end up coming into our favor after day 5. We sailed through the night and a bit of a day until it died just 10nm from our destination. When we went to start up the main engine we found it was dead, (turned out to indeed be bad fuel). So we spent one long evening in glassy conditions with beautiful blue skies just sitting outside of the bay of islands. After two weeks at sea we made it to within rowing distance and again came to a complete halt.

 

Eventually an evening breeze carried us to a suitable anchorage and we were able to use the tender to bring the boat to the quarantine dock in the morning. The crew abandoned ship for some time on land and the captain is still out there, planning his way to the next island, thinking how to get home the long way.