Full Circle to Dubai

Night watches on a long passage give you a lot of time to think about things. My problem is that I don’t always remember everything when I get around to blogging, but I’ll try my best. I’ve come to realise a few things about myself from this adventure.

I think this trip has made me a lot more self-sufficient. There have been times when I wanted to call in the experts to find that blocked fuel line or broken electrical connection, but the reality is that you often just have to get on and sort it out yourself. I am extremely proud of both Helen and myself for the way we handled a few tricky situations, but I find that once the possibility of call out to an easily available professional fixer is removed, you become much better at problem-solving yourself. I’ve found a pattern emerging from each crisis:

Face crisis
Brainstorm solutions/action to take
Resolve crisis as best as the situation allows
Have a cup of tea, calm down
Forget about the whole experience
Remember it in a good-natured way only when prompted by humour (“Remember that time we clipped that reef!?” Giggle giggle…!) Maybe it’s a self-preservation response, I don’t know.

I have found that it is easy to plan passages as you’d like them to go; “average speed of four knots, say a hundred miles a day… we should be in port by Sunday!” I have to remind myself that the ocean is a fickle master and that a bumpy sea (or incompetent shipping agent) can slow progress (or delay departure) and Murphy’s law has it that the wind will never be in just the right direction. Our “fourteen-day” passage will end up taking seventeen days, including being held up in Male for an extra day, but that is the nature of travelling in a vehicle that is largely at the mercy of the elements.

I am looking forward to getting ‘back to civilisation’, whatever that means. I’ve always been highly motivated by my career so I’m looking forward to getting that back on track too. I’m curious how the realisations from this trip will manifest themselves back in the real world.

22 September 2009

The last twenty four hours of open Indian Ocean threw weather at us that could politely be termed ‘none too kind’, with winds gusting up to thirty knots and freak waves slapping against the hull at a regular frequency, drenching those downwind in the spray. I’m lucky in that I’m not affected by sea sickness, but even moving around, let alone putting the kettle on for a cuppa, becomes not only a difficult but also a bit of a dangerous affair.

We were all the more pleased to find the wind dying with the coming of the night and were greeted with a tranquil sea and gentle breeze as the sun rose. Even better, we could make out through the dawn dust haze, the cliffs of Ras Al Hadd. What a welcome sight; we’d completed the blue water part of the passage and now have just a two-day jaunt along the Oman coast to Fujairah. I was happy to be able to report landfall on a birthday sat phone call to my sister back in Auckland. I wondered if or how she would share that conversation with her friends during the day.

We suddenly feel a lot more ‘plugged in’. Ships to and from the Arabian Gulf converge and diverge at Ras Al Hadd to a point where they are separated by a Traffic Separation Scheme- a shipping highway if you will. The VHF radio crackles constantly with the chatter of supertankers and the like avoiding each other, immature obscenities muttered by bored seamen, and the Iranian coastguard questioning the intention of vessels many miles from their shores in the middle of the Gulf of Oman. Aeroplanes overhead have also become much more frequent.

I’ve come to realise that the maximum passage length I enjoy is about six days. After that, the monotony gets to me. I also don’t enjoy the almost helpless feeling of dealing with the weather. You’ll never get an accurate forecast for a two week or so passage so you are resigned that you have to take whatever is thrown at you. Sometimes it’s too much wind… sometimes, not enough. There’s no getting off the ride after it starts.

We passed close to Muscat today. It’s a town we’ve visited many times and enjoy its tranquil appeal. It feels completely different from the sea though and one is immediately aware of the defence possibilities of its squeezed-between-the-hills-and-sea location, one of the original reasons for its development here. The old Portuguese fort, many guard towers and the current presidential palace look fantastic from the sea, whilst the old centre of Mutrah, the commercial hub of Ruwi, and the suburban sprawl towards Seeb are surprisingly little visible.

Spirits on board are now up, with the end in sight. We should arrive in Fujairah tomorrow afternoon. Helen has promised to meet me there with cold beer in hand. Needless to say, the final bottle of Champagne is also in the cooler…

24 September 2009

I must admit to getting a little ‘dust my eyes’ and going blurry eyed as we pulled into the Fujairah marina to the sight of Helen, Suzie (Joff’s other half) and their boys, on the pontoon with a banner saying “You Did It!”. Luckily there wasn’t too much breeze, as I was a little nervous about mooring Aroha on a marina pontoon. It’s been just over six months since the last time I did it!

It feels like a mammoth trip back. It took as seventeen days – three days longer than my original ‘best case’ estimate, and we used almost twice as much fuel as we did on the trip over. We seemed to have either too much wind or not enough, and it never seemed to be from the right direction.

I think it will take me a few days to come down. We’ve been invited to a party tonight and I’m looking forward to catching up with civilisation and friends.

6 October 2009

Helen and I brought Aroha home to Dubai, taking about a day and a half from Fujairah and arriving yesterday morning. This passage took us through the well-known Strait of Hormuz where Iran is only about twenty miles from Oman. All the traffic in and out of the Persian Gulf is squeezed through and smugglers in high powered speedboats zip backwards and forwards carrying contraband into Iran and (so I’m told) goats into Oman. In the past we have been called by both the UAE Coastguard and the Oman Navy to suggest we don’t go too close to Iranian waters. They have a habit of holding boats that stray into their waters. Besides, our insurance loses its validity too.

There is a lot of smog and pollution in the air at the moment, so arriving back into the Gulf wasn’t an altogether ‘welcoming’ experience. On the upside, we had some spectacular sun-ups and sun-downs of the type that only occur when the atmosphere is heavily chemically-altered.

After sailing across about 1,600 NM of water that’s at least a few thousand meters deep, it took some getting used to seeing depths under a hundred meters (and under twenty meters for the last few hours into Dubai) on the instruments.

In a way I’ve been dreading writing this last blog. Of course it signals the end of this adventure, but I feel like I should also write some sort of ‘summary’ of feelings of the whole experience. I don’t think I can, and so I will leave you with some numbers.