I have been building this adventure up over the years with this blog and a few magazine articles. Just before Kate and I left, a very good friend said something to me that took a lot of that pressure off. He said "just by starting this adventure you have already triumphed". Cheers Pete, and a special thanks to you all at Conyer who have helped me so much over the eight or so years since my arrival.
So we left, and here is a detailed description of our first five days out.
Day 1
I spun the boat around on the outgoing tide to face into the unknown. I pushed off, jumped aboard and asked Kate to steer whilst I quickly hoisted the Jib. We gracefully sailed all the way out of the creek. This was a perfect start. To sail out like this after just over seven years of Valmik's restoration was something very special. Once out, we began to test Valmik's handling ability by tacking and seeing how high she points to the wind with the foresail only. After a calm and enjoyable sail we picked up a mooring buoy for the night. A friend was out checking his boats were strongly anchored, because there were severe gales forecast for the next couple of days, and he joined us on board for a cup of tea. I carried on with the sewing of our cushion covers and Kate cooked us a lovely meal. We had a very peaceful first night on a buoy.
Day 2
We both slept in and had a very yummy eggy bread breakfast. I managed to scrub the topsides, the deck and the cabin structure clean of the Conyer mud. Then the winds increased up to around 45 miles per hour. We were sheltered from any big waves as the wind was coming off the land. Although the wind was across the tide, there was still a sort of wind against tide chop coming through. The waves were no bigger than a metre but were coming from behind us and slapping the transom. Valmik has a long keel and because of this she was mostly facing into the tide. Only when the wind reached its peak, did she begrudgingly turn to face it for a very short time. This meant that when the really big gusts came through, instead of facing up she heeled right over and tried to sail the mooring buoy up tide. So it was like we were sailing, heeling right over and slapping into a short and steep choppy sea. It was good to see how Valmik behaved in this wind across tide situation with these little waves. Kate cooked the yummiest pancakes (BEST so far, she is trying to perfect them) on our cooker which gimbals very well. We do eat very well on board Valmik.
I had my dinghy lashed alongside Valmik in case she slipped her lines. The wind direction was such that we would have gone straight up onto the mud bank of Fowley Island. I did not want to go aground there again, so I kept my dinghy ready in case. I was down below when I heard a crash and saw a shadow flashing by. I stuck my head out and found that the inflatable dinghy had landed in the cockpit. I quickly evicted the frightened little boat. As soon as she hit the water, she flew up again and I instantly found that she rested well on her side and lashed to the life line (railing). My batteries were staying well topped up by the wind generator and solar panels. I set a very short anchor dragging alarm on my chart plotter to test its accuracy. I got up every two hours, and every time the alarm went off, to check our position. The tides were springs, so we touched the ground slightly as the tide reached its lowest.
Day 3
We awoke this morning to Valmik heeling right over, aground again on the low tide. There was another severe gale due (Force 9), with a negative tidal surge. We received this news as part of the shipping forecast over the VHF radio. The wind picked up again and was stronger than yesterday. The dinghy managed to get a few flips in before I lashed her to the rail again. The day passed quite uneventfully, as one would hope in winds of 50 mph. I clamped down my sewing machine in the cabin and did some more work on our cushions. Kate had cut out all of the patterns whilst ashore and I was doing all of the sewing. We are doing really well making our first set of cushions. We are a good little team.
In the evening, we heeled right over onto our side again at low tide. Every time this happened over the two days, I prodded the bottom of the sea bed with an oar to ensure there were no nasties that might damage the hull lying in wait. At about 10pm Kate and I were trying to sleep. We were against the hull with Valmik at a heel of about 45 degrees. We both heard the water lapping up over the deck and what seamed like little wavelets hitting the cabin side. I was up in a flash because there was a little trickling sound mixed in with the outside water sounds. I quickly found that some water was coming in from the topsides beneath the sheerstrake and in a few other spots. I redirected my manual bilge pump and Kate and I started removing the water. It was not working too well as the water was very shallow against the hull in this area. I got out my 2000 GPH bilge pump, which is easily removable from the bilge (it is on a really long hose), and this made very short work of the water ingress. So it was not a massive issue and in fact it did well to highlight a few areas where I might be able to stop a little bit of leaking. As this negative tidal surge only affected us at slack water, we were upright again within an hour or so. We have almost all of our important items and food in waterproof containers and bags, so the leaking did not cause a problem on this occasion.
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| Aground the morning of the third day before the severe gale |
Day 4
We set sail down wind under foresail only and enjoyed a nice little sail towards Harty Ferry. I only expected it to take us just under an hour to reach the anchorage. The wind started picking up again and boat speed increased. We were flying along against the incoming tide and the wind kept increasing even more. We were experiencing much more than was forecast. To enter Oare Creek we needed to head straight into this wind. We were not sure if my little 4HP seagull outboard engine would have the power to get us in against the 20 to 25 Knot wind. We did a test run before we reached the creek and I thought it looked like we could make headway against it. As we entered the creek we were not making any ground at all. There was another boat coming out of the small creek and I had to turn quickly around in front of them to avoid being pushed onto the mud spit by the increasing wind. So we turned our tails and rushed downwind.
We raised the foresail again and started sailing back into Harty Ferry anchorage, where it all started getting a little bit hairy. I had wanted to run Kate through all of the reefing systems before sailing in a strong wind. It was all very fast paced and in close proximity to moored boats and mooring buoys. We needed more control, so I raised the mainsail fully. It instantly started flogging pretty badly so I quickly pulled in the first reef. With the first reef in, we were still overpowered so I put in the second reef just as quickly. That was still too much, so I reefed the foresail (thanks Ben Kelly for designing such an awesome sail and letting me make it). My foresail is a bi radial hydranet Genoa which reefs down to a nice working Jib. So I had this down, reefed, then back up quicker than most sailors can change sails. Once it is up I can tie the reefing pennants in at my leisure, which is really good because I had to drop back to help Kate.
During this we had spray coming over the foredeck and I realised that my non-skid coating on the deck was near to non existent. We both really should have been clipped on and had our life jackets on as well, but this all happened so quickly. With all of the reefs in we were still flying along. We were tacking and the jib was getting caught on things as it came around, then we struggled to winch the sail in tight quickly. We navigated out of the busier waters and headed up wind to get away from the lee shore. We dropped anchor and backed the sail (to ensure the anchor set in deep). This was the third time I had anchored Valmik. The first time was at the Swale barge match of 2012, where my anchor had dragged and Kate went out to save Valmik (this is how we met). So I was a little uneasy about the anchor holding. I had lost faith in my 12kg CQR anchor, but was keen to give it a fresh chance. It held up really well and my faith in it has been restored. The conditions had slowly started to ease off a bit and gave us time to relfect.
Notes and things to improve on.
We need to have strict rules about when to wear life jackets and clip on.
My instructions to Kate need to be much clearer and precise.
I will be looking for more effective sheet winches.
Need to improve on tacking the jib and remove things that it can catch on.
I need to repaint the decks with non-skid paint.
Need to consider getting another engine which is more powerful.
Apart from the above, I am really happy with the speed at which I can reef my sails and I think that Kate and I did really well overall.
The early evening was really special. The wind died right down and the water was like a mirror. We had beans and eggs on toast and had the most relaxing sleep. It was worth all the hassle of the gales, groundings and the day's events.
Day 5
We got up quite early and had a tasty porridge breakfast with nuts and raisins. The wind was very light and coming from the east today. We decided to set sail and I let Kate do everything. This is the sort of sailing that I wanted us to start with: really calm, slow and in full control, with lots of time to think out our next move. Kate sailed us up to a mooring buoy which was close to the creek, where we waited until the tide came in. The wind was sporadic and light when we left the buoy to enter Oare Creek. We cast off and were motoring at full throttle when I looked back at the mooring buoy. It had not moved. OH no! The engine was not even powerful enough for this. The tide was quite strong. We needed to motor sail to make it into the creek. When we got upwind of the entrance, we dropped the mainsail and turned downwind to sail into the creek. I had only been into this creek in a small dinghy, so we really had to feel our way in watching the depth sounder as it is quite tricky. I quickly worked out that my chart plotter did not actually know where the centre of the small creek currently was. We dropped the jib to get a better view of where we were going because it was quite shallow and poorly marked.
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| In Faversham Creek about to go into Oare Creek |
We had the engine in tick over and knew roughly where our prearranged mooring was. As we got close to the boatyard, we went aground gently. I tried a few things quickly, but we did not budge. I knew we had another hour or so of tide which would lift us off, but wanted to get off sooner in case we went aground again. I jumped in the dinghy with a big oar to test the depth and Kate passed me the kedge (a smaller anchor) and a small amount of chain and rope. I found the channel with the oar and threw the anchor out. I rowed back to Valmik and stepped on board with the big oar in my hand ... hmm. Did I forget something? I usually step onto Valmik from the dinghy with The DINGHY LINE in my hand. I looked behind me and saw the dinghy floating away. 1 metre away: I got ready to jump. No. Too far and bad jumping position. 1.5 metres away: I quickly moved to a better jumping position and scanned the creek for boats. 2 metres away: I leaped into the dinghy and quickly grabbed to oars to row back. I looked over my shoulder to see where I was going. OH NO! Valmik was afloat and the wind was pushing her towards the other side of the creek. I asked Kate to quickly pull the kedge line tight, but not to pull the anchor up. I got on board and quickly started the engine up again. Kate lifted up the muddy anchor and line and we were off. Shortly after, we were safely in our mooring and having beers with Chris who had been helping us with advice over the last five days.
So over the five days, we have averaged 1 nautical mile per day. We have gone aground four times (albeit briefly), one of which caused leaking. Our dinghy learnt how to fly and do flips. We have learnt a lot about living on board together and discovered that Valmik still needs some improvements before she can be as safe and easy to sail as possible.
At our current average distance sailed per day we have calculated that it will take us until 25 October 2020 to finish the circumnavigation. We will need to pick up the pace...
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