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Episode 23: Lisa Blair Show Notes

Ocean Sailing Podcast: Hi folks and welcome to the episode 23 of the Ocean Sailing Podcast. Just so you know, I’m back on track, just punching out the second episode in the space of three or four days for a little bit of a break while I was away sailing. So thanks for joining me this week on the Ocean Sailing Podcast and we’ve got Lisa Blair who is planning to set a record as a first female ever to circumnavigate Antarctica. So it’s a two hour session, it’s a long one. Lisa has a fascinating background with having done a clipper race, having done a solo Trans-Tasman and now planning to depart in November from Australia, head south and sail around the Antarctica.

So great stories, some great insights into her life and her plans and if you want to find out more about Lisa, you can go to her website, lisablairsailstheworld.com and if you like her story, if you want to get behind a project want to find out more about it, want to follow her, go to the website, check her out. She’d love your support, love to hear from you and love to share her project with you. Enjoy this week’s episode with Lisa Blair.

Ocean Sailing Podcast: Hi folks, this week we are talking with Lisa Blair, this is a really interesting podcast episode. Lisa’s done some pretty amazing sailing in the past over a long period of time. She’s done quite a few interesting things she’s going to tell us about and she’s got a really big challenge coming up, a challenge ahead of her that relates to circumnavigating Antarctica nonstop. So Lisa, welcome along, thanks for joining us on the Ocean Sailing Podcast.

Lisa Blair: Thank you so much for having me.

Ocean Sailing Podcast: You’re welcome, my pleasure and it’s great to talk about something so unique and so exciting, so very different. I guess before you dive into what you’re in the thick of right now, tell me about your background and what sort of sailing have you done to date and I guess what led you to the challenge that you are now facing with the Climate Action Now program and your goal to sail around Antarctica. So take me back and just feel free to tell me your story.

Lisa Blair: Yeah, okay. So generally when I’m talking to people and I say, “Hey. Hi, I’m Lisa, I’m going to go and become the first female to sail around Antarctica solo.” People tend to get a bit of an assumption that I’ve grown up sailing and I’ve done this for 20, 30 years and I’m some real professional sailor. For me, that’s not really the case, I actually grew up in the rainforest on the Sunshine Coast and I didn’t even start sailing till I was 22, 23 and I’ve since been sailing about 10 years now and I just fell in love with it and I just got an awesome opportunity to work as a hostie on a maxi racing yacht in the Whitsundays.

So that’s like an 80 foot yacht doing tours around the Whitsunday Islands and I was the cook and cleaner on board and that was my first real taste of sailing as a career and I just fell in love with it and I was very, very fortunate to have a skipper and a deckhand that were very patient and answered all my questions. They just started teaching me how to sail. So that was sort of where it all started. 

Since then, it’s taken so many twists and turns and my story’s sort of almost written itself. It was never, I didn’t wake up one day and go, “Right the goal is I’m going to go and sail around Antarctica solo.” I woke up one day saying, “Hey, this is fun, let’s do some more of this and see where it takes me.” And it took me on this really long road, which has brought me to today. Throughout that journey I’ve had the great pleasure of sailing from Samoa to Hawaii with some friends and that was like my first real blue water experience.

I also, by that stage I’d sort of fallen in love with sailing and wanted to turn it into a career path and I wanted to do some form of solo sailing but I wasn’t quite sure how to make that a possibility. My skill sets at the time were sort of deckhand level of experience but not by any means capable of sailing a boat solo around the world. So I needed to get more experience, so I researched and I found the yacht race, the Clipper Around The World Yacht Race, have you heard of that before?

Ocean Sailing Podcast: I have.

Lisa Blair: Yes. So for anyone who doesn’t know, it’s an amateur around the world yacht race where you pay a berth fee, you sign up, you then have 10 identical yachts all on the same budget and all with the same amount of crew and sail wardrobe and everything and you race each other around the world. So people can sign on for sections of the race or do the whole thing. 

So I found this race and I was like, "Well, here is a fantastic way to get the amount of experience I need to go and do potential solo stuff later.” The catch is that the price tag at the time was $40,000 pounds so $80,000 AUD. I was selling costume jewellery in the mall at the Sunshine Coast earning $20 an hour with absolutely no savings. So for me to make that leap and go, “Okay, well, this is something I actually want to do but how do I make it into a reality?” That was quite a journey on its own and it taught me a lot of lessons and it also brought me to the point where I realised what you’re capable of.

So over 12 months, I managed to fund raise through sponsorship, the $80,000 to go racing around the world. I was $2,000 short and I had like two weeks until the race start and we tried absolutely everything, and my family’s been amazing support throughout all of this and we were holding fund raising dinners, I cycled my bike from Sydney to the Sunshine Coast as a big fund raiser, selling raffle tickets along the way and just whatever I could possibly think of that was a bit left field, that would get some attention, that would help me raise the money, we did it, we tried it. 

But still we were that $2,000 short and my family had given me everything that they had. So as a family collective, we literally had no money left and so I went to the media and the Sunshine Coast Daily and we just wrote an article and I just said, “Look, can we just do a shout out and see if anybody there that can help me get across the line.” Because with Clipper, once you’ve sign on for the full circumnavigation, you have to pay all the fees upfront or you’re not allowed to race. Even if it’s only $2,000 left.

So we did this article and believe it or not, there was a US citizen who was living in China who once holidayed on the Sunshine Coast and he gets bonuses from work, which he calls his “funny money” and he donates that to charity or individuals who are doing cool things. Anyway, he read the article online just randomly from China and donated $2,000 that night and all of a sudden I was going and yeah, I was racing around the world. 

So I think it’s largely putting yourself out there but also having this incredible opportunities come my way because I put myself out there for them, I’ve been able to be in a position where I can accept them has largely cultivated my sailing career. So yeah. So then I spent 12 months racing around the world, which was to date, one of the toughest things I’ve ever done. One of the most incredible, life changing experiences as well. There’s nothing quite like crossing an ocean or arriving at the next port after 30 days at sea and just be like, ”Yep, we survived that. We worked together and we got ourselves through that.”

Everything that breaks, every incident that occurs, you’ve got to deal with, you’ve got to be the medic, the doctor, the plumber, the tactician, the meteorologist, the baker, the electrician, you’ve got to become everything when you start doing ocean crossings because you can’t just call the handyman up from around the corner and have him come and fix something, you kind of got to become the person that can fix everything. So that was an incredible opportunity and you know, some of the conditions we were sailing in were, well the worst conditions we had were 80 knot winds and 90 foot swell.

Ocean Sailing Podcast: Wow.

Lisa Blair: So the boat’s are 68 feet long and the mast is 90 feet high and we couldn’t quite determine how big the wave was but we knew it was bigger than the mast.

Ocean Sailing Podcast: Wow, that’s substantial. In what part of the world was that?

Lisa Blair: That was off Stuart Island the bottom of New Zealand.

Ocean Sailing Podcast: Wow, down in there. It gets pretty wild down there.

Lisa Blair: Yeah. Well you get the entire southern ocean swell rolling through. So as the storm swell circles the bottom of the world there, there’s no landmass to break them up. So they just get bigger and bigger every time and more aggressive and the swell also has that entire ocean to just keep building and building it. So your average swell is like 30 to 50 foot high waves. Then when you get a low pressure system on top of the average swell then you get bigger waves and in the case of Stuart Island, it’s actually on the edge of the continental shelf.

So you’ve got this 50 foot waves, heeding the edge of the continental shelf and the depth of the ocean going from like three kilometres to about a hundred, 200 kilometres deep and the whole storm, the whole swell size just peaks and stands right up into a really steep sharp wave that is huge and incredibly powerful to see and it’s so breath taking to watch that kind of ocean.

Yeah, people always ask me what was my favourite part of the race around the world and I always say, “The storms in the southern ocean.” Whilst they’re terrifying, they’re just so beautiful to watch.

Ocean Sailing Podcast: I think a little bit of stuff, just the sheer grandeur. If your boat’s set up well and you’re sailing well, just the sheer scale and the sheer grandeur of the mother nature’s full force, it’s really quite incredible. Once you’re confident and you’re happy, you got to make it, it’s just surreal to see the scale. It’s really hard too, photographs don’t even show the scale. It’s very hard to take a photograph showing a big swell at scale, it’s almost impossible.

Lisa Blair: Yeah, unless you get a long range shot from a helicopter or something that can show the boat. But even then it’s really hard to photograph something like that.

Ocean Sailing Podcast: It’s hard to get helicopters out there in the middle of nowhere just randomly taking photos for you as well.

Lisa Blair: Yeah, exactly. Like they just call up your helicopter and get them to come down.

Ocean Sailing Podcast: Yeah.

Lisa Blair: There were some great shots that did come out when two boats were close together and they were taking photos of the other boat. But even still, it doesn’t highlight it because the photo would be of the tip of a mast showing beyond a wave but you don’t have the perspective distance or what size vessel that is or any sort of stuff and then the next wave it would be on the peak and you’d have the photo of the boat. Whilst you can see they’re large, I think conceptually, people struggle to understand exactly how large.

I always put it in the form of your average swell is like a two story high building and then when the storms come through, imagine standing on the top of a 10 story high building or at the bottom and looking up and seeing a 10 story high building, which is a wave coming at you.

Ocean Sailing Podcast: That’s about best way to put into context you can get, for people to be able to grasp the sheer scale.

Lisa Blair: Yes. But a lot of people also think that they’re throwing over, that they’re these big barrelling kind of ocean waves but it doesn’t really work like that because it’s so deep. What happens is you just sort of go up and over mountains basically, like little hills.

Ocean Sailing Podcast: You just rise up. Like a cork your boat just floats all the way up and then flows back down the other side, and they’re quite nicely spaced out most of the time. Unless you’ve got really high winds whipping them up but they’re just completely different aren’t they? The localised swells a kilometre off the coast.

Lisa Blair: Yes, exactly. Then also one of the best things I think about the southern ocean swell is when you watch it, because it’s generally all grey down there, so there’s not a lot of colour. Like everything is sort of washed out grey, the sky’s grey, the water’s grey, you get a few grey birds flying around, but pretty much everything to grey.

When you look back though and you see what will happen is the wave will crest and just the top of it will crumble but just the second before it crumbles, there will be like the most breathtaking aqua blue in the water with the light behind it and it’s a blue I’ve never seen anywhere else in the world. It’s so vibrant and it’s almost like a fluorescent, turquoise, aqua blue and it’s just on the tip of the wave, a second before it crumbles into white foam. But yeah, it’s another thing I’ve never seen anywhere else.

Ocean Sailing Podcast: Some really, really stunning sites. So that Clipper race, you went on to win that race, right?

Lisa Blair: Yeah we did. So it’s basically the whole circumnavigation is 40,000 nautical miles and it’s broken into legs. So you do eight legs over the course of the whole race, you’re competing in 15 different races and each race is from a country to country kind of scenario. So initially we started from south Hampton in the UK, we went to Madeira in Portugal and then Rio de Janeiro and then across the Atlantic again to Cape Town. Around the bottom of the cape there, over to Geraldton in western Australia and then from Geraldton we went down around the bottom of Tasmania and then up over to the east of New Zealand into Taronga and then around the north of New Zealand to the Gold Coast of Australia and then up to Singapore, China and then across the North Pacific to California to through the Panama Canal to New York and then Nova scotia, Derry, Londonderry. Den Helder and then back to the UK.

So yes, it’s an intense race and it’s 15 individual races and we worked really, really hard and we did win overall but we also won 12 out of the 15 races. Got one second and two thirds so we set a new sort of event record, getting a podium position for absolutely every race. So yes, that was pretty cool.

Ocean Sailing Podcast: Okay, what year was that? 

Lisa Blair: That was between 2011 and 12, so a couple of years ago now. Yeah, but it did give me all the skills I needed. I came back from that race with the confidence to skipper my boat or a boat or any boat anywhere in the world. I set about getting my commercial licensing and became a master five in the industry and a yacht master off shore and went back up to the Whitsundays actually and started skippering 68 foot yachts up there. So yeah, that was pretty cool. 

And I also started looking for the next adventure, which for me was the Trans-Tasman Yacht Race, which is a race sailed from New Zealand to Australia solo and yeah, so I was working in the Whitsundays trying to pull together another campaign. What Clipper sort of taught me was that you can achieve absolutely anything if you set your mind to it. So when I signed my contract for $80,000 to go and race around the world, I had no real idea if this was something I could succeed at, I just knew I was going to give it everything I got and try and make it work. 

I was successful at it so it showed me that with hard work and dedication, you get amazing opportunities come your way and you can achieve those sorts of things or anything that you really want to achieve. 

So then when I came back, I was like, “Well, what else could I do?” I’d already had this idea that I wanted to sail solo but I hadn’t yet sailed solo. So I needed to get some experience on that and the Trans-Tasman Yacht Race looks like a great way to do that. I had 12 months, I was the only female to sign up for the race and I was the only person without a boat to sign up for the race, which the organizers thought was quite hilarious. The race runs once every four years and actually finishes in my hometown of Mooloolaba in the Sunshine Coast. So I thought that would be a great way to finish off or to make the next step in my sailing career would be to sail home to where all my family and friends and people who had supported me so much through the Clipper Race could then be there to actually welcome me into port. So yeah, that was pretty cool.

Ocean Sailing Podcast: Okay, so that race goes from New Plymouth to Mooloolaba every four years?

Lisa Blair: Yes.

Ocean Sailing Podcast: I read a book maybe a year and a half ago on the history of that race going back to the early 70’s and quite a few other sort of anecdotal stories of the different people that had done that race. It can be a really, really nasty stretch of water for any crossing, let alone a solo crossing. How did your race go and what were the high points, low points of it?

Lisa Blair: Yeah, I actually, I had 12 months to get it all together and I had arranged for this boat to be lent to me to do the race in and unfortunately like a month and a half or month before the race start, the owner of the boat called me up and said, “Look, I’m really sorry, somebody’s offered to buy it, I’m selling it, you can’t use it for your race anymore.” So I was left without a boat very close to the start line and I also had to do my qualifying passage, which was over 500 nautical miles and I had to get the boat to New Zealand, whatever boat I manage to find.

So there was this period of madness where I quit all my jobs and figured, if I’m going to make it work, I need to 100% be applied to this. Moved into my grandpa’s apartment in a retirement village and shared a room with my mom while I phoned boat brokerages and boat owners to try to find someone, anyone that would lend me a boat. It wasn't until an article was written for my sailing that went out saying “Lisa hangs up the boat wanted sign” that the editor of my sailing emailed me and said, just jokingly, his name is Roger McMillan just jokingly and said, “Look, if you don’t get a better offer, my boat’s always there.” And I don’t think he quite realised that I would totally take him up on that offer.

So I emailed him straight back and said, “Right, what boat? Where is it? Where can I get access to it?” He was like, “Look, let’s just give it a couple of days and see if you do get a better offer.” So we did wait a few more days and I was really impressed with the sailing community. I had another five people contact me to offer their boats and…

Ocean Sailing Podcast: Wow, how good is that?

Lisa Blair: Yeah, and remember, this is to sail solo to New Zealand and back when I’ve never sailed solo and I’ve got to go and take somebody else’s boat through such an extreme trip. So it was just incredible to see that level of support and the maritime community kept supporting me and helped me get the boat ready and to the start line and without their help I wouldn’t have been at the start.

So anyway, I picked up Roger’s boat in Gosford and we took it to Pittwater to fit it out and I had one week to get it operational before I had to leave to sail to New Zealand for my first ever solo passage, which was going to be my qualifier as well. So 1,200 miles to new Zealand, I hadn’t yet sailed solo, so that was going to be my training trip. I think most people would take the boat out for a day first and see if they like it but I just figured I knew I would like it and I just have to go and my timeline had run out, so off I went. 

Now we had so much to get done to that boat, unfortunately it had been sitting on a mooring for over a year just sitting there. So as most people with boats know, a boat doesn’t like to sit around, it likes to be used. When it’s used, you can pick up any faults or breakages really quickly and easily. But when they sit there, the jobs list tends to accumulate. Yes, so the boat sat there for a year, so we had to haul out, get anti-fouled, get the electronics working, the battery charging system working properly again. 

And he used to have a furler reefing boom system on it but he had changed it for a Slab reefing system. So the whole mainsail had to come off and get recut so it could fit the new system and add sliders to it because it’s no longer a bolt rope system. All of this work and the end of the week I was just ready. I did delay another couple of days but we did get there and by the time I left Pittwater and cleared Barrenjoey Heads, I hadn’t yet put the sails up once.

Ocean Sailing Podcast: Gosh.

Lisa Blair: So I was sailing to New Zealand on a boat that I’d had for a week, that I hadn’t even looked at the sails properly. 

Ocean Sailing Podcast: Wow, that’s pretty bold.

Lisa Blair: So yeah I did have some problems as expected. So we put the sails up and the mainsail I put up and then the jib, I unfurled it, and it worked out that it had been incorrectly installed over a year ago and it had been furled the wrong way around on the forestay. So the UV strip hadn’t been protecting it…

Ocean Sailing Podcast: Oh no.

Lisa Blair: …that whole time and it was a laminated jib, so the laminate was cracked in parts. So the first thing I did, about to leave on a 1,200 mile trip, was get the sticky back out and starts putting sticky back on the jib trying to get it to hold together enough to get me to New Zealand. Yeah, so anyway, I left and I had eight days of relatively mild conditions and moderate weather and just got into my routine, so to speak. I didn’t sleep more than 20 minutes the whole way across because I hadn’t had any time to test the electronics and make sure the radar worked or the AIS was reliable or any of that com systems. So I was my own eyes and so every 20 minutes I would get up and scan the horizon for shipping and then go back to sleep.

It’s amazing how if you do that say a six hour block, you do actually get sleep in your 20 minutes because you get in this sort of hyper, not awake, not quite asleep, just sort of middle zone where you can make enough of an observation to know you're not in danger but you don’t actually wake up completely.

So anyway, I did that the whole way across and I also hadn’t had a chance to setup weather files or GRIB data or any of that information. So I had a friend of mine from Sydney and he was getting my latitude and longitude position off the tracker and he was texting me the known weather forecast for my area. So he would say things like, “You’re going to have westerly 12 to 15 for the next 12 hours, in 24 hours you can expect a southerly change, building to 30 knots.” Or whatever the forecast was.

Ocean Sailing Podcast: Yeah.

Lisa Blair: In the end, he sent me this text message, I was about 40 miles off the edge of the continental shelf, 40, 50 miles from the finish and I sailed all the way across with relatively little problems, if anything, not enough wind. He texted me and said, “Look, just letting you know there’s a low pressure system going to come through and pass over you. It’s a pretty small system that should only be a maximum of 30 knots of wind and it should pass over in about six to eight hours and not be too much of an issue.” I was like, “Yeah, no worries, 30 knots, I can handle that pretty easily. I’ll just put some reefs in the sail and drop the jib and put the storm if I need to.”

Anyway, the storm sort of started coming over and it’s getting 25 knots and I’m putting the second reef in and then it was hitting 30 knots and it just kept increasing. But I went downstairs to do something and all I remember was hearing a ping and thinking, “Oh no,” and ran all the way upstairs really quickly just in time to watch the whole main sail tear off the masters, every slider attaching the sail to the mast popped off. I didn’t have time to check how they were attached and unfortunately the sail company at the time didn’t stitch them on very strongly. So they all just tore straight off.

Ocean Sailing Podcast: Gosh.

Lisa Blair: Ping, ping, ping, ping. So I was left with half a mainsail, flogging around in 30 knots of wind on my own. It took me about an hour and a half to get it down and under control and in the time that I took to get all of the sail down and under control. The swell had just kept building and the winds were getting up to 40 knots and whilst in normal scenario that wouldn’t be such a drama. In that current circumstances, it was actually a really dangerous place to be.

So I had the jib up still, sheeted on tight and I’m going upwind so I’m 45 degrees, 50 degrees off the wind, which means I’m going into the swell as well and trying to travel across the swell, not directly into it. But because the ways were getting so big, the boat was having a lot of travel to get up and over the wave. I didn’t have the mainsail and I couldn’t get the trysail up with the amount of winds and I was running on the diesel engine at the time and the boat just didn’t have enough grunt with the engine plus remember this is the end of an ocean crossing so my fuel supply is relatively low and the tank on that boat was only like a 60 litter tank.

Ocean Sailing Podcast: Right, that’s not much at all. 

Lisa Blair: Yeah, so I burned through it relatively quickly. I was throwing jerry cans into it but I was only doing one jerry can at a time because I wanted to make sure I still had a jerry can left to actually to get into the harbour when I got there. So we were going up and over these waves and the winds that had increased and the main’s already damaged and my jib is about to break. I did manage to get the storm jib up but then I’m on the storm jib and the engine and that was…

Ocean Sailing Podcast: So you’re severely underpowered at that stage and the seas are getting bigger and bigger.

Lisa Blair: Yeah, exactly and I got knocked down, like the bow of the boat would get caught by the wave breaking and pushed sideways down the wave and once or twice I did get knocked past 90 degrees and I just remember thinking, “This is a really bad place to be.” I checked the charts and it turned out that I was right on the edge of the continental shelf.

Gold Coast Clipper Yacht

Ocean Sailing Podcast: Right so the sea is just standing up right there.

Lisa Blair: Yeah and if I had have been five miles further in, I would have been totally fine. But because of exactly where I was and I couldn’t get through it, I just kept getting shoved back and I didn’t have enough power. I ended up streaming the drogue and turning the boat around and just under jib and drogue, riding the storm out over the night. But I’d been like 25 hours on deck working on the sails and trying to get the boat through and hand steering over the waves and by the time I streamed the drogue out, I was just exhausted.

I went to sleep and I was trying to do my 20 minute watches because you got to exercise the drogue lines as well to make sure they don’t chafe through and slept right through my alarms, woke up like an hour or two later. The storm had died down and I looked outside and there’s a container ship on one side and a fishing boat with trolling lines at the other side of me and I was about to, like I wasn’t that far up the collision course with this fishing boat and so I radioed them and said, “Look, I’m running under storm drogue, I’m restricted in my ability to manoeuvre. I can’t get around you very easily,” and he was like, “I’m sorry I’ve got right of way, you need to get around me.”

Ocean Sailing Podcast: Oh that’s a helpful attitude.

Lisa Blair: Yeah. I was like, “Okay.” So I managed to jive the jib across and just set enough of a course that we went and just cleared his nets on the other side. But yeah, it wasn’t a nice thing to wake up to after being through a storm all night and running on the storm drogue.

Ocean Sailing Podcast: Especially when you’re a solo sailor, it’s not that easy to change tack, change sails, pull a drogue back in, it’s something you could do in five minutes flat when you’re on your own.

Lisa Blair: No, exactly yeah, it takes a bit of time and yeah. But anyway, we did get through it and I ended up about 150 nautical miles further from my finish by the next morning and then of course after the low pressure system had passed over, we had the high pressure system. So I had no wind, no mainsail and I was tacking up wind with storm jib and storm trysail.

Ocean Sailing Podcast: Right, and hardly any fuel.

Lisa Blair: No fuel and big swells still left over, like really messy, horrible swell. So I basically like bulked around for two days before enough of a steady wind filled in to give me any momentum forward and then coming in to closing in on New Zealand like the entry there is actually a really treacherous entry. There’s a lot of this little tiny rocky islands just outside the harbour entrance and if you make a mistake, you can run aground quite easily and it was closing in on sunset, during the storm as well, my GPS had been damaged so I had no GPS overlaying my chart systems anymore. 

I just had like a handheld GPS and paper charts and so I was doing like six minute fixes on the paper chart and getting a new course to steer and then steering in but this nice late afternoon shell came through the, completely created a white out for like an hour, which was the exact hour I was entering the harbour of course. So I had no visual whatsoever coming into harbour of anything around me and I was standing out in the rain and then have to run downstairs and do another plot and hope like hell my mathematics was working and that I was on the right course. Yeah, but we’ve made it in okay, safe and sound and that was my delivery to New Zealand and then I had to race back.

Ocean Sailing Podcast: This is the stage where this is just your race to get to the start line.

Lisa Blair: Yeah, exactly.

Ocean Sailing Podcast: Which is an exciting story in itself. So I have some questions for you. So a solo crossing like the Tasman, are you able to get insurance for that? Do insurance companies insure that?

Lisa Blair: I do have insurance yes. North Reef Insurance, which is offshore Maldives, Marquesas Islands, it’s somewhere over seas. They run through Edward William Marine brokerage and they’re about the only one in the world that I’ve come across that will sponsor or ensure solo sailing for offshore passages. So they were aware of what I was doing, they were aware it was Roger’s boat and I was sailing it. 

So yeah, it was insured but my excess was $15,000 more and the rigging wasn’t insured. So if I lost the rig I would have to try and pay for that and if any real damaged occurred, I probably would have just paid for it anyway because it would have been less generally, than cost of. But at least to complete loss of boat was covered.

Ocean Sailing Podcast: So another question, what was the name of the boat?

Lisa Blair: Cator of Margaret River. It’s a Van de Stadt 37 foot. It was home built in Margaret River by Roger McMillan, the owner and he had a mate who was an aluminium welder and the two of them built the boat together and yeah, that was it.

Ocean Sailing Podcast: Well it’s a small world because that boat somehow ended up sailing in the Gold Coast in our Twilight series for a couple of seasons. There were a couple of series and then eventually it was sold. I know the boat actually. It’s a bit of a battle truck, so it looks like a solid boat, wouldn’t have been light.

Lisa Blair: Yeah it is. Yeah, she’s a good boat but when you didn’t know the boat and you’re taking it across an ocean, your sort of opinion on what’s reliable and what’s not can be different, especially in 40 foot waves in a 37 foot boat.

Ocean Sailing Podcast: So did you have to be category one rated to leave Australia and to compete in the race?

Lisa Blair: So to compete in the race, you needed New Zealand category one. I did get signed off as a category one compliance with the Australian legislation and then I had to make some modifications over in New Zealand for the New Zealand legislation on category one ocean racing. But yes, it did need to be category one.

Ocean Sailing Podcast: So you managed to get to cat one all in the space of a couple of weeks before departure? Cause I’m assuming it wasn’t already cat one when you inherited it. That’s pretty amazing, in a week? There’s a hundred things on that check list and even boats that are cat one, after a couple of years have gone by, there’s always a few things you need to do to get back up to scratch. So that’s a pretty amazing achievement to get to that level that quickly.

Lisa Blair: Yeah it was. That’s why it was such an immense week and like I said, without the support of the maritime industry and all the individual businesses that contributed to various items on the boat and helped with the labour and the work side of things, it wouldn’t have been a possibility. The boat was initially established to be a cat one boat but it never had it actually set up. There were several things that we did have to modify and change. Like we had to actually put drains into the boat. So I had to plum drains in. They didn’t like how the oven was mounted so we had to work out a jerry rigged system to stop the oven flying across the room in a 360 roll over and get a medical kit together and a life raft in the day. Yeah, there was quite a bit to do.

Ocean Sailing Podcast: Okay. So once you got to New Zealand, then in terms of getting your sails sorted out and getting a jib and a main that were back in good shape and then the race itself, how did all of that go?

Lisa Blair: Yeah, so I had a nine days in New Zealand and true to New Zealand weather, we had a nice big storm for about five of it, which prevented most work. So I met a local guy over there who builds sails and he built me a jib in three days, which was amazing and he also took the mainsail off for me and did all the repair required to the mainsail and sewed the sliders all back on correctly. So he was huge amount of help and then we also had, because my GPS was down and I didn’t have any money left really, just some locals who knew a bit about electronics and they rewired my GPS system back in and helped me with other odd jobs. 

And you know, the community support that I found over in New Plymouth was just as strong as what I had in Pittwater when I was preparing to depart. Everyone just sort of gets behind trips like this and other sailors from other race boats were coming over to help me on my boat and yeah, it was fantastic and we were ready for the start and we did race all the way back to Mooloolaba.

Ocean Sailing Podcast: And the race to the south, was it as eventful as the delivery trip?

Lisa Blair: Not quite. It was probably harder than the delivery trip though, because what we found was it wasn’t that we had enormous extreme conditions, it was the fact that we had such changing conditions. So we had like no knots to 30 knots constant, all the time. So you went right through all the range, every time. You put a reef in, reef in, reef out, reef out. Reef in, reef in, reef out, reef out and it was just exhausting. 

Because you’re actually racing, not cruising, every time the system would pass over you, you would have no wind on the other side of it. For like a good two hours, you’d be walloping around, going nowhere. So you’d want to shake all your reefs out, you’d want to get your code zero up, you’d want to try maximising any potential speed, which meant you couldn’t rest. And then the next sail would start coming over and they were these small little squalls that they were kind of bigger than a normal squall in a sense that they would sit on top of you for a couple of hours and then move off.

But you were still required to do the full change of sails every time and the wind would start building, so you’d change you headsail and then you’d change your mainsail and put a reef in and then put the second reef in and then all hell is breaking lose for an hour or so and then it would be gone again, and you’d have to shake through it out. So it wasn’t that the conditions were unmanageable, they were just hugely exhausting from a solo perspective because you just didn’t get the chance of sleep.

Ocean Sailing Podcast: I find that really challenging in a multi-day race with a crew of eight when you have four asleep and there are only four of you to do this stuff. It’s really hard work. When you’re by yourself, it’s just another whole level.

Lisa Blair: Yes, I totally lost myself. I lost it a couple of times.

Ocean Sailing Podcast: It gets to the point where it’s not funny anymore.

Lisa Blair: Yeah, it wasn’t. I went to sleep once for a 20 minute nap and I woke up and the boat was sailing back to New Zealand because I had gone through 180 degree wind shift while I was sleeping in 20 minutes. So it was just, you had to be so on top of it. I also just had one auto-helm unit and it didn’t like strong winds. So every time it hit a point where it was like it’s cut off, it would just start beeping and the whole boat would start doing pirouette. So I was thinking I became the best ballerina yacht out there with how many donuts I’ve done in the Trans-Tasman crossing.

Ocean Sailing Podcast: Yeah right. Then your sleep goes because for that period of time you’ve just got to hand steer, right? You don’t have any choice.

Lisa Blair: Yeah, exactly. Then when it’s moderate conditions or light conditions, you actually work harder in the light conditions because again the auto-helm won’t work if it’s too light a wind, you don’t have enough flow over your rudder to hold course. So you’ve got to hand steer all of that. I remember seeing Lord Howe Ball’s Pyramid, I saw that chunk of rock for about three and a half days because we got a little bit of wind, got there and just got no wind for like two days and the birds were swimming faster than me. We just sort of drifted pass and I just remember thinking every time I woke up from a nap, “Ah, still there. Ah, still there. Still haven’t lost sight of it.” 

So yeah, most of the trip was like that and then when we closed in on the Australian coast, you’ve got the East Australian Current, which can be really challenging to try and work out the best approach there and you really don’t want to be trying to go up current against two or three knots of adverse current against you. But then also you start getting all the land mass interferences. So you start getting hot air coming off of the land, which generates your little thunderstorms in the evenings and lightning storms, which was just additional challenges to the offshore storm systems.

I’ve got some footage actually of just this amazing lightning storm that was all around the boat and I remember sitting in the companion way going, “Right, I’m in a big metal boat, in the middle of the ocean, on my own, completely surrounded by lightning,” and it was striking the water like 20 meters away. You could hear it hissing and sizzling and I have no idea how the boat didn’t get hit but I was very fortunate and I also had waterspouts as well. I had three water spouts and I woke up one day and looked out and there’s like these three water spouts about three or four miles away from me, coming right at me and I had to tack to get out of the way of the pathway of the water spouts. So that was very…

Ocean Sailing Podcast: I’ve seen them a couple of times on Morton Bay and I’ve always wondered, the force to lift that amount of water, what would actually happen if they came over the top of your boat? Do you know of anyone that’s actually suffered from that?

Lisa Blair: Yeah, I have. I haven’t spoken to them personally but I’ve seen the results in a little video that they put together. I can’t remember the name of the boat. I think it was the Hobart.

Ocean Sailing Podcast: Right.

Lisa Blair: Anyway, they had this waterspout come over and they dropped everything but it still yeah, did quite a lot of damage. It didn’t de-mast them but it did tear their sails and I’ve heard of other boats just getting flattened completely sideways. It’s only for a couple of seconds but it’s just like getting hit by a brick wall that just flattens you.

Ocean Sailing Podcast: Massive amount of water.

Lisa Blair: Yes.

Ocean Sailing Podcast: Okay.

Lisa Blair: Yeah, so I did finish the race, yeah. So I started losing my cool on the finishing sort of two, three days coming into Mooloolaba because the weather forecast had been given would have meant that I would have had winds behind me and would have been there by the next day kind of thing, because I wasn’t that far away. But it ended up being that I got hugely tricky and challenging conditions between no wind and lots of wind and all on the nose. So I was tacking my way against…

Ocean Sailing Podcast: And then against current?

Lisa Blair: …the current up the coast. Yes, just getting pulled down sideways by the current and I did finally get there and when I went across the finish line, the wind dropped out absolutely completely and I was like half a mile from the finish and it took me another six hours to try and get the boat to move and all my friends and family are on the rock wall just going, “Hurry up.” I finally got across and then when I got across, I’d also broken my furler partway across. It stopped allowing me to furl and I managed to get it to furl halfway but it meant that when I had light winds I had not enough sail, when I had too much wind, I had too much sail up. I couldn’t find the happy medium anymore.

But when we finally got there, nobody was allowed to board the boat and I couldn’t get the sail away. So I couldn’t get it to drop, I couldn’t get it to unfurl and I couldn’t get it to do anything and we finally had customs jump on board and take the helm so that I can run up and I didn’t quite have to go up the rig but it was a close call and we managed to just yank it really hard and it came down. But yeah, it was a good lesson learned.

Ocean Sailing Podcast: Okay, so your sail configurations, you said you had a code zero and then you have a genoa and a furler and a jib that was on a different forestay? Or how did all that work? 

Lisa Blair: For the Trans-Tasman, all I had was the mainsail, one furling headsail and I had a little code zero thing that I could put up on a top down furler separately, and that was it, and a storm sail.

Ocean Sailing Podcast: So do you have a separate jib to your storm jib?

Lisa Blair: Yeah. So I had the one on the furler, on the bow, on the forestay. So I had a set furled jib, and then I had a storm jib.

Ocean Sailing Podcast: Oh okay, so you didn’t have a Genoa and a Jib on the furler? You just had the jib? So they provided some challenges.

Lisa Blair: Yeah, especially in the light winds. I didn’t quite have enough speed. Yeah, I mean it would have been fantastic to have a wider range of sails but given the circumstances of how I actually got the boat, I was just pretty happy with having succeeded and got there and back.

Ocean Sailing Podcast: Yeah, right. A wider range of sails would be even more sail changes too, right? So it’s got some upside and some downside.

Lisa Blair: Yeah, and I did end up finishing eighth across the line out of I think it was 14 boats racing.

Ocean Sailing Podcast: Oh, congratulations.

Lisa Blair: So that was a pretty good result really, given that there’s no real handicap system.

Ocean Sailing Podcast: No, because there isn’t, is there? It’s just first across the line no matter what sized boat you’re in.

Lisa Blair: Yeah, exactly. So there was two class 40’s racing that year in a trimaran. So there’s three positions gone. Yeah, but we did run our own sort of in house club handicap as well, which got me sixth place.

Ocean Sailing Podcast: Okay.

Lisa Blair: Which was just for fun handicap.

Ocean Sailing Podcast: That’s pretty good, given how painful your last three days were and even your last six hours.

Lisa Blair: Yeah, well I actually overtook someone in those last three days, which was fantastic.

Ocean Sailing Podcast: That’s a bit of a buzz.

Lisa Blair: Then I found out later, it’s because he broke his mainsail. I was like, “Oh, well now I feel bad.”

Ocean Sailing Podcast: So how long in total did the trip take in terms of days and hours?

Lisa Blair: I couldn’t tell you to the minute, because I never actually looked it up. But yeah, it was 12 days.

Ocean Sailing Podcast: Okay.

Lisa Blair: It was 1,380 miles.

Ocean Sailing Podcast: Okay, so it’s a decent distance that’s for sure.

Lisa Blair: Yeah, because you’re going north and then it was the guy who took over the boat from me who was racing it on the Gold Coast there.

Ocean Sailing Podcast: Yeah, right, got you.

Lisa Blair: David Croft his name was.

Ocean Sailing Podcast: Yeah, I’ve done some sailing with David. He’s an excellent sailor.

Lisa Blair: Yeah, he did the Hobart with me.

Ocean Sailing Podcast: Of course and with Steve as well?

Lisa Blair: Yes. So I only met him because I handed the boat over to him when Roger knew he didn’t want to do anything with the boat for another 12 months. So he found somebody who was willing to take ownership of the boat for 12 months, which was where David came in and yeah. So he took the boat and I handed it over to him. So I was like his point of contact for any dramas with the boat. So yeah, that’s how we know each other.

Ocean Sailing Podcast: Okay, well it’s a really, really interesting story that leads you to where you are now and the bit that I can’t figure out is how you go from sailing the beautiful Whitsundays in plus 30 degrees to wanting to go around Antarctica where it’s pretty minus 30 degrees and then some. So tell me that? So from what I understand, you’re aiming to be the first female to compete in the Antarctica Cup Ocean Race.

First female to circumnavigate Antarctica nonstop, solo, unassisted and circumnavigate below 45 degrees south and you’re also aiming to break the current record for the 16,400 nautical trip, which was originally 102 days, one hour, 35 minutes and 50 seconds that was set by a sailor, I can’t even pronounce his name but…

Lisa Blair: Fedor Konyukhov. Ueah if you’re just reading it, it’s hard to pronounce.

Ocean Sailing Podcast: On an 86 foot aluminium sailing vessel, which sounds like a pretty big reasonably fit for purpose. So tell me about your goals there Lisa? Your goal of completing it in 90 days or around there and then tell me about the message that you’re looking to share around Climate Action Now and what the focus is and how it’s come about and what you're trying to achieve with that?

Lisa Blair: Yes, sure. So I didn’t, like how I actually found out about the record being an option was when I was trying to do the Trans-Tasman Yacht Race. I was talking to a guy, you may know of him, James Burwick, and he’s got a yacht, an open 40 called Anasazi Girl. He was in the media about a year ago because he de-masted off Cape Horn and he’s been cruising around the world with his wife and two young children, now four young children. 

But anyway, at that time I was trying to charter his yacht for the Trans-Tasman Yacht Race and he said, “Look, I won’t let you charter it but it’s available for sale if you can get the money together, you can buy it,” and I obviously didn’t get the money together but he said, “Look, one way you could look at doing it was combine the trip for Trans-Tasman together with another record. What’s the next step? What’s something else you can do afterwards?” And he said, “Look, you should have a look at this record because it is relatively achievable in it and it’s there,” and the record he pointed out to me was the Antarctica Cup Ocean Race and Fedor Konyukhov’s record of 102 days sailing solo around Antarctica and I immediately went, “Red flag, Antarctica? No way!” 

Then I went away and I sort of thought about it and I’ve spent probably three months, four months, researching it before I mentally came to terms with the fact that yes, this is something that I could achieve and it’s something that I actually wanted to do and it’s within my capabilities and all of those sorts of thought processes that you go through when you’re trying to take on something that is perceived to be extremely risky. 

So yes, the idea was bought then and it was always sort of a long term goal by doing the Trans-Tasman that then became like just a short of shake down trip. So my 12 days at sea, I was always thinking, “Oh this isn’t so bad. I’m going to have three months to see you soon.” So, it sort of changed the way I dealt with that situation as well because I always knew I was going to go and spend a couple of months at sea shortly after.

Ocean Sailing Podcast: Yeah.

Lisa Blair: So when I finished the Trans-Tasman, I made the choice to move to Sydney and I started working as a skipper down here in Sydney and as a sailing instructor and tried to pull together a campaign to sail solo around Antarctica. Now, initially I was trying to build a boat, a 50 foot yacht. I had Andrew Develle who is a very well respected architect, design me a 50 foot yacht. Unfortunately, we never got that part of the progress project together. But towards mid last year, I remember talking to my mom and I’ve been working on this for a couple of years now and I was talking to mom going, “Look, if it doesn’t happen this year, if I can’t pull it off this year, it’s not the end of the world. I’ll just go and skipper a Clipper Race around the world or something and then come back to it. Because, then I’m getting a better sort of sponsorship platform or public platform so that I’m more sponsor-able.” 

I sort of had this conversation with mom not really thinking it was leading anywhere. A few months later or a few weeks later, she calls me up and says, “Look, I’ve been thinking about your Antarctica trip. I think I’ve got enough equity in the units to help you buy a boat,” and I was like, “What? No.” I tried to talk her out of it and I was like, “No mom, that’s silly, don’t want to be putting your house on the line for me.”

So mom’s got three units in Cotton Tree, which are just investment properties. She’s got her own house separate of that and she was going to use the equity in these investment properties and the way she sort of sees it is that it’s just a loan that I paid back. It’s just like any other investment I would gather I interest on it and she would make money out of it and it would just be something that I’d pay back later when I’ve succeeded and the sponsorship money has come through.

So I relented and we started boat hunting and we started looking at different boats around the world, in France and the UK and very few that I could find in Australia. In fact, I didn’t really find anything in Australia that I thought would be capable. Somebody pointed out a boat to me in New Zealand but he said, “This would be an amazing boat for you, but I have no idea if it’s even up to sail,” and it was just this amazing open 40 aluminium boat. Then at the same time I just randomly did a Google search and this yacht popped up, which was perfect and it was one that I was familiar with. The original name of my boat is Funnel-Web, and a lot of people know the boat because it’s done a couple of Melbourne to Osaka’s and it’s done a Hobart and a Trans-Tasman and a few other events. 

I was familiar with the boat and I always had boat envy when I looked at that boat, I had a bit of boat porn for me, and it was up for sale and it was up for sail for $140,000 and I was like, “What? That is so cheap. That is within our budget, we can afford that,” and I always knew that I’d need to buy a boat and fully refit it. Regardless of how expensive the boat was. You need to know as the sailor on board in those conditions that you’ve got the right equipment and that you’ve done the checks. So any boat I’ve got, I was always going to have to refit. 

So$140,000, effectively I’m buying the shell and a mast and I’m putting everything else onto the boat. I called the owner up and we put a thousand dollar deposit on it straight away. Then we had about three weeks till I could actually make the trip up, mom flew down and both of us made the trip up to go over and look at the boats. So we went right through the boat, the first time Ivan met me, he spent a good hour trying to talk me out of buying his boat because he just thought I was too small and too little like I’m a five foot two female.

He just was like, “You’re bonkers, no, you can’t. This boat requires lots of power, you know? You need to be strong,” and I’m like, “Yeah, I’m strong.” He kept trying to talk me out of it. Then what happened was we actually put the loan in for the bank and the bank knocked us back. So we had found the right boat and if we had put in a week earlier, it would have all gone through. But they changed the laws that week and closed down on extensions on home loans so that it actually prevented us from being able to do what we had planned to do.

So we were desperate, we tried everything combining our incomes and getting boat loans and we just madly, for three months, we’d try to do anything and every month I’d put another thousand on the boat to just hold it and poor Ivan was losing it and I remember the boat works guys or the buyer boat guys in New Castle said that he just came storming in one day and said, “That’s it, give her money back and put the boat back on the market, I’m not waiting any longer.” I was just so desperate to get this boat because I knew it was the right boat and we really just tried absolutely anything and he really didn’t think that I’d pull it off. 

Anyway, we ended up going to the papers and Roger McMillan wrote an article for me about trying to get a private investor because we did have the equity there, it’s just that the laws had changed that wouldn’t allow us to use that equity. So it ended up being a crew member of mine that helped me deliver a yacht from Albany over towards New Zealand and he got in touch and said, “Look, I don’t know if I can help but send me some more information.” So we sent him all the information and he sat down with his wife and they’ve been amazing and they loaned me as a personal finance, $130,000.

Ocean Sailing Podcast: Wow, that’s fantastic.

Lisa Blair: Yeah. So we got the boat.

Ocean Sailing Podcast: Just to clarify, the boat was called Funnel-Web and if you get bitten by a funnel-web spider, you’re dead in 20 minutes. There’s no irony in that, is there?

Lisa Blair: Yeah, it’s a bit of a beast of a boat. Yeah, well it’s also a 50 foot yacht, which a lot of people look at and go, “It’s too big.” But Fedor Konyukhov sailed an 88 foot boat solo. It’s how the boat is setup with how big it is.

Ocean Sailing Podcast: And it’s ability to protect from big winds. 

Lisa Blair: Yeah, exactly and being down there in a Clipper boat, which weighs 38 tons and getting tossed around like a match stick, I wanted to be in a big boat. I want to be in a heavy boat because I know then I’m going to have more chance or less likely to get shoved around by the waves so much. So yeah, then we had already sort of when we went looking to buy the boat, we’re looking at doing the Sydney to Hobart that year because there wouldn’t be enough time to put the boat in for a full refit for Antarctica but there would be enough time to get it race ready for the Sydney to Hobart. 

So I officially became the owner of the boat, the same day the entries to the Sydney to Hobart closed and I had about eight weeks to get the boat ready for the Sydney to Hobart and again I had to get a cat one safety standards and sign off and all of that. 

Ocean Sailing Podcast: Yeah, which is not a lot of time, there’s a lot to do.

Lisa Blair: It was a lot to do and again, it had been sitting there for like a year and a half and the previous owner had literally just stepped off it on his last trip. There were still dishes in a bag that he had just thrown his bowls and stuff in with mould all through them. He obviously had just hit his limit with boats and stepped off. Yeah, so there was quite a lot of work to be done and we spent the next sort of six weeks getting the boat ready.

The crew I managed to get together is just mates and friends of friends and incredible sailors in their own right that I have had the privilege to sail with. None of us actually had much of a chance to sail the boat before we left. We hadn’t even hoisted a spinnaker before we left. The race start to the Sydney to Hobart last year, I lost a steering cable like 30 seconds to the start gun and I was pinned in by two 70 foot clipper boats on either side and I remember being on the low side and having the guys on the high side sort of give me a guideline with their hands as to how far away from the boat next to me I was.

Ocean Sailing Podcast: Whoa. That’s a hairy start.

Lisa Blair: Because I had to give way to the guy on the other side of me.

Ocean Sailing Podcast: So did you lose a rudder on one side only but still have a rod on the other side?

Lisa Blair: No, it’s a single rudder boat, its just twin steering.

Ocean Sailing Podcast: Oh got you.

Lisa Blair: One of the cables in the steering snapped. I heard it go when we went through a tack and I just jumped straight to the other wheel. But it meant that I was stuck on the low side coming across, right at the start gun moment with hundreds of boats.

Ocean Sailing Podcast: No visibility on the high side because you can’t see over the top.

Lisa Blair: Yeah, exactly, can’t see anything, and the boat leans over quite a lot so I couldn’t see anything to my right at all. But that’s okay, we got through together as a team.

Ocean Sailing Podcast: Did you repair them? Did you carry on racing with one wheel or?

Lisa Blair: No, we repaired it under way. Once we cleared the Heads and the congestion dropped off a bit, one of the guys is a U Beaut mechanic and he got down there and repaired it all for us, which was fantastic. so we did have two helms for the rest of the trip. Yeah, cleared the heads, got the spinnaker up, got a wrap in the spinnaker for our first hoist, got that cleared and then off we went and the boat performed amazing.

It needed a lot of attention, it still does need a lot of attention but we were catching up to TP 52’s and we overtook a couple of them. Like these are the latest model racing yachts and this thing that’s 13 years old was like sailing past them under spinnaker. That was amazing and then the first night, we all knew this southerly change was coming through with a southerly buster and it was forecasted to hit at around midnight. So at about 7 o’clock I said, “Look, I’m just going to head down for an hour or two because I’ll probably be up for the rest of the night once the southerly change comes through.” 

So I went off watch and just got out of all my foulies and the boys poked their head down and said, “I think you should come up and see this.” I was like, “Okay.” So I got all my kit back on, went up and just in the horizon was just black. This banker. It was probably the most aggressive southerly shift I’ve seen come through just this wall of cloud that was so aggressive. So I just said, “Right, all hands on deck,” and a little oversight on my part is that I hadn’t changed the jib down yet. So we still had the number one jib hanked on at the bow so we had to take that off and hank the storm jib on before we could get the spinnaker down, before we could then put a reef in.

Ocean Sailing Podcast: right.

Lisa Blair: Because you can’t really throw a reef in when you’re sailing under spinnaker and you can’t drop your spinnaker and then hoist the number one jib because that would have just been blown out in two seconds, and yeah, it was this accumulation of effects. So we’re madly trying to get this jib off, threw it down the hatch, grab the storm jib out. We didn’t have time to get the storm jib on. The wind was coming and I just said, “That’s it, we’re dropping.” 

So we spiked the spinnaker and somehow it ended up being just me on the bow and all the boys were at the back of the boat looking at me and I was like, “Guys, a little help here.” I’m madly trying to pull down this ginormous spinnaker that we’ve got on the boat and I got that down and then we couldn’t put a reef in until we’ve got the storm jib on to give us some steerage while we put the reef in. We then had to put the storm jib on, got the storm jib up and then went and put two reefs straight away, and then finally put the third reef in and rode the storm out.

That was like a good hour and a half of energy and then I went to go and fill the water ballast tanks, because the boat’s got six tanks and the power didn’t work. So unfortunately, our U Beaut secret weapon of water ballast tanks didn’t work. By the time we got the connection fixed, the wine went down. There was a numerous amounts of issues with the boat that hadn’t had yet had a time to address. But we did successfully sail to Hobart and finished 54th over the line, which was pretty good and coming up to the finish, we overtook 12 boats as it bottle necked. So yeah, that was really great.

Ocean Sailing Podcast: That’s a good result, because that was one of the tougher races in I think about 10 years in terms of the weather that came through. I think there was like 34, 35 retirements out of a fleet of 115 odd?

Lisa Blair: 23.

Ocean Sailing Podcast: 23 was it? So yeah, a reason chunk of the fleet didn’t make it for whatever reason. So finishing was a good achievement, given your preparation time was again quite short.

Lisa Blair: Yeah, I mean, none of us had sailed together before. Most of these U-Beaut racing teams, they sail all year round together, trained just for the Hobart all year and the boats are so worked up and protected and we didn’t know the boat at all. We didn’t know what made it go fast, what made it go slow. We had to figure all that out on the way down and we didn’t have weather. I didn’t get GRID files because I didn’t have a chance to set that sat com system up. So we had the four class when we left and then we have whatever we got off the radio on the way and that was it. So yeah, I think as a team we did remarkably well and we did beat some of the clipper boats to the finish and yeah, so I was really happy with how the boat reacted and dealt with the situation and beating into 50 knots for two days, the boat was totally fine. Uncomfortable but the boat was fine itself.

Ocean Sailing Podcast: To give the listeners an idea, like an open 50, what kind of speeds can you do in a boat like that?

Lisa Blair: The way to Hobart was mostly upwind, so we didn’t get a huge amount of speeds. But the delivery back from Hobart, we were doing 23 knots pretty easily, averaging probably 16 and then get the surf up to 23 knots and then the wave will pass over you and you sort of drop down to 16 knots, 14-16 knots and then the next wave would come underneath you. Yeah, when she’s going, she goes.

Ocean Sailing Podcast: Those are great speeds.

Lisa Blair: Yeah, and that was in like 30 knots of wind with the storm jib and two reefs in the main.

Ocean Sailing Podcast: What’s your displacement?

Lisa Blair: The weight of the boat is 11 ton.

Ocean Sailing Podcast: Wow. That’s really light. That’s really light.

Lisa Blair: Yeah, she’s pretty light.

Ocean Sailing Podcast: Nice and beamy really quite square at the back.

Lisa Blair: Yeah, she’s square at the back but she’s not that beamy for a 50 footer. Four meters wide and the reason I got a narrow boat was because it allows you to reef really early but still maintain good speeds. So because she’s narrow, she doesn’t need a lot of force or pressure to actually get her going fast. With the clipper boats, you had to push them whereas with this boat, it doesn’t need pushing as long as I’m above my set average.

Ocean Sailing Podcast: Yeah.

Lisa Blair: I’ll just throw a reef in and make it easy. So yeah, that was another big reason why I went for that kind of boat. It was very similar to the 50 footer me and Andrew Develle had designed in the fact that the same length, the same sort of width. It’s just the transom’s slightly more square than the other boat that we had designed. But yeah, very similar so I was really happy to find it.

Ocean Sailing Podcast: So tell me then, from here, so tell me about Climate Action Now and where are you up to with your project to circumnavigate Antarctica and tell us about some of the stuff you’re doing that’s quite cool around emission friendly, carbon free technology you’re using to power your trip.

Lisa Blair: Yeah cool. So when we took the Sydney to Hobart, we ran a campaign called Climate Action Now where we actually got people to help fund the trip by buying at post it note for a donation. Donation of $5 or $10 or whatever people really wanted to donate towards my trip. That would give them a post it note. Now, on their post it note, they put their climate action message and the whole thing around it is it’s actions that people are already taking towards a better environment so that we can inspire other people to take those same actions. So it ended up being, and if you see a photo of my boat anywhere…

Ocean Sailing Podcast: Yeah, I’m looking at it now with a zoom in of the individual messages. It looks so amazing.

Lisa Blair: Yeah, so the whole bow of the boat had a seven meters on either side of this very colourful, vibrant, standout, louder than life hull wrap and it was all done in vinyl as a digital wrap and it’s hundreds of post it notes that each message has an environmental message on it from a supporter of the trip, which was, you know, it’s a great way to just get the community involved and it brings someone’s contribution is actually on the boat that’s getting sailed in the Hobart or now in Antarctica. 

So we’re continuing on with that same message, it was widely successful and it sort of cemented and developed over time but it’s become the Climate Action Now movement or messages and we wanted to use post it notes because traditionally, that’s how you would leave a note for somebody and effectively we’re subtly trying to say, “Hang on, come on guys, we need to take action here.” I guess it’s probably not that subtle when big words on my boat say “Climate Action Now”. But with the post it note messaging, it’s subtly showing other people what actions they could do that when an individual does it, won’t necessarily have that big of an impact. But when you have a million individuals doing something like that, you create a big impact and it’s trying to show people that you’re empowered even if you are just the individual. If you can make a change or more to the way you live or the way you consume or the way you deal with your rubbish, globally that will create a massive impact when we start inspiring millions of people to create those changes. So that is really the messaging behind Climate Action Now.

For Antarctica, we’re trying to get enough messages so that we can do the whole boat rather than just the bow. So we’re trying to wrap the whole hull of the boat with all these post it note messages. So if people want to get involved, I’m actually launching a new website at the end of the month where we’re going to have an interactive post it note creator form building program thing on it where you go to it and you can generate your own post it note there and then. You can download it to print it or you can share it on social media. 

We’re trying to get people to nominate three people to take a stand for Climate Action Now and to fill out a post it note on an action they’re already doing and I just think it’s so important to get schools and the youth involved. It’s a great thing for families to do it collectively. They all fill out a post it note and then they can come and see the boat in harbour and try and find their message on the hull of the boat. Like, that’s sort of interactive with the community is so important and being able to inspire that next generation.

Ocean Sailing Podcast: Okay. So where are you, what are the next tips for you on the project and what are the challenges you’re sort of facing right now?

Lisa Blair: So I’m still definitely seeking sponsorship, so if there’s anybody out there, I really do need a lot of help at the moment. But what we’re doing is the boat goes into refit over the month of October. So I’m also seeking anyone with any real skills, whether it’s just you know your way around a screw driver set that can volunteer some time in Sydney to come down and give me a hand on the boat and help me do a lot of the jobs and save me from having to pay professionals to do it, because I just simply don’t have the funds to do it that way.

So I’m largely trying to seek a big volunteer pool. But yeah, the boat will get refitted over the month of October in preparation for Antarctica and then in November, I’ll be sailing the boat to Albany in Western Australia for the start of the record. Now it’s an Albany to Albany circumnavigation and the reason for that is that’s because what that is where Fedor Konyukhov left who set the record. So therefore for me to do his record and have a chance of breaking his record, I have to leave form the same destination.

So the plan is to sail it over and have three weeks on land before I leave so that I can try and rest up as much as possible, eat lots of food and just generally try and be in the best health I can be before my departure and also gives me a chance to fix anything that might have broken on the delivery on the way over and then yeah, leave at the end of December to go and circumnavigate Antarctica.

Ocean Sailing Podcast: Wow.

Lisa Blair: So it’s going to be a pretty unreal trip.

Ocean Sailing Podcast: Okay, so then you depart from Albany and then you go, which way do you go; Clockwise or anti-clockwise?

Lisa Blair: Clock wise, yes.

Ocean Sailing Podcast: Okay, and then, what sort of wind? Do you expect to have more wind from aft of the beam or more on the nose or what? Is there more of one than the other?

Lisa Blair: Yeah, well it’s more beam reach than broad reaching.

Ocean Sailing Podcast: Nice, oh that’s very nice.

Lisa Blair: Yeah. Well that’s why we go with the prevailing conditions. But there is a 30% up wind sailing forecasted with the current model based of historical data for the southern ocean. Unfortunately the historical data in the southern ocean isn’t that detailed. They don’t’ tend to get a lot of data down there because there’s not a lot of people going down there. So yes, so what we’ve got is the best information we can find and that’s the modeling at the moment.

Ocean Sailing Podcast: Okay, and the systems you’re using for charging, why don’t you tell us about technology that you’re using?

Lisa Blair: Yeah, so I want to do the trip 100% eco-powered. So to do that and to have the right redundancies, because for me, this trip isn’t about high speeds. This trip is about sailing smart and sailing safe and coming back. Because I get a world record simply from finishing. So if I have to take twice as long as Fedor to finish, then I’ll do that. At the end of the day, it’s all about being safe and staying safe and coming home. 

So to build those redundancies into my charging systems, what I’ve got is two wind generators getting amounted to the stern of the boat. A hydro generator, which is like you want and see hydro generator. They just drop down off the back of the boat there. Some solar panels, while solar panels won’t give me a lot for the actual record, they will do a slight trickle charge of about 18 to 20%. Then I also am putting in fuel cells. 

Now, fuel cells are, they’re called Effy fuel cells and they’re methanol and they use them a lot in caravans, the mini transat boats use them these days to do all their powered requirements because it’s just easier, it’s a silent charging system and it’s environmentally friendly. So what it does is it takes methanol and puts methanol through a catalyst and spits out the hydrogen and then the hydrogen goes through a silent charging system and basically just puts the enzymes from the hydrogen into the battery cell.

I’m also trying to change, and it’s budget constraints will affect to this, but trying to get lithium ion phosphate batteries on the boat as well. That will give me a lot bigger redundancy power wise so that if I don’t get any charge coming in for whatever reason at any point, I’ve still got a couple of days back up charge at my minimum power requirements. So yeah, just trying to build those redundancies in. So that’s the plan at the moment and then for my sail setup for Antarctica, the plan is to have two furlers on the forestays. 

So on the primary forestay, I would have a number one headsail that can be reefed to number two, and then onthe inner foresail have a number three headsail that can be reefed to number four and number five. So it can go all the way down, to remove the need for me to actually put a storm jib out if the situation is that rough. Then, additionally we’re also putting in a baby stay fitting with a Dyneema halyard that will be out to run a storm jib off and then my mainsail just have three reefs but they’ll just be really deep reefs and I’m looking at trying to get an upwind sort of code zero/wind seeker sail, which should be a bit of a hybrid for the lighter conditions because you get just as much high pressure as you do low pressures down in the southern oceans.

Yeah, so that’s the sort of setup and then I’m taking a whole spare second number three headsail, which will have the same furling capabilities as the first one and both headsails or all three headsails will — they have eyelets all the way up them so that I can attach them around the furler using soft shackles if the furlers are broken at any point, I can still use the sails in their natural forms.

Ocean Sailing Podcast: Oh that’s great, especially if the rope comes out of the track as well, you don’t have any track issues. That’s a great backup plan.

Lisa Blair: Yeah, and then I’m also taking a couple of strips, the luff length of the sail, of bolt rope with enough extra cloth to actually stitch on a second bolt rope onto the sails. So if I do teravolt rope off, say the number one or something.

Ocean Sailing Podcast: Yeah.

Lisa Blair: I could just drop the whole sail down below and then hand stitch on a second bolt rope and then put it back up again. So yes, so I’m just trying to build those redundancies into the sails and the sails are just getting heavily over engineered, double stitching, everything’s glued, just to make sure that they survive the trip.

Ocean Sailing Podcast: Yeah, that’s great and then today’s glues help so much in terms of the strength of spreading the load as well, as opposed to stitching, which on its’ own can have issues at times. So that’s really, really good.

Lisa Blair: Yeah, definitely.

Ocean Sailing Podcast: Then I’ve got a Dyneema inner forestay, which I use on my boat, which replaced the hard forestay and it’s purely for storm jib as well but it’s perfect because you just — I just sit on a block at tack and I just clip it away at the base of the mast when it’s not in use and then put it out when I want to use it. Otherwise, the inner forestay gets in the way when you're trying to tack your genoa across. It’s impossible. So it’s a really good alternative, it works really, really well. The way mine was designed, you had to go over the mast to put it in play. So what are you going to do? Are you going to wait until the storm’s almost there and then send somebody up the mast? It was just the most unpractical idea ever. So that’s good. The Dyneemais amazing.

Lisa Blair: Yeah. Again, it will all be soft shackles so the chafing will be very minimal and the storm jib will also have the same capabilities to be able to go on the furler if it needs to. So I’m just sort of trying to get the most amount of mileage from the minimal amount of sails.

Ocean Sailing Podcast: Yeah, then it just keeps you off the foredeck 99% of the time too by doing that, which is a really good idea.

Lisa Blair: Yeah, and we’re also trying to set the storm jib up so that what I can do is, when I know the beast of a storm is coming down on me, I go forward and set it up in 20 knots and I attach the halyard and everything and I can deploy it from the cockpit.

Ocean Sailing Podcast: Yeah, right. That’s just great, that’s really, really good.

Lisa Blair: So the bags just sort of clip around the Dyneema forestay unit there and it’s all hanked in the bag and just sitting on decks. So just yeah, trying to eliminate going out of the cockpit as much as possible.

Ocean Sailing Podcast: So I know, just one thing to mention, our session will get typed up into an article and posted in the show notes as well. So any photos, any videos, anything at all you have, that would be great to add on the show notes and also I’ll link to your website and your contact details so that people can easily find out how to get hold of you. But if they’re just listening and they want to get a hold of you, what’s the best way for them to get a hold of you or make contact with you?

Lisa Blair: Yeah, so just go to my website, which is lisablairsailstheworld.com. Alternatively you can email me at lisa_blair@outlook.com. But yeah, all those details are up on the website and like I said, we’re launching the new website at the end of the month. So I definitely recommend that everybody go back and visit the new website when it’s up because it’s looking pretty amazing. So I’m very excited about the new release and it will have lots of interactive ways of following and live trackers and all of that stuff will be out there.

Ocean Sailing Podcast: Okay, which is great. Instinctively, when you say to somebody, “Wow, this person is going to sail around Antarctica,” the common theme seems to be, “Oh my goodness, the storms, the sheer force of the winds, the isolation, the cold.” What’s your expectation in terms of range of weather, range of temperatures, and what are some of the other things you have to do personally to mitigate those in terms of clothing and first aid and all sorts of things?

Lisa Blair: Yeah. So Zhik’s come on board as a clothing partner, which has been amazing and their production, sort of designer production area, is actually based in Sydney here. So we’ve been meeting up and going over their clothing and modifying things here and there just for specifically Antarctica and actually next month, we’re getting a big freezer and we’re going to have me in all the layers inside a big freezer where I get to run around on the spot and work up a sweat and then stand dead still and see what the effect is. Because at the end of the day, it’s that combination of high activity and then no activity that really makes you cold. 

So yeah, we’re looking at that ross, I’m looking at heated clothing, electrically heated clothing for when I’m down below. So additionally, instead of sort of heating the whole cabin, have a layer of clothing that I plug a batter pack into that I’m always wearing it, and I just have to connect the battery pack. So when I’m downstairs just cooking or going to sleep or just sitting at the chart table or something, I can have that heated clothing on and it’s additional to my core body temperature, so it’s warming me up more than my core normally would. So that would be fantastic. 

So yeah, we’re still testing the final side of things for that but I’m quite happy with where we’re at with the clothing side of things. Medical wise, this group called Telemed, which race around the world with the Clipper and basically what it is, is it’s a virtual doctor. So if you’re in an emergency, you sign up to a membership plan and they do it a lot for big containerships, crossing the oceans and big expedition ships and they can do inland ones as well as off shore but it’s largely been focused around the maritime industry to date.

What it is, is you create a membership and when you create the membership, you submit a list of what you have on board for all your medical kit and then any previous medical history that you’ve encountered, you submit all of that so that when or if anything happens, you can call them, they put you straight in touch with a doctor and the doctor has a full program in front of him of exactly what you have on board your boat as well as what your previous medical history is. So in the event that you’re having a reaction to something or you might need adrenaline or whatever it is, they can then direct you what you need out of what you actually got on offer.

Ocean Sailing Podcast: Right.

Lisa Blair: Rather than saying, “Oh well you need to get this, this, this,” and you’re like, “Well hang on, I’m in the middle of the ocean, I can’t get this, this, and this.” Then they also have a program where they can help you put together your medical kit for the area you’re traveling in. So they’re helping me put together the full medical kit and saying, “Oh well I think you should take more of this or less of this because of how long you’re at sea for.” So that’s quite a unique and useful program. They had a clipper boat sponsored by the group in the last Clipper Race as a bit of a charity sort of event and yes, it’s was ClipperTelemed. But yeah, that’s sort of how I deal with medical side of things. 

Then as far as weather, yeah, first time I went to the southern ocean I saw a snowstorm and that was the first time I ever saw snow falling in my life and I was at like 48 degrees south in the southern ocean and it was pretty incredible to watch the snow fall in the middle of nowhere in the ocean. So yeah, definitely snow, sleet, hail. It’s bitterly, bitterly, bitterly cold and there’s really nothing you can do about it, you just got to endure and unfortunately I’m quite susceptible to the cold. So I have to be very careful that my core temperature doesn’t get too low. 

So for me, that is probably one of the greater risks of the trip is the risk of exposure and hypothermia. Because if I go down through something like hypothermia, my cognitive levels also go down and I can no longer make clear decisions or help myself get out of that scenario and there’s nobody else there to help me. So that is really important that I’m constantly monitoring my own systems and making sure that I’m not getting too cold in any given scenario.

Additionally you’ll have waves, like I’ve already said, we get 90 foot waves, but anywhere up to a hundred foot swell and I’m expecting winds potentially up to 120 knots, which is what I’m trying to prepare the boat for. 

So yeah, then a low pressure system generally passes over every three to five days and they’ll normally sit on top of you for eight to 16 hours, depending on how big a storm it is. But you do get some high pressure systems through there as well and you get a lot of high pressure ridges between the low pressures that are passing you around. But yeah, I’ve got — I’m going to have a meteorologist between some weather routing for me as well and he’ll be sending me GRID files every morning to make sure that I’ve got the right data and I can make the right calls a couple of days in advance of a storm to make sure I’ in the right quadrant of the storm and I’m not getting totally nailed. But yeah, I mean, it’s going to be rough. It’s going to be windy, it’s going to be wet, and cold and I’m not really selling it am I?

Ocean Sailing Podcast: No, not if you’ve got a natural sort of natural need to avoid getting too cold. So what sort of wind chill are you talking about? Are we talking about -10, -20? More than that? Then will you have a situation where it’s so cold that you actually have a maximum amount of time you can actually go out in the wind chill to fix the problem that if you don’t fix, you have to go down below and come back once you’ve warmed up again? What are some of the extremes you’ll face?

Lisa Blair: Yeah, look you do have to implement that timeframe factor quite a lot when it is cold like that and I guess at the end of the day you’ve just got to put more clothing on if you need to do something longer. Like say I de-masted and I’ve got to build a jerry rig. Well I’m not going to be able to build a jerry rig in 20 intervals. I’m going to have to be out in the cold for a couple of hours but you would pick your moment.

So it’s not the fact that it’s cold on its own that’s the issue. It’s the fact that you’re wet and then you’ve got 50 knots of wind on top. The wind just rips through your clothing like as soon as you get a tiny bit wet, it just cuts through. Now, I haven’t had the chance to test the Zhik gear. They do have a different membrane to cortex, which appears to be more water proof and more wind resistant. But if it’s not better, it will be the same as what I’ve already experienced in which you’ve got to eliminate one of the factors. So you either need to try in the wind or wet and no wind but you’ve got to try and minimize your exposure to the combination of all three. 

So your air temperature, when I was down there last time, 48 degrees south wise, three degrees temperature but the wind chill factor was in minus 20’s, easily minus 20’s. The sea temperature was eight degrees. So I will be going down as low as four degrees C temperature and below the convergence line, it goes down to two degrees. But I shouldn’t be dipping below the convergence line if I can avoid it because then I get into heavy ice areas.

So my wind chill factor yeah, it can be anywhere from minus 20, minus 30. But if I do have to spend extended time on deck then I would have to pick an area in a high pressure system when the weather is good and if I have to wait a couple of days for that then that’s the nature of the challenge, you’ve got to wait. It’s that or lose your fingers.

Ocean Sailing Podcast: Yeah, it’s not indifferent to mountaineering really when you’re talking about those sort of temperatures. Do you have the ability to keep every single bit of skit protected? Like will you have like a full body suit including being able to cover your face completely as well in terms of keeping your skin separated from the air?

Lisa Blair: No, not really. My hands, feet, body, yes. Head, yes but the actual eyes, nose, face area, I guess what you do is I have like a hat and neck warmer section that doubles up as like a balaclava and that would come up and I wear safety goggles.

Ocean Sailing Podcast: Right.

Lisa Blair: So your clear plastic safety goggles. So that’s — yeah, you’re effectively doing the same thing without it being so formal as a full face mask. I’m also trying to get access to crash helmets with visors that are designed to be worn in a water environment that allow the water to not fog it up and stuff. So that when I’m helming, I can have the visor on and it’s also looking at getting body armor that the snowboarders use, because if I’m down below or I just know there’s a really bad storm coming through, I don’t want to get tossed around the boat in a 360 roll over and break a rib or something because at the end of the day, I’m the weakest link. 

So if I do break a leg or break a rib or have any sort of major incident like that is going to limit my ability to complete the trip and to survive. So I’m the weakest link so I’ve got to protect myself as much as possible. So that’s reef early to minimize having to come on deck in bad weather. Setup safety protocols on the boat so that as soon as signs for hyperthermia are showing up, I’ve got a check list card that’s laminated and stuck on the walls with a permanent marker next to it. 

The checklist card is including things that have you had a [mars] bath? Have you changed clothes? Have you got the hot water bottle going? Have you done this? So instead of me having to make the thought process and actually thinking through, I just have to read the cards and read the next step in the scenario. So yeah, we’re trying to do that as well. For me, safety is so important with the trip like this that you’ve got to really try and think of every scenario and how can you control it and if you can’t control it, how can you minimise the risk involved. So yeah, that’s a big part of it.

Ocean Sailing Podcast: Yeah, it’s a good idea and body armour, I mean, ribs the only thing I’ve ever hurt sailing is ribs and it’s ironic but as soon as you crack your ribs, you seem to have find more ways to land on them and hurt them. But they really limit you in terms of what you can do and also even sleeping becomes hard. so protecting your ribs because it’s amazing all the things you can do it fall over or fall down or land heavily. Arms and legs seem to be pretty robust but ribs seem to be quite fragile really.

Lisa Blair: Yeah, ribs and head injuries were the biggest ones with the Clipper Race and a few leg injuries as well where we got flung or washed by a wave and hit something really hard with your shins. But yeah, definitely we had quite a few head injuries as well with the Clipper. Just people losing their grip and falling across the deck and smashing their head. So yeah, helmets and the likes are going to be really important for that.

Ocean Sailing Podcast: If something ends up happening to you down there and you need assistance, how long are you likely to have to wait before somebody can come help you?

Lisa Blair: Look, it really depends on the scenario and where you are. But yeah, you can wait days if you really need help. The same step time, I’m building in a redundancy where I can motor the boat north if I have to. So if I can’t sail the boat, I can still manoeuvre the boat to get to help faster. So if they’re diverting a containership to me, I can divert myself to the containership as well and be there in half the time unless I’m completely unable to do anything. In which case, three days is going to be too long anyway.

Ocean Sailing Podcast: Yes. We won’t dwell on that.

Lisa Blair: If I’m decapitated and debilitated then the chances of them getting to help me before I’m dead are probably pretty slim.

Ocean Sailing Podcast: Yeah, prevention is definitely better than the solution.

Lisa Blair: Yes.

Ocean Sailing Podcast: In that scenario. Then with your trip, in terms of taking your provisions and managing water, what’s your plans around water making, water storage, water capacity?

Lisa Blair: Yes. So your average person uses three litres a day. So being solo over a 90 day trip, that’s 350 litters, somewhere around there. So I’ve got two tanks that will make 400 litters, which should do me most of the trip. But what I’m going to do is also have a water maker but the thing with water makers is they like to get used. It will be putting out 30 litres a day and I’m not able to consume that much water.

So when it gets low or one tank is empty, I will transfer to the new tank and then I’ll re-flush the water maker, fill the tank completely and then shut the water maker off flush it again with fresh water, get the saline out of it and then let it sit while I use the second tank and when that tank’s empty then I’ll do the process again. So rather than risking the membrane getting all clogged up, that way I minimise the damage to the water maker.

So that should be fine, I should only really need to fill it up once, maybe twice if I’m using it for bathing and wiping walls down in the boat or something like that. Generally, fresh water consumption will be filled, will be cut off at simply eating and drinking and nothing else, and everything else will be salt water. 

Ocean Sailing Podcast: Okay, that’s great.

Lisa Blair: Any other questions?

Ocean Sailing Podcast: I think I’m out of questions. We could talk for hours on this.

Lisa Blair: Yeah.

Ocean Sailing Podcast: Okay, so what else would you like to share that we haven’t discussed or haven’t talked about?

Lisa Blair: A lot of people ask me about the ice, how do I deal with the ice? So I think you know, it is perceived as a real high risk event and whilst it does have its risks such as exposure and the cold and the isolation and everything else we’ve already spoken about, ice is there and it is a factor to consider and it is something that I may or may not encounter. But it isn’t as high a risk as everybody perceives it to be.

So what we have these days is satellite forecasting on iceberg movement. When I’m at sea, I’m getting basically shipping forecast for iceberg movements and it gives you the latitude and longitude position of the Nolan Burg and the radius of the boat. So you plot them over the period of the trip for the whole ocean. It’s a bit of a task but you plot them constantly, so that you can find out what their set and drift is.

Once you’ve got that set and drift, you’ve got there no and debris area. So when an iceberg is moving it leaves the bergy bits and growlers in the water behind it as it’s moving along. Prevailing conditions and prevailing winds will then spread those growlers and bergy bits out. So as you're traveling, you can effectively forecast an exclusion area of where you’re almost guaranteed to see ice and you can do a low risk zone and then a high risk zone. If you have to enter that zone, for me, I’m changing tactics in how I sail my boat. 

So A, I’m eliminating going into that zone wherever possible. So if I have to sail an extra thousand miles to do that then I’ll sail an extra thousand miles. B, my boat is seven full water tight compartments, so if I rapture the first two compartments or rapture on a bulkhead and lose two compartments, effectively I can still float. What I’m doing with the first two compartments is I’m filling them up with empty plastic bottles and that way if I have the hull raptured, the plastic bottles will actually still give me the buoyancy and prevent the whole bow of the boat sinking.

Ocean Sailing Podcast: Sinking too low in the water.

Lisa Blair: Yeah, exactly. Then those plastic bottles, in case I rip a big hole in the boat, they’re all going to be encased in some netting to stop them floating away should I actually rip a hole in the boat.

Ocean Sailing Podcast: Right, of course.

Lisa Blair: Because I’d hate to have an environment disaster on the Climate Action Now boat.

Ocean Sailing Podcast: Just big enough for them all to start falling out one by one.

Lisa Blair: Yeah, exactly. Then I can set about running repairs and tactics of how to stem the flow of the water, bail out compartment, bolt on seals, whatever I need to do to deal with the scenario. Then if I have to sail into iceberg waters, you have radar, which picks up icebergs but only really picks up things big enough to be seen on a radar and seeing a small growler, which is 90% of the growler is generally floating under the water and a growler is like two by two meter block of ice. 

So having that in the water, it’s the size of a mini car and it will rip a hole in your boat, especially if you hit it going 20 knots. It will rip a really big hole in your boat. So trying to work out tactics to sail safely through those known ice areas. I’m actually fitting the boat with infrared so instead of spotting the growler, I’m spotting the isolated cold area of water around the growler that’s been cooled by the growler sitting in the water.

Ocean Sailing Podcast: Wow, that’s really clever.

Lisa Blair: So we’ve got that and then I’m also going to be slowing the boat down. At the end of the day, and like I keep harping you on, I have to finish to get any record. So if I have to go five knots to make my way safely through an ice area then I’ll be going five knots. So it’s just a matter of reducing all my sail early, slowing the boat right down and then unfortunately, technology hasn’t caught up with solo sailors and their demands. So our infrared camera doesn’t actually have an alarm system. So I can’t set it to have an alarm system for ice detection but I am trying to find someone at the moment who could help me develop a widget or some software that would integrate with the existing software that would allow it to detect ice or a certain ice area of water which show up as a certain shade of black.

So when that shade comes up on the screen, it triggers the alarm. At least then I’d be able to get some sleep. But failing that, I’d have to go into my 20 minute watches of just constantly looking at the computer screen and getting naps as I’m making my way through that body of water. Or alternatively stop the boat dead in the water. Have a sleep, get the rest and then start again and sail for another five or six hours and then have another rest.

Ocean Sailing Podcast: Because how far ahead can your infrared actually see? The reason I ask is because if you’re doing even 10 knots, you’re still covering a lot of ground quite quickly aren’t you?

Lisa Blair: Yeah. So one and a half to two nautical miles on average but for me to be able to then spot something at that distance is probably pretty slim, which is why I want to minimise my boat speed down to five knots or below. Because then it gives me reaction time.

Ocean Sailing Podcast: Yeah.

Lisa Blair: The idea is that this is all relayed to the screen on deck as well so that when I’m like really getting in congested areas, I’m taking the helm, monitoring the screen and I’m physically steering through the ice flows.

Ocean Sailing Podcast: It’s a pity you can’t use satellite to relay what you can see on the screen back to a control centre and then have a team of volunteers sitting there 24/7 looking at it for you, waking you up every time they see something, human alarms.

Lisa Blair: That would be great if they just wake me up.

Ocean Sailing Podcast: Yeah. It’s like, “We see something.” Yeah, okay. Wow, you’ve got some interesting challenges to deal with, and then also I read that you’ve got a boundary that you can’t, from a seven boundary point of view, you’ve got a ring that you can’t go past that you have to sail around.

Lisa Blair: Yeah, I can’t go above 45 degrees south or below 60 south once you’re in the gate.

Ocean Sailing Podcast: Oh so you’ve actually got an upper and a lower limit, that’s interesting.

Lisa Blair: Yeah, you can’t go up any higher than 45 and you can’t get below 60. Yeah, so it means that after Cape Horn, that’s the highest ice risk is that part of the ocean and pretty much you have to go right up to the 45 limit and I’ll be slowly making my way around on the 45 limit because you don’t want to be any further south because there’s often lots of bergs around there.

Ocean Sailing Podcast: Okay, so this will be a fascinating episode and I’m sure we’ll have lots and lots interested in what you’re doing and your story and the challenge and so the next question someone’s going to ask me is how will we be able to stay abreast of the trip? Will there be progress updates? Will your website give updates of your location and what have you got planned media was?

Lisa Blair: Yeah, so obviously it’s budget constraints. So the more money I have the more I want to share with the audience. But for me, a large part of doing this trip is about inspiring people to go and follow their dreams, whatever their dream may be. To do that, you need to share your story as you’re going. I think there’s not a lot of solo sailors out there that really bring the audience along for the whole trip. You get these little updates like once a week, there will be a photo and there will be a blog but you’re not really there with the sailor.

What I’d really like to see is, I’m in a storm and I’m able to beam that data back and it’s online while I’m still in the same storm. So people are experiencing what I’m experiencing as it happens rather than a week later.

Ocean Sailing Podcast: That would be fantastic. I’d stay up and watch that, that would be really good.

Lisa Blair: Yeah, and being able to do updates. I can really see it being a great potential for something like Facebook live. Interfacing there and doing live broadcast from the middle of the southern ocean and people can sign in and just follow with the journey and the hardships and stuff as they happen. That all does take an immense amount of money, which I don’t have. So that would be the wish list. 

But my minimum requirements that I can fulfil at this point is a two minute video once a week and then we get into a daily photo and a daily blog as well. So people will be able to get those updates as they’re happening. Obviously as anything changes, I will be doing additional, when there’s something conditional that’s super exciting or super dangerous or, you know, traumatic that needs to be shared. Also, I’ll have the live tracker so people can track me around the world on the tracker. So yeah, that will be really fun.

Ocean Sailing Podcast: That would be great. Hopefully you find like a media type of sponsor who wants to help you with that so that they can get access to the content because certainly being able to do a live broadcast and live sharing of video and photo updates and that kind of stuff really will get people engaged and following it.

Lisa Blair: Yeah, and it’s such a, you know, it’s the 21st century. We live on the Internet. Like people don’t really watch TV a lot anymore, especially the kids. They sit on YouTube all day and watch YouTube or Facebook live and those sorts of social media platforms. It is something that could really be focusing in on even as a web TV series kind of thing.

Ocean Sailing Podcast: Yeah, absolutely.

Lisa Blair: There’s a lot of scope and potential, we just have to find the right partner. 

Ocean Sailing Podcast: Look at the appetite now for people who want to watch reality TV shows and contests and elimination shows and that kind of stuff. This is the ultimate reality show, right? Very few of the population will ever get to Antarctica but to be able to be there and see somebody traveling through it and all the challenges as they sail around it would be incredible, wouldn’t it? A good experience. I’m sure that would get a lot of interest and a big following.

Lisa Blair: Yes, definitely, that’s exactly, yeah. Being able to bring it to your audience on such a real level is yeah. It’d have a lot of potential and be so important.

Ocean Sailing Podcast: Absolutely, well that’s excellent Lisa. It’s been really, really fascinating talking to you about your story and your challenge. When I first heard about it, Steve Humphrey’s told me and he said, “You must talk to Lisa,” and then when you sent me your back…

Lisa Blair: Steve sailed to Hobart with me.

Ocean Sailing Podcast: Yeah. He races with me these days. He’s a really, really good sailor. But once you sent me the background information and I read your background and all the things you’ve done and how you’ve worked towards this with your training and your previous sailing with the Clipper and the Tasman and then the fact that you’ve got a number of sponsors on board already and a good team behind you then I truly wish you all of the success. 

Because I think it’s a fantastic project and I certainly encourage any of our listeners who are sailors or part of the industry or have got some level of sponsorship interest or know of somebody who might to share Lisa’s story, share the podcast and go to her website and contact her. Because it really is a fascinating story and it’s an amazing personal challenge for any human being with all the elements you’re facing with weather and cold and being on your own and the isolation as well. So it really is an amazing story.

Lisa Blair: Thank you. Yeah, I think for me, the biggest challenge is always getting to the start line, the rest is just sailing.

Ocean Sailing Podcast: Yeah, so much for sailing is really about the preparation and training isn’t it? The fun starts once you stop preparing.

Lisa Blair: Exactly.

Ocean Sailing Podcast: That’s great. well what I would do is simply if you, I’ll have a look on what’s on your site. If you’ve got any other links, any other videos or images, anything else you want me to share in the show notes then I’ll put them online at the oceansailingpodcast.com website and then obviously I’ll link to your contact details and your website through there as well. So if you’re listening to the podcast and you want to find out more about Lisa, either go directly to her site, which is lisablairsailstheworld.com, is that correct?

Lisa Blair: Yes.

Ocean Sailing Podcast: Or you can click through via the Ocean Sailing podcast site as well and hopefully I can share a whole lot of extra information as well to help people stay abreast of what you’re doing and then certainly be great to be able to follow your journey. So will you have satellite phone access while you’re away as well? 

Lisa Blair: Yes I will, yes, that’s on me.

Ocean Sailing Podcast: Well if it all pans out, hopefully we can give you a call, partway through your trip and maybe do an episode on the sail. It might be a shorter one than this so we don’t use all your phone credit.

Lisa Blair: Yeah, it’s quite expensive I have to say. 

Ocean Sailing Podcast: Yeah, it’s much more like the old mobile phone rates, isn’t it? In terms of the cost per minute.

Lisa Blair: Yeah.

Ocean Sailing Podcast: But maybe we can do a couple of quick updates and get a couple of chats along the way if it all works out, if you have some time. Well that’s fantastic Lisa. Well thank you for appearing on the Ocean Sailing Podcast and this is going to be a great episode and it’s going to be closer to a couple of hours so it’s going to be the bigger the episode appears to be, the more that people seem to listen. So more is more as they say, and it’s a fascinating story so thank you so much for sharing it.

Lisa Blair: Yeah, no, thank you so much for having me on the show, it’s been a pleasure and yeah, I’d love to come back again and give you guys all the updates as they happen.

Ocean Sailing Podcast: That will be fantastic, so that’s cool. I will just press the pause button on this, that’s all done. That is awesome, that was great. You’re the ultimate person to interview because you got lots to talk about, I don’t have to say much at all. That’s great when people have got a great story and they just get up and tell it.

Lisa Blair: Yeah. No, it’s good. I mean it’s got a lot of challenges but that’s why we do these things. If it were easy everyone would do them, right? 

Ocean Sailing Podcast: Yeah, that’s right. It’s just about getting the more that people tell people you’ll be amazed at how far the word can spread with these things so.

Lisa Blair: Yeah.

Ocean Sailing Podcast: You’ve done a lot of work to get to where you are with your story and how you’ve packaged and presented it from a marketing point of view and the boat you’ve put together, I think it’s fantastic. I’ve actually registered to the solo Tasman race in 2018.

Lisa Blair: Oh awesome. Yeah.

Ocean Sailing Podcast: I sailed across the Tasman three years ago because I bought my boat in Auckland and sailed it to the Gold Coast and it was an awesome trip, but yeah, I’d love to do that. I haven’t done any solo racing before but I love being out on the ocean and away from the land so…

Lisa Blair: The way I see solo is if you can sail a boat, you can sail solo.

Ocean Sailing Podcast: Yeah.

Lisa Blair: Because at the end of the day, you’ve got a second crew member, which is your auto-helm.

Ocean Sailing Podcast: That’s right and they really, that’s actually like three because they run 24/7, unless the course the weather gets to the point where it won’t operated properly.

Lisa Blair: Yeah, but that’s just like the additional hardships that you’ve got to endure. But you still have hardships when you sell a crew, it’s just as exhausting in sailing crewed as it is solo.

Ocean Sailing Podcast: Yeah, that’s right and I just did, I took my boat up to the Hamilton Island Race week and so we did a nonstop three day, a 50 miles off shore, did a nonstop three day trip out there with a couple of riggings that have never been offshore before. It’s kind of like solo with a couple of ring-ins where they haven’t even done much sailing. So you realise actually, by the time you have the [inaudible], you end up doing three quarters of everything. “Oh, they’re far off solo sailing.”

Lisa Blair: Yeah.

Ocean Sailing Podcast: If anything, you’re actually cooking for more people and looking after more people because you’re worried about them hurting themselves, being spectators.

Lisa Blair: Yeah, and you just tend to do a lot of running around like back and forth because you’ll set the boat up and you’ll dart forward and start hoisting then something’s getting caught on the lazy jacks or something. You’ve got to dart back and reset the boat on another course and dart forwards. It’s just a lot of that backwards and forwards. What type of boat do you have?

Ocean Sailing Podcast: I’ve got a Beneteau 445.

Lisa Blair: Okay, yes.

Ocean Sailing Podcast: It’s actually 25 years old, but we’ve got, we’re IRC rated and we’ve got full carbon sail, water code zero sails and we’ve done a lot to really I guess, trick it up you’d say. It’s actually the very first Beneteau, first hull that was every produced of that series. So it goes all right actually and it’s really a lot of fun, we got a really good bunch of people and Steve sails with us as well but I envy you because we’ve done Sydney to Gold Coast recently that was hard because it was really low winds. Like you said, you’d have a sleep for two hours and you’d wake up and the boat had moved or you’ve gone backwards in the current and it was tough.

Then you realise, “Gosh, have we just had another 10 feet and we don’t weigh anymore because we had 10.3 tons, you just see all these carbon boats just gliding past you and we kind of need four to five knots to really move along. At two to three we just struggle to get, actually any boat speed. You just see them gliding on by and you just think, “I thought we were good but now I realise that we’re only good if it’s seven knots plus, below that it’s horrendous. So yeah, we do about 80 races a year all together between club racing and twilight racing, go to Morton Bay a couple of times and so I love it. I could do more of it if I had time.

Lisa Blair: Yeah. It’s fantastic. I mean, it’s just such a great sport and like I said, I didn’t even discover it until I was 20. But it’s a sport you can do at any age I think and that’s something that, I’m a sailing instructor now, one of the ladies I was teaching, she was 74 years old and she had sailed her whole life with her husband but she’d never been the skipper in charge. So she never had to make those decisions. She just needed the confidence more than anything. But yeah, so she was doing a sailing course to learn it. Andnow she races her own little SNS 34 all the time.

Ocean Sailing Podcast: Great little boat.

Lisa Blair: Yeah.

Ocean Sailing Podcast: Well that’s great and to that point, we’ve got about 18 crew together, which means we need, which means we have seven to eight at any one time. But our crew are mostly 50’s and 60’s and most of them have got into sailing out of neighbours, friends, friends of friends who said, “Ah, I’d like to go sailing.” I’m like, “Cool, come on down, come and have a race, before you know is, you’re with the man and they’ve all mostly come to the sailing later in life and it’s just, that’s any age, any gender, any physicality you can become a good sailor and you can actually do really well. It’s such a great sport, our crew have, I think our range is 17 to 60’s. Most of our guys are older and it’s awesome.

Lisa Blair: Yeah.

Ocean Sailing Podcast: A lot of them wouldn’t be sailing if I hadn’t talked them into it and then they’ve actually become really good sailors and digested anything I give them to read any books, any tarps.

Lisa Blair: Yeah, got right into it, it’s addictive.

Ocean Sailing Podcast: Yeah it is very addictive. 

Interviewer: David Hows

 

 

Episode 22: Hamilton Island Race Week Show Notes

Ocean Sailing Podcast: Hi folks and welcome to episode 22 of the Ocean Sailing Podcast. A little bit of a gap between episode 21 and 22, I apologise for the unexpected break there. I spent the best part of six weeks covering about 2,000 nautical miles, heading down to Sydney up to Hamilton Island and then home and that ended up being a larger, more demanding exercise than I expected having to do all of the delivery trips to and from the various races as well.

Not only that, I had great intentions at Hamilton Island of capturing podcast footage while I was there and publishing it while I was there but unfortunately between dropping my iPhone on the ground and smashing it, which rendered it kind of useless and then spilling bear onto my MacBook Pro keyboard, I ended up with all sorts of technology issues and unable to do anything at all while I was away at the Audi Hamilton Island Race Week Regatta for the first time.

So this week’s episode is a bit of a debrief we did just yesterday with some of the crew that did race week. It was a really challenging week for us. I’ve got a number of interviews lined up this week and next week as well, which will get me back into weekly publishing cycle. So you can be assured, despite having a two and a half week break there, we’re back into a weekly cycle and I’m back now, back on board, back on deck and up to date, business and family wise as well, along with a bit of a list of repairs I had to work through after a bit of damage with some of the racing we did. 

So enjoy this week’s episode with the Ocean Gem racing crew, doing a debrief on Hamilton Island Race Week, what went well and what didn’t? And what we’d look to do differently next time around. See you next week.

Ocean Sailing Podcast: So folks, this week we’re going to join some of the crew members of the Ocean Gem racing team. We competed in Hamilton Island Race Week for the very first time at the end of August. So a couple of weeks ago now and a bit of a background, we’ve done the Sydney to Gold Coast Race previous to that. We had a long, frustrating race due to lack of wind and then we had to sort of high tail it after a short break here from Gold Coast up to Hamilton Island, which I did with a couple of delivery crew. 

We sailed 570 nautical miles and three days and four hours and fortunately on the way up, against current, we had 20 to 30 knots southerlies or south easterlies, three to five meter swells and we were able to average over six knots and hit 16 knots with two reefs in the main, and a jib. So it was fun sailing up there. 

Got to Hamilton Island the day before the regatta started. We spent a day we didn’t plan to spend taking about 12 golf buggy loads of gear off the boat and from all of our offshore racing and transferring to our hotel unit to line of the boat. Then what unfolded over the next six days was a reasonably challenging week. We had the first race we finished, we had a couple of races, and we didn’t finish within the time limit. We had to race where we went around clearing back the wrong way and were protested by the race committee. We had a race abandoned and then we had our final race where we had to retire due to a bit of gear damage and heavy winds.

So we had a mixed bag for the week, first week competing in IIC Passage and we probably realised that in strong currents and against some pretty good race boats and some challenging weather conditions that maybe IIC isn’t best for us versus some of our colleagues from the Southport Yacht Club who competed in some of the cruising divisions and had a lot of luck and a lot of fun and lot of success and a great week. 

So part of our challenge for the week was our crew was a mixture of some that had done a lot of off shore racing with us, some that had done not us much and a couple of ring ins as well and it’s quite amazing where you change some of the people in the team, how then under pressures, we had 252 yachts competing across 14 divisions, we had some very busy times prior to starts in pretty narrow channels and you combine that with the pressure of racing and some of the personalities that can then really change the team culture and crew dynamic. 

And so this is an interesting episode to debrief even though three weeks ago I didn’t really feel like it. I guess by the end of this week, despite the expectations I personally felt quite dejected for a whole lot of reasons. Then unfortunately my delivery skipper had fallen through a month prior, so then I had a 517 nautical mile trip home to do with two, again, reasonably inexperienced delivery crew and that turned into sort of closer to 700 miles with a couple of days of upwind sailing to get home. 

So I thought it was quite a good episode to do a bit of a debrief on the highs and lows and talk about what we can do differently. There were certainly lots of positives but there were some challenges as well. So four of our team members are here. We’ve got Rod, Alex, Alan and Steve, a couple of those people you remember from the earlier Sydney to Gold Coast debrief and we’re just going to have a conversation about what we liked, what we didn’t like and what we could do differently next time. So we’ll just kick it off guys and just say hello to the listeners out there.

Alex: Hey everyone.

Rod: Hello.

Alan: Hello.

Steve: Hi everybody.

Ocean Sailing Podcast: So let’s just open up the conversation with I guess. Given we spent months talking about it, months paying for it. Well, what were you most looking forward to before race week? What were you most looking forward to about race week itself?

Steve: Probably for me, Steve here, it’s not my first time I’ve done it but probably my favorite event on the whole calendar just an awesome location in the Whitsundays there which is probably the best area in the world to sail around and then on top of that, there’s 250 odd boats all doing the same thing and quite often they coverage at the same time and we’ll started at similar times so you get heaps of boats and a small amount of area and it’s just great racing.

Rod: And Steve, I think to add to that, this is Rod, my expectation was my first time and my expectation was probably pretty high because there’s lots of stories during the course of the year, when you’re outside and you hear a lot of stories about Hamo and the week and the restaurants and the food and the sailing and not being away for nine days with a group of people, it’s pretty challenging around with the currents and the wind and also spectacular. I was really looking forward to it for probably six months, couldn’t wait for it to come. I was really expecting the most from the week.

Steve: I’d very much have to agree because the Whitsundays is that premier sailing area and knowing that they were going to be a record fleet of 250 boats, whatever it was there, just to be in that location with that number of boats and it was the Australian sailing championships after all. So it was just like yeah, if you’re going to be sailing or anything to do with sailing that was the place to be.

Alan: This is Alan, I’ve done a couple of Hamo’s previously, I was aboard on the sailing, just love the sailing and I love the big fleets and the spinnaker runs and probably downwind starts, a bit special but you’re not getting around the Cairns and that sort of thing. You’re out there with the big boats as well. Really was looking forward to it for a long time.

Ocean Sailing Podcast: So in terms of what I was most looking forward to before race week, the amazing backdrop, the photos and the scenery, the videos from previous years, really does a quite spectacular and we’ve had some great regattas on Morton Bay. I just imagined that on a bigger, more interesting scale. That was really what I was looking forward to, just the sheer scale and spectacle and the islands and all the wildlife and then also just the ability to hang out at shore for a week with the team because mostly we race wherever we are and go home at night and got to bed and you don’t really get to hang out for a few days and a few nights. So that’s what I was most looking forward to.

Okay, so given we had all these expectations, what was different about race week in terms of the way it unfolded to what you expected?

Alex: For me it was quite interesting, just to see the actual number of classes that they had setup for the race week. Anything from those maxis down to little small bay cruisers and trail sailors almost. Just to have that many classes of boats out there and then that first day that I arrived, I was able to sort of see what races were going on and literally, one end of Hamilton Island, you’ve got the passage race starting at the other end you’ve got the cruising division starting and there was just boats and races happening everywhere. It was just unbelievable.

Ocean Sailing Podcast: Okay. 

Alan: I think from my perspective, it was the beginning of the week was really, I was really impressed with the setup with how well organised it was, everything was done really professional. There were a few things during the week, which perhaps we’ll come to later; that I didn’t think necessarily was great. But at the beginning of the week I thought it was absolutely fantastic and being amongst all of those boats, certainly, my expectations were met in those first couple of days except for the 12 loads of taking stuff off the boat on the first day was, I suppose I hadn’t thought too much about that and that maybe wasn’t part of what I thought about.

Ocean Sailing Podcast: Some kind of social plan?

Alan: Yeah.

Steve: For me, it was probably expected us to be a bit more competitive in the IRC stakes, we are a cruising boat but thought we had the right sort of goods to at least be mid fleet. But as you probably hear, actually coming up, we did struggle a lot and even on a good day, we were still down the back of the fleet, which was a bit painful but we sort of didn’t have the high winds that we needed to actually perform with a heavier boat. So that was a bit of a letdown but that’s sailing I suppose.

Alex: To Steve, I think our expectation was we probably were going to be towards the back of the fleet based on our handicap, right? It’s just when we got the handicap results…

Ocean Sailing Podcast: Our corrected time?

Alex: Our corrected time, yeah. We didn’t come up, but those first couple of days we had a lighter wind so we thought, “Oh well, maybe it’s just not right conditions for us.” So I was still in there, “We’re going to do okay.”

Ocean Sailing Podcast: Yup. I thought we’d spare our drop on the first day, then from there turn it around and get results.

Alex: First race, sail to drop.

Ocean Sailing Podcast: So yeah, in terms of what was different to me, I was completely in awe of the facility and the backdrop and the way that it was run. They exceeded my expectations, the yacht club, you know, all the social activity ashore, that was fantastic. The results, IRC passage, I thought, “Yup, we’ll get a mixture of wind, we’ll get a mixture of results, we’ll end up, if we can have mid fleet, division of 12, 13, if we end up fifth or six that would be a good result and we couldn’t, we had a couple of light days at the back end of the fleet, second to the last from corrected time.

Then we had a great race where I thought, “This is awesome,” and we still ended up second to the last on corrected time by 20 minutes. 20 minutes off the pace on a three hour race, we couldn’t find another 20 minutes a day and then that happened to be the race where I think we were probably going the wrong way around the clear marking. So one of our better results become a bad result with the point’s adjustment.

So that was different, it’s a different caliber of boats that go out there to what we see locally. There are some really good sailors, some really good boats and it was just a whole different level. However, in the cruising division, where we probably should have been, one, two, three or four, there are some great basic boats who sailed well, didn’t have the same challenges, had a great week and some great sails from the club here who had a great time. So I think the challenge you guys have got expectations around, the reality is the results when you don’t do so well, sometimes you can almost take too seriously and cloud your week but that was definitely different. 

And then the other thing that was probably a big difference for me was we had a couple of people that were just riggins’ that hadn’t sailed much at all that we had on board and then we had some of then that did a lot of sailing on board and just some of the differences in terms of the culture and communication side of things.

I think that had been a quite a big impact on us and to the point where you started question, what was the balance between taking racing seriously but not taking life too seriously? I think we had a bit of a wake when we took a racing quite seriously but we started taking life too seriously as well and for me, the enjoyment starts to go out of it if everyone on board’s not having a having a good time and gas of our challenges. That was unlike any other, we’ve obviously had. Okay, which leads to the next sort of question. What aspects of the week did you find the most challenging?

Alex: So I supposed to lay on from what you’ve just said David was from my perspective, the only thing that stayed constant was that every day, something changed and the biggest thing for me was we had a lot of crew changes. When we had our best crew, our most experienced crew, which included Alex coming up for those four or five days, which we weren’t sure whether you were going to come up or not. But when you’re around and we had that extra bit of experience and Steve was there obviously and we were sailing pretty seriously, it was okay. It was when some of that dropped off and Raja dropped off and then Alex went, we still have enough crew but we lost a lot of the experience but we’re still sailing pretty seriously.

I think with the amount of change that we had, I think that that was quite hard because we were taking it so seriously. Normally we probably would have eased things back a little bit but we didn’t and that was hard especially, we changed the setup of the boat, we changed them whether we were trimming, we changed a lot of things including the crew. And that’s really where the challenges came because of the seriousness, the way that we were sailing.

Alan: This is Alan, I thought we really sailed the boat hard, we really sailed it very seriously, we had to run very experienced set on board who was sort of pushing us along and yeah, we had a mixed crew but we got a lot of experience out of that but we really did push the boat pretty hard and there were long days because we had light winds so we were out there for a long time. That was pretty challenging but quite rewarding, yeah.

Steve: Yeah, I think the last I was probably the biggest anticlimax because we had, we were down to seven people, we had some robust experience wise. We hear a strong breeze and we just pushed the boat unnecessary hard till we broke stuff and stuff was going to break and it could have been avoided, we just broke stuff.

Alan: You could see no one was enjoying it at the time either.

Steve: At that point it was just silly and then our race was over and we talked about, you shouldn’t do this because this is going to happen and we did do that and that happened to them, we snapped a tubing lift, we rip the tubing lift, we rip the spinnaker, how you block of the base of the mast, we just sailed stupidly in the end in terms of the risk we took and we’re just lucky that nobody else got hurt actually.

That could have ended in tears with the spinnaker with the way that that unfolded, we could have ended up with the spinnaker going on the front of the boat and the pole coming down on someone’s head and putting the mast down and ultimately by the time we got it under control, we went there far off the rocks really. That was silly sailing.

Ocean Sailing Podcast: You get to the last out of the regatta and you’re sitting second to the last, you’re not sailing for six stations here. Just breaking stuff that I know a lot of the other boats actually went out there to have a bit of fun that day, some of the other guys who weren’t in the race, let’s just go and have a bit of fun because the wind was up and the rest of it, we weren’t having any fun.

Steve: No.

Rod: I guess it was sort of like a frustration like you’ve had a frustrating week and you’re really looking forward to getting it resulted a race.

Ocean Sailing Podcast: Yeah, you want to finish on a high note, right?

Alex: Of course. It would have been better if you guys, you two had more experienced guys were both there because we would have coped probably better but because we had an inexperienced crew at that time…

Rod: It was worst case scenario, it was wind and not the crew that we had. 

Alan: For single strength of the bow and we jammed and the track and couldn’t get it up or down.

Steve: I think obviously I wasn’t there for the last day. My take on the whole week is probably different because I ended on a high. So I had to catch an earlier flight which meant I couldn’t do the IRC race because it was too long so I went with a self-built boat that was doing the cruising division and we had a very short race, I still had to run to my plane but we had a pretty short race and we were just second over the line here, we were only a half minute off first so it was all like a highlight.

Ocean Sailing Podcast: Yeah, what a great finish.

Steve: I finished on a high, which is probably where we should have been as a boat but I think it’s safe to say that our division we’re in versus where we’re at or where the boat was at, just didn’t align. So we were in a racing division, we had our racing faces on and trying to actually hit that level but with different crew on different days and all of that sort of stuff, we were just not there.

We’re up against IRC optimised or IRC built boats that are just built to be optimised and we’re an old cruising boat with some nice sails and a whole lot less weight on it thanks to the first day. But it just showed the difference between being an IRC division and being an IRC optimised boat.

Ocean Sailing Podcast: Yeah, it’s a real reality check, right? But you would expect then the last 25 years, since the boat was built, they’ve made strides in terms of development, they clearly have right? Because look at the gap. Even with the IRC adjustment, there’s a big gap with those optimised boats.

Steve: Yeah, absolutely.

Ocean Sailing Podcast: The currents just exacerbated it further if you turn out slower and then you’ve got to current factor and percentage.

Steve: And I’m sure like on the IRC boats, they didn’t have crew coming on and off every day and different stuff like that. That’s just the difference between a racing program that’s a lot more professional and casual sailors going for a sail in a regatta. So it was just a good chance to see where we’re at, compared with others, which is what I always thought from day one. Well it’s a good chance to rate. You can’t rate yourself at Southport against eight other boats on PHS. You really have to rate yourself against the best and then see where you sit and then from that point on, then you can choose to go into the cruising division, a PHS, an IRC because you know where you’re at.

Ocean Sailing Podcast: Yeah.

Steve: We probably had worst case scenario because we had all of that plus we didn’t have a lot of wind, which the boat doesn’t like under five knots. So that made it even harder, but it was just good to find out where we’re at.

Ocean Sailing Podcast: Yup. Yeah, and I think it was positive; the lesson definitely was you can optimise a cruising boat so far but, what do they say? You put lipstick on a pig, it’s still a pig.” So you’ve got to pick the races, PHS versus IRC, and you’ve got to pick the conditions and even when you think you might go IRC, if the conditions look really light then don’t go IRC if it just doesn’t make sense. At least you don’t care about the result but it’s hard to race and not seriously care about the result.

Steve: If you don’t have the same crew on the boat every week, then go, “Well this probably not going to happen so let’s do a quieter style of racing and enjoy it a bit more. So you’re not so serious, you’re not taking all the chances 

Alex: Steve, or you can say, it’s something that I’ve thought about is if you’re going out to Hamilton Island, do you get the crew to commit for the six days of racing? Because one of the things that I think we also suffered was because we had that extra sailor on board, you know, we were changing some of the ways that we’re doing things because we had some people stand down or not be available certain days. Some of those changes took place and then when they came back on, we were doing some things differently. 

That just adds an extra dimension to making it difficult and if you’ve got experienced sailors on there, you can cope with that, but if you haven’t got experienced sailors on there or if the sailors are changing, the crew is changing, it makes it even that much harder or better reason to just take it easy. So one of the things that you probably get to later is that concept of do you do something on Hamilton Island that’s a bit different where you try and get a constant crew or the same crew for the whole week? Which is a big commitment because you know, I was away for nine days, two weekends and the week of sailing. It’s hard to do but maybe that’s one way to look at that.

Ocean Sailing Podcast: Yeah I mean that’s definitely a couple of things there. Definitely when you think about it, sailing is about reducing a number of variables and we have a different course every day, you start changing how you do things. You have a different mix of people, we have a different mix of wind strength then when you got too many variables too often, and not everything’s going to work. In three, three and a half hours you can find 20 minutes if you don’t give up. A minute here and 20 seconds there and two minutes there but you can easily give all that stuff up. 

Then the other thing is, going south to Sydney then going north to Hamilton Island and then coming home is a 2,000 nautical round trip. Unless you’ve got people who do the deliveries who don’t race, at least you can set it up so that you have your core team doing one thing really well, spreading people across three or four events is just nuts when you are having to be fair to other people, bringing in people with limited experience who haven’t raced with you at all and then you try that kind of environment. It kind of doesn’t make sense. 

So part of it is you know, maybe a change that even how the week is in. The cruising guys, all those guys are smart. They spent three or four weeks getting there and took your time. Well they spent three or four week getting home, while all their crew when up and their families went up the whole day beforehand or Saturday the week afterwards so they had a much better balance. Just going up there, racing, coming all the way home.

Rod: I think also because it’s the first time that the boat has raced at Hamilton and it’s the first time most of the crew have been up there in that race week that it was a bit of an eye opener and you know, this discussion now is very quickly highlighting what we should do differently to number one, be competitive next year if it’s going to happen and number two, make sure that we’re all setup as a crew and that we know. I’m sure that doing this again, it will be a completely, completely different result.

Ocean Sailing Podcast: Yeah, definitely. There’s lots of things we’ve done twice, where the first time we’ve had a lot of lessons to learn and next time, if anything, this had second time you go so many reasons and challenges but yeah.

Rod: And Dave, would you put it into context the other week when you actually just mentioned now that the distance covered like going down to Sydney then back up to Hamo, and then back down to here was literally a double crossing of the Tasman.

Ocean Sailing Podcast: Yeah.

Rod: So, you know, crossing the Tasman one way is a big deal but to do it that distance, that’s a lot of water. That’s a lot of water, so it’s a lot of sailing.

Ocean Sailing Podcast: Yeah. People doing the deliveries, not actually racing is definitely going to be part of the solution ideally. Or at least not doing all three deliveries. Okay, anything else about what you found most challenging?

Rod: Look, I thought the current, because everybody talks about the current up around Hamilton Island and in that, down the passage and all the rest of it and until you come across it yourself and look, you know, you got your sails trimmed, everything’s happening and then you realise you’ve got four knots or five knots of current under you, it’s a real eye opener. It’s like you’re doing it all right but you’re in the wrong part of the channel at the wrong time and there’s nothing you can do.

Ocean Sailing Podcast: Just to add to that, it’s a rocky area as well and one of the little discoveries on the way back when we ran aground coming down the side of Frazer Island, is we ran aground with 1.4 meters showing on the depth sounder because when the BNG gear was upgraded at the start of year, they didn’t recalibrate at the bottom of the keel. They re-calibrated to sea level. So here’s us sailing around Hamilton Island saying, “Ah, it’s all right. We’ve got a lot, we’ve got another meter and a half more than we thought,” and we didn’t. So we’re just lucky we didn’t push it to below two meters because we wouldn’t have been far off touching the rocks, just to add to the trouble for the week.

Rod: Wow. Yeah, that’s exciting.

Ocean Sailing Podcast: Samson was most perplexed when we ran aground doing 7 knots on the way back in the middle of the night going, “I still see1.4 meters on the depth founder.”

Rod: It would be.

Alan: I was too.

Steve: It didn’t make sense.

Ocean Sailing Podcast: Okay, so was there anything that really started to get on your nerves? Have an open, candid conversation?

Alex: Oh I think, I can’t remember which day it was, the second day or third day? I was helming the boat and we all just gave it absolutely everything and like I know how I felt that night. I went straight to bed and I was exhausted and we actually ended up catching the fleet that day from behind because we’re the second slowest boat in the fleet. So we’re always behind, but we caught the whole fleet and I think it was a combined fleet then too. 

So we caught probably 40 plus boats, went past most of them and we were high fiving each other and then did well for the rest of the race or at least did okay down wind. We were underpowered with a small kite, but did okay. And, come back to a bar and have a beer or two and then there are the results, we’d come second last. I think that was the day that we got protested as well. So, was that the same day? That was the next day.

Ocean Sailing Podcast: That wasn’t that the day we finished 90 seconds past the cut off?

Alex: Past the cut off, yeah, that’s right.

Ocean Sailing Podcast: So we raced for six hours and we were 90 seconds pas the cut off.

Alex: Yeah we were a minute and a half after the cut off.

Rod: We thought aw had actually made it because it was before sunset.

Alex: Yeah, sunset. And I don’t think the races were really designed for our speed of boat. So we shouldn’t have been after the cut off in that time because the cut off should have been further out because we did everything we could and still we didn’t get a score. Even if you allowed us to finish at that point, we were still not even mid-fleet

Ocean Sailing Podcast: Still going to be ninth or 10th out of 12.

Alex: Yeah.

Ocean Sailing Podcast: That’s right, on the time.

Alex: So, you know, probably what got on my nerves was effort versus reward.

Ocean Sailing Podcast: Yeah.

Alex: The result on board was actually quite good. We were doing real well. We were doing some great tacks, great jives, good tactics, ticking quite a few boxes and then you get home, you check the results and you’re down the bottom still. That was either because we didn’t finish or just handicap on all the rest of it. So effort versus reward was just painful.

Ocean Sailing Podcast: Yup. We’ve sailed worse in the past and won stuff.

Alex: Yeah.

Ocean Sailing Podcast: That’s right when you think, “We didn’t leave anything else on the table today.”

Alex: I don’t think whilst everyone was pushed or learned heaps. I actually think we probably sailed the best that we have on days there. There were some good skills shown there, particularly sort of mid-week and you know, results that like Dave just said, we’ve sailed a whole lot worse and won stuff and this time we sailed a lot better and right up the back of the fleet. So yeah, that was pretty painful.

Rod: I’ve got to mention that horrible W word, the wind. You know, up there this time of year, you’re expecting 20, 25 knots in those south easterly trade winds and you know, we had what was it? Tuesday ended up being a no race day because of lack of wind and like you correctly said David, where we strive was with the lighter winds and that boat needs to perform in slightly stronger winds. That’s what we were expecting and up there, you’re thinking, “Well, it’s going to happen,” and despite all the predictions the wind just didn’t come through.

Alex: It came a week early with the Airlie Beach Race.

Ocean Sailing Podcast: It did indeed. Brisbane to Keppel, heaps of wind with Airlie Beach, heaps of wind. With the stuff that we did do.

 Alex: Yeah, but having said all of that, was there anything that got on my nerves? I mean it was fantastic. Some of those starts where the big guys were on the same start line as us, that was awesome, other than some that sailed back across the start line, which, coming back on one of the races, which I was a bit surprised at, we were all surprised at. But it was fantastic and great setting and there were frustrations around the sailing for six and a half hours, missing the cut off time by 90 seconds. 

It still was fantastic and that day when we caught the fleet and then sailed pretty well down wind. We got past a bit, so we should have. But we sailed well that day, you know we still had great fun and if you did have a chance to look up and have a bit of a look around, it’s absolutely spectacular. Everyone’s kite’s up and away you go and you know, just fantastic.

Ocean Sailing Podcast: Yeah, I mean, that’s where I thought a few times, you think we’ve had a tough day, you mentioned talking to someone on the phone who is back at the office at work and you say, “Ah we had a very tough day sailing around the Whitsundays in the sun, because we didn’t quite finish but we saw whales and dolphins and there’s 250 boats here, it’s been a really hard day.”

Alex: I’m going out for dinner.

Ocean Sailing Podcast: Like a bad day, it’s not really a bad day.

Alex: That’s right, in fact it’s exactly that, happened to be on a Monday. You know, you’re back to work on Monday and absolutely stuffed for the week. People say, “Oh, how was it, how’d it go?” Start showing them some photos and say, “Oh you know, it was a pretty tough week and god, we had to do this and this and this didn’t work and broke this and this happened,” and they just look at you and like, “Are you dreaming? That’s sounds fantastic. It sounds like you had an enormous week. That’s fantastic.”

Alan: I think sitting behind that start line on that day where we’re next race to start and we’re sitting behind all the big boats and there’s Wild Oats and the old hundred foot Raga Muffin and Ichiban and they’re all at it and you could hear the screaming and it’s almost, they had a false start in there but there was almost boats crashing into each other for the top IRC boat. A bit of mayhem and here we are, you’ve got a front row seat, you’re just cruising around behind and waiting for your start and then they had another go at it. So that was fabulous. You can’t go anywhere and see that, you know?

Ocean Sailing Podcast: No, that’s right, you can’t. And sitting 100 meters below their start line, just watching them, coming in with the start of that, it was just, that was stunning. I was the bugger taking heaps of photos and…

Alan: Yeah, we noticed.

Ocean Sailing Podcast: Alex, you have anything else? What you found challenging?

Alex: That was pretty much it, just that W word that… everything else was like Rod said, it was an eye opener and it was just a lot of fun.

Ocean Sailing Podcast: Yeah, I think the people part was, I found a bit challenging. I think the listeners, when you have a group of people that get on pretty well together, and one person comes to the mix, they just kind of like, you know, melt into the mix. When you have you know, two or three people come into the mix and some have got you know, different experiences, different personalities, different ways to do things, I think if you don’t take you’d always, you don’t know what you don’t know upfront but even when things start to unfold differently like you expect, if you don’t take the leadership view and sit down and say, “Here’s how we’re going to work together, here’s how I’m going to make decisions, here’s how we’re going to treat each other, here’s how we’re going to speak to each other, here’s what’s good, here’s what’s not good. If you don’t kind of do that stuff, I think you can kind of end up with like things just unfolding good, bad or otherwise. 

I think that that’s my responsibility but I think it just shows you just letting things kind of happen by osmosis isn’t always the best approach. Because people don’t know what they don’t know, they come from different crews, different boats, and different backgrounds. Sometimes you can end up with people starting to feel a bit indignant or a bit frustrated and it’s just through a lack of clouding and lack of communication. If you don’t sort of agree on what the sort of the rules of the road are then starting [inaudible] if they guest differently. 

So I think you know, in hind sight, I would have approached it differently given the impact of some people in the first part of the week, some people in the second part of the week, had never sailed with us before. They’re a local person with a ton of technical experience, again who is thrown in the deep end and maybe didn’t have the role sort of fully clarified. So I think that was really challenging in hindsight because I think, if we’re not having fun doing it then you know, there’s no point in doing it. And if you want to be a hard core racer and not care about having fun and just want to be hard core racer, that’s fine. 

But we have to find the balance because it’s a bit like listening to Clouds talking about meteorology, say “Well how can you learn to be an expert at meteorology?” He’s like, “You can’t, you’re a cruising sailor, you do it occasionally, you’re never going to be an expert.” So we have to also say, “Okay, what’s the ideal for us? And let’s have fun doing the ideal. Let’s not, not have fun trying to do something that’s not the ideal, well not realistic.” Otherwise we can take you know, we took a lot of positives out of it I think, but there’s some negatives as well that if you balance it all out, you might…

Steve: I think if you look back for the Keppel race, which was about three weeks before this, you were going to have five new people on board and you know, that call was made, which I think was the right call, for that exact reason of it’s just not going to work. And I think it’s nothing like business or whatever, if you have a whole new team, you can lay all the ground work, they’re still going to be new and it’s still not going to gel together. So, my take on it is, easy for me to say that flew out on the last day which was actually a mistake, so I plan to be there. But it is, you commit for the week, unless there’s something like big that you can’t be there for it, it’s just so much easier to have the same team. 

So it might start off a bit rough, but at the end of the week, you’re well oiled, you’re enjoying it you know? And I think that’s something to take out of it that you choose to do Airlie, you choose to do Hamo, make sure you're there the whole week and even if there’s a couple of new people then you can lay all the ground rules down on day one, it’s not going to be perfect for a couple of days but then we’ll all gel after that

Alex: Steve, we learned a lot on those first couple of days and I really, you know, I loved that. That was great because we started doing things quite differently and you started to get good at them, which was fantastic. I think one of the differences, which you just eluded to was, when there were the three senior guys on the boat together, you sort of fell into your leadership roles and that worked pretty well. But when that reduced to two, I don’t know if you had any discussions about how that was going to work, but that’s when it didn’t work as well.

Steve: No, and we were down to seven overall so…

Alex: That’s right. And we changed the crew and we were doing things differently and we’re trimming to 25 knots. I think it was all of those things compacted. It’s like anything that happens, you’re get a compounding factor, really affects you. But if you had the constant crew as Steve was just saying and you know what those senior roles are.

Ocean Sailing Podcast: Yeah.

Alex: It doesn’t matter how much you actually change and do the rest of this stuff, yes it should be rough at the beginning because you’ve changed some things. But by the end of it, you’d be you know, be doing a great job. I still enjoyed all of that anyway. I learned heaps. I learned heaps those first couple of days from the Sydney guys when we did things differently. It was great.

Steve: I think too with the experienced crew, that’s where you got either a float or everyone floats. So I know if I’m doing [inaudible] or something like that and I can see the bowman’s having trouble or something happened, you’ve got a couple of people that can actually pull from to jump up there and help out. As soon as you get down to less experience then there’s always someone on the helm that’s generally experienced so he can’t jump up the front and then, you know, once you get to handle one other person, they’re probably going to be doing a role that they can’t leave. 

When, if you have three that are experience, you can actually float in that. So you can look after each other’s role and then someone else can go help out on bow or trim or something like that if there’s a weak point. So it makes that weak point not so weak and it’s easy to float but the less and less experience on board, it just becomes and it just so happened that the least amount of experience on board was on the last day with the most amount of wind and that’s when it all goes foul. 

So, it’s unfortunate that it happened that way, it’d been nice if it happened midweek and then you had a chance to enjoy the last day because I think you’re soured by the last result or the last day compared with, just like what I said, I was having a ball. I had to run for my plane but I still had a great day because at the front of the fleet, you know, it was a spectacle, it was great racing and it was in Cruising Division 4, yeah. It was a great race. So probably where we should have been but it was a good chance to pair ourselves again to the big boys anyway.

Alan: I think also what it highlighted was that a lot of our racing that we do is every second, you know, Sunday for the offshore stuff. One twilight a week where the crew doesn’t come together very often. But in something like Hamo where you’re day after day after day, doing the race and everybody’s in their roles and there is repetition happening that the crew starts to gel very quickly which is what like you had highlighted Rod that by the middle of the week, we’re pretty good.

Ocean Sailing Podcast: Like Sydney to Gold Coast, right? Four days together nonstop, same people.

Alan: Yeah, exactly.

Ocean Sailing Podcast: Can’t get off, even if you want to. 

Alan: Yeah, and everything was starting to flow really well and that really did make a difference and I think that’s something that we could maybe utilise for the future of that, if there’s a regatta or something like that coming up, that a couple of days of that crew being in close quarters, sailing consistently over a couple of days just to refine their skills really does make a difference.

Alex: Yeah, I think it come out on the last day, just for the background its blowing 25 knots, we had a down wind start, which is just sensational. Pulling the spinnaker over, you load the spinnaker ready to go and some of the boats actually you fly your spinnaker before the start so you’re over the line with the spinnaker up. So we fly down, I think we did the spinnaker jive and then we’re heading down about a 12, 13 mile run was it down to South Molle Island?

Ocean Sailing Podcast: Yeah. A fair odd run.

Alex: So we had the spinnaker up and then, pretty exciting, we had the big IRC, the game Wild Oats with code zeros, I think they had up.

Ocean Sailing Podcast: Yeah, they’re all storming through.

Alex: They’re on a broad reach and they’re doing like 20, 25 knots and they’re surfing past us within four or five moves of us. Which is just, you know, just amazing. But then we found that we have a bit of a problem with the pole, we couldn’t get the pole down. The thing had jammed and we messed around and there was a call from the helm that we’re 16 minutes before this land and we’re sort of asking to land to move and then it’s 12 minutes and then eight minutes and I’m thinking, “Well it takes us three minutes to get the spinnaker down.” 

And finally David yells, “Four minutes, four minutes,” and so I was up trimming spinnakers, so I gave a bit of a yell and a more excited yell than I would normally, saying, “Look, we’ve got four minutes.” We smoked the spinnaker, we managed to get it down without it doing any damage and so it was quite, I don’t know if it was an exciting day, but it was certainly with an inexperienced crew. We weren’t selling for cheap stations. So I think that was, by the time…

Ocean Sailing Podcast: Yeah, I mean 20 knots plus, sailing in sort of 80, 90 to a hundred degrees with this big spinnaker really loads the boat up and then that’s right, the islands provide so much excitement. However, the big downside is the islands provide obstacles that if you’re heading toward them, they’re not going to move and so it does change things a lot. As much as it creates excitement, it creates a lot of pressure as well, navigationally. So yeah, that’s right, there were some real challenges. 

Okay, is there any other highlights form the week? We’ve covered a few, but any other different highlights?

Alex: For me, the biggest highlight and I’ll just quickly set the scene, I forget it was either the Tuesday or the Thursday but we were on the downwind run and we could see this fleet slowly sailing away from us and then they had to, I think it was tack away, and they all disappeared behind an island and I think we were next to last at this stage. Then all of a sudden I remember looking up and I’m seeing all these sails coming opposite to where the fleet had just gone. I’ve had a closer look thinking, “Hang on, their sails are set for them to be going the other way,” and it was actually the current that had collected that 40 odd boats that was ahead of us and it was literally dragging them backwards behind that point. So we’d gone from a position where we were like maybe what? Mile and a half, two miles behind?

Ocean Sailing Podcast: Yeah.

Alex: Within 20 minutes, half an hour, we are in amongst the fleet. To me, that was just so much fun and just watching while everything was going on and we’re on the inside and we actually got to the head of the fleet in no time at all. That was just so much fun.

Steve: I think what Alex meant to say was we held back because we saw the conditions were improving from behind and we took the fleet on the inside and unfortunately, they were going to shorten the race, we heard it over the radio and one boat snuck through. So that was the race that we were two minutes after the cut off. They were going to shorten the race and we were going real well at that point. Our tactic, as Alex was saying, of hanging back to ensure that we weren’t first to the current worked very well.

Alex: It was, it was nice. 

Steve: We did all right in light winds in there to take probably two thirds of the fleet. 

Ocean Sailing Podcast: There are very few times in your life you get to re-join the fleet from behind and sail around them. It doesn’t happen very often.

Alan: It’s usually the opposite. 

Ocean Sailing Podcast: I’ve only done it once before, it was a very long time ago. 

Alan: Yeah. 

Ocean Sailing Podcast: Okay. Any other highlights? 

Steve: Highlights wise probably a low light that was losing the tug of war, which was on island, at team event. We thought we were up for a cart and a beer every time we won. We won one and then lost the rest. So that was a low light that we didn’t get our beer. 

Alex: It was, but it was a good highlight because we won convincingly that first tug of war. 

Steve: That’s what I tell my car. 

Rod: And we came very close to winning the semi-final. 

Steve: And we paid for it for the next four days. 

Alex: Well you know the trouble was, that first, the first tug of war we won without the gloves and when we put those stupid gloves on, then we were starting to slide. But had we not had the gloves I’m sure we would have won that so. We would have been in the final.

Ocean Sailing Podcast: I don’t think that there would be any bestselling books after Rio Olympics saying, “How I almost got bronze”. 

Rod: And no one remembers the name of the silver medallist either. 

Ocean Sailing Podcast: Correct, no disrespect to our local sailors. 

Rod: Exactly. 

Ocean Sailing Podcast: Yeah, I mean I thought the time ashore was great, when we did have a social life after about 10 hours on the water, or packing up from being on the water, the evening stuff I think was fantastic. Just being able to hang out together and everything’s so close, our comrades were close. It was close, we were down the straight. 

Alan: [Inaudible] was close, the food was good. 

Ocean Sailing Podcast: Yeah. 

Alex: I think where you managed to get a spot on the marina was fantastic because it ended up literally being, you know, on that arm that was right in the middle of all the action. 

Ocean Sailing Podcast: Yeah. 

Alex: So if you wanted to go to the bar you turned left, if you wanted to get food, you turned right. We were right in the middle of it. It was fantastic. 

Ocean Sailing Podcast: Yeah, yeah and in terms of professional regatta management, that’s certainly some of the best I have experienced. 

Alan: Yeah, yeah. 

Ocean Sailing Podcast: It was fantastic, you know really fantastic. 

Alex: That yacht club on the point. 

Steve: Yeah, champagne. 

Alex: How swish was that? 

Steve: Champagne at the yacht club. 

Alex: Yeah champagne on the deck with that sunset. 

Steve: On the deck, yeah with sunset going down. 

Alex: That is actually nice. That was a beautiful afternoon that. 

Steve: Yeah. 

Ocean Sailing Podcast: Yeah. Whales, dolphins and like for me, I had the other highlights for me, I had a three day four hour trip up and got to do it with my 19 year old daughter who’s now just gone overseas for two years. That was really cool. We haven’t spent three days together, not just the two us, ever. So that was pretty cool and doing 15 to 16 knots, surfing with the two reefs in the main and the jib was pretty cool going out there certainly. Actually going straight lining and fast. 

And then the highlight on the way back, oh I’ve got to mention this, there’s quite a lot of shipping activity as you know inside the Whitsundays and I was downstairs on that saloon kind of just sleeping lightly, there’s lots of shipping activity and we were literally sailing down the channel, that was angled wrong. We’re doing down the channel, whether against ships, and Samson came running downstairs and woke me up and say, “We’re on a collision course for the HMAS Adelaide. 

I couldn’t think what he was talking about and he’s like, “Can you come upstairs?” And sure enough, it was an aircraft carrier and we’d be fine AIS wise but what had happened was they were, we were 50 miles still inside the bottom of the Great Barrier Reef, so it’s inside the Whitsundays. They are honking along doing 17 knots directly towards us, we’re doing 7 knots towards them. They flicked their AIS on when we’re five minutes away. 

So it’s a military ship, they must just put AIS on when they need to be seen. So where we went from everything being fine, we were five minutes off collision course. So then I checked the AIS and see that we’re going to cross within half a mile and we were sailing across their bow at about 30 degrees, so the AIS doesn’t tell you are you going to be half a mile that side of the bow or half mile this side of the bow? 

So I thought I will slow down and change direction and then it still said half a mile and now I’m thinking, “Right.” So we were going to go pass, and meanwhile we’re down in two minutes and this thing is looming up and so I just luffed the boat and watched them slide past and they were like 0.7 of a mile away but they looked like they were right there and no, you could not tell. 

I swear they were coming directly towards us and it was only because the AIS showed that they were going past us, you know, parallel to us. But if I didn’t have the AIS, I would’ve been taking other actions. I swore they were coming straight towards us. That’s just three lights on this massive ship. They had them beaming alone, so I couldn’t tell. So that was a highlight but that was, you know, it was a highlight that Samson decided to come and grab you and I was thinking, “I can fix this,” because you know, crossing the bow of an aircraft carrier doing 17 knots is not very smart. So that was a highlight. Okay, any other low parts we haven’t mentioned? 

Steve: Well another highlight sorry it was actually Samson who’s probably the least experienced on board on our normal crew and he was set the challenge and he really stepped up during the week, which was great and even exactly what you just said there, it was a massive step up that anyone else may or may not have actually come in to grab you and all of that. So hats off to him. The whole week he stepped up and he was going real well by the end of it so hat’s off. 

Alan: Yeah, I agree with that. 

Ocean Sailing Podcast: Yeah he was great and after the week of stress and pressure and focus and exactness, I had to detune him for the delivery trip home and say, “We’re not going to push it. Take your time. There’s no urgency, any injuries. That’s all right. Have lots of sleep.” But yes, so I think he learned a lot because the delivery trip home was close to four days and he was literally adjusting the helm to the wind angle. 

He was managing traffic, he sailed down most of the way inside Frazer Island on the helm navigating the hand steering down the channels in the dark and stuff. So great crash course for him and so I think it’s great when you get something like that that comes out of that because it just gives somebody just a whole lot more experience than they plan to get. Okay so any other low points? 

Rod: It was a great week. Excellent week. Food street and tavern and the whole island, just all in close proximity with all of the boats and the atmosphere of the rest of the crews and yeah, it was just a good week. 

Ocean Sailing Podcast: So the Wallabies on the big screen wasn’t a low point at all? 

Rod: Yeah, it was probably a low point there. I wasn’t going to mention that.

Alan: Who are they again, who were they? 

Ocean Sailing Podcast: Okay, cool. I think, yeah I think since we’ve talked about it now, I feel much better about the week than I did. There were lots of high points. So guys, what amazes you most about the week if there was one thing that amazed you the most? 

Alex: I got one. I think it was on the last night I was there, we went up to your guys unit for pizza and a beer and I walked into that unit and I couldn’t swing a cat in there. There was crap everywhere. There were anchors and chains and ropes, how do you get all that stuff into the boat? Because the unit was absolutely full. It was amazing how much stuff is actually on that boat when it’s cruising mode? 

Ocean Sailing Podcast: But that’s not even cruising mode, that’s just ocean racing mode.

Alex: Yeah, that’s… 

Ocean Sailing Podcast: Or a delivery trip mode, because I’ve got another two and a half meter high, six meter long shelving system at home and 90% of that gear was also on the boat when I bought it. So it’s amazing how you can… 

Alex: Yeah, it’s just amazing too like the last time I’ve been on the boat, you know, in the galley there was cups and silverware and all the rest of it, and I walk on and there’s three plastic cups and two plastic spoons and that was it. 

Steve: Yeah, we didn’t take everything off. There was everything off.

Ocean Sailing Podcast: It was a lot. 

Steve: I think we took six chopping boards off of it. That’s serious cruising mode. 

Ocean Sailing Podcast: Yeah, no there were slices and everything. Okay, what else amazed you about the week? Anything else? 

Alan: I would say, as far as the area goes, it just never let you down. Like we didn’t have the best weather. It was pretty gloomy most of the time, rained some days and all of that sort of stuff, but it was just spectacular. You know there were whales jumping over the boat. You literally, they were calling over the radio that, “There are whales in the area, watch out.” You need to watch that don’t hit them. They were everywhere. They were like the plague of the sea. They were absolutely everywhere and then there’s dolphins and turtles and the beautiful green water and the landmarks, the current, the everything. Just every year you go out there and it’s just amazing. It’s an amazing place. 

Ocean Sailing Podcast: It seems a shame to go all the way there and actually not spend some time cruising or enjoying it. It almost seems a waste doesn’t it? Because it is spectacular. 

Alex: And Hamilton Island is an amazing place as well. I mean just that whole marina precinct, the way it’s set up. The way they set it up for race week, you know, they had that big stage in front of the bar. They had live music every night. You know, there was a band, they had the Heineken were doing their promotion, someone else was doing their promotion. Everything was just laid on for all the competitors and it was so welcoming, you know? You could go anywhere and it was just set up for sailors and for sailing. It was just brilliant. 

Ocean Sailing Podcast: They absorb thousands of extra people in the space of the week and everything works. You know, the queues aren’t 50 people long, everything works, you know, it’s really well done. Okay, anything else for you Alan?

Alan: No, I’m good.

Ocean Sailing Podcast: I don’t know if it’ just the sheer spectacle of the size of the fleet, besides it’s 250 boats in a dense passage and then just seeing those big boats, the division AIIC boats the hundred footers. The TP52’s starting behind us and sailing through us in some of those races, just the noise in the backdrop and the spectacle. 

That last day, I mean when they’re doing 25 knots coming up behind you and deciding whether to go above you or below you, a couple [inaudible] went below us, one went above us and started luffing their code zero. But just the noise and you are never going to get to see that any other way. You’re not going to get to see that unless you’re in a helicopter, unless you’re in a big power boat. Most other part of the country, you’re going to be unable to get to them. So it’s pretty unique. 

Alan: We had the helicopter above us and one of the boats went above us and ran it up. You could hear the winches, hear that sound of those winches. 

Ocean Sailing Podcast: Groaning noise. 

Alan: Groaning noises of the winches on the big boats, those electric winches. It was amazing. 

Ocean Sailing Podcast: Okay. Is there anything else you want to share or comment on? 

Steve: I’d say it was a great week of training and up-skilling really because we’ve still got heaps moving forward and bigger adventures too with the Hobart. So it was just a good learning week, even though it wasn’t as enjoyable as if we were in a cruising division. I think it’s probably what we needed and it was also what we needed to gauge the boat, just to see where it was at. So I think it was actually the right thing to do, whilst it’s not as much fun, we had to know.

Ocean Sailing Podcast: Learning and training often isn’t fun, is it? 

Steve: No, no, no. 

Ocean Sailing Podcast: It was valuable though. 

Steve: But it’s not a bad place to do it, all the same. So I don’t think there was a lot done wrong. There are always things you can improve on but a real good up-skilling event really. 

Ocean Sailing Podcast: Yeah and we have to acknowledge Clay. I mean he sailed with us for that week. He’s a volunteer who lives locally. He came and raced with us. He worked from sun up to sun down, past when I was ready to carry on. 

Alex: Yeah.

Ocean Sailing Podcast: Fine-tuning stuff, fixing stuff, training people.

Alex: Taught us a lot. 

Ocean Sailing Podcast: He’s very patient, very diligent, very persistent. But his technical expertise is second to none. So he, in terms of things that we learned while being under pressure, racing isn’t always easiest learning environment. Really, that’s when you learn, when you are actually under pressure. He gave a 120%, he didn’t come for, you know, a free cruise. 

Steve: And David, added to that, I mean the basics that he went right back to the basics and taught us all on the same way of doing things and went over it and over it and over it again on those first two or three days, that was great. That was really, really valuable I think. In some ways I regretted that we didn’t have all of the crew there that we could all learn it the same way. Hopefully we can pass on a lot of that stuff, especially around trimming and the way that we did that and some of those things, that was fantastic. We’re very lucky to have that. 

Ocean Sailing Podcast: Yeah and he was like a drill sergeant, you know? In helping you to change subconscious habits until they became new habits and that’s never easy. And Steve just says he would be like that. He was not like he didn’t say upfront, “He’s going to be anal about stuff.”

Steve: I’ve been to his school before, which was probably a steeper learning curve for me because I’d never done bow before and ended up on a boat that had a tactician, a paid skipper, a paid tactician and ended up doing bow and mast for a wind with a little bit of head. So I went through his school and it was a tough one, and particularly because I weighed 90 kilos so I wasn’t allowed past the mast to do the bow. So that adds some extra fun on board but there’s one thing like he teaches you, you do not forget and it’s really good. 

Ocean Sailing Podcast: Yeah. 

Alex: I think the thing that I found fascinating about what Clay was able to pass onto us was that yeah, all the basic stuff but then there’s so much of the finesse, the little stuff that we’re just not aware off that he is just like an encyclopaedia with and when you think about it, you know the difference between a race sometimes is 30 seconds, 20 seconds and if you can shave that extra 20 seconds off, he’s the sort of guy that is going to be able to teach you how to do that. 

Ocean Sailing Podcast: Yeah, that’s right. That’s exactly right. So I think, definitely, I’d love to do Race Week again. I think it’s doing all everything that was learned and approaching everything I think for me part of the lesson is next time around, let’s not try and d two ocean races and two regattas in five weeks, that are spread from Sydney to the Whitsundays. Let’s pick a couple of things I really want to do that fit together better, or one thing, if that’s what our team decide. 

Let’s just plan ahead, do it well, you get the right coverage across the entire, [inaudible]. Let’s not try and spread ourselves too thin because at the end of the day, we’ve got day jobs, we’ve got families, we’ve got other distractions and part of, like if you’ve got stuff that isn’t quite right, because you’re just so busy racing that you’re preoccupied with what’s happening outside of racing at home or work or whatever, then that distracts you from the enjoyment as well. 

So I think getting the balance right with our team upfront and saying, “What should we do? What do you think?” And working out a plan rather than just changing and hoping after we’re tuned up, I think that’s a list as well. 

Alex: I think the wonderful thing about the Hamilton Island Race Week is that it’s a very nice balance of intensive racing if that’s what you want to do, or a bit more social in the other classes but then there’s also the social aspect of it. So you get to mix with your own crew and other people that you know, that you may want to meet from other crews. You get to see some fantastic boats and also do some racing and it’s almost like emersion. Because you’re there for the week and you know that it’s in that tiny environment, around the marina or around the Whitsundays, it is a fantastic week. 

Ocean Sailing Podcast: Yeah, I think the same thing that’s why wherever level you’re at, you go try the boat, cruising boat, high sea tide boat, you can get away if you want to out of that week. Whatever you want you could get in terms of cruising or racing super serious just having fun. This is, there is definitely something for everybody if you go and do what you want. 

Steve: And yeah you to add to temperature and the climate up there is just sick and down isn’t it? 

Ocean Sailing Podcast: Yeah, okay. Any last words about anything else we’d do definitely next time around? 

Steve: I made the point earlier about the crew. If you can get like a core crew for most of the days at least and if you didn’t have the rest of the sailing early maybe there’s even a chance to do some training around certain things that you’re then not going to change up there. Again, that constant change of all of everything was one of the hard things. So the less you have of that constant change. You’re still refining things up there but that’d probably make it a bit more enjoyable and then you can work out, “Okay, are we really going to go hard for the first couple of days and then see where we are and ease off a bit?” I think that would be really good.

Rod: Yeah, I think the same team for most of the week would be a big plus and then also probably just being in a PHS division so that we’re with like boats and probably doing races that are more setup for our speed of boat Then the other thing is, a delivery skipper for Dave so he’s not having to sail halfway around the world every time we do a race. I think that’s something we should be on the lookout for or someone step up, someone retire or someone lose their job so they can actually you know, help out with the deliveries because that’s a massive thing for Dave.

Alex: Yeah, and don’t spill the beer on to your laptop and smash your mobile phone as well.

Ocean Sailing Podcast: That’s right and part of, you know, I haven’t publishing, it’s still a couple of weeks but yeah, spilling beer into my Mac Book computer in Hamilton Island as I was working and then dropping my iPhone and smashing the screen and then having delivery chips to get stuff done. Or I couldn’t because the conditions and I wasn’t in range because we’re 50 miles off the coast. Yeah, technology installed I keep them apart, it’s just keeping the concrete and the beer away from my technology.

Alan: But the high point in that is the fact you were drinking beer. So it’s not water, it’s not coffee, you were drinking beer at the time so life wasn’t too bad when you’re doing that.

Ocean Sailing Podcast: Sitting on the deck at a yacht club.

Alan: Yeah, that’s right.

Ocean Sailing Podcast: So yeah, it’s good and yeah, I think it’s a good summer end. Like I was going to say, in hind sight you could probably actually have two more people that you needed because definitely across the course of six days some people get stretches and strains. Some people just get overloaded with work and they’re happy to take a day off, you have light weather you can afford to sit out

Having two more than you need, so your core team’s actually bigger than you need rather than suddenly you lose a couple of people for whatever reason and now you’ve suddenly gone from ideal to too thin. I think that that’s good planning. And then if people then are tired or something and they decide to take a day off because just because they do, then you can weight that stuff and a bit more flexibly as well. Especially if you’ve got some longer days, you’re not getting back to your loved ones until after seven or eight o’clock at night. Its hard for them if they’re waiting for you to come home from racing.

So okay, good stuff guys. Well, and then thank you to the Southport Yacht Club for making this room available to us again for recording at no cost. So, we appreciate their support in helping us by making it available. And thanks guys for getting together tonight and fitting this debrief in, it’s actually been really valuable, I’ve learned a lot out of it and it just reinforces that if you are keen in taking the learning’s out of these things and fine tuning then saying it’s a bit it gets better and better.

Alex: Yeah, and thank you to you David, you’ve done a lot of work over this last six weeks, I remember listening to a couple of podcasts where you were saying this is what’s going to happen over the next six weeks and now we’re at the title end of it, it has been a big commitment, it has been a lot of work and we’ve learned a few things and we’ve gotten through it. So look, thanks for you for all your efforts and for even organising it.

Ocean Sailing Podcast: Pleasure, thanks guys. And yeah, certainly, hence there’s been a bit of a break in the podcast because I ran, everything got so far behind and is so but so be it. I ran out of steam so we’ve got three, maybe four interviews lined up this week, this is the first one so we’re back into the week cycle from now on so that will be good.

Rod: Good.

Ocean Sailing Podcast: So, great stuff, thanks guys and new season kicks off this week and first race is the, well for us it does, and first race in the new season is tomorrow. Tomorrow racing.

Alex: Great, fantastic.

Ocean Sailing Podcast: Through the Southport Yacht Club. Thank you, excellent. We’ll wrap up.

Interviewer: David Hows

Episode 19: Ocean Gem Crew Show Notes

Ocean Sailing Podcast: Hi folks and welcome to this week’s episode, episode 19 of the Ocean Sailing Podcast. This week I decided to do something different again, we’ve just done quite a bit of racing recently, so I thought I would take the opportunity to do a bit of a race debrief with five of my six crew who sailed the Sydney to Gold Coast race with me. So for this session, we are at the Southport Yacht Club. They’ve graciously supplied me with a room free of charge to be able to sit down and do a bit of an interview and recording session and do a debrief on the race and share that with you and since I last put together an intro, we’ve been north and south and probably done right about a thousand nautical miles.

We sailed at the XXXX Gold Cup, which also the IRC Queensland championships a couple of weekends ago and unfortunately for us, the forecast 15 knot winds ended up being 20 to 30 and in the first race of the championship we dropped number one kite into the water while the bow was doing nine knots down wind and prominently destroyed it and ended up having to finish the series race two, three and four somewhat under powered without our number one spinnaker and had a reasonably good run, we’ve had a few accidents with it and it’s been repaired a few times.

It was due for replacement but ultimately we finished that series of our first IRC series, 10th out of 15 entries I think it was. On the Sunday night we then left Manly, which is east of Brisbane, travelled the 60 miles back to South Port on the Gold Coast. I got in about 1:30 in the morning, Home at about 2:30, back up at six AM and then back at the boat at seven for departure for Sydney. We had a really tight window to then get down to Sydney for the Sydney to Gold Coast race, a 384 mile race north up Australia’s east coast.

Second biggest ocean race of the year behind the Sydney Hobart in terms of the competitor numbers and for me, it was our first multi-day race as a crew. We’ve done quite a bit of sort of 12 to 24 hour stuff, but we’ve never actually done any multi day racing. I’ve done plenty of cruising that way, but it was the first real test and for us given we got our IRC and ORCI ratings just before Christmas about nine months ago. It was our first real big fleet test as well on those ratings to see how we go, and just a reminder, I’ve got a 25 year old Beneteau, 44.5 foot long yacht. Beneteau 445 it’s called Ocean Gem. 

So, as you can imagine, today’s IRC racing, we’re racing a lot of high performance boats, a lot of carbon hulls, carbon masts, carbon gear, carbon sails, and so we rank quite low against the rest of the fleet. Our rating is 1.016 and we’re racing against boats that have got 1.1, 1.2, 1.5 as much as 1.98. That’s why they literally have to sail at almost twice our speed on average to beat us on handicap.

So that’s our first real test and it was a race that was supposed to be about two and a half days and ultimately it took four days, just over four days for us to go the 383 miles. It’s a race north against the prevailing southerly current and what it means, in all breeze conditions you’ve got to factor the current into account. But in light to no breeze the current becomes a real challenge and a real test.

So my thought is a bit of a debrief would be quite good. If you’ve done some racing then seeing how we go about debrief might give you some thoughts with your crew. If you haven’t done any racing or any sailing at all, getting the perspectives of crew that some of them had done their first multi day race, sleep on the boat overnight type races ever. Some of them had only done day racing before that. So I thought it would be good to see how they reflected on the race. 

Some of my crew, Shaya, Sean, Eli, Alex and Steve and Rick and me. That’s seven. So all but Sean were at the session. Sean couldn’t make it unfortunately because of some family sickness issues. So I thought it would be good to have a bit of a debrief and this is the race, I think the race that we had was a real test of character and it really showed up tenacity and determination in our team, which is really encouraging with what lies ahead. 

We also had a journalist from the local newspaper, News Limited owned Gold Coast bulletin who had contacted the yacht club about three months ago and said, “I want to do the Sydney to Gold Coast race onboard a yacht and write a story. A bit of a day in the life of an off shore sailor.” So I volunteered to take her on my boat.

Shaya was her name and she was excellent. She’d done a little bit sailing with us before that but really I got stuck and then wrote a bit of a feature piece in the local newspaper which is all good for helping to promote sailing as well. So for us, the four days or four days and one hour is a pretty long race. Only because our expectations were almost half that. But four days isn’t that long if that’s what you expect and so it was a real test of character with the change of weather we dealt with. 

And so this episode is about hearing it from a crew’s perspective, hearing how they saw things, their highs and lows. Are there things that they thought we should do differently and it was great having the session at the Southport Yacht Club where we based, fantastic yacht club and again if you live in the Gold Coast, don’t hesitate to stop and if you’re thinking of trying some sailing, come down on a Thursday afternoon and join one of the twilight racing crews and go out on the broad water.

So for us, because of the length of the race and we finished late on the Wednesday then we had to pull out of Brisbane to Keppel race which was due to be starting on a Friday. We just couldn’t turn the boat around in six hours with damage we had to repair to sails, re-provision the boat and get it back out to Brisbane ready to go again. So we pulled out of the next race unfortunately. Unfortunately that race, unlike the Gold Coast race, was 20 to 30 knots from the south, southeast. It would have been a fantastic one and a half day, 350 mile race but that’s how it goes.

So that’s a session that you’ll hear shortly with my crew, some of the crew who did the race and doing a bit of a debrief and then the next week I’m now heading away north again 580 nautical miles to Hamilton Island, for Hamilton Island Race Week for the very first time. If you want to check that out, audihamiltonislandraceweek.com.au. 250 entries, biggest fleet ever I understand, should be spectacular racing around the Whitsunday Islands. So we’re in the passage, IRC passage division so each day will be, I imagine, sort of four to five hour race around different islands and different courses and stuff which is pretty cool.

So again, I’ve had a really busy couple of weeks so a little bit behind in show notes for the last couple of episodes. So they will follow and with those again some great videos, I’ll include some great videos as well. Make sure you check out the show notes at Oceansailingpodcast.com. In the show notes for this episode, got a great two minute video that is a good listen and not being overly aggressive whether you’re in the right or in the wrong off the start line of a 383 mile race.

The videos show a dozen to 15 boats, literally pulling out, spinnaker poles out, they didn’t give themselves enough room, they got tangled up leaving Sydney heads, one ran aground, see if we needed up facing the wrong way, boat’s bowsprits, four or five out of the race within 20 minutes of starting and we managed to veer 20 degrees to the left and go around a sort of messes to start had sort of unfold. Again, I’ll put a video in the show notes page in YouTube.

But it’s just a good listen and staying out of trouble because it’s pretty sad when you see the crew who have prepared for weeks, maybe months, have their race ended just through being in the wrong place at the wrong time, and being a little bit too aggressive. So I will share that as well. Enjoy this week’s episode of the Ocean Sailing Podcast with some of the Ocean Gem racing crew. Great episode to get crew perspective on things and certainly if you’re thinking of getting into sailing, your local yacht club, have a chat of somebody, I’m sure they’ll be able to get you on the boat and get you a taste of what it’s all about. So folks, enjoy.

Ocean Sailing Podcast: Hi folks, welcome back to the Ocean Sailing Podcast. This week we’ve got something different we’re doing. I’m with some of the crew of Ocean Gem, my yacht that recently competed and they XXXX Gold Cup up in Manly in Brisbane and then we had to finish it on the Sunday get back to the Southport on the Sunday night around one AM and then head off to Sydney on the Monday morning first thing for this Sydney to Gold Coast race. 

We have three delivery crew, a couple of our regular crew and a ringer that we got from the yacht club at the last moment and we had a great sail to Sydney, it took us two days and four hours, so a nice quick trip down 390 odd nautical miles and then we started the Sydney to Gold Coast race on the Saturday morning.

Ocean Gem Crew: Afternoon.

Ocean Sailing Podcast: Saturday afternoon, I forgot. Despite all of our expectations and intentions, we participated in the slowest Sydney to Gold Coast race in history and so we thought it would take us about two and a half days, it took us four days and one hour to complete and unfortunately for us, the race was a bit of a roller coaster ride. We started with a fleet of 75 boats, started out at Sydney Harbour which is pretty awesome and quite a spectacle.

On the show notes page I’ll post a couple of videos which show 10 or 15 yachts piling up as they lift the Heads. One running aground and several running into each other. So it was quite an exciting start. We’ve got some good breeze overnight the first night, going into day two we, to our surprise, we’d gone from back of the pack to leading our respective IRC and ORCI divisions. Then by the end of the race, some four odd days later, we were at the back of the fleet after really staying quite a stop start race where we were becalmed several times from anywhere between three and six hours at a time and we probably spent at least 24 hours of the four days at a standstill.

Unfortunately with the East Coast of Australia, if you’re heading north, you’ve got south bound current that’s running between sort of half a knot and three knots depending where you are. When you’re becalmed, you’re not actually standing still, you’re going backwards, so it really can be quite a test. So I’ve got the six of us here today for this session, six of our seven crew and we’re going to run through a little bit of a debrief really as we would normally talk about the race, talk about what we experienced, what we learned and then with some other racing we’ve got coming up later this year, just do a debrief around what can we do differently or what could we do better next time around.

So on Skype we’ve got Shaya who is currently on holiday in Cairns, which is a couple of thousand kilometres from here. Say hello Shaya.

Shaya: Hello.

Ocean Sailing Podcast: Okay, welcome along. Then in the room with me at the Southport Yacht Club, they’ve kindly lent us a room we can use, we’ve got Rick, we’ve got Alex, we’ve got Steve and we’ve got Eli. So say hello guys.

Ocean Gem Crew: Hi everyone.

Ocean Sailing Podcast: Welcome along. Hopefully the rest of the podcast is at high level of excitement.

Ocean Gem Crew: Because it started off yeah.

Ocean Sailing Podcast: Okay, so we’ll get started, we’ve got a few questions to ask you guys really, as a bit of a debrief and we’ll start with you Shaya seeing as you recently joined us, you’re a journalist for the local Gold Coast bulletin, you joined us maybe 10, 12 weeks before the race with the intention of doing the race and writing the story on a day in the life or four days in a life as it turned out on the race course.

So from your point of view, what were you most, I guess, anxious or worried about before the race started? What things were on your mind the most prior of the start of the race.

Shaya: It’s definitely sea sickness to be honest. Yeah, I was just really worried about it because I know I do get quite sea sick out there and that once you’re on the boat you can’t really get off. So I was worried that I’d get sea sick and then be sort of stuck on there and yeah, that was my biggest worry.

Ocean Sailing Podcast: Okay, Alex, what about you? What was something you were concerned or anxious about before the race and just drag that mic right up towards you guys. Pull it a little closer.

Alex: I guess the only thing I was really concerned about was not making the start line because we’d all put in so much effort and everyone was on such a high to actually get down there and race, that’s my concern was that was something going to happen with the boat? We had that issue with the HF radio where we’re getting replies back from Lake Macquarie Marine Rescue. If we didn’t have an operating HF radio we couldn’t race. Those sort of things were concerning. It was just, we wanted to make the start line and we wanted to race.

Ocean Sailing Podcast: Yeah, this is a good point and a bit of background, we did have issues passing our radio test which in the end turned out perfectly fine throughout the race and then we had other issues, which we’ll come back to later with our model safety checks, and we’ll come back to that. Okay, Rick, what about you?

Rick: Well, contrary to Alex’s idea, I had full confidence in making it there and getting into the start line, the only thing that I’m really sort of I suppose worried about was sleep. Personally I don’t sleep well in strange beds but I realized that if I got tired enough I would sleep. It’s just a matter of making sure I did sleep and get the most out of it.

Ocean Sailing Podcast: Did you sleep?

Rick: Sometimes, not very often. Just lying there looking.

Ocean Sailing Podcast: Okay. Now Steve, you’re done quite a lot of off shore racing, Sydney to Hobart races. I guess this is a bit of a dawdle up the coast really. Was there anything at all that you had sort of concerns or worries about and just pull that microphone even close to you guys. Pick the whole stand up because your sound here is a little bit low.

Alex: Probably the basically just the unknown. So we’ve got a crew that hasn’t really done a lot of off shore racing for any great length and we’re throwing it all together whilst we’ve trained on off shore races. It’s just the unknown of what was going to be two or three nights, which turned into over four days of how everyone would react to that, who was going to get sick and who could cope with be it, be it high winds, low winds or anything like that?

Probably the other thing, the concern was the race start. It’s probably the biggest fleet of off shore race yachts in Australia on a quite a short line and like what happened, you really got to get away well and not retire. Just before the Heads like I think four boat steed. That was probably the main thing and the same race last year, it was very light wind start, it was very tight start and made a big difference on the overall result. So they are probably the two things for me.

Ocean Sailing Podcast: That’s good point because you think about the Sydney to Hobart having a 110, 115 boats but it’s spread over three start lines isn’t it? So 75 on one actually is busy. Also, there’s no control of the spectators, so they just go anywhere they like.

Alex: Yeah, it’s very lose where as a Sydney to Hobart, you’ve got three lines, you’ve got spectators behind their own buoys, they’re out of the way and you’re allowed to go around them but then they’ll actually go around you. All the big boats that are absolutely smoking through at three times the speed, miles away, you don’t even see them. It’s always a pretty tight line and which we did great on. So that was a highlight.

Ocean Sailing Podcast: Yeah, because it’s quite unique to have big boats get a bad start and have to come up through the fleet past you as opposed to being ahead of you on their own line and off and gone.

Alex: It looked great for us, that’s for sure and embarrassing for them I’m sure so that’s good.

Ocean Sailing Podcast: Cool, what about you Eli? What were your anxieties or concerns?

Eli: Yeah, popping spinnakers in front of 74 other boats, two thirds of them professionals, some of the best boats in Australia, dropping spinnakers in front of those boats and trying to get a clean start. It all felt like I was on, or we were all on show a bit and I wondered how it was going to go. I was confident.

Ocean Gem Crew: We had confidence in you.

Eli: Now, we did really well. We did great actually. Great start

Alex: We actually ran the line on port for a while, which was a bit concerning at times.

Eli: A little bit. 

Alex: It worked well.

Ocean Sailing Podcast: I think part of the challenge is there’s so much going on around you, there’s so much to look at if you don’t keep an eye on your own game at the same time because you’re a spectator as much as you’re a participant. So it’s easy to just get distracted with what’s going on around you and lose sight of what’s in front of you.

Eli: Yeah, there’s a lot of nice boats to look at. I had to keep my mind on the job.

Ocean Sailing Podcast: Okay, that’s good. Shaya, back to you. What aspects of the race did you find most challenging from a personal point of view?

Shaya: Well I got pretty sea sick in the first few days because the tablets just weren’t working. So I was sort of trying to put on a brave face so you guys wouldn’t notice, to then pull my weight and then I found that really challenging. But then as soon as Steve gave me his tablets from, I think you said they were from England or something, they worked wonders. So it all came together then.

Ocean Sailing Podcast: Okay, what brand of tablets were they Steve?

Ocean Gem Crew: Stugeron.

Ocean Sailing Podcast: Oh Stugeron?

Ocean Gem Crew: Yeah, they’re the good stuff.

Ocean Gem Crew: Yeah, better drugs.

Ocean Sailing Podcast: Highly recommended. That’s good, you certainly did put on a brave face for the first couple of days because it’s not nice when you’re feeling green.

Shaya: Yeah. The rest was all right I think. When there was no wind, of course that was challenging because you get up from your four hours sleep and you haven’t sort of moved, that can be a bit disheartening.

Ocean Sailing Podcast: The same rock that’s there when you go to sleep, is still there four hours later when you get up.

Shaya: Yeah.

Ocean Gem Crew: In fact, further in front of you.

Ocean Sailing Podcast: Yeah, or the rock’s further ahead than it was last time you saw it. That’s even worse. Okay, cool. Alex, what about you? What aspects of the race did you find the most challenging?

Alex: I guess because we’re all at a race, we want to sort of pumping on a bit of adrenaline and you want to get moving and you want the bike to go fast and you want to be up there with the fleet and I guess the most challenging parts for me were when we will becalmed. When we just couldn’t get the boat speed that we wanted and particularly, because a lot of the racing that we do here is against other keel boats that are fairly cruiser sailors. To see that fleet of high performance racing yachts and just a little whiff of a breeze, off they go and eight, nine 10 knots.

That was challenging to be so slow in those light breezes. Start to catch up to them, the way we did on the first night and then to be becalmed and then to see them maybe a mile or two ahead get a breeze, and then just take off and we don’t get that breeze. So to me, that was just frustrating. You just wanted to get moving, you wanted to race, not sit there waiting to race.

Ocean Sailing Podcast: I think it felt worse the time than it actually was. After we finished I looked back for the results and I think IRC rating wise, we have a second lowest rating in the fleet and that’s pretty much about where we finished up. It was nice to be ahead of 15 or 16 or 20 boats, whatever it was at one stage, we needed wind to keep that up. Having a low rating is one thing, it’s never motivating to see a whole fleet in front of you. It doesn’t matter what your rating is, it’s just psychologically it feels wrong, isn’t it?

Alex: But we were doing so well. If we’d been able to keep up that speed, we were with the fleet and it was just frustrating to see that wind die out continuously. What did we have? Four or five holes that we fell in to on the way up?

Ocean Sailing Podcast: Yeah, quite big ones.

Alex: It would have been just favour to not find those holes. Keep moving.

Ocean Sailing Podcast: Yeah, exactly. Okay. Thank you. Rick, what about you? What did you find?

Rick: I agree with Alex on that one and this is challenging, his words were frustrating and I think that’s correct. It was frustrating just watching people being able to move with no wind and we just stopped or went backwards with the currents. Otherwise, I think it was a pretty smooth run, the whole thing, enjoyed it.

Ocean Sailing Podcast: That’s good. And when we were moving, we were moving okay but that’s right, when you’ve got wind of less than four knots, you’ve got carbon hulls that will just drift along.

Rick: Yeah, and just leave us fore dead.

Ocean Sailing Podcast: Literally stopped dead. Yeah. It’s quite a difference, over four days.

Ocean Gem Crew: Rick.

Ocean Sailing Podcast: Steve?

Steve: I’m exactly the same, heavy boat, light winds, a sub three knots…

Rick: Heavy crew.

Steve: Yeah.

Alex: Heavy everything, heavy absolutely everything. No matter what you do in sub three knots in a heavy boat, it’s just not going to go as well as a light boat, which as everyone was saying, we were right up with. If not ahead and frustrating that we just park up and just couldn’t get going like they could. I suppose like what you’re saying, if we were second last the whole race, that wouldn’t have been a problem because they would have been ahead and we probably would have been encouraged because we were catching them and then we’d slow down and then we’d catch them and slow down being a downwind star race that you catch the boats that are in the holes.

Because we’re so far ahead and we’re first in our division and ahead of boats that are a whole lot lighter and a whole lot faster than this. It’s just so frustrating going backwards through any fleet. So that was the main challenge that I saw like everyone I expect.

Ocean Sailing Podcast: Fortunately it eventually came to an end and didn’t last another 30 days or something silly. 

Ocean Gem Crew: It felt like 30 days.

Ocean Gem Crew: Just that last day.

Ocean Sailing Podcast: Yeah, especially the last day, that cruel. Eli, what about you?

Ocean Gem Crew: Yeah, well I’m just going to repeat the same thing, lack of wind was really frustrating and then to throw into it a million sail changes.

Ocean Gem Crew: I knew that was coming because there was no wind.

Eli: Then, you know. Still not to happen. From a number one to another three to a code zero back to a one, down to a three again. And still we’ve only gone two miles and that doesn’t sound like every bowman in Australia right now. Complaining about sail changes. Yeah, just no wind.

Ocean Sailing Podcast: Yeah, you want to be able to sail more than 500 meters if we change sails again, don’t you?

Ocean Gem Crew: Yeah, preferably.

Ocean Gem Crew: Preferably in the right way too, not backwards.

Ocean Gem Crew: Yeah, that two miles, that could have been any direction.

Ocean Sailing Podcast: Okay, Shaya, back to you.

Shaya: Yup.

Ocean Sailing Podcast: Were there any times you sort of felt scared or unsafe or just wish you’d stayed home?

Shaya: Yeah. I did think a few times, “I wonder how long it would take me to swim to shore?” Yeah, I don’t know why I thought it was so tough when there was no wind. You’d think that’s it’s not hard on you physically or anything, but mentally it’s just I found it really tough. Especially when we got deadlines and stuff coming back home and I just didn’t know when exactly we’d be back home, I found that a bit challenging. Then I started wondering, “Oh was it the right decision?” Of course it was but at the time, it plays with the mind a little bit.

Ocean Sailing Podcast: Well and to put into context, I think the last couple of days you had your editor calling you, more than once a day saying, “Are you back, have you written your story because you’re past your deadline?”

Shaya: Yeah.

Ocean Sailing Podcast: Added to the stress right?

Shaya: It ended up turning even, like publication wise for us, it was even better that we came back closer to the weekend but at the time I didn’t know that, yeah that part was a bit stressful.

Ocean Gem Crew: Exams.

Ocean Sailing Podcast: Yeah, that’s right, you miss an exam, right? You had an exam to be back for it.

Shaya: Yeah, but I sort of laughed at it in the end, it all turned out but yeah.

Ocean Sailing Podcast: Did you ever feel scared at all?

Shaya: I think there was only once when it was dark and there was thunder storm and there was a fair bit of wind for once and I think the boat was leaning a little bit and I just got a little bit scared for maybe 10 minutes but you said, “Oh don’t worry, you’ll be okay.” It was fine after that.

Ocean Sailing Podcast: Then wind died and you wish the storm came back so we could get going?

Shaya: It was sort of like, “Come back.” Yeah, it was fine then.

Ocean Sailing Podcast: Okay, what about you Alex? Any scary moments or what the hell am I doing here? 

Alex: No.

Ocean Sailing Podcast: I could have been at home reading a book or doing the gardening.

Alex: No point that any of that occur. I mean I committed to the team, to the race, to basically get out there and experience as much as I possibly can and it was more of a case of like bring it on, let’s give ourselves a good test and I guess the time where it started to happen, like the sort of weather we wanted was that thunder storm on that last night. Started to get 20 knots over, apparently it was the boat was healing, it was cooking, and that was fun. That was a lot of fun but the rest of it, no was just pretty much as I expected.

Ocean Sailing Podcast: Okay, unfortunately that only lasted maybe six, seven hours at the most?

Alex: Yeah, it was very short.

Ocean Sailing Podcast: By the time it build and faded out. Good ride.

Alex: Can you imagine that ride all the way up from Sydney? How good would that have been? I think it would’ve been awesome. 

Ocean Sailing Podcast: I think that’s called the Keppel race.

Alex: Yes, exactly. That’s 30 knots, 30 knots, 30 knots. 

Ocean Sailing Podcast: It changes everything when it’s got pressure all the time. Okay, what about you Rick?

Rick: I was never scared or felt unsafe or anything. I had full confidence in the crew or you as a helmsman. But I’ve been off shore with enough of you and we’ve been up to things like Mooloolaba or whatever. Okay, they’re not as long but everyone knows their job and gets to it and does it. So yeah, I was never scared or unsafe there.

Ocean Sailing Podcast: Yeah, I think the boat bangs and crashes off stuff, the more you realize that’s just the norm and it can handle it. If you haven’t heard for a while, it can be a bit unnerving to start with when you start falling off the odd wave and crashing along and the funny thing is there’s plenty of noise downstairs, and you think, “What is going on upstairs?” But you go upstairs and it’s just a tack. But downstairs you’d swear that somebody’s ripping the bows out of the boat when you tack. That noise is horrendous.

Ocean Gem Crew: That’s a very quiet boat. Anything above five knots of speed, it just sounds like a cyclone above.

Ocean Gem Crew: It’s crazy. I actually made a comment of how quiet this boat downstairs.

Ocean Sailing Podcast: It’s called a thick heavy hull.

Ocean Gem Crew: It’s like the hot shower. Very enjoyable.

Ocean Sailing Podcast: When was the time you did an ocean race where you had a hot shower two or three days and ate fine dining the whole way? Okay, so given your background, I’m sure there wasn’t any sort of scary moments for you? But at some point did you just wish you had stayed home and given the race a miss?

Ocean Gem Crew: It was hard to get through a few moments, like I just hate going slow and we went slow and then we went ultra-slow and then we went backwards and then we actually past a rock and then it past us. So that’s how ultra-slow we were going. Only fear that I had was more about how much food we had because on the last day we’re just eating biscuits because we’d run out of food. You just weren’t sure why someone was actually staring you down.

If your arm looked quite tasty or what? So no great fear on sailing but yeah. I’m glad we had just enough food to get us home and no more holes in breeze because that could have been easily an extra night.

Ocean Gem Crew: Yeah, I did suggest to Eli that he starts holding up his arm.

Eli: That’s about the only time I thought, “Oh today, I wished I’d stayed home.

Ocean Sailing Podcast: Yeah, we have plenty of gas to cook whatever we were able to acquire, no fishhooks. Okay, so Eli, what about you?

Eli: Yeah, other from trying to eat my arm, it was pretty good.

Ocean Gem Crew: When we got overtaken by Fish Rock, kind of wish I stayed home.

Eli: Yeah, that was a bit disheartening but as for unsafe, not really, everything was pretty good, we didn’t really have much wind so I couldn’t really get too out of control. It was all pretty good.

Ocean Sailing Podcast: Fish Rock was probably the pinnacle of whoever was on the helm was really unlucky because he’s just sailing these lines that are going up and down the same line, everyone else is giving him advice. He’s trying to get the boat moving and in three knots with a strong current, there’s nowhere to go except for back to the foresail on the main line, just not to go backwards.

Eli: Three knots was a gust.

Ocean Sailing Podcast: Then other boats somehow came through.

Eli: Well I went to sleep for four hours, praying that when I woke up, we’d be somewhere further up the coast. We were further back than when I went to sleep and that was pretty bad.

Ocean Sailing Podcast: You need to sleep for eight hours. Okay. Cool, Shaya, what was different about the race to what you expected. I’m on a recurring theme here.

Shaya: Well, like I’d done it a little bit of sailing at night before and I’m new, I think I knew what to expect in terms of sleep and that it’s not always comfortable and that for sort of thing. I just didn’t think that sometimes we wouldn’t move. I thought surely we’re sailing along the coast, there will be wind all the time but there wasn’t. That was the most surprising part. The rest I think I just went with an open mind thinking whatever happens, happens and I’ll try and get used to it. Yeah, that was pretty much it, the wind 

Ocean Sailing Podcast: It’s clear this podcast is about answering all these different question with the same answer all the way. The lack of it.

Shaya: Sorry.

Ocean Sailing Podcast: That’s all right.

Shaya: Like the journal in me sort of came out a few times when something was a bit hard, it was like, “Oh, this is good for the story or by far overboard,” I have a better story. Sometimes it worried me but at the same time yeah, not too much.

Ocean Sailing Podcast: Okay, cool. Alex, what was different to your expectations. 

Alex: Look I suppose being exposed to the calibre of racing yachts out of the CYC just the boats, like the TP 52’s, those DK 46’s, whatever they were just seeing that racing hull with all the carbon. Just the speed of those boats that was just wow. That really blew me away and I wasn’t expecting to see such acceleration and such movement in open water from boats like that in light winds. That really blew me away.

Ocean Sailing Podcast: Okay, good. Rick, what about you? What was different of what you expected?

Rick: The timeframe. Literally how long it actually took for such a short distance and how long it took to get down.

Ocean Sailing Podcast: Especially the trip down, two days and four hours.

Rick: We killed it, turned around, and stopped. Yeah, that’s the only thing that really I suppose was really unexpected.

Ocean Sailing Podcast: Okay, Steve?

Steve: Mine’s a little bit different. The unexpected was having a hot shower, day two I think it was and I think I led the charge on that one then because we actually used a fair bit of water, we just made or own water. So I’m not used to the luxuries of a cruising, a star race boat and took full advantage of it. I must say, having a comfy bed, having a dry bed, having a dry boat, it was just great. It would be great if we could have all of those experiences and did it in two days but I’m sure we had a much better race than some of the guys on this ultra-fast boats that were expecting it to be over in a day because I did hear that those guys ran out of food. That was after one night. At least we had enough for three nights. Yeah, mine was the other way of how good is this. Great food, comfortable, happy days.

Ocean Sailing Podcast: Yeah, that’s a good point, because when you say that, “I think I’m going to have a shower.” I thought you were joking. We’re sitting there, we’ve got hot water because we have to run to use the radio to use the radio and so then to suddenly go, “Why not?” Then everyone followed I think. “Are we having a hot shower? Who is next?”

Ocean Gem Crew: You’re welcome.

Ocean Sailing Podcast: So yeah, that’s good. Okay what about you Eli, what was different to what you expected?

Eli: Yeah, the food was way better than I expected. I don’t know what I expected but it was pretty good. I was like, fine dining, calm water, you know. It was pretty relaxed, it was good. 

Ocean Sailing Podcast: We were just was thinking like the red wine or…

Ocean Gem Crew: I was going to say, you expected wine.

Eli: Yeah, it wasn’t that. I didn’t expect no alcohol on the boat at all. I don’t know if I should say that on the podcast, blasted around the world but it’s easy, semi-cruising boat.

Ocean Gem Crew: Even on the way down, when we’re in such a hurry to get out of there because we had four hour turnaround from Sunday night to Monday morning. Same thing on the way down, we didn’t even think about it to run away, that was two days. But yeah, coming back, we normally would have a bit of a sun downer or something, especially in fine weather. 

Ocean Gem Crew: I suppose we expected it to last a lot shorter than that. When you’re sitting there looking at the same rock, it might be nice to have a beer.

Ocean Sailing Podcast: If we had beer on board, we would have quickly made a rule that as long as we becalmed it’s okay to have beer, it would been gone. So good point. Okay. Shaya, how did you enjoy your 24/7 life on board while you were racing?

Shaya: I really liked it to be honest. I don’t know, it was just really different to what you get at home, you come out on deck and like millions of stars and there’s whales and there’s dolphins and it’s just so different, but it’s so enjoyable at the same time. Yeah, I was surprised by how much I liked it.

Ocean Sailing Podcast: Had you done anything like that before?

Shaya: I did, we were on a sail boat for three weeks in the Amazon but there wasn’t much wind so it was still life on board where you had to do watches and that sort of thing. I enjoyed that as well. So I knew that that wouldn’t be the tough part.

Ocean Sailing Podcast: You kept that little adventure up your sleeve didn’t you?

Ocean Gem Crew: That was very quiet.

Ocean Sailing Podcast: Up the Amazon, we’ve all done that. Okay, that’s cool. Alex, what about you?

Alex: Look, I really did enjoy the 24/7 lifestyle of the boat. It’s interesting, everything sort of compresses, it’s sort of like almost like a little society that’s compressed in time because everybody’s got their own little personalities and what was really good about our crew was that we all got on so well and everybody supported each other and because you’ve got that watch system happening and you virtually I think Steve you said at one stage, the life becomes sleep, food and sitting on the rail.

We didn’t get a chance to sit much on the rail because of the wind again, but you sort of get into that routine and everybody was out there sort of helping and supporting and rotating and doing what needed to be done that I loved every minute of that 24/7.

Ocean Sailing Podcast: Yeah, that’s good. It is an important part, it’s easy to underestimate the importance of that because I’ve been in groups, either on camps or on boats where there’s just one or two thorns in the side and people get irritated after a while if everything’s not going their way. So that sort of team spirit and ability to get along, that means a lot of as the days tick on and the frustrations start to build.

Alex: Yeah I mean there’s not a lot of room on the boat, everybody’s in very close proximity to everybody else, you know? They’ve all got to go for a piss over the rail if need be and eat and sleep and belch and burp and fart and everything else that happens then.

Ocean Gem Crew: He’s speaking for himself. 

Alex: Yeah, and no one complained.

Ocean Sailing Podcast: That’s right, that’s right. Okay, that’s good, what about you Rick?

Rick: I enjoyed it, I agree with Alex in saying that everyone got along really well and they did, they knew what was required of them but also they sort of went out of their way to make sure that everyone else was happy. If they look like they’re a bit down, take over a bit of their tasks that everyone worked together really well and I know Shaya says we’re all thrown together as strangers. Well we weren’t really that. We weren’t at the end of it, that’s for sure. Everyone I think sort of cemented their friendship and understanding of the other person.

Ocean Sailing Podcast: Yeah, I mean that’s a good point because you can work with somebody but then going to be 24, 48 hours with them and they could be a different somebody to the eight hours you spend with them occasionally.

Ocean Gem Crew: Especially without a drink, you know?

Ocean Sailing Podcast: I think I lost a few kilos on that trip actually. Not planned, but there you go, healthy. Okay, what about you Steve? Well you covered quite a few of your luxuries.

Steve: Yeah. As you probably heard. I enjoyed it a lot and being on a long race or what turned out to be a long race was actually quite good because it did actually gel us as a crew as well. So we had more time and we had more time to chat, more time to learn each other’s skills and how we live. Personally I sleep more on the boat in a three hour shift on and off than I do in a night on land.

So that and the Stugeron helped in that as well. But yeah, I love it. It’s even though it was a lot longer than expected, it was still a great time, it was just hanging out and we just had more time to hang out than we did in those big wind holes.

Ocean Sailing Podcast: Where by the end of it, it was like, “Okay, no wind. Who wants to sleep? And wake me when there’s wind.” I think some of us must have got about 12 hours a day by the end, in terms of sleep, which is great. You might as well be asleep than sort of sitting around getting frustrated waiting for wind.

Steve: Or in some cases, “Wake me when it’s time for a sail change.” It was exactly right.

Ocean Gem Crew: Then back down stairs.

Ocean Sailing Podcast: Yeah, okay, that’s good. So Eli, what about you?

Eli: Yeah, with that 24/7 lifestyle, you kind of build that camaraderie and you get really close with everyone and by the end you kind of a family and that’s quite enjoyable, that’s quite amazing and you get back and you’re all more than friends. You’re all pretty solid and it was a good crew, there was no thorns or someone you’d kick off the boat if you had the chance. No, it was great.

Ocean Sailing Podcast: Yeah, that’s a good point. You normally get some time together. It’s amazing I thing just settle onto a daily routine; breakfast, lunch, dinner, and a bit of wind in between.

Steve: I got a lot of sleep. I slept better than I do at home as well, so you’re not the only one Steve. Yeah, maybe more.

Ocean Sailing Podcast: Okay, Shaya. So I’m going to rephrase this question, what was it that started to get on your nerves by the end of the trip, if there was one thing?

Shaya: Well initially I thought it’s like when I first heard I was the only girl in the boat, I was like, “Oh my, everything’s going to get on my nerves,” but at the end it was just the wind, everything else was fine, it was pretty good.

Ocean Sailing Podcast: After you’ve been on the boat a few days, everything slows down anyway. All the day to day stuff you’ve got to [inaudible] kind of behind you really, apart from a text message. But yeah, life’s quite simple on the boat really, as long as you get along. What about you Alex?

Alex: Yeah look, the only thing that got on my nerves was lack of wind. It’s the prevailing theme, you just get moving, everything’s happening, you’ve had sail change, you’ve trimmed it up, you’re getting up to eight knots, everything’s going well and then within half an hour it’s dead and you’re back sitting around lulling around. That was like, “Ah!”.

Ocean Sailing Podcast: Okay. Something different?

Ocean Gem Crew: Yeah I was going to say nothing got on my nerves, I don’t think I just accepted that there’s no wind and that was life. There’s nothing we can do about it, and that’s just luck. You got bananas on board, you’ve got bananas on board.

Ocean Gem Crew: And we did, we found one.

Ocean Gem Crew: Oh there were more.

Ocean Sailing Podcast: Clearly there must have been, right? Does a banana [inaudible] as well?

Ocean Gem Crew: Oh, there is a dessert.

Ocean Gem Crew: Yeah I think I was pretty chilled out for the whole race really. 

Ocean Sailing Podcast: One thing I saw that started to get on people’s nerves, is if you try to steer the boat and know that it’s not moving and you try your best and then another comes back giving you advice, like I was going to do that. You think, “Oh maybe this — someone else do it,” and then do now better. Well maybe we go from two and a half to three and a half, you could just get the boat moving again. But it was so wind dependent. It’s just that line that’s below three and a half knots, there’s almost nothing you can do.

Ocean Gem Crew: That’s sailing for you. You’ve had that here on a twilight where we haven’t even finished a race.

Ocean Sailing Podcast: Several time.

Ocean Gem Crew: You just have to learn to accept it I suppose. Move ahead hopefully.

Ocean Sailing Podcast: At least the weather was 20 something degrees, it’s not like it was raining or it wasn’t really cloudy, it wasn’t cold. I’m sure there’s tougher ways to have no wind.

Ocean Gem Crew: I really thought that you showed exemplary patients when there was no wind, you’d be at the helm looking for a sail change, looking for a shift and you were just positive, pumped and we’re all sitting around and going, “Ah there’s no wind,” and you were there going, “Yes, there’s a breeze coming in, let’s get the sail done, let’s put the boat this way.” Hundred meters away and I looked at you and I thought, “All right, this guy’s got it, he’s working, he’s working.”

Ocean Sailing Podcast: Day four when you hear that for the 29th time you’d say this guy’s lost it.

Ocean Gem Crew: You kept going which is great, from a team point of view that was just fantastic.

Ocean Sailing Podcast: I think it’s important because it would be fair to say, by the time we had the last bloody hole at Coolangatta on 7 o’clock in the morning before we finished the race, I was thinking, “We’re going to vote. Surely it’s going to be unanimous. Let’s just retire.” But we did it.

Ocean Gem Crew: Well at some stage we were going to have bacon and eggs for breakfast weren’t we?

Ocean Sailing Podcast: We were going to pre-order it ahead. I think Eli said, “It doesn’t matter if we’re at it for a month, we’re going to finish this damn race.”

Ocean Gem Crew: Breakfast by 8:40 it was at one stage?

Ocean Sailing Podcast: Yeah, it’s tough. Okay, can we cover you on that one?

Ocean Gem Crew: It’s probably all the same.

Ocean Sailing Podcast: Anything for anybody else?

Ocean Gem Crew: No. It was a good test of character because being sailors, you’re supposed to be able to deal with light winds, you can’t just go, “All right, throw the anchor out,” or what we prefer to do is, drink alcohol or something like that in a pretty serious race. It’s the second biggest off shore race in Australia. You can’t just give up. You have to get the boat moving and frustrating wise, it just isn’t going to happen under two knots.

So same old frustration, wind. But that’s sort of what we do, we’re sailors and its wind dependent. So it’s a good test of character to not give up, to keep actually going because in some cases, that is the difference between like moving forward a mile and not moving forward a mile. It’s easy to say, “It’s the light boats,” and in this case, it was but in other cases, it could be, you’ve just given up, you’re not on the ball, you’re not leaning the boat over, and you’ve not got the right sales up or something like that. 

So it’s a good test and what we have coming up, even though the Sydney to Hobart’s a heavier wind race. Absolutely guarantee, we will have a hull. A dead patch where we’re doing exactly what we just did and that’s when we need to go, “We’ve done this, we got two knots of speed out of three knots of wind, we know how to do it, now we know what angle to point the boat all that sort of stuff. Whilst it gets on your nerve, you have to look at it for what it is and choose to actually make it an opportunity to build character, to build skill and go from there.

Ocean Sailing Podcast: Yeah, that’s a really good point because we tried lots of sail combinations and we had lots of different wind streams and there’s times we got the boat moving in a certain breeze, there’s time that we didn't. It was a really good learning exercise, you never get to test that many combinations over that many days and be able to retain it in an off shore race when it’s like five, or six hours. You just don’t. So yeah, it’s a great lesson on persistence.

The race was like 93 hours long or something, somebody said? Well even if it’s just three of those hours, if you can give two knots and others are doing nothing, six miles at the end of the day can be the difference between somewhere and nowhere or can be the difference between finishing or hitting the next wind hull because you haven’t got home yet which is pretty much what happened to us. So yeah, that’s a really good point, okay. What about you Eli?

Eli: Just refers back to no wind probably the 29th time, put the code zero up because the wind had built from zero knots to one knot, that started to get a bit tedious and get on my nerves but it was great training. Sometimes we did get the boat moving from doing that, sometimes we didn’t. Either way we tried something and I’ve put a code zero up a lot more times than when I started.

Ocean Sailing Podcast: That’s the most we’ve done in the whole of the last 12 months..

Eli: Change sails. So it was sort of great training but it might have got a bit tedious.

Ocean Sailing Podcast: I think on your 49th and sail change I did it for you because I just figured it was just…

Eli: You don’t want to bring me up from my sleep again.

Ocean Gem Crew: How good are we at sail changes?

Eli: Yeah, it was great training.

Ocean Sailing Podcast: Actually, by the end of it, we were like, well I know everybody when we were a third of the way through it we were like Steve said, people in the cockpit are anticipating what you need because they know it, they’re not waiting for you to holler, “Ease this, ease that, let this go.” It was starting to happen quite fluidly.

Eli: Yeah that’s true actually, at the start there was a lot of shouting back from the bow to let things off and by the end, it was all done as I’d go to grab for sheets. They were already off and free so I could do what I needed with them or have the how you tied on and you’d be going up before I called for it. Perfect. It’s good training and nice weather for it.

Ocean Sailing Podcast: Yeah absolutely. Okay, Shaya, what were your key highlights?

Shaya: The finish line was pretty good. That we did it and that we got through it all but the start I found really impressive as well, with all the other boats because I had never done anything like it. So to have Wild Oats XI on the side and all these others. Yeah I found that impressive. So I’d say probably the start and the finish. Heaps of stuff in the m middle as well like the whales and the food was also really, really good but yeah.

Ocean Sailing Podcast: So to summarise, if you can start, see a whale, eat something and finish that would be the perfect race for you? 

Ocean Gem Crew: All inside one hour. 

Ocean Sailing Podcast: Yeah, half an hour or an hour.

Shaya: Yeah.

Ocean Sailing Podcast: Okay, that’s good, thank you. What about you Alex? What were your highlights?

Alex: Look, my highlights were the whole ocean racing experience. Pretty much the build up at the dock, at the CYC like you could see the more people arriving from the Friday to the Saturday then on Saturday there’s a big crowd, there’s TV crews, there’s helicopters starting to fly around and you could just feel the buzz and you sort of can’t help but get caught up in that buzz and like Shaya, the start was amazing, at that one stage, I looked to my left and there’s Wild Oats, you look up and there’s about 10 stories of sail going up and then at another point, I looked over my other shoulder and they’re Scallywag, it’s just a wall of black carbon sail right next to you and just watching this boats power past. It was just great. The whole thing was just fantastic.

Ocean Sailing Podcast: Yeah, it’s pretty exhilarating. Besides being in and amongst that really, it’s hard to explain.

Alex: Just the buzz on the harbour. After we started and the spinnaker was up and things settled down and I mean, everyone’s like really pumped up looking left and right, seeing where there’s a hole to move in to, where the gap is, where the congestion was, where that collision was up near Watsons Bay, we dodged that really well and just sort of being in the zone I guess, we were at the start there, it was just all happening really nice, that was fantastic. If you could relive that every weekend it would be wonderful.

Ocean Sailing Podcast: Exactly. Okay, great, thank you.

Ocean Gem Crew: Yeah, the highlights I suppose, as Alex was saying again, the buzz at the club. There’s always a buzz there in front of the big race. My brother did a Sydney to Hobart a few years ago and yeah, it was just going off. So this isn’t as big but it was still there. The start was good with all the boats calling starboard to boats that we probably shouldn’t be calling starboard to, things like that and then one night we had the kite up and we had a bit of wind and that was fun. You had everyone now on the rails at the back corner, they’re just keeping it down and we were just flying along and that was a good night sail.

Ocean Sailing Podcast: Yeah, that was fun. That was really thrilling. Gives you a taste of what’s possible if we just [inaudible]. But yeah, that was fun.

Ocean Gem Crew: A lot of fun.

Ocean Sailing Podcast: Okay, thank you. Steve.

Steve: I’ve got two things, the adrenaline on the start, I was helping Dave with the tactics and like what I said before, 75 boats, lots of coin out there and all on the one line, which was about half the size of the finish line which was ironic. But with wind that changed through about 90 degrees with about five minutes to go before the start and having to change tactics and just adrenaline pumping, calling Dave through on the line on port and there’s moments there, do we go behind or in front and then sort of jiving, in fact I think we ended up tacking around to go back on starboard and then looking back to two thirds of the fleet behind us, including boats that have a multimillion dollar check thrown at them every year to just go faster and here’s us, a little old cruising boat, out in front of them and we got a few photos. Which is great.

So having two thirds of fleet behind us and just watching them come through, which was fantastic and then we followed our routes that we planned off the weather route we got, went out wide and I think we were probably the widest boat there for a while and because we had breeze and because we had a great route, we ended up coming first at that point in time, which is probably where we should have actually gone and said, “Well we’ve done it now, a portion of the race, only had about 300 miles to go. They weren’t going to shorten the course on us unfortunately but that was nice going from a great start to then leading our division in two divisions. 

Ocean Sailing Podcast: I’d say maybe e12th out of 75, 24 hours in which was as good as it got.

Steve: Really cool for what was really a training exercise for us to get us to the next line and really getting a result to start with then three days later it’s slightly different. But those three days were probably more important than the first 12 hours. So yeah, they’re the highlights for me.

Ocean Sailing Podcast: Yeah, you did a great job at start because I never would have planned on being at the pin end, on port with a style like that. It’s not where you want to be normally.

Steve: Well it generally costs you more money than me too.

Ocean Sailing Podcast: Well he actually find this hole and said, “There’s a hole there.”

Steve: We’ll take that.

Ocean Sailing Podcast: There’s a big hole but isn’t there someone to fill it? It took maybe 10 minutes into the race then Black Jack came through and you think, “Oh shit, we did get a good start. This boat should have been off and gone.” So yeah, it was excellent. Okay.

Rick: Yeah, the start. Having spinnakers up in front of Black Jack and having them come cruising past five, 10 minutes later. That felt pretty good. The shadow of Scallywag coming over and just hearing this noise, and looking up as we were about to put the spinnaker up and there she is. Just huge, it was amazing. Highlight of my life. It was unreal. Blew me away. I never thought I’d be on a start like that with 75 other boats and boats of that caliber.

Ocean Sailing Podcast: Being in the thick of it.

Ocean Gem Crew: Riding in the thick of it. I had to keep my mind on the job and not gawk too much, everything around me.

Ocean Sailing Podcast: I was going to say, there must be a bit of damage caused by crew members taking photos rather than taking photos and taking selfies and everything else on the job?

Ocean Gem Crew: I’d be guilty of that, in a quiet moment I had

Ocean Sailing Podcast: We’re okay because we didn’t have any damage but you see a video footage of broken spinnaker poles and spinnakers flying out the back of the boat, you wonder how the crew had time to take the footage. Okay, cool, So Shaya. Let’s try not to meet you on the W this time but what were your low points other than wind?

Shaya: Probably where they say, yeah. Just because you know that you’ll have to pull your weight because there’s different jobs around the boat and that if everyone’s stays positive that plays a big part and then being seasick you sort of want to curl up into a little ball and sort of do nothing but you still got to do everything. Well not everything but I still played a part in a crew I guess that I found out a bit tough.

Ocean Sailing Podcast: Yeah, okay. With sea sickness, it happens to most of us at some point and the best thing you can do is gear and well and best thing the crew can do is support you while you get yourself well.

Shaya: Yeah, which I was really well not surprised, but I thought you guys were awesome as well because when it wasn’t feeling too well, I was falling asleep on the spot, there was always someone to say, you know, “You go have a sleep, I’ll take over on this,” and yeah, that helped a lot.

Ocean Sailing Podcast: that’s good. Okay, Alex? Low points?

Alex: I don’t think I had any low points because like I said, I’m really keen to ocean sail and race and stuff and the whole lot was just enjoyable but if you had to say, “Well if you had to pick anything, what would you pick?” I’d probably say when we had that really good run with the storm that last night and then we got up to Cook Island and we’d already organised breakfast for 8:40. We’d already just about sent the text ahead, we’re going to be home soon, I can smell breakfast and to physically see the finish line and to sit there for those hours that we did, that was like, “Okay, this is sending a message, this is a real test of patience, how are we going to handle it?”

We handled it really well, Eli went for a swim, we got surrounded by dolphins and whales and really it wasn’t a low point in the end, you just had to sort of adjust your thinking and to me it was literally that. Change your attitude, adjust your thinking and make the most of it. Low points, no. There weren’t any.

Ocean Sailing Podcast: To put it into context, we got to the point where you could see the finish line, it’s probably an hour and a half away sailing time and we sat there becalmed for another four hours, staring at the finish line off in the distance. Realising our bacon needs weren’t going to end.

Alex: That I think was the ultimate test like you can understand being becalmed at Smokey or those other places but when we had already had the wind, there’s the finish line. Why did the wind stop?

Ocean Gem Crew: Because that’s sailing.

Ocean Sailing Podcast: Yeah. Okay, thank you. Rick?

Rick: I didn’t have any low points, I enjoyed the whole trip, it’s as easy as that. I thrive on it, love it.

Ocean Sailing Podcast: That’s good, okay.

Ocean Gem Crew: I’ll second that motion, we’re really living the dream. We’re out on the boat, showering, eating well, got dolphins and whales, we probably saw 30 or 40 whales and heaps of dolphins and people pay good money for that so I’m living the dream.

Ocean Gem Crew: Yeah it was pretty awesome, maybe got to steer it to rock a bit too much maybe but other than that, I enjoyed it a lot. There wasn’t really too many low points.

Ocean Sailing Podcast: Was there any point which the sail changes started to become low points?

Ocean Gem Crew: No. I love it up there. It was all training and as gruelling as it can be, when you’re half asleep and you’ve just been woken up at three in the morning because the wind’s increased to three knots and they want the spinnaker, it’s all training. No it was good. No real low points other than Fish Rock.

Ocean Gem Crew: It was just repetitive, the sail changing not a low point.

Ocean Gem Crew: Yeah, just repetitive.

Ocean Sailing Podcast: You’re pretty enthusiastic so it would be fair to say, I’ve sailed with lots of people that are very unenthusiastic when it comes to sail changes and you get to the point where you don’t want to ask them because their reaction but you are always 99 times out of a hundred, you're enthusiastic.

Ocean Gem Crew: Yeah, more than one, I think that was one of those pretty… I was a bit half a sleep.

Ocean Gem Crew: We didn’t change anyway so I didn’t know that.

Ocean Gem Crew: That was it actually, that was the low point up to change.

Ocean Sailing Podcast: I came to relieve you to say you can go to bed now and you just got the companion and I said, “Can you just change the sail before you go to bed?” You had to come back out, you were psyched and you were headed for bed and then suddenly, we didn’t even change sails in the end. I just had to stand around.

Ocean Gem Crew: He actually said that. He said that before you went down and it’s like, watch this, I’ll do this to him.

Ocean Sailing Podcast: Five minute rule became new rule. Okay, cool. Shaya, what do you think your biggest contribution to the team was?

Shaya: I guess photos? I don’t know. I don’t think I contributed as much as everyone else.

Ocean Gem Crew: You got a cool article in the paper, that was pretty good effort.

Shaya: Yeah, I think just photos.

Ocean Gem Crew: I think your contribution grew over the four days, the last few days you were the first to jump on anything. When we said we were going to do anything, you were like, “Great, which winch, which halliard, which sheet? So your enthusiasm grew.

Ocean Gem Crew: No, it was drugs. She was running a pit by the end of it.

Ocean Gem Crew: Yeah, she was.

Ocean Sailing Podcast: Yeah you were steering the boat by the end of it, I saw that the paper. it must be true. Okay. Cool, Alex?

Alex: I guess what I think my biggest contribution was basically backing up all the other team members, if something needed to be done, I was sort of trying to be in there helping if I could, at no point did I try and sort of sit back on the rail and take it easy, it was like get in there and get it done and I think that can be said for pretty much everybody and that’s what made it such a great experience that everyone was in there committed and pitching in.

Ocean Sailing Podcast: You did lunches really well and you did the radio skits really well. That helped a lot. Because sometimes there’s just jobs you do well and he’ll be like, “Okay, he’s done a great job, just leave him to it and the theory is you rotate everything but doesn’t work that way. So it’s better that na assembly do something well?

Alex: Yeah, the Scheds, that’s obviously first time I’ve ever done Scheds and I really enjoyed it, it was a good experience and because I hadn’t done it, before I was quite happy to put my hand up and say, when you said, “Can you do it?” I said, “Yeah, I’ll do it. Just for the experience,” and it was good.

Ocean Sailing Podcast: Yeah, it was good, it was actually something I was worried, given some of the HF radio problems we were having with people, well being able to hear people. out of there, people we could hear vaguely okay, we ended up having voice, great calls and everything just been…

Alex: Do you remember like that, first radio call it went, I could actually, like sitting down stairs, everything went silent up in the cockpit. Everybody stopped talking and then when I did my skit and they replied, there was clapping and cheering from up in the cock pit there, yes, the HF works.

Ocean Sailing Podcast: With the HF and the satellite phone, and what to do. So we need some awesome technology.

Alex: Yeah, so all the backup plans were ready but it was just some relief, we didn’t have to use them and the HF was clear as a whistle.

Ocean Sailing Podcast: That’s good. Okay, what about you?

Ocean Gem Crew: I hope I contributed just by being there for everyone, willing to do anything, any time, I even went up the front. Call you out once.

Ocean Sailing Podcast: You did.

Ocean Gem Crew: Give him a break but yeah, I don’t sort of say I did anything fantastic or anything like that. I just hope I was there for anyone that needed it.

Ocean Sailing Podcast: Was just the fab you had with the helm for hours on end, happy to sit on the rails, Happy to leach others the route, happy to teach others.

Ocean Gem Crew: It’s part of the job.

Ocean Sailing Podcast: It’s great having you happily do whatever’s required. Some peoples specialise in some things and some people with say, “I’m not even doing that, also, that’s my rig, get out because you don’t. There’s people that are quite protective so it’s good to have people that are willing to just do whatever it takes and change break as well so it’s good. Okay, Steve. 

Steve: Hopefully I could just share my experience and give everyone a bit of a heads up on what to expect, probably not so much in sea state and winds and all that sort of thing on this trip but even just food and sleep and sea sickness and all the stuff that I’ve been through and done on these style races and more so that the unknown becomes the known. Like what I said to Shaya who was concerned about sea sickness said, I’m assuming I’ll actually get sick for the first day or two.

I almost embrace it this days, a way to lose five kilos in three days. I think it’s more of a mind game than anything else, that if you let it get you down and it can destroy it where as if you go, you feel great afterwards and it’s good for weight loss and you can make more after it and have a bit of a drink and then you’re fine. Even those sorts of experiences hopefully that can help everyone else because it can be terrifying thing.

Ocean Sailing Podcast: Yeah, the stuff that you really helped with on the start line was in and around that was excellent. The tin foil trays with the food, how good was that? They just popped dinner in the oven and heat it and come back to it 45 minutes later, not standing over a pot like we historically did.

Steve: All those sorts of things will really be tested when we actually have some rough conditions and then the next step from that is, “Well we’re not eating meals like tonight because it’s too rough. Anything that fits in your hand, that’s what we’re having for dinner. It can be an apple or it could be a quiche or something that fits in the palm of your hand, to protect that from the salty spray and then that’s what you eat. It’s sort of all those things that you’ve learned from having a soggy sandwich or a bowl full of food that has sea water in it. If that could save anyone then happy days.

Ocean Sailing Podcast: You need to paint a better picture if you’re going to get Shaya to come down with this.

Steve: No, she’s got the drugs now, it’s all good.

Ocean Sailing Podcast: Okay, what about you Eli?

Eli: Changing sails, that’s probably the biggest contribution, just getting it up there and changing sails.

Ocean Sailing Podcast: Well that’s a really big contribution, it was great, just give it 100% without doing that.

Ocean Gem Crew: I’d also add to that too. And there was good times to test even though the winds weren’t as high as what we probably expected or, we did have times we were like majorly overpowered and the boat was on the land and it had to do sail changes and all that sort of thing. Both Eli and Sean were up there on a big angle. It’s not so much, “I’m able change the sail but I’m willing to go up at night time when the boat’s on a massive heel and do it, flake the sail, hold on for dear life, do all that because not everyone can do that. So the sail change sort of thing is part of it but the balls to get up there and actually do it is a big part as well. That was a good part of the crew, had that same attitude, it was great.

Ocean Sailing Podcast: To put in context, it’s 75% of the race actually did have wind. It maybe 20% of the race, 50% of the race made lots of wind. Even though the cabinets kind of dominate our thoughts, we were moving 75% of the time. That’s a long 25%. Okay, cool. Shaya, what else do you want to share or comment on in terms of something else you want to share with us? 

Shaya: I guess I just wanted to say thanks for you didn’t, you guys didn’t really know me, I hadn’t done much sailing with you guys and just let me come on the boat and sort of embrace the whole photo side of things and shed your stories and yeah, just really appreciate it. So I guess just thank you.

Ocean Sailing Podcast: Well, you’re welcome, and you’re definitely the nicest journalist we’ve ever met.

Ocean Gem Crew: I’ve only met two.

Ocean Sailing Podcast: Oh no. I’ve met a ew. So thanks for taking such an open minded view of the whole experience because you could easily write a story and say, “This sailing life sucks. You sit there going backwards and it’s boring.

Ocean Gem Crew: I’m pretty sure we thought she was going to do that.

Ocean Sailing Podcast: Okay, Alex?

Alex: I just wanted to share that ocean sailing just being on the water is such a wonderful experience. I had sort of some preconceived ideas about what spending that amount of time on the water would be like but it was just such a positive experience, particularly the nights where we had those nights where it was just stars blazing from horizon to horizon and you can actually hear the slip stream of the water against the hull and no other sound, that was just fantastic. 

For me, one of the big highlights was just the camaraderie that amongst everybody that was sitting on the rail or in the cockpit on watch during those nights. It was just — look, thoroughly enjoyed it. Anybody that ever wants to take up ocean racing, I would highly recommend it to anybody because it’s a chance to get out in nature and something that is such a beautiful place but the same time, we’ve all got a little bit of competitive spirit. You can just sort of keep that going and be out in the wild blue yonder. It’s just fantastic. I just love it.

Ocean Sailing Podcast: That’s great, thank you. What about you Rick?

Rick: Yeah, I think that everyone should try something like this just the experience of, as Alex’s saying, being out there. Whether it’s sailing in the bay or whatever but just sailing full stop I think is an experience that has to be done. I suppose I’m a bit bias that being brought up next to the water but the sailing is the first step and then the racing, so you’re mixing two things together, that’s recommended to anyone and everyone.

Ocean Sailing Podcast: The irony with off shore racing. It’s actually quite relaxing, probably 75% of the time and probably difficult or terrified probably 25% of the time depending on how the weather goes. But it’s not as demanding as racing in Cairns, there’s lots of long periods of quite enjoyable increasing the moment and relaxing really. Okay, thank you. Steve.

Steve: A couple of things. I’d say that one comment is we’re saying all this and we’re saying the wind was bad and woe is me, but we’re actually very blessed to actually go out on a boat with a whole lot of money and sail the seas and see whales and dolphins and we had fun, there was no doubt we had fun. My sailing passion started when I was 12 years old and it came from a dream of my dad that when he had cancer when he was in his 30’s, he said, “If I survive this I’m going to buy a boat and learn to sail.” So he actually did that, he survived and bought a boat, only problem was he realised he didn’t know how to sail.

So that’s where I came into it and he enrolled me to a yacht club and it took off from age 12 onwards and I enjoyed racing and all that sort of thing. It’s something that you can’t just buy a car and go for a drive, you actually have to have the skills and it’s something that most people don’t take on at this stage in life, they got to live it from day to day. That’s probably the first thing that we’re very lucky doing this, there’s no doubt and the fact that Dave supplies the boat and food and fixes things up when we break it and all that sort of thing. 

The second part is, this was really our ideal warm up for the Sydney to Hobart. Spending all that time together. Learning crew watches, learning how to live on a boat, doing all the sail changes all that sort of thing. We’ll probably line up one of the least experienced boat on the line for the Sydney to Hobart this year but we’ve experienced the crew work and everything we need, we don’t have the Sydney to Hobart’s under the belt like some teams have but we know that we’ll stand by each other, we know we can do stuff in heavy times and we know we can get there and we know the boat can get there, that’s the other thing. It’s a well maintained boat. 

Put all that in as well as Dave’s passion for the sport and yeah, you only need to look at what he’s doing in the next two years. He’s either very passionate or close to being insane that there’s no doubt we will be in Hobart for New Year’s Eve this year and this is what we need. I’m sure a few days of heavy wind and all that sort of thing. We’ve had that in off shore race, we just haven’t had it for a long period of time. We’ll get there. It’s great prep for us.

Ocean Sailing Podcast: Yeah, it’s really good point for a preparation point of view because you can do a one day race and virtually no sleep and there’s nothing like a multi-day race where you have to have watch systems, you can’t have one person doing one job the whole time and all this things are getting tested, that’s a really good point. Okay, thank you. Eli.

Eli: The crew work was great and everyone had each other’s backs, you’d be tired or a bit down or get moody because it’s three in the morning, you’ve been awake all night and someone would have your back, send you to bed even when you wouldn’t send yourself to bed. So it was a great test of the crew and I think we will do really well, great skipper, great helmsman, everyone chipped in, everywhere, good test to the gear as well. I found some serious flaws in some of my gear, water proof gloves that aren’t really water proof, stuff like that you know? Yeah. That’s about it, just a good test and I think we did well and it was great, a lot of fun.

Ocean Sailing Podcast: I agree, I mean in terms of just the fact that we great supportive group and had a sense of humour all the way through and even if one person was feeling a bit down six people and get the move back up, if we’ve got that kind of attitude and we were versatile cross trained and for me to try a thing and we supported each other and then anything’s possible really and that kind of group’s going to succeed more for the a lot, kind of succeed all the time, you can’t succeed if you don’t have a good supportive group that works well together and that we are lucky to be able to get out there and great piece of ocean and great climate and sail. 

So if you can have fun and do it with who you enjoy doing it with then that just makes it perfect experience. Okay, I’m going to roll the last two questions into one because just conscious of time. Just sailing with you Shaya, what do you think we need to prepare or pack or do differently or change for the Sydney to Hobart based on anything you might have observed that wasn’t quite as operating as smoothly as it could have or gaps and things that were lacking?

Shaya: No, I think maybe an extra day of food just in case you get stuck out there. That’s pretty much it. The team work was great, I don’t know much about equipment but nothing really failed on us. So it always seemed like pretty perfect on that point. That’s the only thing I can really think of.

Ocean Sailing Podcast: Okay, maybe waterproof camera for you for Sydney to Hobart.

Shaya: Yeah, that would be great. And a water proof notebook as well.

Ocean Sailing Podcast: Yeah. Especially if you’re having to file your [inaudible] before you get there.

Shaya: Yeah.

Ocean Sailing Podcast: No, that won’t. It won’t be a slow race. Okay, cool. Thank you. Alex?

Alex: I thought it was quite funny when we’re thinking about if we’re going to be out here for another night, we’re going to be start running out of food and at one stage, we were talking about fish hooks and fishing lines and someone mentioned that, “Ah there’s fish hooks and lines in the life raft. So if we go hungry, we know we won’t have to break into the life raft and get the fish hook. I’d probably take a hair line and a fish hook in those quiet moments, bring a couple of coral trout or something on board.

Ocean Sailing Podcast: Yeah. Okay, cool. Rick, what will you do differently for Sydney Hobart?

Rick: I think we are working very well together as a team at the moment. There’s no doubt about that. We got on together, I suppose the Sydney to Hobart, and we just have to be prepared for that start up the harbour. Then the finish up to Darwin because that’s the next spot.

Ocean Sailing Podcast: That’s just a repeat actually isn’t it? This about last leg of our race if you’re doing it wrong.

Rick: I’ve got a client that’s done the Sydney to Hobart five times now and he says stick to the right, that’s what he said but we’re not saying that out to everyone else.

Ocean Sailing Podcast: That’s what he said. But we’re not saying that out to anybody else. Yeah, okay, cool, thanks Rick. What else have we got [inaudible] wise?

Rick: I think we’d probably got to make sure we don’t take everything on board from this light, long race into the Hobart, I go a bit crazy with food and because we are going to have heavy times. Food prep, use all the things we learned from this race but also have it designed so that we can sit on the rail for two and three days, eat three meals and all that sort of thing. 

Live routes for our weather. So if we can get live data off the satellite phone because after two days of forecasts that we found on this four day race that the weather changed and our original route was probably not exactly right. So we probably need to adjust that as we go to ensure we are in the right spot. Yeah, we will definitely get the same conditions at time and to be able to do it, that’s a frustratingly slow part of the race. But we’ve learned a lot from that too. Happy days.

Ocean Gem Crew: One other thing probably we do need to pack is a bigger kite because…

Ocean Sailing Podcast: Okay, I’m working on that, we should have it next week. Yeah, definitely sail more conditions that would even help. Okay. Eli?

Eli: I’ll probably re-waterproof my waterproof gloves just to make sure.

Ocean Sailing Podcast: You’re quite attached to those one. 

Eli: Yeah, I’m feeling a little dry and then they’re wet and then just horrible. Nothing really, a couple of small changes with the way we run lines on the bow the knots we use, we are going to need to get the spinnaker sheets and braces spliced or using other night because it can jam in the end of the spinnaker pole and when we try to jive, I can’t get the line to drop out. I’ve looked into it and I know there’s another knot we can use.

Ocean Sailing Podcast: We just spliced them.

Eli: I think we had two spots blowing.

Ocean Sailing Podcast: The two part. Yeah.

Eli: I think so because they’re all bounce now which I think. Anyway, the ones on the brace are definitely by one and they get jammed every time and that’s not working, we need to get them re-spliced or is there a few other knots you can use that are a bit larger which hopefully won’t jam in the end like the bow one does?

Ocean Sailing Podcast: Yeah, let’s do that, because splice pull out?

Eli: No, not really, actually be stronger.

Ocean Sailing Podcast: The spinnaker part, and straight away and it’s not a good thing right?

Eli: No, they should be stronger than a knot. So if they’re done properly, done on this. They’re probably a fair bit older than the average knot wind they blew out.

Ocean Sailing Podcast: Yeah, at least 12 months old.

Eli: Okay, that’s good.

Ocean Sailing Podcast: In fact, one of them we lost overboard and one to be replaced it’s pretty sit them on top. Yeah, splices are all fresh this time.

Eli: Yeah, they shouldn’t be blowing out.

Ocean Sailing Podcast: Okay. We picked up from the safety order. We’re going to add latches to our floor boards so when we’re upside down.

Eli: “When we’re upside down.”

Ocean Sailing Podcast: So we don’t fall on our heads. In case we’re upside down. Saloon beds, we have to put some nets up on the bed so we got 10 foot off this so when you’re sleeping on one, take it off and leave it on the table.

Eli: Yeah.

Ocean Sailing Podcast: Maybe a little lower table quite a bit of sort of storage area and then we’re going to put some stretching and hitting up on the fridge freezer. You can get nearly up on top and clip it on and all that stuff up the top doesn’t come flying off if we have a bit of a knockdown.

Ocean Gem Crew: The cradle for the life raft too.

Ocean Sailing Podcast: Oh yeah, the cradle.

Ocean Gem Crew: A cradle for the Dan boy.

Eli: Yeah, rest in peace. The other thing was more area to hang up the crew gear.

Ocean Sailing Podcast: yes.

Eli: We sort of ran out of room and have the crew gear everywhere, we’re going to have an extra four people on board for the Hobart.

Ocean Sailing Podcast: We’ll have to reorganise that. Okay, has anybody got anything else they want to add before we wrap up?

Ocean Gem Crew: I think it was just a really good experience for everyone, everyone enjoyed it and we just like to say thank you David.

Eli: Yeah.

Ocean Sailing Podcast: Pleasure.

Ocean Gem Crew: How about we turn it back on Dave? What’s your highs and lows of the race and what did you get out of it?

Ocean Sailing Podcast: Haven’t you noticed I’ve been dodging answers? The high points were definitely the starting a fleet of boats like that and getting off to a great start and staying out of trouble, which we said we were going to stay out of trouble. It’s along race. We didn’t have to get a great start. We got a great start, just the atmosphere was amazing at the club, seeing the history of the club of all these photos of all these racing at 9h45, that’s pretty cool. Yeah, I loved it.

I’ve done lots of sailing and it wasn’t racing with lack of wind and persistence pays off and I’ve done lots of racing where you don’t win because you win because the other guys gave up. You managed to just get yourself up the front of the fleet and before you know it, it’s running away. That was high. Just the whole crew, just the way we work together and gone on well and sort of the funny side of some of the most frustrating crazy setbacks that we had, that was really enjoyable.

In terms of low points, yeah, probably the only low point really and it wasn’t really a low point. It was just we sailed really well when we had plenty of breeze and saying when it started raining that there’s lighter boats we got to be moving away and they had the same challenges as us relative to the other competitors. Not really about testing ourselves but being able to say, “We started, we finished, and we had more than our fair share of reasonable breeze, to test ourselves. The moments where we did, we were climbing up the ladder and when the wind stopped we sort of received it gain.

Here’s what we need to get out of it. The boats in good shape, we had a great race, everyone worked together extremely well. At least we know now if you tweak a few things and then we’re in good shape on the next. It was excellent. The fact that it wasn’t easy was I thought was a good thing because otherwise if everything just goes easily and everything goes to plan, it’s easy not to look for what you can do better, it’s easy to gloss over some of the cracks but usually when things aren’t going well, the cracks show up. Especially with people and personalities. Especially when people get tired and frustrated and grumpy. I was quite impressed that we didn’t really have hardly any of that at all. Virtually none, which was just a reflection of everybody’s character and commitment to what we’re doing. So yeah, I thought it was great and the food was good, that helped a lot.

Ocean Gem Crew: It was unreal.

Ocean Sailing Podcast: Good food at sea when you’re racing or cruising. Good food’s a highlight or a really big low light, so having good food was good. Shaya, anything else you want to add before we wrap up?

Shaya: No, that was all.

Ocean Sailing Podcast: Okay. Thanks everybody, thanks for the race, thanks for coming out tonight for a couple of hours and having a chat, thanks for appearing on the Ocean Sailing Podcast, this will be the fastest kind of in the can to live, probably sometime [inaudible]. Looking forward to all the racing we’ve got ahead together over the coming months and I’m really excited about that.

Ocean Gem Crew: Bring on Sydney to Hobart.

Ocean Sailing Podcast: Thanks for all of you.

Ocean Gem Crew: Thank you.

Ocean Gem Crew: Thanks David.

Ocean Sailing Podcast: Okay, thanks Shaya, Enjoy the rest of your holiday.

Shaya: Thank you. See you next time.

Ocean Sailing Podcast: See you next time, we’re looking forward to that

Ocean Gem Crew: You’re roped in now.

Ocean Sailing Podcast: Don’t worry, if we don’t hear from you, you’ll hear from us.

Shaya: Okay, sounds good, all right. Thank you, have a good night.

Ocean Sailing Podcast: Thank you, you too. Take care.

Ocean Gem Crew: See you.

Ocean Sailing Podcast: Cool.

Ocean Gem Crew: Unreal.

Interviewer: David Hows

Episode 17: Gerry Fitzgerald Show Notes

Ocean Sailing Podcast: So this week we are with Gerry Fitzgerald and we are going to spend this episode talking about marine safety training and we’re going to drill into Gerry’s background, a lifetime of maritime experience and life involved in all things related to the ocean. So Gerry welcome along to this week’s episode of the Ocean Sailing Podcast. 

Gerry Fitzgerald: Thank you, good to be here. 

Ocean Sailing Podcast: Thanks for agreeing to have a chat. My personal experience is I went through a number of your training courses two and a half years ago and I found it fascinating but as 45 a year old student, what I found even more fascinating was many of the stories that you shared with us in terms of your personal experience in life and on the ocean and some of your adventures and it made it easy to learn and it made it really fascinating. 

I could have spent those training courses just listening to your life stories to be honest and not the course material if I had a choice. So take me back to when your life and the ocean kind of converged, and how did you get the maritime bug in your blood? 

18 foot skiffs in action on Sydney Habour

Gerry Fitzgerald: I guess my father, growing up in Brisbane, near the Brisbane river inspired me to a large extent. He sailed 18 foot skiffs on the river prior to the war and then a colleague of mine came by an old sailing boat under a house somewhere. He lived at Norman Park, the river was very handy to him. We got some tar and tied up the hulls and worked out how to stand up the mast and away we went. I guess my father and my future brother in law were inspiring in that sense, in that they got me onto the water. 

Ocean Sailing Podcast: Okay and where did things lead to from there?

Gerry Fitzgerald: From there, I was a frequent Gold Coaster and that Kirra for many years, Kirra Beach. They were sailing off the beach, catamarans developed by Lindsey Cunningham and the quick cats were able to surf the surf prior to Mr. Hobie Alter coming on the scene and away we went. So I saved up some money and bought myself a quick cat, sailed it around a number of prices up and down the Queensland coast, in fact offshore, and then got into tornado catamarans as an Olympic class. 

Ocean Sailing Podcast: Wow. 

Gerry Fitzgerald: And there was a tornado fleet based at Kirra Beach, five or six tornado catamarans and away we went, we raced off Kirra. Ultimately as life progressed, I stuck with the tornado class and competed in regattas internationally and nationally and also at the state level. 

Ocean Sailing Podcast: Okay and did you have a day job? 

Gerry Fitzgerald: Yeah, I had a day job. I had a day job which morphed into working for Carlton & United Breweries and working for Carlton got me traveling a fair bit and I ended up being transferred to Cairns back in the late 60’s at the Cairns Brewery and I introduced tornado catamarans to Cairns and got involved in the administration of yachting up in that neck of the woods. So I really enjoyed developing a fleet up there as well. So we had — well I think we might have had 15 tornado class catamarans sailing off the beach at Ellis Beach up in Cairns over a period of time. 

Ocean Sailing Podcast: That’s a pretty respectable size fleet too, that’s a good size fleet. 

Gerry Fitzgerald: Indeed and it was at the end of the world regardless, regardless of the fact that I had a brewery there and a damn good one too. We campaigned from Cairns and we travelled to Perth, towing our boats behind us for regattas over there. Adelaide, Melbourne, Sydney of course and here in Brisbane. But unfortunately my skills didn’t developed as they needed to in the tornado class. There were damn fine sight. 

Ocean Sailing Podcast: So you weren’t Olympic material then? 

Gerry Fitzgerald: I certainly wasn’t Olympic material, but I was a willing participant and got to meet a lot of good guys. 

Ocean Sailing Podcast: That’s great. So how did things sort of evolve to the point where you made a living out of being on the water? 

Queenslands Kirra Beach

Gerry Fitzgerald: I got involved in offshore multihull racing in the 70’s. So racing 40 foot, 60 foot trimaran and catamarans. Invitations came from various boat owners and back in the 70’s, offshore multihull sailing was really highly developed and highly refined. The multihulls were more highly developed in terms of design and enthusiasm for offshore multihull racing fostered mainly by the Multihull Yacht Club of Queensland but also other multihull fleets in Sydney led to regular races between Sydney and Mooloolaba. These were conducted annually. Brisbane to Gladstone of course. Gladstone to Cairns multihull races were regularly conducted and attracted a lot of media attention mainly because of the fact that they were breaking records. 

Ocean Sailing Podcast: The need for speed. 

Gerry Fitzgerald: The need for speed, that’s exactly as it was. We were on the edge of development in terms of design, wing mast, rotating masts, foils were all experimented with. 

Ocean Sailing Podcast: Wow as far back then? That’s pretty amazing. 

Gerry Fitzgerald: As far back then, yeah. But for a whole range of reasons, growth in the offshore multi hull fleet declined as technology caught up with monohulls and monohulls of course are a lot cheaper to build and maintain. 

Ocean Sailing Podcast: Easier to sail for a lot of people. 

Gerry Fitzgerald: For a lot of people, it’s much easier to sail, yeah and they didn’t have the risk. So I guess then, I had a day job in the 70’s, which was in the liquor industry. I invested in a couple of pubs, which provided me with the resources to spend more time sailing. I got into monohull racing back in the early 80’s doing Sydney to Hobart Yacht Races and so forth and then I realised that I needed some commercial qualifications if I was going to get into maritime on a full time bases. 

So I went along to TAFE and did a master class five, then went to work in a maritime industry driving 24 metre vessels, both power driven vessels and sailing vessels. This led me into a career that took me into a lot of places as a paid employee, driving boats from the equator all the way down to Antarctica. 

Ocean Sailing Podcast: Wow. 

Rediscovering Mawson's Hut in Antartica after it was close up in 1913. Photo: Reuters

Gerry Fitzgerald: Yeah so I got an opportunity to become first mate on a sailing boat going to Mawson’s Hut. A 16 metre aluminium sailing boat, which has been designed by Ben Lexcen who was an around the world single handed racer and it was converted into an expedition vessel and off we sailed south of Hobart, 1800 miles down to Antarctica. It was relatively easy to do back in the 90’s because the regulators weren’t overly concerned about the adventurous types. 

Ocean Sailing Podcast: They just let you go, right? 

Gerry Fitzgerald: Yes, they just let me go. Or let us go, more correctly. We spent months down there doing various jobs opening up Mawson’s Hut. Mawson’s Hut was fascinating, a time warp from 1913 and exactly, it had a lot of ice inside but it was as it was when it was abandoned when Mawson came back to Australia. 

Ocean Sailing Podcast: So I don’t know the background of Mawson’s Hut but what led to it being closed, and what led to it being reopened? 

Gerry Fitzgerald: Okay, well it was built by Mawson to study the location of the south magnetic pole. So a number of scientists went down there, they set up a research base in 1913 and Mawson led the expedition. He also did some inland exploration, which was very high risk in those days and subsequently after a period of time when the research was completed, Mawson came back to Australia and consequently, the South Pole was conquered. 

Mawson had worked out the mathematics of the movement of the South Magnetic Pole, which is where your compass needle points, and the hut was abandoned. It was intermittently used over a long period of time and if anyone ever gets a chance to go to Hobart, then the Mawson Hut has been recreated in Hobart and it is really fascinating. Of course, people travelled in those days under sail as what he did and it was a pretty adventurous trip. 

Subsequently, the Government of Australia has restricted individuals from heading down there because of possible danger to the ecology and of course people. If you go to Mawson’s Hut you want to go inside. It’s secured, it’s well locked, we had permission to go in and do various things. It’s fascinating to say the least. 

Mawson’s Huts expedition conservator Peter Maxwell stands in the workshop section of Mawson’s Hut. Photo: Reuters

Ocean Sailing Podcast: And the research that he did is that still serviced today in terms of compass variation calculations? 

Gerry Fitzgerald: Yes, absolutely. Of course all basic recreational navigator understand variation and the adjustment that has to be made to bearings, to use the charts that we have been using for a long time, paper charts. So “variation” as the name suggests, just is adjusted in an annual basis on the charts that have been printed and the movement is well-known now and we all make our annual adjustments to paper charts. 

Many of us have moved away from paper charts and we’ve gone into electronica where it would be fair to say that most of the thinking done for us in relation of the mathematics of navigation. Flinders of course had a lot to do with discovering deviation and deviation is caused by the magnetic field on board the ships was sailing on them. Flinders noticed that when nails came into use to build ships, the metal in the nails were affecting the ship’s compass. 

So there had to be another adjustment made for navigational purposes and these days, deviation on board a vessels, we are sailing on is addressed by having a deviation charted prepared by a licensed compass adjustor and the licensed compass adjustor’s prepare a deviation chart for us and they give it to the owner of the boat and he applies the deviation if he is using the ship’s compass for navigation. But these days with electronica, things don’t require as much as in depth understanding as to what’s happening on the boat we’re sailing on. 

Ocean Sailing Podcast: I was going to ask you about that and one of my questions or comments is the complacency that GPS creates and there’s a whole group of sailors now sailing keel boats that have never actually done anything but tune on a chart plotter and recreational parks are always taught to look for potential landing strips whenever they’re flying along in case of engine failure but I don’t think sailors, you know, some sailors would quickly be in trouble if they lost their electronics or their engine and are you seeing a decline in seamanship skills and with what technology is helping to provide or solve for us? 

Australian geologist and Antarctic explorer Douglas Mawson (1882 – 1958) Photo: Getty

Gerry Fitzgerald: I am seeing a massive dependency on electronica to navigate your way either up the coast, up the river or across the bay as the case might be and this is a dangerous dependency. We all know people who wouldn’t get out of bed every morning unless their app told them that it was Tuesday at 9 o’clock or whatever and these days, there are so many apps that give us a false sense of security. 

The replacement of electronic charts, from paper chart to electronic charts, is almost universal and people have got their whole life on their tablet in front of them and if they become dependent on it and power goes down or the tablet goes off or went overboard or whatever or the driver of the tablet is not able to drive the tablet, then the vessel is going to be left figuratively rudderless so to speak and we’re seeing lots of electronically induced accidents occurring. 

So if one has got navigation — can buy a navigation app, install it on their laptop computer, connect it up to the fluxgate compass, then we become totally dependent upon that particular method of navigation. We are seeing accidents occurring where mariners are following the electronic chart, turning on the auto pilot and then watching a movie or reading a book and we’re having a faster boat sailing up behind a slower boat because they’re on exactly the same electronic track. 

So there are lots and lots of those accidents occurring. The East Coast of America comes immediately to mind, a high traffic area. I haven’t come across those sorts of accidents occurring on the east coast of Australia at this time but what I certainly have noticed is an absolute dependence on electronic navigation and there are some terrific, absolutely terrific innovations and one of the major innovations, in fact the greatest electronic innovation in my lifetime has been the introduction of AIS. 

Many people are buying AIS now to alert them to the fact that there is a vessel in close proximity. An AIS provides a range in bearing to that particular target. An AIS can provide closest point of approach, time of closest point of approach. In fact can provide the identification of the vessel and this has been enormously helpful to the recreational boating community. Pardon my cough. 

Ocean Sailing Podcast: It’s okay, I had it last week and just so folks know a little bit of background noise, we’re at the Royal Queensland Yacht Squadron. We are sitting outside on the grass around the back of the training building, sort of in the sun but as a result, there’s the odd vehicles, and the odd sailor, and the odd bird in the garden, so there’s a little bit of a background noise. 

So I was going to ask you about AIS because I mean on one hand if you’re going offshore as a sailor, it gives you a lot of confidence that 60 minutes out you start to see on the AIS that the heading, speed and closest point of approach and time with AIS, as opposed to you’re out there and it’s dark and there’s five metre waves and suddenly a ship appears out of the darkness and that whole risk of being run down. 

But I also read recently that there’s a view that AIS should become more mainstream and more wide spread for recreational mariners, but a commercial ship captain said, “Well if there ends up being that much out there, I’m just going to filter out the smaller boats because I can’t handle the clutter on my screen and I’m more interested in the big ships and they’re just going to have to watch out for me, I’m not going to watch out for them.” 

Example of how AIS occurrs

Gerry Fitzgerald: That is correct, vessels over — commercial vessels from 12 metres up to 24 metres in certain areas of operation must be fitted with AIS and of course, all big ships are fitted with AIS mandatorily under the Global Maritime Distress and Safety System. What you said is absolutely correct. Small boats fitted with AIS can filter out a whole range of information if they choose to but there’s very few cruising sailors who have installed AIS that don’t fully utilise AIS as a tool. 

Ocean Sailing Podcast: It’s a great tool. I found it fantastic. I think you just can’t take the assumption that just because people can see you as well that you can assume that they’re going to look out for you and stay out of your way. You’ve still got to use it as a lookout tool and take responsibility. I think thats the lesson with AIS. 

Gerry Fitzgerald: Absolutely, we find that in our radar courses where small boats fitted with radar just don’t appreciate the difficulty of interpreting the radar signal. Small boats fitted with radar don’t understand their legal obligations if they’ve got radar on board their vessel. The obligations under the International Regulation for the Prevention of Collisions at Sea and very few small boat sailors who have spent the money on radar appreciate that they have to know what action they should take under rule 19. 

If they detect by radar alone the presence of another vessel, there are certain things they can do, certain things they must not do and they will be held to account for the result of anything that occurs where they’re using radar alone to detect the presence of another vessel. Now the good thing about AIS is, A, it’s about one sixth of the price, B, it requires no knowledge of the cull rigs, C, proximity alarm sound, D, the identity of the vessel that’s it’s a threat is clearly displayed on the AIS system. 

So it is a major, major step forward for recreational sailors and I commend it and I say, “Small boat sailors forget radar, start with AIS.” If you’re going to put a radar, then you need to understand what your legal obligations are and its limitations more importantly. 

Ocean Sailing Podcast: So I’ve got radar and I’ve got AIS and I’ve had my sailmaker tried talking me into taking my radar off and saying, “If you’re racing, you shouldn’t have radar. It gets in the way,” and I’m adamant I need to keep it because sometimes we’re out on the broad-water at night and the radar is fantastic when you’re motoring along and you know full well that there may be boats in the channel, boats without lights on. 

Radar’s a great tool but also, I’ve had instances with my chart plotter where my GPS location is 20 metres left of a channel marker but in reality, I am 20 metres to the right and so I have also learned that with GPS, and it’s not the norm but at times it can be 20, 30, 50 metres out and again your radar with indexing where you are in relation to the land around you and overlaying that on every chart, it gives you a lot of confidence at night too. So I’m a bit of a fan of both and I found them both in different ways give you some great tools at night. 

Gerry Fitzgerald: Indeed. So AIS is not fitted to islands or reefs but it can be fitted and indeed, it can be fitted to navigational marks to provide a greater degree of accuracy for night time navigation, indeed in daytime navigation but AIS will tell you who’s out there particularly commercial vessels, larger vessels. 

Ocean Sailing Podcast: Which you really want to know when you’re a small boat. 

Gerry Fitzgerald: Well you do want to know, particularly if you’re going into places like Gladstone, particularly Mackay, Townsville, Cairns. 

Ocean Sailing Podcast: And just anywhere of east coast of Australia if you’re out there. 

Gerry Fitzgerald: Where there’s high traffic. 

Ocean Sailing Podcast: That’s the five to 20 mile zone. It’s like a motorway sometimes. 

Gerry Fitzgerald: Indeed it is. 

Ocean Sailing Podcast: Okay and I did your one day radar training course, which I found — and I already had my radar for two years but I found that once I learned how to use it properly, it just changed how I use it, but also I started to understand why some of the things I was seeing that didn’t make sense, did make sense and it was a sea clutter and some of the things too. I found that really useful. So take me back to some of your other adventures? From memory, I recollect that you’ve done some contract away for the place and for the Australian Navy. 

Gerry Fitzgerald: Yes, during the Solomon Islands Insurrection, I was working on a 500 tonner as the master of a ship that did a whole range of things around the Solomon Islands. It was carrying copper, it was running steel out of Bougainville out of the old copper mine workings, salvaging steel and so forth and so I developed a pretty good understanding of how the Solomon Islands-Bougainville area worked. 

I happen to be in Honiara one night when I noticed some Australian naval activity, a little more than normal. All Australians were called to the high commission where we were briefed on the fact that the Australian government was going to undertake an operation where the military and the Australian Federal Police were going to restore law and order. 

Ocean Sailing Podcast: Right by stealth. 

Gerry Fitzgerald: Law and order — no, just by the sheer force, the presence of the Australian Army in uniform. When the Australian Federal Police arrived, they had some immediate priorities obviously but because the Solomon Islands is so diverse in terms of its population spread through various islands, they realised they needed boats to travel around and to locate and to transfer troops and so forth, to various areas. 

So the company that I was working for was employed to provide a police boat service and are also employed to provide a service running troops and equipment to various locations within the Solomon Islands. I had qualifications that would allow me to operate vessels of a certain size. The Navy were unable to operate in certain areas in peace time. Solomon’s being in peace time so they employed civilian contractors. 

So I was the first Australian Federal Police boat driver. We charted a 23 metre vessel and put it to work as a police boat. So I worked under Ben McDevitt who was an Australian Federal Police officer in charge of the operation. So we ran the police around the places where the police had to go then. We ran troops on that boat, armed troops into places where there were problems. Dropped them on the shore at nighttime and they did what the military and the police do in these circumstances. So I had a very interesting, to say the least, range of work over a period of a number of years, in the first three years of the Solomon Islands Insurrection. 

Ocean Sailing Podcast: Did you faced any hostile situations or risk type situations? 

Gerry Fitzgerald: Plenty, yeah. We faced a number of operations where in the early days, the rascals boarded our boat and tried to hold us up. That’s before it became a police operation. We had just to deal with that as best as you can. It varied by circumstance, for instance one night we had three guys board the vessel with an attempt to rob the safe and steal food and do various other things. 

We had basic security protocols in place onboard the ship and consequently, we knew they were on board and then we harassed them into a corner and overcame the problem and lots of other similar circumstances. We had people from a particularly island group board the ship we’re on, The Neptune Gail, and we were there to drop supplies off to them, a hundred or so people came on board and they had a sit in, they weren’t going to leave the boat. Now very difficult for us, unarmed, to deal with that problem but I was told by my employer not to come back with anybody other than the 30 employees on the boat. 

Ocean Sailing Podcast: So the headcount was a hundred more men. 

Gerry Fitzgerald: Yeah so we had to deal with that over for a protracted period of time and that was all about negotiation. 

Ocean Sailing Podcast: Right and did they get hungry eventually and go on their way? 

Gerry Fitzgerald: They got pretty hungry eventually, but we dealt with the problem through negotiation and it was pretty challenging. 

Ocean Sailing Podcast: It sounds like it’s pretty challenging and wide ranging kind of work. I mean did you find that satisfying? Did you find it difficult and frustrating at times? 

Gerry Fitzgerald: No day of sea is ever the same, of course. It doesn’t matter where you are. Up there at that time, each day would present four five significant challenges that might be of a security or safety issue. So understanding the perils that seek and present was overlaid by the perils of an unstable environment, which ramped my skill sets. 

Ocean Sailing Podcast: Well I was going to say, just being an everyday person on the ocean, I have experience and judgment and decision making. All those things are important but that takes it to a whole other level that you’re not even looking for the problems that are landing in your lap each day. 

Gerry Fitzgerald: Indeed but all in all, it all came back to seamanship and people management, which encouraged me to continue maritime studies remotely and through the Australian Maritime College down in Launceston. So I ended up doing a wide ranging job on both power driven vessels in that context, in the military context and on sailing vessels. So I went away and I spent a period of time getting a square rig endorsement on the master’s ticket and sail square rigged ships including the replica of the Batavia, 1800 ton, which was brought out to Australia in 2000 to coincide with the Olympics. It was the home base of the Dutch Olympic team and it’s only ever sailed on a number of voyages here in Australia out of Sydney Heads and at the end of the Olympics, it was put on a low loader and it was transported by sea back to Holland. 

Ocean Sailing Podcast: It weighs 1800 tons?

Gerry Fitzgerald: 1800 tons, built by traditional methods to the traditional design of the original design so with adzes and no nails and it was incredible. We sailed it, took it off, towed it with a couple of tugs out of Sydney Harbour during the Olympics and engaged in square rigger activities with the endeavour that we had a naval battle at sea..

Ocean Sailing Podcast: Wow, how fascinating. 

Gerry Fitzgerald: …purely under sail. Yes, it was enormously enjoyable. 

Ocean Sailing Podcast: And what sort of speeds do you move at on a boat that size? The speed’s probably not even part of the equation I guess. 

Gerry Fitzgerald: No, the speed is not part of the equation but I think the fastest we got the thing going at was about seven or eight knots. 

Ocean Sailing Podcast: Oh, that’s pretty respectable given the size of it. 

Gerry Fitzgerald: Yeah, 1800 ton. Getting it moving is the basic problem and the maritime authorities were very reticent to let the Batavia loose in Sydney Harbour. 

Ocean Sailing Podcast: You wouldn’t stop it in a hurry, would you? 

Gerry Fitzgerald: No and there was 7,000 sheets on that boat, 7,000 lines that had to be manoeuvred to sail the vessel. Now each of those lines relate to a particular mast and each of those lines had a Dutch name. So 7,000 different names for different lines that did different things. Now, I was captain of the bowsprit and we had about 100 lines to adjust the four headsails. Let me tell you, Workplace Health and Safety issues into those context went out the window. But there was a captain of the mainmast and the captain of the foremast and the captain of the mizzenmast and there were all Dutchmen. 

Ocean Sailing Podcast: What an amazing structure and a whole organisation to run a ship. 

Gerry Fitzgerald: Indeed, but it was so rewarding, so rewarding. So it was a pleasure and a joy. I was the master of the Windeward Bound, which was a Tasmanian based square rigger and I was doing my master’s sea time for 24 metre square rigged vessels during the Olympic period. So they called on all of the square rigged skill sets from Australia to get the Batavia up and running, which was the only period in its existence. It’s on display on the hard, I think, in Holland. I haven’t been there, back to see it but fascinating. Thoroughly recommend going onboard and having a look. 

Ocean Sailing Podcast: That would be a sight to see. 

Gerry Fitzgerald: Yes, it is a sight to see. All flack sails, very, very heavy. Very big loads. Anyway, so be it. It was thoroughly enjoyable. 

Ocean Sailing Podcast: Wow, and just completely diametrically the opposite of being in the Solomon Islands on peace keeping support duties. 

Gerry Fitzgerald: Yeah, well the square rig came before the Solomon Islands but I had the opportunity to sail to Antarctica again out of South America, out of Ushuaia, onboard Spirit of Sydney, which had been purchased by a new owner and he took me over there to do the first couple of voyages down to the Riviera of the Antarctic, which is the Antarctic Peninsula and that was a different part of Antarctica, totally different marine life and pretty Spartan way to go to Antarctica too I might add, the Spirit of Sydney. 

Ocean Sailing Podcast: Not a lot of luxuries on board. 

Gerry Fitzgerald: Not many luxuries indeed. Stalactites were hanging inside the boat off there.

Ocean Sailing Podcast: Right, that is cold. 

Gerry Fitzgerald: Yeah that is cold. Nevertheless, it was all part of maritime experience and when I decided that enough was enough in terms of taking random commercial jobs wherever they might be in the world. I decided that I needed to spend more time at home and I cobbled together my qualifications and applied to became a training centre. The inspiration for which was the six deaths in the 1998 Sydney to Hobart Yacht Race. 

So it took about five years for me, up to about 2005, to get the necessary qualifications and accreditations to run a training business for recreational sailors and for commercial sailors as well and that in there has morphed into my business which is based here in Brisbane. We have six basic products centring around sea safety. So we have developed a marine first aid course for mariners, I’m not sure whether you did that one? 

Ocean Sailing Podcast: I did that one and it would be fair to say that the image of the de-gloving of the fingers is still etched in my mind and I saw it on the home page of your website when I was looking at it yesterday too. So it’s a very good course. 

Gerry Fitzgerald: Yeah so all of the six different products require five different levels of accreditation, working now as a registered training organisation within the Australian Maritime Safety Authority, a gambit of training products has been tedious, restrictive but absolutely vital for trainers to fit within that context and your listeners might not know but from the first of January 2017, the states will have no longer authority for commercial maritime activities within state jurisdictions. 

It’s all been handed over to Canberra. The Australian Maritime Safety Authority will be responsible for all commercial boat operations and they’ve been transitioning to this for five or six years. 

Ocean Sailing Podcast: And do you think that’s more positive than negative? 

Gerry Fitzgerald: Oh absolutely. The one jurisdiction with AMSA is a better environment and it gives better outcomes in terms of safe operation of vessels, in terms of qualifications, in terms of survey standards. It’s now uniform, whereas previously, you could get a qualification in Queensland and you won’t be able to work in New South Wales. 

Ocean Sailing Podcast: Which is kind of ironic isn’t it? Given our population base, but also if you’re running a training organisation, then there’s opportunity as well to be able to, if you can provide qualifications that they can use nationally, those will get you opportunities too, right? 

Gerry Fitzgerald: Exactly and the problem was you could be qualified to teach a master five here in Queensland but you couldn’t teach it at Twin Heads because you couldn’t use it and you weren’t accredited by the New South Wales government. 

Ocean Sailing Podcast: Which is kind of like red tape gone wrong. 

Gerry Fitzgerald: Yeah, crazy. Crazy stuff. So it’s a very positive move in my view. 

Ocean Sailing Podcast: Okay and the courses that you run, so your sea safety and survival. 

Gerry Fitzgerald: We run sea safety and survival for recreational boaters. That’s mandatory for people that race to Hobart. It’s mandatory for people, for a percentage of people on every boat that does a Brisbane to Gladstone or Keppel Island race or Darwin to Ambon. 

Ocean Sailing Podcast: Sydney to Gold Coast. 

Gerry Fitzgerald: Sydney to Gold Coast or Sydney to Coffs Harbour as the case might be. So that’s a recreational course of two days. Interesting times in recreational boating. We’re finding decreasing number of participants in organised yacht races. So the number of people that are actually going out there and racing is declining. There are a number of reasons for this. 

Ocean Sailing Podcast: It goes hand in hand with increasing compliance I suspect as part of it. 

Gerry Fitzgerald: Yes, it is related to compliance. Compliance is related to safe operation by participants. So every time there is a death or loss of a vessel in an organised event, that is an organised Yachting Australian event, the regulators do what the regulators do best and the regulators might write more regulations. There is no regulation that is introduced that is cost free and consequently, people say, “Bugger this, this is enough for me. I can’t afford to keep sailing with this investment if it’s going to cost me this much.” 

Ocean Sailing Podcast: And it’s a time cost too for a lot of people who are just sailing recreationally, just with keeping up with it, let alone the money cost. 

Gerry Fitzgerald: Major time cost. So participation rights are directly related to compliance as you’ve correctly pointed out but they are also directly to the economy. So if I’m a panel beater and the economy is going well in that particular segment, every panel be to buys himself a racing boat and off they go. However we’re now facing an uncertain economic future. I’m not sure which way it will go myself. 

But what’s happening is that racing sailors are being replaced on sea safety courses by retirees, grey nomads who bought themselves the dream. The dream is, buy a boat and sail to Hamilton Island. Buy a boat and sail to the Solomon’s. Buy a boat and sail to Indonesia or further afield. So lots of recreational sailors are now attending these courses. 

Because they now realise having spent half a mil on a sailing boat, a cruising boat realised they really need to know a little more than what they thought they needed to know. So radio courses, first aid courses, diesel engine courses, radar courses are all part of the skill sets that an informed offshore sailor has in his intellectual tool kit to ensure that the boat gets to where he wants it to go. 

Ocean Sailing Podcast: Are you seeing couples doing these courses? 

Gerry Fitzgerald: Absolutely. 

Ocean Sailing Podcast: So not just the male, “I know everything me and my wife will be fine sitting in the cockpit as long as I don’t fall off the boat or get incapacitated” type attitude. 

Gerry Fitzgerald: That was the transition. So the transition was the guy retires, buys a boat, has either a lot of knowledge about yachting because he’s come out of racing or sailing so he’s made an informed decision. The majority make decisions of the heart and of course, they used to sail as a kid so they don’t need to know. So they send their partner along and she attends the course and then she comes back and she says, “I’m not going unless you go to these courses and get some qualifications,” which has been quite hilarious. 

So now we see, there was a start seven or eight years ago of cruising couples doing rigger courses that require qualification as an outcome and of course, where mom and dad both operate in ignorance, it only takes one voyage with wind over 15 knots for the uncertainty to start to bubble to the surface as to whether they’re really equipped, as you would know, to do the dream voyage. 

Ocean Sailing Podcast: Yeah and if you’re not confident, especially in a yacht, a bit too much heel angle and a bit of sea sickness and somebody gets a bang on the head and the confidence and the drummers can be shattered immediately, particularly for the uninformed. 

Gerry Fitzgerald: Yes, that’s right. There’s a great move amongst cruising couples to go to multihulls, which gives me great joy. 

Ocean Sailing Podcast: Given your long time passion for multihulls? 

Gerry Fitzgerald: Yeah and multihulls are faster and of course, they’re far more stable but they’re proportionately more expensive as well. There’s a definite move for cruising couples to go into multihulls and cruising multihulls really do provide the opportunity to cover distance quickly and live in a degree of comfort. 

Ocean Sailing Podcast: Well they’re almost like an apartment, the living space in them. I mean my wife would love to have that space in the whole sit flat in an anchorage kind of concept. It’s probably not right now for me but you know, you see — I do see all the positives. 

Gerry Fitzgerald: Yeah and lots and lots and lots of positives. The typical mono-huller, probably doesn’t morph into multihulls simply because he doesn’t know what he doesn’t know and he knows what he knows and he sticks with his knitting, so to speak. 

Ocean Sailing Podcast: It’s the generational issue that’s a part of it too, right? 

Gerry Fitzgerald: It is a major generational issue and I might say that there are certain yacht clubs in Australia who avoid involvement in multihulls for a whole range of reasons. Some practical because their marina will only take half the number of boats, etcetera. But that general awareness, particularly America’s cup. 

Ocean Sailing Podcast: That’s helping a lot.

Gerry Fitzgerald: Yes, it has certainly helped. 

Ocean Sailing Podcast: When the kids started saying, “Hey dad can we get a cool boat like one of those catamarans?” That might change it. 

Gerry Fitzgerald: Exactly, exactly. Yeah, so I guess the big challenge are regulatory changes. Regulatory changes are driven by deaths in yachting. I am happy to say that deaths in yachting, in organised yacht races, have been declining and we haven’t had a death in an organised yacht race since Pricewaterhouse Coopers, Andrew Short and Sally Gordon died in the Flinders Islet Race. Category two race

Ocean Sailing Podcast: Yeah, that was a tragic story. 

Gerry Fitzgerald: But we are still getting deaths in yachting, recreational yachting, occurring essentially because people don’t know what they’re doing and they’re occurring on the return legs. So if we do a race to a particular destination, then when we have to get the boat home and there were always time pressures and crew pressures. 

The crew pressures are pressures that occur because we accept people to bring the boat home under the clock, to be home by a certain day. They don’t have the same skill sets onboard racing boats. Now, we had a death in January this year where they skipper of the boat was washed overboard in five metre seas and 50 knots of wind and he wasn’t wearing a life jacket harness or tether. 

Ocean Sailing Podcast: No tether, yeah, out of Coffs Harbour on the return leg? 

Gerry Fitzgerald: Yeah on the return leg. We have another racing boat, had a guy trapped up the mast for seven hours in a Bosun's chair. He had to be brought down by a crew member of another boat who swam across to get him down. 

Ocean Sailing Podcast: Well they had “get there itis”, didn’t they? Because they both sort of could have sat at Coffs for two or three more days and they just waited for the weather to pass. The race was over but they were in a hurry to get home.

Gerry Fitzgerald: Hurry to get the boat home because, rather than hiring a car, driving home and coming back when the forecast is like it is today. 

Ocean Sailing Podcast: Yeah, well it’s funny that you say that because I had to have my insurance policy extended because I’m doing Sydney to Southport and Sydney to Hobart this year and then the insurer, and a premium and told them all that kind of stuff that’s more than 250 miles and that was all good. But I don’t know how the conversation started, but the insurer said we have four times the number of claims on the return trips than in the races. So if we have four claims going to Hobart, we’ll have 15 coming back from Hobart for exactly all the reasons you just have said, which I thought was staggering. 

Gerry Fitzgerald: Yeah, you know, I preach the gospel. Three times a month, we’re doing sea safety courses. That’s probably 50% of all sea safety qualifications in Australia from our base here in Brisbane. I’m off to Sydney at the weekend for the next round down there. 

Ocean Sailing Podcast: So what locations do you do you hold your training? 

Gerry Fitzgerald: We train from the Darling Point Sailing Squadron here in Manly Boat Harbour in Brisbane. Terrific location, right on the water, there’s a good training ground and the dock is good for us as well. So you can bring a boat alongside if we have to. 

Ocean Sailing Podcast: It’s just hard sitting in a classroom and not daydreaming and looking out the window, such a great backdrop. 

Gerry Fitzgerald: Exactly, exactly. In Sydney, we train in the Mosman Bay Sea Scouts Hall. It was a derelict building back in sometime in 2006 or 2007. Scouts hadn’t been using it and I approached the Scouts and I said, “Look, I’ll rent it off you, provided that you spent the rent money doing it up.” 

Ocean Sailing Podcast: That’s a good deal. 

Gerry Fitzgerald: So that’s the way it is, so we’ve got a workable dock out the front, the building has been lined, the windows are being replaced, the floors have been polished. 

Ocean Sailing Podcast: Well you don’t get conditional landlords like that normally. 

Gerry Fitzgerald: No, that’s right and free parking in Mosman in Sydney, free 12 hour parking so it’s a great location and it’s worked very well. 

Ocean Sailing Podcast: Well that makes the courses cost effective when you don’t have all those other issues going on. 

Gerry Fitzgerald: Those major overheads, yeah. People come by boat there as well and pull up in the Mosman Bay Marina. 

Ocean Sailing Podcast: So you’ve got those two locations, are there any other locations that you train in? 

Gerry Fitzgerald: Yeah, we have been going to Darwin on a regular basis at the Darwin Sailing Club. They have now set themselves up so they don’t have to drag me and all my gear up from Brisbane. Certainly Gladstone, certainly Port Curtis, Mackay Yacht Club, Coffs Harbour, Gladstone and we travel to China on a regular basis. In China yachting is the new golf. 

Ocean Sailing Podcast: Right, that’s interesting. 

Gerry Fitzgerald: And so in Shenzhen, they have built themselves a yacht club and a marina. So the yacht club is six star. It has got 100 rooms, six star with restaurants and so on. So one guy built that and gifted it to the club under whatever arrangement. Another guy built the marina. The marina is 300 berth and another guy donated 20 Beneteau 40’s as the kick off fleet. 

Ocean Sailing Podcast: Wow, they just donated a fleet of 40 foot Beneteaus? 

Gerry Fitzgerald: Yeah so they then realised they had the club, they had the marina and they had the boats, but nobody knew how to sail but we’re going to do a race over to Taiwan. 

Ocean Sailing Podcast: Just from the get go? 

Gerry Fitzgerald: From the get go, that was — they don’t miss a boat up there. So they said, “Well we need to make sure that people know how to be safe”. I suggested to them they needed to know how to sail to start with and safety would come as a few steps down the chart. 

Ocean Sailing Podcast: It’s like a byproduct, isn’t it? 

Gerry Fitzgerald: It is a byproduct, yes it is. Anyway, they all got to Taiwan and they all got back and they realised that they didn’t know how to sail when some key people fell overboard off a number of boats and they didn’t know how to do man overboard drills. So now there’s a thriving business in China for ex-pats to teach people how to sail and on 40 footers. I mean the Chinese have brilliant thinking sailors. So for the future if anybody is listening who might want to pursue a career in China, there’s lot of opportunity for people that are appropriately qualified. 

Ocean Sailing Podcast: That’s going to open up a whole significant channel overtime isn’t it? 

Gerry Fitzgerald: Absolutely. 

Ocean Sailing Podcast: Yeah and great for production boat builders too to have some extra scale out there, which overtime continued innovation and cost come down, and all that stuff starts to happen. 

Gerry Fitzgerald: Yes, there is a major production boat industry in China of course. Lots of boats are coming are being built by Australians in China and Taiwan and certainly Vietnam and the work standard quality is good. 

Ocean Sailing Podcast: That’s great. Okay, then your website, what’s your website address for listeners? 

Gerry Fitzgerald: Marine Training, all one word, all lower case, www.marinetraining.com.au. 

Ocean Sailing Podcast: That’s a great domain name, Google would love that, from a search engine point of view, that’s great. Just jumping back, I remember you telling me you were actually on a yacht in that Sydney to Hobart race in 1998. 

Gerry Fitzgerald: That’s correct. 

Ocean Sailing Podcast: But you didn’t complete the race, so tell me about that? Because I remember listening to that story at the time just absolutely wide eyed when you told me about that and the information you had access to and decisions you made. 

Gerry Fitzgerald: Don McIntyre bought the Benlex and designed the aluminium hulled Spirit of Sydney and Don raced it around the world on a single handed event and at the end of the race, he decided that it would make a good expedition vessel and where else would you want to go other than off to Antarctica on a sailing boat. So he took Spirit of Sydney down to Antarctica with 10 paying passengers onboard. 

He went down there in January and had a good time and had a backup plan. The backup was the’d do it again next summer. So he did it again next summer and I was retained as the first mate partially responsible for crew training with the skipper and the skipper was Dave Price, a naval architect and a well-known sailor. So we decided that the Sydney to Hobart yacht race would be our delivery voyage from Sydney where Spirit was based. 

So then for a number of reasons, the vessel would not comply with category one. It complied with category zero which is an around the world yacht and race boat. So we said, “Well, what we’ll do is we’ll start with the fleet.  We will sail down with the fleet, metal in tows and all the paying passengers onboard, 10 of them and that will allow us to sort out how that goes during a typical Hobart yacht race.”

Well, we hung about with the heads and then we took off with the fleet but we got a phone call by the time we got to Wollongong from Roger Bantam who was the weather router. He’d been retained to give us advice about the Antarctic weather and so forth, he rung us up and said, “Go home”. He said the fleet are going to get bashed up and you don’t need to be bashed up this early. You’ll probably get bashed up from Hobart South. 

So we turned around and told the crew that we were pulling out because of the forecast weather and we got back into Sydney and we swung at the peak and we listened to the events unfold on the high frequency radio and the high chief radio over the next couple of days and we were glad we’d pulled out. We had one crew member pull out then, they didn’t like what they heard on the radio while we were anchored in Quarantine Bay. 

We then took off to Hobart in generally pretty good conditions across Bass Strait, got down to Hobart and then we did a reassessment of the crew that were on board and we suggested to a member of the crew that this voyage wasn’t for them. So they got a refund and we then brought another crew member down who filled his place and off we took and we had a voyage to from Hobart to Antarctica that was predictable. 

The weather advice was good, the weather routing was good, the weather was manageable, 35 knots on the beam, five metre swells, plenty of ice once we were south of 55 south and found our way into Commonwealth Bay which was quite tricky, no charts. Found our way in and managed to get the boat secure before the first katabatic wind came through. Katabatics are 70 knots every afternoon at 2 o’clock. 

So we had a month there doing what we had to do in Mawson’s Hut putting instrumentation in mainly and then doing some voyaging. By voyaging, I mean voyaging out onto the ice in our ice climbing gear. It was a voyage of a lifetime and I would love to go back to Commonwealth Bay, going to Antarctica is addictive. The light is different, the whole thing is different. You just have to experience it, it’s extraordinary. So we had some near misses but none that are deterring in any way from wanting to do it again but it’s not for the unwary. 

Ocean Sailing Podcast: No and the weather is the weather when you were down there? 

Gerry Fitzgerald: The weather is the weather when you’re down there, you’ve just got to deal with what you have and there had been people, fool hardy people who tried to do it and there’ve been no loss of life amongst the fool hardy.

Ocean Sailing Podcast: Which is quite remarkable, given how hard it is to get them out of there.. 

Gerry Fitzgerald: Yeah, it’s extraordinary. 

Ocean Sailing Podcast: And when I did the sea safety and survival course which I highly recommend for everybody racing offshore, cruising offshore just in terms of the confidence it gives you. I highly recommend it and I think about 80% or 90% of my crew have done that course in total and I think it’s extremely valuable but one of the key lessons out of your example there with Roger’s advice and I think his nickname is Clouds. 

I tracked him down and when I sailed across Tasmania and used his services. The weather down there was fantastic and he made us wait for three days before leaving even though we were impatient to go, this northerly system came through but our crossing which was eight days, we had six days of motoring or motor sailing just to due to the lack of wind. 

Then we had a couple of night at which we’re at boat, I don’t know, 35 knots in six metres but he routed us around the top of a system that was much bigger through the south but the lesson is the easiest way not to deal with the problem is just stay safe and out of trouble that way. If you could just wait for it to pass or go around it and then don’t put yourself through it. It’s a good starting point. 

Gerry Fitzgerald: Absolutely. So I have been impatient as everybody is, sailing voyages at a particular point in time and then rounding the southern island of New Zealand, sailed down on New Zealand on my way to Cape Horn on a delivery trip. I decided to take a short cut and I’m lucky that I’m here to recount it. So I just came too close to the southern end of the south island of New Zealand. The ocean goes from 4,000 metres to 200 metres in 10 nautical miles and if you’re in that 10 nautical mile, the sea just obviously stands up. 

Ocean Sailing Podcast: It stands straight up like the Cook Straight in New Zealand, not like Bass strait on a bigger scale. 

Gerry Fitzgerald: Yep. 

Ocean Sailing Podcast: It’s interesting, I heard about Bass strait for years but I never fully appreciate it until I looked at the nautical charts and you see the Tasman Sea going from 4,000 metres to 3,000 to 2,000 then to a 150 metres. You’ll just think, “Well of course the volume of water is going to go through that small gap but it stands up.”

Gerry Fitzgerald: Exactly, yep. 

Ocean Sailing Podcast: So it’s not a matter of it it will happen to you. It will happen to you if you go through there in that kind of weather. 

Gerry Fitzgerald: Absolutely but having said that, heavy weather shouldn’t be necessarily looked at as being an insurmountable challenge. Heavy weather is a part of offshore sailing. Heavy weather is enjoyable, heavy weather needs to be undertaken by people that know what they’re doing. So getting experience near coastal, which is far more dangerous because of traffic and reefs. 

Ocean Sailing Podcast: And ships. 

Gerry Fitzgerald: Yeah, absolutely. Heavy weather sailing can be extraordinarily enjoyable. Alex Whitworth is a well-known yachtsman, has had a boat, he still has as of today, a Brolga 23 called Berrimilla and he sailed Berrimilla around the world, east-west and also north-south double handed. 

Ocean Sailing Podcast: Wow, I hadn’t heard of anyone doing north-south, that’s amazing. 

Gerry Fitzgerald: Yeah, so he sails Sydney to Dutch Harbour in Alaska non-stop and then Dutch Harbour straight through the northwest passage from west to east and then down the side of Greenland and from Greenland down to Portugal, Portugal down to Cape of Good Hope and Cape of Good Hope across to Kerguelen Islands and Kerguelen to Tasmania. Yeah extraordinary voyage. So Berrimilla passes into history. He tells me it’s been sold, but I think he’s still in possession. 

Ocean Sailing Podcast: That’s an amazing voyage, he’d be an interesting person to talk to. 

Gerry Fitzgerald: But a key point for him is that heavy weather has just got to be dealt with. I mean if you’re undertaking a voyage, then heavy weather if you’re out there, may not be avoidable. So if you don’t have a boat that can’t handle heavy weather, stick to the coast, stick to safe haven and that’s just as enjoyable as well. 

Ocean Sailing Podcast: But if you’re boat’s set up for heavy weather. 

Gerry Fitzgerald: If your boat is set up for heavy weather… 

Ocean Sailing Podcast: The rawness and the beauty of it is actually quite thrilling. Once you’re comfortable and your realise it’s going to be okay, it’s actually awe inspiring just to see that the grandeur around you and when it’s just you and the ocean is actually a lot less to worry about. 

Gerry Fitzgerald: It is a lot less to worry about, exactly. So Alex won the 1998 Sydney to Hobart Yacht Race in his division. So he got through it all. Everything’s happened to Alex and my recurrent theme is, if you’re out there long enough, everything will happen to you too so you’d better be prepared for it. That’s why he makes a great presenter on our courses. So he comes up to Brisbane and down to Sydney and up to China as well where we’ve had our course notes, our sea safety presentation, transferred to Cantonese. 

Ocean Sailing Podcast: Wow and I think as we sort of wrap up, I think the value I got out of doing all the courses prior to sailing across the Tasman for the first time, it’s now two and a half years ago now, was just the life experiences you draw on. You can read all the books in the world and you can kind of grasp the theory but when you’ve got teachers that can actually apply the lessons based on life experience and great stories and analogies and examples, it makes the learning stick, but it makes it so enjoyable, and it makes it — it’s almost like the stories you’d take away help you to continue, just to meet the learning I think, that’s what I’ve found. 

Gerry Fitzgerald: Indeed, that’s a good way to explain it because we don’t tell irrelevant stories I hope. 

Ocean Sailing Podcast: No, I could listen to your stories all day. That’s why I’m here today right? So that’s great, so any last kind of lessons or advice you’d like to give recreational sailors and recreational racers about good judgment and safety and survival? 

Gerry Fitzgerald: Absolutely, you’ll only get the experience if you a go. So not many recreational sailors sail inside the Barrier Reef. Now, I’ve sailed many, many oceans, all of the oceans of the world where it’s cold and where it’s hot and all I want to say that too many of us in Australia are shirking the Barrier Reef. Once you have done some day sailing inside the reef on your boat with the keel sticking down and the coral heads sticking up, then you’ll be hooked but you’ve got to get the confidence to do it. 

So the basic rule of thumb is never avoid the reef but never sail before nine of a morning and after three of an afternoon. Find yourself a hole somewhere in the reef, 60 miles offshore and you’ll never go short of a feed, scenery and memories that you’ll carry right through your last days. The reef that is here on Australia, is just a great resource that’s under-utilised. 

Ocean Sailing Podcast: And it’s in reach of 80 or 90% of the population of sailors in terms of its location where everyone lives too. It’s a nice sail up there. 

Gerry Fitzgerald: Absolutely, look Lizard Island, they’re running a regatta this year okay out of Cairns. Check with the Cairns Yacht Club. I am a life member of the Cairns Yacht Club. Check with the Cairns Yacht Club, they are running a cruise and company, a race and inverted comers up to Lizard and Lizard are hosting the whole show. 

Ocean Sailing Podcast: Wow sounds fantastic. 

Gerry Fitzgerald: Terrific, do it. 

Ocean Sailing Podcast: What a great destination. Well in the show notes, and we’ll get this interview typed up as well and published on the Ocean Sailing Podcast website and on the show notes I’ll put links to your training sites so people can easily find it and some of these other things that we’ve talked about and then also, if there’s any photos or videos that you can share, I will publish those as well to give people some more graphical kind of experience around some of the things that you’ve talked about. 

And really a big thank you for putting aside the time this morning Gerry to join us on the Ocean Sailing Podcast. We’ve got lots and lots of listeners all over Australia and outside of Australia as well and I think this has been a really valuable insightful conversation and I think it will be really, really well, enjoyed and listened to. 

Gerry Fitzgerald: Terrific, thanks for the opportunity. 

Ocean Sailing Podcast: Okay, thanks Gerry.

Interviewer: David Hows

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Episode 15: Ian Thomson Show Notes

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Ocean Sailing Podcast: Hi folks, welcome along to this week’s episode of the Ocean Sailing Podcast. This week we’re down on board with Ian Thomson down at RQ, or Royal Queensland Yacht Squadron at the marina. Ian, welcome along.

Ian Thomson: Thank you. 

Ocean Sailing Podcast: This week we’re going to talk about the Around Australia Race, which is planned for I think August next year?

Ian Thomson: Yeah, the 5th of August 2017.

Ocean Sailing Podcast: It’s just something that’s just been released in the last couple of months, really tropical and the race last ran in 1988. So t’s been a long time between drinks. Ian, tell me a little bit about the history of the race and what sort of motivated this idea to run it again after all this years?

Ian Thomson: Funny enough, the initial race was run back in 1988 in the bicentennial year. The name of it back then was the Goodman Fielder Wattie Bicentennial Around Australia Yacht Race, which is a hell of a name for a race. How they promoted that I've got no idea. A friend of mine, Don McIntyre who happened to own Jessica Watson’s boat, also did the Bounty Boat re-enactment. Quite an adventurer. Runs out of Tonga, runs down to the ICE every year. Incredible guy. 

He was the one who actually ran it back in 1988 and what a race, at the end of the day, Sir Peter Blake is the only winner of an around Australia Yacht Race. To be able to put your name on a trophy next to Sir Peter Blake would be kind of pretty cool I reckon. My motivation for it has been to sailed around in 2010 solo, it was a dream of mine to do and a lot of people have been inquiring with me as to whether I can run something or whether they should do it themselves. 

Actually sailing home recently from overseas, I sailed through Fiji and actually caught up with Don McIntyre. We were talking about his 2018 Golden Globe Race, which is the 50th anniversary of when Sir Robin Knox-Johnston sailed around the world, and he said, “Yeah, I’d love to run an around Australian yacht race but I don’t have the time.” I said to him, “Well it would be really cool if you had someone who has done that track to promote it wouldn’t it?” He’s like, “Yeah, you’d be perfect.” 

It’s something I’ve been thinking of for a while and just Don tipped me over the line and said he’d support us 100%. So whilst he can’t do it himself, he’s there in the background helping us and yeah. So putting on a race, probably the motivation behind the race is a little bit different to most other races and the fact that we’re trying to help people achieve their dreams rather than just running a race to make a million dollars. That’s why we can make it affordable for sailors, not charging $25,000 like a prior attempt I tried to do.

Ocean Sailing Podcast: Okay, and so it’s 6,350 nautical miles, it’s the longest coastal race in the world and it’s virtually the equivalent of sailing from Sydney to Los Angeles across the pacific. Kind of puts it into context.

Ian Thomson: Yeah, it’s a long way. The conditions you’re going to face around the country, well, I was fortunate enough when I went around to sail 78% of it, I had the wind behind the beam. It is good weather but once you get to the West Coast, anything can happen and of course you got the southern ocean leg there from Cape Leeuwin and across to the bottom of Tasmania, which, well the Southern Ocean could throw anything at you. 

I had everything, I had storms, I had nothing. It’s an awesome track, takes you through the warm, takes you through the cold, I’m sure most people will enjoy the warmth at that time of year but won’t appreciate the Southern Ocean at that time of year. But hey, that’s part of sailing. 

Ocean Sailing Podcast: So how did you choose August? Does it help with it climatically to start the race at that time of the year in Sydney?

Ian Thomson: Look, if you are going for an outright record, I would say you would go earlier but you’d be pretty silly to put a fleet through the southern ocean in July. Just for every reason. But also, the winds are getting lighter and lighter now like we’re still copping southeast, well the low’s off the coast here, which is very northerly as we speak. So we don’t need that, to sail up the east coast on northerlies. So hopefully August next year, who knows? The weather could do anything but if we can get a nice high sitting in the middle of Australia, you sail around it.

Ocean Sailing Podcast: That almost times to the day with the start of the Sydney to Southport races, is that just a coincidence or?

Ian Thomson: It’s a week after the Sydney to Southport. It was deliberately done a week after. Sydney to Southport, I’ve been in the yachting industry before and the Sydney boat is always on the same time that that race is on.

Ocean Sailing Podcast: Right.

Ian Thomson: So selling yachts and wanting to race, you can’t do both. We decided to go afterwards, we don’t want to compete against these other races but at the end of the day, we’ll only run every four or five years. So obviously we’re taking people away from Airlie Beach Race Week and Hammo Race Week, which we didn’t really want to do. It would be great if you could run it at Easter, but the weather at Easter is just not good enough to do that. 

Ocean Sailing Podcast: Yeah.

Ian Thomson: You have to run it, it’s an event a lot of people want to do and hopefully we can get a good fleet of boats on the line that are happy to do that and I apologise to all the other yacht races if I take people away from them. I hope they don’t see it that way. I hope they see it as just once every four years we’ll get people down. Sydney to Southport, we could bring boats from overseas that could do a Hobart. So it might take away from one but might add to another.

Ocean Sailing Podcast: Yeah, absolutely. The thing is too, like the way I look at it is, if you attract a lot of amateur racers or people that don’t do it for day job, many of their crews can’t do anything anyway. They’re going to have to make choices between what they do in terms of time off. So technically, even if you are at the event at a different time of the year, there will be a whole lot of boats for the crew and say, “Well we can’t do Airlie Beach and Hamo and do this race week and fit in family and work.” So that trade offs going to be there to some degree regardless to timing, I think.

Ian Thomson: Wouldn’t it be lovely if we could all just race yachts for a living? That would be awesome but as you say, if we run it in the middle of the year, we’re going to taker boats away from the winter series that club’s run. So there’s always going to be something you’re going to conflict against, We’re very aware of trying not to conflict against the Volvo Ocean Race because our Ocean Crusaders Campaign is trying to get a leg in there.

So we’d love to head to, straight from finishing this race over to Alicante and run around with the Volvo Ocean Race with Ocean Crusaders pushing our environmental message. We don’t want to clash with the Golden Globe because that’s Don’s pet and that’s something we’re also looking to be involved in, and 2019 is a long way away. 2017 is the goal and I think most boats will make it around anywhere between 30 and 60 days around the country. Obviously with the eight day stopping, unique feature of any sort of race. Yeah, who knows.

Ocean Sailing Podcast: Okay, so at least just to sort of jump sideways into Ocean Crusaders, tell me about that. A read some interesting facts online on what’s out there in the ocean that a lot of us, even sailors, take for granted. Tell us about that.

Ian Thomson: It all started back in 2010. I picked up my ice turtle out of the ocean when I was a skipper up in the Whitsundays and I just got over it. Like picking him up, finding out they die because of plastic and plastic bags in particular. It was just killing me because that’s what we love going and seeing. So I actually sailed around in 2010 to raise awareness of that. Okay, it was a bit of a dream to sail around the country but to do it to raise awareness was a really key thing. 

So off the back of that, I ended up launching what is now Ocean Crusaders. Back then it was Save Our Seas Australia. But Ocean Crusaders is morphing into something quite big, into 18,000 schools through our online project. So it’s an awesome thing, but the issue in the ocean is, it’s unheard of. People don’t realise what is actually going on out there. We go to the shops, we pick up our plastic bags, or they’re almost thrown at us. We pick up our milk in plastic containers; we pick up water in plastic bottles.

A lot of it does go to recycling but we’re only talking 38% here in Australia, goes into recycling of PET products. Plastic bags, we don’t have the recycling facilities here to do it. The amount of rubbish out there, they’re talking over 53 trillion pieces of plastic now, all breaking into smaller and smaller pieces and yeah, everyone talks about the north pacific garbage patch but that’s only one of the five jives out there. 

You can’t see most of it because it’s so small, it’s in micro plastic sizes these days, the same size as planktons. So 95% of the fish we’re eating have plastic inside them, they’re consuming plastic out there so we’re consuming plastic. Massive issue. The Ocean Crusaders side of things runs along in the background with sailing to 18,000 schools with our own online education program last year, it’s growing again this year. We’re getting a lot of interest from other yacht races like for our environmental campaign because we’re sailors to be involved. 

We’re trying to get the message out there, do a little bit, whatever we can but obviously this yacht race, being run by me, is going to have some unique features to it and that includes a set of special environmental regulations, which will ban provisioning your boat with plastic bags. You won’t be able to have single used plastic water bottles on board. So the smallest water container in plastic you’ll be able to use will be a 10 litre. 

So you have to refill your bottles as part of the entry fee like each crew member will get a race shirt and a stainless steel water bottle. So they can actually refill those and use them, you don’t end up with all this plastic water bottles in your bags at the end of the race, mostly half drank. No one knows whose is whose. It’s one of those crazy things and we keep doing it. People go on racing and they’ve got plastic forks and they just one use, bang, in the bin. 

People have been throwing aluminium cans overboard for years, thinking, “Oh well, it’s aluminium, it will go.” People don’t understand, aluminium cans have a layer of plastic inside them otherwise, all the fizzy drinks, we know coke what it does to your teeth. It would eat though the aluminium can.

Ocean Sailing Podcast: Right, so this is just the assumption that it would just breakdown and disappear. That’s not the case, with the lining?

Ian Thomson: They will eventually but the plastic parts will actually end up in the ocean. It still takes like something like 400 years for that can to actually completely disappear but the plastic won’t. So throwing aluminium cans in the ocean isn’t good. I was speaking to someone the other day saying that they’re happy to throw glass in the ocean because it’s made from sand.

I don’t even know how to respond to that because I mean where is the mentality that says that’s okay? Let’s recycle it; let’s reuse that product so we don’t have to keep pulling sand out of our beaches. We’ve just got to start getting a lot smarter and less lazy I think. So this race hopefully will change the way we go sailing.

Ocean Sailing Podcast: That’s really interesting, you’ve touched on a number of different topics there. How did you reach 18,000 schools? How did that come about? That’s no mean feat when you think about — even if you think about a thousand kids in a school, I mean you’re talking about what? 18 million young people? That’s a big reach.

Ian Thomson: In the five years since we’ve had the online education program going, it’s been stunning the growth. It sort of triples every year. We started off visiting school after I went around Australia and then I realised I couldn’t visit a lot of schools because you visit one school a day. Of course it costs money and we weren’t getting funding in.

Ocean Sailing Podcast: Yeah.

Ian Thomson: So we put the program online. 13 lessons here in Australia, ranging in topics from overall general plastics is the introduction and then there’s one on plastic water bottles, there’s one on turtles, seals, whales, dolphins, sharks, albatross. There’s all this different lessons. Then we do email marketing out there, as the money comes in, which is very little.

The big growth came when Shawn Manchester, one of the guys from America. He sailed in The Clipper Round the World Yacht Race. He only did one leg, which was Florida from San Francisco, which was 5,100 nautical miles. He raised a dollar for every mile he did for Ocean Crusaders. That $5,000 ended up being put back in to an email marketing campaign in America. We grew like over 10,000 schools in America in a year just from one email marketing campaign.

Ocean Sailing Podcast: Then you get to that tipping point where so many people start to know about it and they start to tell others and it starts to take on a life of its’ own.

Ian Thomson: It’s interesting because unfortunately, I’m not that computer savvy of how to get statistics back and Don picked this up that we’ve got 18,000 schools who have downloaded the program last year. That doesn’t take into account the people who have already downloaded it in the past.

Ocean Sailing Podcast: Yeah, right.

Ian Thomson: Who could still be using the same program, because you download it on to your computer and you can use it time and time again.

Ocean Sailing Podcast: You can just use it over and over.

Ian Thomson: That’s 18,000 new schools last year.

Ocean Sailing Podcast: Yeah, right.

Ian Thomson: It’s not 18,000 schools. So we could be somewhere a lot higher than that, and I don’t know how to work out how to work out who is using it every year. So we’re working on how we can do that. Whether it’s kids signing a contract committing to no plastic bags for the year and they sign it each year, and after three years they get a T-shirt from Ocean Crusaders, don’t know.

Ocean Sailing Podcast: Yeah, some good things you can potentially do there with that information and then probably start to help you gather more support to help spread the word wider once you understand the reach because it potentially, like you say, it could be quite large without really even knowing.

Ian Thomson: Yeah, one of the things we struggle with is funding for Ocean Crusaders being not for profit organisation. Recently we’ve been looking at trying to get funding but because we’ve got now quantity of measures of our impact, we struggle to get funding. Yet the people who are cleaning up beaches and pulling tons and tons of rubbish off the beaches are getting hundreds, if not millions of dollars from our government, which makes no sense at all.

Ocean Sailing Podcast: It’s like working on the bottom of the cliff, right? After it’s already turned to custard and cleaning up the problem rather than preventing it.

Ian Thomson: We teach the kids prevention is better than a cure. We all learned that at school, and yet the government’s funding the cure, which is “clean it up”. 

Ocean Sailing Podcast: Because it’s visible, yeah.

Ian Thomson: Which makes no sense and we can’t get funding to go and keep campaigning. As I say, $5,000 US dollars we get over 10,000 new schools.

Ocean Sailing Podcast: Yeah.

Ian Thomson: Bang like that. But then it does snowball.

Ocean Sailing Podcast: And like you say, if you look at supermarket shelves now, there’s bays allocated to 24 packs of water bottles and the irony is we live in a country where water’s on tap for 99% of the population. There’s country’s where they just happily have clean water, yet we’ve got to go now buy it in water bottles instead of taking it out of our taps and I read recently that RQ, Royal Queensland Yacht Squadron, are looking to change their sailing rules to prohibit use of disposable plastic bottles on boats when you’re racing. Is that something you’ve had a hand to play?

Ian Thomson: To be honest, no. We helped promote the fact that they’ve made the decision but they’ve actually made it off their own back when we go back from our trip overseas. We came to RQ and we know quite a few people here and they said, “Oh you know they’re going plastic bottle free here at RQ,” and I’m like, “Well that’s awesome, let’s promote it because no one knows about it.” They’re following the royal Hong Kong Yacht Club who did it. They’ve been over there and seen one of this massive yacht clubs, which is now a host to the Volvo Ocean Race. They’re doing it so RQ are going, “Well maybe we should too?” 

It’s a huge thing if we can get that done like we’ve just got to find a way for them to do it where we can cater. We’ve just had the junior sail week here and there’s a lot of kids off the beach, so you’ve just got to make sure that we can provide for those kids so we don’t have thirsty sailors. A lot of the senior sailors, that’s all right, they usually drink beer anyway rather than water. But at the end of the day, we just got to make sure we could set it up so that it works.

Ocean Sailing Podcast: Theoretically though, 50 years ago when kids sailed before the days of disposable water bottles, or throw away wear bottles, they drank water somehow didn’t they? 

Ian Thomson: Yeah, we all used to do it. We also used to be able to get our groceries home without plastic bags. They were called the boxes that everything goes into the shopping. You pick them up at the door.

Ocean Sailing Podcast: Well that’s a good point. Theoretically, the same number of boxes that takes food into the supermarket, the same number of boxes you need to take them out again right? In theory.

Ian Thomson: Well, they just crush them.

Ocean Sailing Podcast: Yeah, they just go to waste, put them to the bows, but you look at what Dan Murphy does, not necessarily a good cause but you get your box back of the check out, and you pack your wine in and away you go. They don’t need to give you plastic bags.

Ian Thomson: That’s just logical; we’ve just got lazy. Unfortunately the supermarkets, it’s a cost thing because…

Ocean Sailing Podcast: Yeah, it’s a productivity issue too, right?

Ian Thomson: Their biggest cost is to checkout person. Getting someone through the check out as quick as possible and unfortunately at the moment, plastic bags, all one size that they can just pull out on those little stands, fill up, that’s quicker than us taking our own bags.

Ocean Sailing Podcast: What you’re starting to see overseas is cities that are starting to ban plastic and force the change from bylaw level to say, “Within five years you won’t have plastic bags and plastic bottles and what have you.” So some of those things aren’t going to come out of self-motivated commercial agendas are they? If push comes to shove, a bit like all the other stuff for the carbon trading and emissions and sometimes it does take a bit of brute force from government to start to force the change.

Ian Thomson: We wrote a letter a long time ago to the government saying, “why don’t you ban plastic bags?” And they said, “It cost too much.” We spend millions every year on banning like cleaning up the problem but they say it’s too much to ban. Well how much does it cost to make legislation? It’s a bit of words on a few pieces of paper and get a few people to tick it and that’s it.

Ocean Sailing Podcast: Yeah, it’s too hard to risk all those votes for those lazy people who wouldn’t want to change in a short term from plastic bags usage.

Ian Thomson: No, I don’t think it’s that. I think it’s how much will it cost their government because most of their campaigns are funded by the oil companies that made plastic.

Ocean Sailing Podcast: Right. Yeah, right.

Ian Thomson: So it’s not about the people. We deal with whatever we give them, whatever government you get soon, if we get one, we have to deal with whatever they put in place. You learn to live with it, you have to. Otherwise what are you going to do? Complaining when no one listens really.

Ocean Sailing Podcast: Yeah, well that’s right. I never use plastic water bottles when I was racing and maybe 18 months ago we started buying them and now half our rubbish bags are plastic bottles. We were planning some multi-day stuff recently and one of our crew said, “We’ve got this water tanks, why do we fill up the bag with disposable bottles? Why don’t we just take water bottles. If you don’t like the taste of water in the water tanks, which is tap water, just put a carbon filter on your sink tap and it will taste great.”

Ian Thomson: 19 bucks from Bunnings.

Ocean Sailing Podcast: Hundreds years ago if you said, “You can have a boat with water tanks, and just fill up your bottle whenever you want,” people would have gone, “Wow.” Now we go back to taking bottled water along that we can fill up our rubbish bags with.

Ian Thomson: Still countries out there who would sit there and come on a boat like your boat, like my boat and just go, “Wow, you’ve got a sink, you’ve got a stove, you’ve got running water, you’ve got hot water.”

Ocean Sailing Podcast: Yeah.

Ian Thomson: I mean there’s people that live in villages like they don’t have that. 

Ocean Sailing Podcast: You’ve got a cutlery drawer. Why would you throw disposable plastic cutlery when you can just use what’s in your drawer?

Ian Thomson: Exactly. We’re a wasteful society and it’s because we’re lazy. We’ve just go to get over it.

Ocean Sailing Podcast: Okay, so you’re currently the solo around Australia monohull record holder. How did that eventually come about? That’s no mean feat to do it solo given, unlike crossing the ocean, you spend a lot of the time close to the coast, close to other recreational commercial traffic and there’s lots of hard stuff to run into if you got the wrong way at the wrong time.

Ian Thomson: Yes, there’s lots of hard stuff to run into. I didn’t hit anything, thank god. Electronics is the only way you can do things solo these days. I was lucky that I had Furuno sponsor it. The Furuno radar overlaying onto the plot with all the alarms. If rainclouds came close they’d come up on the radar, set off an alarm, I’d wake up but the longest sleep I had in 42 days was 26 minutes.

Ocean Sailing Podcast: Wow.

Ian Thomson: The average sleep was usually 20 minutes, I’d sleep for 20 minutes, get up, check everything, get up. I might go straight back to sleep for another 20 minutes. But it’s pretty furlong running two hand it would be a hell of a lot easier and a hell of a lot faster because you can run spinnakers all night because someone’s on deck watching the whole time.

I didn’t. I’d slow down like at night time to make it safe. If there were rain in the area, I wouldn’t have a spinnaker up. It’s was full on to sail solo and these guys who sail around the world on these [inaudible] 60’s with foils.

Ocean Sailing Podcast: That’s unreal.

Ian Thomson: Insanity is probably the word. I realised when I got back that 42 days by yourself is not a good thing in life. It’s sort of people, we’re meant to be with other people. Yeah, pretty full on achievement but doing that is nothing compared to what our oceans are facing and that was the message of why I did it. The oceans are facing a much bigger battle in 42 days. It’s going to take a lot longer than 42 days to clean up our oceans.

Ocean Sailing Podcast: Well because the problem’s not standing still, right? With population growth and then with some of the countries that just literally bulldoze their waste into the ocean, along there where you stop contributing to the problem.

Ian Thomson: When we’re consider that China’s producing 27% of the plastic that’s in the ocean, China’s a big hit and I remember talking to the guys over at Volvo Ocean Race and they said to us, they went to China obviously in the last edition and they said, “Okay, we want to do a beach clean.” And they’re like, “No, we don’t need to clean beaches because our beaches are clean.” The Chinese government is just not admitting they’ve got a problem. 

Volvo said, “Well okay, no, we want to come and if there’s no rubbish to pick up, that’s awesome, we can promote that, fantastic.” So eventually they agreed that they would be able to do this clean up. 6 o’clock in the morning, the Chinese army went down and cleaned the beach that the Volvo team were going to go and pick up the rubbish off. So by 8 o’clock, when they got there, there was no rubbish on the beach because the army had already picked it all up. So it kind of gives you an idea of China doesn’t want the reputation of creating all this plastic, but they are, and until you admit you’ve got a problem, you’re not going to fix it.

Ocean Sailing Podcast: Yeah, I mean we’re pretty critical of North Korea but that’s a little bit in denial there isn’t there? In terms of that example.

Ian Thomson: A little bit of an understatement, yeah.

Ocean Sailing Podcast: Keeping up a public façade that’s quite transparent, well not transparent but you can see straight through it.

Ian Thomson: Yeah, absolutely. That’s what we’re fighting; companies and when governments that are doing that. Our own government says it’s too expensive, it we’ll spend millions of dollars cleaning up the problem.

Ocean Sailing Podcast: Yes.

Ian Thomson: It’s just, “Let’s get to the source of the problem,” and that is just making a few decisions, making a few changes, getting rid of lazy people. Let’s do something. It can be done. San Francisco’s just banned Styrofoam, there are no more Styrofoam cups, there’s no more Styrofoam burger boxes or anything like that. What a fantastic initiative. Why can’t other governments do that? If it’s so expensive for us to ban plastic bags, how does South Australia and Northern Territory in Tasmania do it?

Ocean Sailing Podcast: Well exactly. You give people choices and they’ll either recycle or they’ll pay extra for not recycling by buying paper alternatives or other alternatives.

Ian Thomson: You change. You have to change.

Ocean Sailing Podcast: They take quite a lazy option and people don’t have the option anymore.

Ian Thomson: If you have to change, you will.

Ocean Sailing Podcast: Yeah, that’s right. Okay, so your last trip around the country, I mean doing it solo is pretty significant. Like you say, even having a second crew member is probably like having five more crew members in terms of the perceived difference it can make. What were the key lessons you took out of the preparation that you did that made that possible?

Ian Thomson: Pretty much like making sure you’ve got all your electronics running properly. I mean my trip was meant to be nonstop, unassisted. It didn’t end up there because coming across Bass Strait, I had a fan belt broke. I put the spare one on. Must have been petrified because it last less than 24 hours. I didn’t have a third one. So I ended up having to pull into Sydney.

Pulling in to Sydney meant that I was no longer a nonstop, unassisted but I was going to captain cook it up the coast. I literally was. I actually have the ability to do that and because you’re coastal, you can get your line of site and I had the charts, I had the handheld GPS, so it wasn’t quite Captain Cooking it but I would have done all right. 

Problem was when I was not sleeping and I couldn’t have my radar and my alarms set anymore, literally at one stage, I woke up, came outside, made sure there’s nothing around and there was a super tanker 50 meters beside me. That scared the living bejesus out of me and that was it. As a commercial skipper, I couldn’t go running into a ship, putting other people’s lives at risk, so you just couldn’t do it. I had to stop. Records are one thing but safety of life is the biggest thing to anyone. I wouldn’t be able to live with myself if I hit some other boat and near killed someone or anything like that.

Ocean Sailing Podcast: It’s not great for your family either to leave…

Ian Thomson: It was interesting because I probably got more credit from people in the sailing industry for actually stopping and making that decision for safety than if I had pushed on and actually got the record. In this race coming up, safety is always going to be a paramount thing and one of the cool things with the pit stop version of the race where you can take your eight days wherever you like…

Ocean Sailing Podcast: I love that part.

Ian Thomson: …is that if you have a problem, you can go in and get it fixed.

Ocean Sailing Podcast: Yeah, it’s like having money in the bank, isn’t it? You just got to choose when and how you spend it or whether you save it till the end of it and enjoy it all at once.

Ian Thomson: Massive technical decision for weather but it does give you a get out of jail clause if you tear your mainsail in half. Like in the last Hobart, how many boats pulled up because of torn mainsails? Well this option is, you sail into the nearest port, you get it fixed and off you go again.

Ocean Sailing Podcast: Yeah.

Ian Thomson: To me, that was a really cool feature. It was actually Don McIntyre’s idea of how to run it, learning from his original race. So yeah, I like that. Eight days, I don’t even know how Don came up with eight days, and I don’t know why I didn’t change it. It was just, “Well that sounds good. Happy days, eight days.”

Ocean Sailing Podcast: Yeah, that was probably kind of a day a week kind of thing almost isn’t it?

Ian Thomson: Yeah, what did it take me? Six weeks to get around? Six weeks to get around. So yeah, it is sort of a day a week.

Ocean Sailing Podcast: Yeah, well when I saw it, the thing that instantly struck me was, “Wow, this is actually doable whether volunteer crew who have day jobs and lives because they can join you for one leg or two legs or three legs because depending on how you use those days, you might say, “We’ve got four 12 day legs,” and anyone potentially can join you for 12 days but they couldn’t do the whole race.

So the ability for a crew to swap out at certain change over points and you’d have some reserve days for things that come up that break or need attention. It just gives you a whole lot of flexibility that you wouldn’t have if you had to say find people who want to do a 45/50 day race and take two months out of their lives. 

Ian Thomson: Absolutely. And I mean we had a fine call and I hope this comes off because it will be awesome for the race and awesome for the program but Dave Pescud from Sailors With Disabilities currently owns the nonstop fully crewed record around Australia for a monohull with the Sailors With Disability Program. He’s been in touch and he loves the whole stopping concept because it means they can go in to port, they can get promotion at that port, they can swap crew over, get sailors with disabilities from that region to sail the next leg. 

So if they come on board, fingers crossed that their committee allows it and we can find some funding for them even, like if you’re out there listening, awesome program. It changes people’s lives. If they had the funding to do this race, imagine what that would do for those people. “I was in the race. I’ve raced around Australia.” Huge thing for someone who is able bodied, let alone disabled.

Ocean Sailing Podcast: There will be some stats somewhere that says there’s more to the moon already than to have sailed around Australia. So it’s no mean feat when you think about some of the adversity that you face with some of the weather and some of the legs, especially down south.

Ian Thomson: Absolutely, one of the ambassadors of the Ocean Crusaders Program and I’m still yet to get in touch with him, Jamie Dunross. In 2010 when I was sailing around Australia, Jamie was too. Jamie was doing it on a little S&S 34, same thing that Jessica Watson went around.

Ocean Sailing Podcast: Popular model.

Ian Thomson: His was yellow, not pink like Jessica’s and he was doing it with stops, which you sit there and go, “Okay, well you know a guy sailing around the country, stopping by himself, no problems,” then you hear the guy’s story. He’s a C5 quadriplegic. It takes him 40 minutes to get to the bow and back on a 34 foot yacht. The guy has so little movement in his arms and legs that the whole interior of his boat was actually padded because he can’t hang on if the boat rolls. 

He can’t come in to a port and tie up without someone to help him because he can’t be on the tiller and just quickly run up to the bow and then 40 minutes later your boat will be in the next marina. So what a legend. He sailed around and if you actually took out the days of his stops, he’s the second fastest person to sail around the country.

Ocean Sailing Podcast: Wow, that’s no mean feat.

Ian Thomson: For a C5 quadriplegic. He’s an absolute dead set legend and inspiration for anyone who is thinking of doing this race. He did it as a C5 quadriplegic with stops. Anyone can do this.

Ocean Sailing Podcast: And most of us grumble because it takes us 20 minutes to get away with the gear on and off and we don’t have to worry about lifting up the stairs into the cockpit in a hurry. I mean that’s a huge barrier for somebody that has to deal with a race like that.

Ian Thomson: Just to set his boat up with systems to get him up and down a companion way. We just walk up and down the companionway. He has to have a full system to lift him up there.

Ocean Sailing Podcast: Yeah.

Ian Thomson: He even had a system set up to go up the mast.

Ocean Sailing Podcast: Wow, that’s amazing to just have the guts to do something like that with a limited movement. I’m not the best with heights on a good day let alone the fact that you’re completely reliant on technology to get you there and nobody to naturally grab on in a hurry, that’s incredible. 

Ian Thomson: You talk of inspirations in your life to do things and for me, running this race is about allowing people to achieve their dreams and so many people want to do it. You’re our third entry but the two first entries, both of those boats had actually been custom built for this race. The first one was built for the 88th bicentennial race. That’s the 50 foot cat Top Gun. That was built back in ’87 to go on the first race, it didn’t make it because of funding issues.

It was then bought by somebody else to do the race, that didn’t happen in 2014 and now we got the new owner who is hopefully third time lucky, we’ll actually get it around the country. Then the other boat is Tam Faragher’s 50 foot Kerumba. Absolutely stunning boat. Beautiful boat, built it to do what was meant to be the 2014 race. Obviously never went ahead and so now he was our first entrant because as soon as he heard about it, he was like, “Yup, okay, we’re in.” No hesitation, it’s just what his boat was built for, it’s a dream for those people. Coramba, I don’t know how much it cost but it’s not a cheap boat.

Ocean Sailing Podcast: It’s a beautiful boat.

Ian Thomson: Absolutely stunning boat. For him to have built a boat for this event and not be able to do it, that would have hurt. Now he’s got an opportunity to do it. We’ve got three boats now; we’ve got a race.

Ocean Sailing Podcast: Wow, because I entered last night.

Ian Thomson: You entered last night and I love the fact that your boat’s not a full blown race boat, the other two, well okay the catamaran is a full blown race boat. Kerrumba’s a race boat on the outside but really nice downstairs and you’ve got the more cruisey version of a boat. It shows, it doesn’t matter what boat you’ve got.

We’ve had interest from a guy who owns an old Herreshoff, 70 year old boat and it’s the smallest boat to have competed in the Sydney to Hobart, he raced five times in the 50’s and he’s looking at going around on that.

Ocean Sailing Podcast: Isn’t that cold to get some of those iconic type boats back for something like this. That really creates a special race. 

Ian Thomson: Well something I’m really focused on, because I really hate the Hobart every year because it’s all about the maxis. 

Ocean Sailing Podcast: That’s right. The television viewers who don’t sail would think that there are only five boats in the race or that all the boats in the race are hundred footers because that’s the coverage, right?

Ian Thomson: They’re all multimillionaires and it doesn’t matter, all their crew get $20,000 to go to Hobart. But you get Maluka of Kermandie who is Sean Langman’s boat that’s so small and timber and takes nearly till New Years to get to Hobart. Some say it’s kind of like golf, they’re out there longer so they get more enjoyment. I don’t know about that because going to Hobart’s, the wrong way.

Ocean Sailing Podcast: Depending on the weather that you’re enjoying.

Ian Thomson: But at the end of the day, we’re dead set certain we will promote every single boat in this race. Everyone will have sponsors. If they’re sailing for a cause, we’ll be right behind them 100%. Every boat will get coverage. If we get TV for the start, we’ll actually run separate starts if we have to, to ensure that every boat gets covered. If those start focusing on the big maxi boats, they’ll have me in their ear very quickly saying, “Get off them. It’s not about them, it’s about everybody living a dream.”

Ocean Sailing Podcast: Well it’s really struck me as a horses for causes type of an event because you’re going to attract shorthanded crews that want to go nonstop on monos or multis but also all of those crews that are out there that can make it work because of the eight day ability to stop for eight days throughout the course of the race to change crews, repair damage, replenish provisions. I think that makes it work and I think that when I thought about like last night, I thought, “What is it about this that’s kind of the magic ingredient?”

I think there’s this whole bunch of sailors who sail up and down the coast and never want to get out of sight of the land and they look at the around the world sailors and say, “Wow, that would be cool to do some day but I’ll never do it because of time, cost, money, logistics. I can’t take 10 months out of my life or what have you.” You look at this race, you’re within a stone’s throw of the coast, even though it’s probably out of sight sometimes. It’s a long race but even the cost of getting crew from one side of the country to the other that get on and get off is not that significant. Versus getting them to the other side of the world. 

It’s really got all the ingredients of a great ocean race with all sorts of challenges and different legs and different stops and different dimensions but it’s actually within reach of a lot of people I think from an affordability but more importantly, time. You can take a couple of months out of your life to do something like this but most of us couldn’t take nine or 12 months or 18 months as it turns into when you’re preparing for something big and all the preparation that goes in.

It kind of struck me as this sort of big enough to be challenging and you wouldn’t want to do it every year but it’s one of those things that if you did it once in your life or twice in your life, it’s a pretty amazing way to see the country as well.

Ian Thomson: Yeah, we’re trying to open it up to as many people as we can obviously for safety side of things, we had to put an age barrier on it but we did actually drop that down to 16. There’s a lot of 16 year old kids who are damn good sailors. Jessica went around the world when she was 16. So people can sail at that age. If you’ve got a 16 year old kid who wants to sail around the country with you, what a great thing to do when you’re 16.

We took the size restrictions off that most races have these days. I’m talking about top end and bottom end. Because you got the mini transat boats. Mini Transat boat, six and a half can’t do a Hobart. But they can cross the Atlantic?

Ocean Sailing Podcast: Yeah, that’s an odd one isn’t it? That anomaly.

Ian Thomson: We’ve had an inquiry from a couple already that love the stops thing because on a six and a half meter boat, being able to stop and re-provision is probably a good thing.

Ocean Sailing Podcast: Well you can’t take it all with you upfront, can you? Not easily without having a severe weight issue with handicap wise.

Ian Thomson: Well, you can and obviously they do it across the Atlantic. But when you’re eating out of a packet all of the time, it might be nice to stop and have a good steak meal. Even a few cold beers or anything cold for that matter because they don’t have fridges on those boats but yeah, just being able to open it up to smaller boats. Obviously the big boats, there are outright records held by 110 foot trimaran.

Imagine if Spindrift 2 wants to come down here, 135 footer, 130 foot maxi trimaran and do it, fantastic. But the other thing, the shorthanded version, we have the Melbourne to Osaka that starts in March 2018. To come out here to Australia, do the around of Australia, hang around, do the Hobart with a few extra crew, then go back to Melbourne, do the race week in Melbourne, Victoria Sailing Week or whatever they call it these days. Then line up and go back to Japan, you’re back in the Northern Hemisphere. Hopefully we can drag a few international entrants on that basis.

Ocean Sailing Podcast: Yeah, it’s nice if the timing feeds into other things, makes it all work.

Ian Thomson: So you would have that if you did it in 2018 that would be the wrong time of the year.

Ocean Sailing Podcast: Okay, what’s your vision and do you see this as the start of something new that then starts to run every four years or some sort of frequency and starts to take on a life of its own and gather them into them?

Ian Thomson: Absolutely, we would love it to become a permanent race and grow into one of the legendary races that you want to do in your life. Round Island Yacht Race, just had 300 entries or something. I don’t think we’ll ever get that many but you dream.

Ocean Sailing Podcast: Who knows right? You could start somewhere. 

Ian Thomson: So timing wise, how many years between? I don’t know to be honest. We’ll talk to the sailors who enter this event afterwards and say, “What do you think?” We’re listening to the sailors in this event. We just want to listen to what their thoughts are. If they like something, great. If they don’t, we’ll change them.

Ocean Sailing Podcast: Yeah, I saw some interesting commentary, I think you might have said, the people have already raised questions about the fuel restrictions and part of the environmental approach is whatever fuel you leave, is what you’re going to take around the country and if you think on one hand about solar and wind generators and the hydro ones you can go through the water, then from a self-sufficiency point of view, the options are there. I think you got around with about 180 litres I think when you went around. What’s the push back been? I didn’t see that it’s unreasonable when I read that as part of the conditions.

Ian Thomson: I think some people are looking at what they’ve used in other races and haven’t even thought about the alternatives because they’ve all spoken to me before that article was put out about the environmental side of things. Which we just wanted to hold back a little bit as to why we put them in there.

It’s like the plastic bag thing, really? “Why do you want to get rid of plastic bags?” “Because we don’t need them.” “Why do you want to restrict fuel?” We don’t need it. We don’t need fossil fuels. Teslas can drive around the country like on a battery.

Ocean Sailing Podcast: Yeah, that’s right.

Ian Thomson: We’ve got solar and by jeez, Australia, sailing around the country, you’re not going to see too many cloudy days apart from the southern ocean. 

Ocean Sailing Podcast: Plus we’re sailing right? We’re not murdering. That’s the primary goal. 

Ian Thomson: That’s the other thing, we’ve sailed back from Croatia to Australia with solar and wind and we could sail, like when we’re sailing, if the wind was 15 knots, with the wind generator and the sun during the day, we didn’t need anything. At night time we might have to throw the engine on for a couple of hours which is two litres of fuel a day. That’s not a lot. 

The hydro generators are improving and the cost are coming down. Just spoken to a company and it’s likely we will have them on board with a discount. 

Ocean Sailing Podcast: Also when you’re sailing, it’s kind of annoying putting the engine on if you don’t have to. Even just the sound interruption, let alone the fact you're wasting fuel in running the engine, which doesn’t really like just idling.

Ian Thomson: I’ve always talked about the R factor of sailing of when you turn that engine off and you hear that silence and all of a sudden it’s like like, “sigh”, yeah. The hydro generators that are coming out these days, they’re getting better and better. We’ve got a company, Watt and Sea that are likely to come on board and offer a discount to our entrants on their systems. Now, someone said to me, “Well that costs a fortune, they’re like $12 grand.” They’re down to under $6 grand these days. I think its $5,200 for the new Watt and Sea hydro generator. It’s 300 watt so…

Ocean Sailing Podcast: Wow, that’s pretty substantial. I’ve just put three solar panels on there and they’re 1.2 meters by 800 millimetres and they’re 400 in total for the three panels. So 300 is quite substantial form an output point of view.

Ian Thomson: Yeah they’re 300 watt and that’s sort of speed at 10 knots. They power up in anything above three knots. So I mean at the end of the day, that’s $5,200 I think. I’m hoping that we’ve got some sizeable discount coming from them as part of the deal we’re trying to work with them.

Ocean Sailing Podcast: Yeah.

Ian Thomson: It’s a sponsorship of sort. We’re not looking to get money from them, we want to offer discounts to our entrants and that’s the sponsorship that hopefully they’ll put forward. So fingers crossed for that but they look awesome. They’re just a one meter fin that hangs off the boat, that’s very little drag on them and huge power. So I think you’ll actually find this system, not in the 17, 18 Volvo Ocean Race. But they have a vision of going fossil fuel free in the Volvo Ocean Race. I think you will actually find those things will power the next generation of boats because they want to design boats. So if they’ve all go them, they’ve all got them.

Ocean Sailing Podcast: Yeah, well instead of having to run those dedicated generators daily to top their batteries that would be a great step forward.

Ian Thomson: It’s where we’re going, we’ve got hybrid engines in boats in the past, we’re getting hybrid cars. Germany is looking at banning fossil fuel cars after 2030. So if cars aren’t in them, why are we using them in sailboats? 

Ocean Sailing Podcast: Life’s easier. I mean if you don’t have to plug in the shore power on your engine, I’ve just put solar on because down the Gold Coast, quite often it’s not enough wind for the wind generator to be effective and if you’re in anchorage for a few days, just running your engine for the sake of it, there’s no enjoyment there and here’s a trailer for it, you’ve still got a fuel cost and you’ve got an engine wear and tear cost, it’s not that running your engine’s free. So when you’re thinking about the value over time of other forms of power generation, you’ve got to look at the cost of your engine use and maintenance and fuel over time, it’s not a free resource.

Ian Thomson: Well in the last Vendée Globe, there was a boat that actually was going fossil fuel free. Didn’t get a lot of publicity because it wasn’t one of the quicker boats but his deck was covered in those flexible solar panels. So even on a race boat you can do this. Because how much deck space on a race boat do you never walk on? So just looking at those alternatives, you don’t have to have the big bulky solar panels. The technology is there, we just got to think about it.

Ocean Sailing Podcast: To be motivated to think differently, be creative. Okay, with the race, so how many entries do you expect or what do you think the range will be? Do you have any kind of guesstimate in your wildest dreams as to what it could be on the start line when it comes to August next year?

Ian Thomson: Wildest dreams? People keep asking me this question and I have no answer to it. We’ve got three boats now, we’ve got a race. If we end up with 10 boats, awesome. If we end up with 20 boats, awesome. It’s not about how big it is to me, it’s about making sure that if we got three boats, that those three boats achieve their dream. If we got hundred boats, we’ve got to cover a hundred boats and we’ve got a hundred boats achieving their dreams. That’s more important to me than numbers. Obviously if we end up with a hundred boats, god, it would blow my mind for starters. Like a hundred boats…

Ocean Sailing Podcast: There’s a few logistical issues coming out of that.

Ian Thomson: We might need a few more crew to run the race. But that’s all right. I don’t have a wild expectation. I don’t have a number that I dream of, I just want people to achieve their dreams and come on out and if they’ve got questions, give me a call. I’ll talk to anybody. Drop me an email, I’ll respond to every email. I’ll help people try and get to that start line. That’s what it’s about for me.

Ocean Sailing Podcast: That’s great Ian. I mean there’s this little old race called the Solo Tasman Race, which runs every four years, and most people have never heard of it. 10, 15, 20 odd boats turn up every four years, and leave from New Plymouth and sail to Mooloolaba. So for people to be able to achieve things like this they want to achieve, with the flexibility that the format creates and the sheer number of boats that are potentially attracted to it, it’s got all the potential to be very satisfying for a lot of people for a whole lot of different reasons.

Ian Thomson: It’s also a bit more achievable in the Solo Trans-Tasman. The problem with the Solo Trans-Tasman is solo and you’re off shore.

Ocean Sailing Podcast: Yeah, and it’s the Tasman.

Ian Thomson: No insurance company will touch you. Around Australia, when I went around, I was on a Club Marine insurance policy. 200 nautical miles from land. You're going to stretch the boundaries across the Southern Ocean there, but most of the time you’re within 200 nautical miles of land. We’ll talk to the insurance companies and say he’s going to come on to try and support the teams who are trying to do this event so that hopefully they’ll offer discounts as well. When we sailed offshore, we went with Pantaenius, so they have an offshore cruising insurance, I don’t know if they cover racing or not?

Ocean Sailing Podcast: They do, I use them. In fact, I just had my policy extended for Sydney Southport because it’s the length of race rather than distance off shore. In terms of the Australian policy and up to 250 nautical miles is the first level of racing cover. The club racing up to that and then they’ve got over 250 which of course Sydney Southport and Sydney Hobart and that’s pretty — my access hasn’t changed, it’s added $900 to the year for the policy but it covers all of the racing activity.

So it’s actually quite reasonable. I found they’re the best. I had another company I used but through my good behaviour or five years of having nil claims, my access progressively got matched from $2,000 to $15,000. I couldn’t get any explanation as to why. So I changed to Pantaenius.

Ian Thomson: Yeah. So just being achievable, like I say, it’s one of those things, you can fly crew to Cannes and pickup, swap your crew out who are tired from the trip from Sydney to Cannes. I’ve got a pretty good bet that we’ll have quite a few boats stopping Broome. Why wouldn’t you? It’s Broome. It’s hard to get there by plane, that’s really hard to get there by boat but in this race you're going to be sailing past the doorstep.

After that, do you go into Bunbury like I actually did? That’s not far from the corner there at Cape Leeuwin and then stop in there before you go across. Or do you sail around the corner into Albany before you sail across down the Tasmania. Who knows? It’s going to be really interesting to watch that side of it from being stuck on land and probably with itchy feet. My wife’s looking for a ride on a boat, she doesn’t even want to sit with me and watch the boat, she wants to do it. So yeah, it’s interesting.

Ocean Sailing Podcast: Well and it brings so many different variables. Like an incredible number of variables with the ability to choose when you stop and to work that around weather being a factor as well. Clearly stopping for a day when there’s no wind is going to be more advantageous than a 20 knots power wind. I’m sure it’s one of those races if you get a dozen boats or more, the lead will chop and change many times and to finish first, you must finish, as they say with many marathons.

Ian Thomson: Yeah, but being able to stop and do some repairs, even if you use more than the 8 days, so what? As long as you finish because crossing that finish line — in my solo around Australia I had to stop, but I still crossed the finish line, and it was the best day of my life.

Ocean Sailing Podcast: Yeah, it’s interesting they say that and I think some of the times you find with these things, people think they set out to do it for all sorts of external reasons. Competing a race and what have you but often then they finish the race, they realise they did it for a whole lot of other internal personal reasons and that regardless of the external outcomes, that’s a far greater life lasting sense of achievement and satisfaction than anything external that you can be given or awarded.

Ian Thomson: I launched Ocean Crusaders off the back of my trip around Australia. What else is going to be launched from it? Who is going to be able to do what, having being able to do this race? Who knows? 

Ocean Sailing Podcast: It’s just a one little drop starts off that ripple effect that gathers all that moment.

Ian Thomson: Yeah and look, as I say, it’s about people achieving their dreams and if people can achieve their dreams and I’ve helped them do that then another tick in the box and my life achievements is to be able to get these boats around Australia. To be able to save a few turtles lives, to raise awareness of plastic even while doing this race. 

Having, as you say, half dozen over a dozen boats going around and being able to send the message out through them as well rather than just me going around solo and when I went around, no one really, apart from Sail World running an article every day, we didn’t end up on the TV or anything like that. Who knows what will happen on this road because it’s a pretty major race.

Ocean Sailing Podcast: Absolutely. It’s very Australian centric as well, with it being around Australia.

Ian Thomson: Yeah, we just need a big good old Aussie sponsor now and we’ll be fine. 

Ocean Sailing Podcast: Well, there’s a little bit of time, some would say there’s not much time but it’s quite a bit of time and the sooner you can gather momentum and interest now, who knows what could unfold just the next two or three months.

Ian Thomson: To be honest, we haven’t even chased sponsors yet. We wanted to get a few entries in first and get a feel for it before we decided to do it, but we’ll start chasing them now.

Ocean Sailing Podcast: Okay, that’s good. So when you sailed around the country and clearly if you’re living on small pockets of sleep, I guess there’s days where you’re just enjoying the wild beauty and the aura of it all and there’s days where you think, “I just want this to be over, I’m tired and grumpy.” What were the memorable parts of the trip for you?

Ian Thomson: Well, some of the things that a lot of people wouldn’t realise is what sleep deprivation can do to you. I tell this story now but I didn’t even tell it when I was out there. Especially to my mom because she was panicking as it was me being out there, but sailing down the west coast, sailed right across the top from Airlie beach to Carnarvon. We flew around there and I think we were averaging 11 knots, the wind was behind us, and we were just off, happy days.

Get to Carnarvon, the weather forecasts were all telling me to go into the shore, you’ll get this run down the coast, happy days. So I went in, it wasn’t that, there was no wind. All four forecasts that I was using said the same thing and nothing was there. So we spent two days getting back out, we missed a front. But sailing down the coast I was, each day, I wasn’t on a big budget so I’d call in on the satellite phone to a friend and they’re write the report and put it out to a Sail World and three days in a row, I was ringing my own mobile because she had my mobile and I got my own voice on the answering machine. 

So I was speaking to myself and that was the only contact I had. I kind of got a little annoyed the first day and the second day was very annoying and the third day it was pretty livid, so I rang mom just to hear another voice. But coming down the coast there, because I missed the weather wind, instead of getting in front of a huge front that came through I ended up in it. This was off the coast of Perth. Perth had 60 knots that night. I don’t think I quite had 60 knots on the boat but rather than sailing downwind to Cape Leeuwin, I got absolutely hammered on the nose, 35, 40 knots on the nose, on the boat that was made to go downhill. 

I was tired, I was grumpy, I was cold, and the boat felt like it was breaking. I actually was sitting there on a beanbag downstairs, wet, miserable, planning how to sink my boat. To all the insurance companies out there, don’t listen. I was in such a mental state that I wanted out. I couldn’t fail by just giving up, that’s just not who I am. But that’s where I was sitting. I was thinking, “I’m going to sink the boat and hang on. Hang on, I don’t want to sink it out here, it will take too long to get the rescue services to me so I’ll sail in towards the coast.” So I started sailing in towards Bunbury, and I fell asleep. Woke up, “What the hell are you doing?” Literally like that. 

Ocean Sailing Podcast: Top your batteries up, have a little bit of sleep and suddenly you’ve got a whole different level of reasoning. 

Ian Thomson: I was like, “What the hell are you trying to sink your boat for?” But just that sleep deprivation, it was the hardest thing I’ve ever gone through in my life. I wasn’t thinking about jumping off the back of the boat and killing myself, I was going to get into the life raft and you know, I had problems, I wanted it to stop. But yeah, for me, it was a pretty big moment in my life to sit there and just that little bit of sleep. I woke up, I’m like, “Ah, this isn’t right. Okay, we’re going to get some repairs done.” So I sailed into Bunbury, and just dropped the anchor and fixed my mainsail, got my engine working again, took off again. So I’m not going to say this is the easiest track to sail around in the world. It’s over 6,350 miles by the time you actually sail. Everyone’s going to face some pretty wicked challenges. At least you’ll have someone else on the boat to help you and to talk to.

Ocean Sailing Podcast: Yeah.

Ian Thomson: But finishing was the highlight of the race. Sailing across, I was fortunate enough to have done it out of the Whitsundays Sailing Club. They supported me hugely, a lot of mates up there. I happened to be arriving on a Wednesday afternoon. So they actually had Wednesday afternoon sailing on, and I was arriving before the race and every single boat came out, came over and sailed past me to congratulate me before they went to the start line of the race.

Ocean Sailing Podcast: It’s a pretty magical way to finish.

Ian Thomson: It was cool. It was really cool. Mom was up there on one of the boats that I worked on and it was just, what an achievement? You’ve finished the line; you’ve achieved something massive. So from halfway around wanting to give up, to actually achieving the goal, just two total contrasts of life, probably the lowest point in my life ever to the highest point in my life ever. So yeah, achieve your dreams, you’ve got to never give up. 

I wrote a book afterwards called Dare to Dream, and it was all about encouraging people to just go for it. Like stop living within your comfort zone, get out there, have a go. Okay, you’re going to fail sometimes but get up, get off of the ground and go again. It doesn’t matter whether it’s your business, whether it’s your family life, whether it’s a running race or race around the country. Unless you have a go, you’re never going to know and dying with regrets is probably one of the biggest regrets you’ll ever have.

Ocean Sailing Podcast: Yeah absolutely. 

Ian Thomson: So yeah just to me, that’s why this race exist. Allow people to achieve your dream that so few people will ever do or so few people have done.  Jamie Dunross can do it as a C5 quadriplegic, anyone can do this. Anyone can do this. I’m hoping that maybe a few boats will actually get together, you know, the corporate boats and do something like The Clipper where you can have people who have never sailed before. I haven’t been in touch with any of them but I will be touching base with them. I know there’s four Volvo 60’s in this country that would be ideal for it.

Ocean Sailing Podcast: That would be perfect. What a great culture and team building exercise and you’ll be able to change out employees on different legs so that you have this marathon type event but you can tailor it to businesses needs as well, that’s a pretty cool idea.

Ian Thomson: Spirit of the Maid, 2001 Volvo 60, sitting up at Hamilton Island, foresail $150 grand.

Ocean Sailing Podcast: Gosh, wow.

Ian Thomson: That’s a for sale for us. Okay you probably have to do some work to get it on the water and get it ready for the race.

Ocean Sailing Podcast: That’s a great starting point though.

Ian Thomson: Volvo 60 is going to smash this course, 78% downwind for me. That’s what those things were made for, going around the Southern Ocean. Spirit of the Maid, Merit’s got new owners. You’ve got Southern Excellence, it’s a Volvo 70, it’s on the market, I don’t know the price of that one. Some pretty cool boats on the market, there’s even a TP 52 for $180 grand down in Sydney. I mean that would be smoking to do this trip on. Some pretty cheap boats out here. So and people overseas, I’m sure there’s some boats out here that people will put out.

Ocean Sailing Podcast: There’s lots of Whitbread boats still floating around that are now sort of charter and tourist boats that would be still be fit for purpose.

Ian Thomson: But even a fleet of Sydney 38’s, great boat to do this trip on

Ocean Sailing Podcast: It would be good if you had a class, one or two classes where they took tat kind of approach, with another race within a race type concept.

Ian Thomson: Yeah, like even the class 40’s I’ve had interest from one already. There’s not too many in Australia but certainly a class that I think will build in Australia because they’re two handed boats and perfect for this race. So who knows, hopefully we’ll get some sort of class going and who knows what will happen. It’s an open slider at the moment and we’re open to anything and ready to listen and definitely ready to take entries and help people achieve their dreams.

Ocean Sailing Podcast: With this type of race, logistically, if you are 10, 20, 30, 40 entries. Logistically, what has to happen other than the start-finish line is there anything you need to do logistically around the country from a safety support, logistics compliance point of view? What happens from that point of view? 

Ian Thomson: We’re basically, there will be a tracking system, there has to be to know where everyone is. But also, everyone has to have a shore-based contact so that we know that they’re in touch with someone on the shore. When people are doing their pit stops, we need to hear from them so that we know where they’re going in. Obviously we will have a lot of contacts, I mean I know most of the marinas around the country, so if you need a mainsail repaired in Broome, that we’ve got someone sitting on the dock waiting for you when you get there because on a boat, you don’t want to be organising that stuff but we’re happy to do that.

Ocean Sailing Podcast: Yeah, and a day’s a short amount of time ashore right? Even with the best laid plans. 

Ian Thomson: Yeah, but they can do it after every race day and Hammo and Airlie Beach Race Week. Certainly like you break a sail there and it’s back on the dock first in the morning. 

Ocean Sailing Podcast: If you organise the right people in place, everything is doable right? 

Ian Thomson: If people are there and just even people from the yacht clubs may be willing to come and support people who are coming in by running them down the shops rather than having them get a taxi or picking up people from the airport or if you’ve got crew flying in there, who knows, yacht clubs can help out.

When Jamie Dunross pulled in to the Whitsundays, I contacted the Whitsundays Sailing Club and said, “This bloke is coming, help him out.” A whole fleet were out there to greet him. He wanted to move to the Whitsundays after that event. So yacht clubs around the country if we’ve got boats coming in to you, we’ll be looking for your help and I’m sure people will be willing to help and just listen to the stories those people have, have a beer, because I’m sure people will be having a beer if they do stop. It’s an Australia wide race.

Ocean Sailing Podcast: Well it creates quite an opportunity for, away from the typical you’re a stop over port or you're not. Anyone can be a stopover port within reason, right? So in an unplanned kind of way, there’s all sorts of ports and stops and marines around the country that may get a boat to stopping for whatever reason that they get the ability to host and spend 24 hours with and help out and create all sorts of local interest from just general public wanting to come down and see a boat that’s part way around the country. It’s quite a cool concept; it’s a really interesting format. Though I haven’t really seen or thought of before but it hits so many nails on the head I think in terms of the flexibility.

Ian Thomson: It would be a very interesting scenario from Sydney to Hobart allowed it because how many boats end up in Eden? Imagine if you could pit stop at Eden, do repairs and keep going. It will never happen but you sort of sit there, you’d have so many more finishes if you could do that. A club like Coffs Harbour might sit there and go, “Oh, we’re so close to the start, no one’s going to pull in to our club.”

Have a look at the Vendée Globe race. How many boats break the first day? Then they’ve got to go back. So boats could even be pulling in at pit water. You don’t know. If damage happens, at least with this concept, pull in, get it fixed, continue racing. That allows you to do that; as long as you don’t pull the boat out of the water. So don’t hit anything underwater.

Ocean Sailing Podcast: Yeah. Well and here’s the thing, right? If you, just hypothetically, if you’re cruising and your average six and a half knots right? Well that’s a thousand hours of sailing and do and a thousand hours of sailing, it’s probably who knows? Five years of club racing, you are going to break stuff. Stuff’s going to wear out; you can’t carry speed through everything. There is that unpredictability and their need to improvise that’s all part of the magic I think in terms of the race.

Ian Thomson: Don’t expect your sails to be in very good condition when you get back. Six and a half thousand nautical miles of sailing is going to put some wear and tear on a set of sails. But one hint I will give you is making sure you leave with damn good sails. I didn’t. My mainsail delaminated when I put the third reef in. That was off in that storm over in Western Australia.

For the second half of the trip, I couldn’t take the reef out. I sailed with the third reef for the second half of the trip because the rest of the sail was destroyed. So leaving with the right equipment, and this is why I say my phone’s always on and my email’s always open. I’ll help you get to the start line but I’ll also make sure you’re ready for the start line as well because I learned a lot of things. Bruce Arms who owns the multihull record I’m sure would be only too happy to talk to anybody about how to run your drogues. 

A lot of people don’t realise that in the Southern Ocean, he nearly ended up being pulled off his boat. He was racing alone and put the drogue out, it got tangled or something was in it. He tried to pull it in, ended up with a loop around his ankles and he’s drogue trying to pull him off the boat. Very, very lucky guy. We’ve learned a lot. Dave Pescud’s probably got some stories to tell as well of when we went around. So there are a lot of lessons to be learned, there’s a lot of lessons that will be learned but preparation of your boat, key. Number one factor, it’s got to be ready. Not just to sail to Hobart, this is going around the country.

Ocean Sailing Podcast: It’s 10 Hobart right?

Ian Thomson: 10.

Ocean Sailing Podcast: Yeah I just suddenly thought, it’s a quantum leap when you think about that.

Ian Thomson: You crossed the Queensland border you haven’t even done a Hobart. You’ve only just began, you’re only 10% of the way when you’re crossing to Queensland. It’s a long way. 

Ocean Sailing Podcast: Just along those lines then, and if you look at a different example, but the Atlantic Rally for Cruises which is 150 odd entries each year now, they run a number of seminars or workshops leading up to that to prepare some of the novices for these types of things.

Have you got any plans to give any thoughts to some of the resource that may help the average boater to plan something like this where they haven’t done anything category one or been off shore before like this where they’re having to prepare for that kind of long distance, self-sufficiency, marathon type event where it’s not like you can just, even with eight stop overs, you still need to prepare and plan. You’re not always in everything within reach and you’re not going to get around if you don’t think about these things and plan property.

Ian Thomson: Certainly would love to travel around and do some workshops before we go, but that’s going to come down to the funding that we’ve got available from sponsors because we won’t put that funding onto the competitors. If we have to do a webinar or whatever.

Ocean Sailing Podcast: Webinar I was going to say is probably a good alternative.

Ian Thomson: So at the end of the day, we’re here to help, we’ll find a way to do it and just a matter of when and how and listen to them. At the moment it’s still over a year away and as we get close within six months of it, certainly we’ll want to start talking to competitors more often and find out where they’re up to.

In the Golden Globe Race, Don was telling me people were already preparing and that starts in 2018. Their boat’s getting ready already so yeah, obviously a year is going to disappear pretty quickly when we all think about having to work and get a boat on the water at the same time. But it’s nothing over the top of what you would normally do on a boat.

Ocean Sailing Podcast: No.

Ian Thomson: It’s just you might have to add a few systems, you might want to put that wind generate on, you might want to put those solar panels on and getting them fitted early, making sure those systems are operating correctly, trying them in a race beforehand is really worth it to make sure that you don’t go out there with a new system.

Ocean Sailing Podcast: Absolutely, and your tools and your spares and your points of weakness and your backup plans.

Ian Thomson: Make sure your fan belts are good and you’ve got two spares.

Ocean Sailing Podcast: I carry two spare sets now because I had an unfortunate experience for taking friends away for a week and we were half an hour out of the marina and the main one went and I said, “That’s okay, we’ll sort it out when we stop.” But it had shot shrapnel through the other two belts that run my super alternator and they shred themselves, I kid you not, half an hour later. So I ended up with over three belts gone and I checked the spares and there was only one spare for the three I needed and even though the previous owner had the boat’s engines serviced every year, the fan belt was 12 years old. The irony is you should just replace it before it breaks but it’s a good example if you don’t have spares, we were stuck for three days waiting for spares to arrive and not been able to run power and stuff.

Ian Thomson: Yeah, and getting the right stuff, making sure you’ve got your spare and powers for everything. It’s just you kind of carry a bit more equipment on this trip than you would even going to Hobart because yeah, you don’t want to off the coast to Broome have something go down and you don’t know how long it’s going to take to get to Broome. Probably quicker than you think, but you’ll pay for it.

Ocean Sailing Podcast: Well and it’s better than ending your race early just because you’re not prepared and often I’ve found, it’s the $5 path that causes you the grief. It’s not that the problem’s expensive, it’s just the part’s unique and without it, other things don’t work.

Ian Thomson: But it’s the little things that a lot of people don’t look at. They just go, “Oh you know, my rudder is tight.” They don’t pull the rudder out and check the bearing, and make sure the bearing is solid; it’s got no cracks in it. You need to do that before you go around the country like this. You pretty much need to pull your rig down and have a rigger scan all your rigging. 

We don’t want any dismounting because that’s going to take a bit more than 24 hours to fix. When I went around, I spoke about — well I spoke to myself about it, which you do quite a lot when you’re sailing solo. Sailing at 90% a 100% of the time. You can’t sail at 110% in a race like this. You can’t do it, it’s not a sprint.

Ocean Sailing Podcast: No, and you’re just going to break stuff.

Ian Thomson: The ARC guys in the Hobart might do that and if they make it, great. If they don’t, “Oh well, we tried.” This isn’t about that, this is about getting to the finish line, if that means you do sail at 90%, you do. If there’s a cloud on the horizon, pull the cart in, what’s it going to do? Over six and a half thousand nautical miles.

Ocean Sailing Podcast: Yeah.

Ian Thomson: A nautical mile like lost because of safety versus blowing up your coat on the second night. It takes away your tactical advantage of getting something fixed later on. If you break something the first night, it takes out a day or two of your stops. You can’t use them later. Later on down the track, you’ve got to realise the crew’s going to be tired. They’re going to be very tired and it is more likely that things are going to get broken.

Even though Hobart seems really close to home, with just a reverse Hobart to Sydney to do, Hobart would be a pretty cool spot to stop and just make sure you’re fresh for that last little blast if you’ve got two or three days up your sleeve when you get to Hobart, perfect. Stop, relax, chill out.

Ocean Sailing Podcast: Yeah, you can really recharge your batteries.

Ian Thomson: Hopefully the weather’s kind too, otherwise you could stop just even in Botany Bay.

Ocean Sailing Podcast: Yeah.

Ian Thomson: And you use up your days in Botany Bay if that’s what you have to do. You could sail right around the country and spend eight days in Botany Bay and then finish. It could happen.

Ocean Sailing Podcast: Yeah, that’s right. For preparation and education’s pretty key component and not just having to be category one certified but just the fact that in that many days of consecutive racing, you have chafe, you have things that bolts and screws that come loose, you have all sorts of things you have to manage. They’re quite different to the normal just going out for a day or a week, and so much of it is about just boat management within the constraints of comfort not pushing and breaking and how many things come apart or having crew come apart.

Ian Thomson: Yeah, absolutely. Even your mainsail, you don’t want to sail around the country with the main at full the whole time. I’ll tell you that now because your hull is going to cop a hammering if you do that. Throwing in a first reef and get some stress of that point or just slacking it off a little bit in the light winds just so it moves an inch so you’re at a totally different waypoint on the sheets.

Ocean Sailing Podcast: Yeah.

Ian Thomson: It’s all things you’ve got to consider when you’re doing this right because six and a half thousand nautical miles on a halyard, it’s a long way. Six and a half thousand nautical miles on your steering gear; it’s a long way. You’ve just got to constantly think of all this stuff beforehand and just like our plastic motto of prevention is better than a cure. Same with your boat. Preventative maintenance is a hell of a lot better than a fix it maintenance.

Ocean Sailing Podcast: Yeah, absolutely.

Ian Thomson: Which so many people do. So you make sure your boats ready. Have your oils on board just in case you need to top up. Not that we want to be using that, but you might need that as a backup. You still need it to start to go on in and out of the port. We’re not making you sail up onto a birth, you can stop racing and go back to that point when you decide to go ashore. You might be a hundred miles; you have to go back south because you’ve decided that you’re going to motor that hundred miles. Who knows? This is all part of the tactics and fun of this race and the challenge, I think.

Ocean Sailing Podcast: That’s certainly fascinating. I guess my last question for you Ian is, the Vendée Globe and the Volvo Ocean Race have done, I think they’ve done an excellent job and the last couple of events have really started to engage a wider audience and they’ve done things with virtual gaming and virtual racing and live tracking and media reporting from on board and there’s a bit of controversy at the moment because they said, “Oh we need to have a media person on board, the Vendée Globe boats if the Volvo guys have done it.

The Vendée Globe guys said, “Well hang on, it’s a solo race. What do you mean somebody else on board?” So I’m not sure where that’s going to end up. Have you given thought of a technology plan, tracking plan, live broadcasting updating plan from your point of view with this race to help make it accessible and make it interesting and keep that attention? The reason I ask is we had a Coffs to Paradise race, which isn’t 150 mile race back in January. 

For the very first time, the club had trackers on the boats. Suddenly we have people on Facebook, friends, family, watching our results. And you know how slowly those things move up the screen, doing six or seven knots. But the fascination was, I got a real taste of it. It’s not just these big races that gather interestingly. Even a smaller format, you definitely have access to the technology and the data and the information. You really start to get engaged with it.

Ian Thomson: Yeah, tracker’s they’re definitely be on the boat and they’ll be interactive sort of system that you can, we’ll highly likely to use yellow brick tracking for it because it’s quite a simple box that you can put on board and away you go. But there will also be a virtual regatta going around. We’ve just got to decide what boat we’ll use for the virtual regatta because obviously there are so many different boats in it that the virtual regatta has to have one particular boat.

So whether we use a Volvo specs or TP 52, I don’t know. We’ll talk to the virtual regatta guys about that. They setup a race for us when we try to go around Australia in 2011 on Brenda Bella. Unfortunately the boat never went but we still held the virtual regatta around people around the world and were racing around the country too.

You find out where the boats are on the tracker and then you go to your system and you go, “Okay, where are we going as they race around the country?” That always creates lots of social media and everything like that. On board reporters, we’re setting it up so that people have satellite communications so that we can talk to them, we can still get photos off. I mean, these days, the iridium go, we came across with the iridium go, which was we purchased through predictwind.com. You end up with your own tracker as well for your own website. So apart from…

Ocean Sailing Podcast: That’s cool.

Ian Thomson: … people who are cruising off shore, like our parents knew where we were the whole time and how fast we were going and when it failed for whatever reason, they’re like, “Why are you back in that country?” It’d be good and bad but at the end of the day that allows you to get your weather data down. It’s $125 US a month for unlimited data.

Ocean Sailing Podcast: Wow, that’s actually really, really affordable.

Ian Thomson: And what was it? 150 minutes talk time.

Ocean Sailing Podcast: So anywhere in the world or just coastal Australia?

Ian Thomson: Anywhere in the world.

Ocean Sailing Podcast: I need to tell Andy Lamont, he’s sailing around the world in and S&S 34. He assumed it was going to be thousands of dollars.

Ian Thomson: If you get the external aerial, I think it’s $1,600 to buy the unit but then after that, yeah it’s $124.95 a month.

Ocean Sailing Podcast: It’s really accessible.

Ian Thomson: Unlimited data. Okay, it’s downloading at Iridium speeds, which are glacial at 2.4 kilobytes per second. But at the end of the day, you can actually still get your news.

Ocean Sailing Podcast: I’m just going to make a note of it. Yeah, that’s great, and your weather as well?

Ian Thomson: Yeah, the weather is really important. When I went around Australia I wasn’t really getting weather because I didn’t really have a satellite system. I did have a satellite phone but the Internet was hopeless on satellite phones back then. Now it’s brilliant because you’ve got this system and in 2017, there are some areas that are going to go to 3G speeds on the Iridium Network. 

If we get to that on these devices when we left Croatia, we were getting 50 minutes of talk time. Still unlimited data but then the plan changed to have 150 minutes of talk time, which was great. We’re in the middle of the ocean and Anica’s calling her mom back in Sweden.

Ocean Sailing Podcast: It’s pretty cool isn’t it?

Ian Thomson: I can call my mom and call your friends and sought out things at home still. So it’s nice to have that security out there and it’s actually got an SOS button on it, which will send a message to all the different people on a setup email. A fantastic system, so that’s on predictwind.com. They were sponsoring our campaign, they still do. Well worth talking to John over there and his weather forecast, you can download that on your tablet. The cool thing with the Iridium GO is that it’s like a Wi-Fi dongle on your boat. Then you use your standard, whether as your computer, your phone, your tablet, as your device to talk on.

Ocean Sailing Podcast: Oh right. So you’re just…

Ian Thomson: So your iPhone becomes your handset.

Ocean Sailing Podcast: Yeah, right. How good is that?

Ian Thomson: So technology’s coming to allow us to get more stuff off boats and out of respectable cost. Like I say, $125 bucks, I think its $50 bucks to connect it. But so what? The security that’s involved in a satellite phone to make sure you’ve got it, fantastic. If you don’t want the outside arial, I think you can get it for about a grand, they’re pretty cheap.

Ocean Sailing Podcast: Yeah, that’s great.

Ian Thomson: And it’s not even like the old brick phones anymore, they’re tiny.

Ocean Sailing Podcast: Okay, cool. Well, is there anything else you want to tell me about the race or the plans or anything else at all before we wrap up, Ian?

Ian Thomson: I think we’ve covered most things. To me, it’s about achieving your dream and that’s what this race is about. Go hard, sail around the country and experience that feeling of finishing. If you’ve ever finished a Hobart, you know what it’s like to finish a Hobart. To finish 10 Hobart in one sail, it’s a pretty damn good feeling and it will be the highlight of your life and a definite achievement and it will change the way you look at life, absolutely. So if you're thinking about it, please contact us to talk to us. If you’re looking for crew, if you’re looking for a boat, get on the website, let us know and we’ll try and hook you up. That’s what it’s about.

Ocean Sailing Podcast: Okay, the website address is?

Ian Thomson: It’s Aroundaustraliayachtrace.com. It’s a long one but that’s easy to get to.

Ocean Sailing Podcast: Yeah, and we’ll link to it from the podcast episode and we’ll also create some show notes off this episode and link to it and Ian’s details from there as well so you can check that out through the podcast website. I’m sure we’ll love to catch up over the next few months as we get closer for a check in with you and see how things are progressing and I’m sure this will be a really, really fascinating episode for our listeners. 

I’m sure, if you’re thinking about doing this race, it’s just over 12 months away, there’s time to prepare and plan. It’s a coastal race around Australia, it’s accessible, it’s a cost effective way of doing it and I know when I took a screenshot of the banner off Facebook and put it on my Facebook group with my 18 crew that share that page, there was a lot of interest straight away.

In terms of I said, “Are you thinking what I’m thinking?” Suddenly the mind starts thinking about “how can this be possible” as supposed to “it’s not possible”. There’s lots of ways it can be possible. So particularly with your resources, your advice and support and your ability help people to find boats or crew that I’m sure that people can make this happen and something that they’ll remember for their lifetime.

Ian Thomson: There’s not too many times you’re ever going to be able to do something like this and as you say, if you can do it once, fantastic. If you get to do it twice, you’re pretty privileged. But yeah, if you’re dreaming of doing it, let’s do it.

Ocean Sailing Podcast: That’s great, well thanks Ian, thanks for getting behind the creation of the new chapter of this racing and good luck and all the best with it. I think it’s going to be — I think it’s a fantastic concept and I truly wish you all of the success and I think all the ingredients are there now, it’s just a matter of making people aware of it and getting them thinking about it and I think it’s going to truly become a great spectacle and a great opportunity and a great endeavour that many people decide to aspire to do.

Ian Thomson: Yeah. I think it’s an awesome thing and the more people we get involve, it would be awesome.

Ocean Sailing Podcast: Great. Thanks Ian, look forward to catching up again soon.

Ian Thomson: Thanks again. 

Interviewer: David Hows

Episode 11: Andy Lamont Show Notes

Ocean Sailing Podcast: Hi folks, welcome along to this week’s episode of the Ocean Sailing Podcast. We’re back on Impulse catching up with Andy Lamont so hey, thanks for coming back Andy. 

Andy Lamont: Oh, it’s a pleasure mate. It’s great to be back.

Ocean Sailing Podcast: So I thought it would be great to check in with you, your first interview which was a couple of episodes, has been really, really popular and we’d had lots and lots of interest in your story and with all the images that you supplied. There has been lots of visits in the page and so I thought given a couple of months have gone by now and your trip’s now a whole lot closer than it was, that it would be good to check back with you on the progress you have made in terms of the further changes and upgrades and the extra bits and pieces with the boat. 

Then also, what else has been happening? I know you’ve done some stuff sponsorship wise, I know you’ve been doing some stuff world record wise that you’re looking at doing and some other ideas you’ve got around collecting sea samples. So tell us what you’ve been up to? 

Andy Lamont on board Impulse at the Southport Yacht Club

Andy Lamont: Well, I guess that the biggest news is that just after I spoke to you and we recorded the first episode, I found out about a guy called Bill Hatfield who was going for the world record in the 40 foot class doing a west bound circumnavigation and I thought that record had been broken a long time ago. I knew that Chay Blyth had done it back in the late 60’s. 

He did a west bound circumnavigation just after the Golden Globe Race and that was in a 59 foot boat called British Steel and I just assumed that that record had been broken a long, long time ago. When I found out that it hadn’t been broken, and Bill had been going for the record it was an incredible story. 

He got around Cape Horn and got hit by a big storm and it was apparently blowing like 60 knots plus for quite a few days. He put out a drag and run before the storm, which basically took him back into Cape Horn again. When the storm abided he was below Diego Ramirez Islands and he was starting to pull his drag back in. For some reason, he wasn’t clipped on and he got knocked flat by a big wave and a breaking wave, thrown out of his boat. 

Ocean Sailing Podcast: Wow, into the water?

Andy Lamont: Into the water, this was below Cape Horn, and he was in the water and looking at his boat 10 or 15 meters away, picked up by another wave and sort of washed back onto his boat so he was a very lucky man. 

Ocean Sailing Podcast: Unbelievable. That’s not going to happen twice, is it?

Andy Lamont: His boat was a bit damaged and broken windows and a bit of damage to one of his shrouds and he decided that digression was a better part of him and headed back to the Falkland Islands and sold his boat, which that was around March. Around that time I was listening to his story just after I spoke to you. I went, “Well, that record is still there for the taking.”  

So I sort of told my wife and she said, “Absolutely not,” because it was going to take longer but eventually she acquiesced and so I said, “Look, we can go. We can go for this record if we go in October, which was the same time. It’s a good time to go because we get through the southern ocean in the summer time.” Going towards Cape of Good Hope, which was always going to be the worst part of the journey going east bound. So we’ll do that which will be good but then we’re just going to have a really good weather window to get around Cape Horn because that’s going to be around March. 

Andy Lamont's offical documents for his world record attempt

Ocean Sailing Podcast: Right and then you’d be coming across the Pacific. 

Andy Lamont: Yeah and then once we get around Cape Horn, not that anything is ever going to be plain sailing but hopefully, it will be a pretty plain sailing. We’ll be able to get back home, so I guess that’s the biggest news and the biggest change, whereas before I was just going for my own personal achievement and something of an achievement of a dream that I always had and wanted to do. That’s now changed into, “Well I’m going for a world record attempt,” which brought with it a few extra issues because you have to register with the World Sailing Speed Records Council. 

Ocean Sailing Podcast: Well and it’s quite costly too. I saw the bill and it’s in pound too, right? 

Andy Lamont: Yeah, it was in pounds. 

Ocean Sailing Podcast: What was the cost of that? 

Andy Lamont: Well that was 1,600 pounds. 

Ocean Sailing Podcast: To register to make it legitimate.

Andy Lamont: Yeah, which seems like a lot of money. If you’re running a Mocha 60, it’s probably…

Ocean Sailing Podcast: Yeah, or if you live in the UK right? 

Andy Lamont: Yeah, exactly.

Ocean Sailing Podcast: It’s just your local currency. 

Andy Lamont: Yeah but when I looked into it, they do provide a fair bit for that. So they have a local commissioner here in Australia who is going to basically look after all the technical aspects of the record. So he has to be paid and they send down a black box and the black box records the journey. 

Ocean Sailing Podcast: Oh right, so they actually measure that you don’t just go out there and sail around in circles in nine months. You actually go around the world. 

Andy Lamont: I mean ever since Donald Crowhurst has tried that, they’ve done it that way after that one. So yeah, no I can’t go to the Whitsundays anymore and just sort of hang around there. Yeah, so all of that, I mean obviously all that costs money so you don’t begrudge paying it but it was an unexpected cost. But you know I’m quite happy to do it because I think well, it definitely will be the first and the fastest westbound circumnavigation. I don’t think the record that’s the fastest will stand for very long because it is an S&S 34. 

Ocean Sailing Podcast: Well it stood this long, right? 

Andy Lamont: Yeah, that’s right. 

Ocean Sailing Podcast: It hasn’t been established. 

Andy Lamont: Yeah and interesting. Westbound circumnavigations are interesting. The record for a westbound circumnavigation is held by a boat called Adrian and the guy’s name is Jean-Luc or something. I can’t pronounce the French name but he set that in an 85-foot mono hull, single-handed. 

Ocean Sailing Podcast: Wow, that’s a big boat single handed. 

Andy Lamont: Yeah, although a lot of them are. It’s the same as Dee Caffari the first woman to do it with a 75 footer because the bigger boats are much better going to… 

Ocean Sailing Podcast: Yeah and the French are very good in those single handed big and multi’s as well as the mono hulls. They’re very good at that. 

Andy Lamont: Yeah but that record, his record was set now it’s probably, I think, 2004 from memory but that’s the record for a still stand. It’s a record for crewed or un-crewed so yeah. 

Ocean Sailing Podcast: Wow and how many days was it? 

Andy Lamont: Ah, now you’ve put me on the spot. If you go to my website, www.andylamont.com.au it’s there. I think it was 135. 

Ocean Sailing Podcast: Right. Oh yeah, so that’s a pretty good average. 

Andy Lamont: Yeah, I think it was so don’t quote me on that. 

Ocean Sailing Podcast: Okay and so tell me about your website you’ve built. 

Andy Lamont: Yeah that was pretty amazing too because I hadn’t really done anything in the way of promoting this trip for sponsors or anything like that because I was pretty low key and then I thought about two weeks ago, I sat down and people keep asking me, “Can you send me this? Can you send me that?” And every time that someone asks me to send them a letter, I’ve got to sit down and write a letter. 

It takes me an hour and a half and then I forget everything or another one, so I thought I’ll just to see if I can build a website and I was just amazed because it’s just so easy now and so I sat down and just a few days, I had the barebones of the website there. I had all the photographs of when I was doing the boat up. So I just put those into a blog and when the blog is all done and the photographs were all there.

I was doing this website with my wife and I got really excited. I was doing it late at night and I keep waking up my wife and going, “Hey, look what I did! I put this photo here and I put a caption underneath it,” and as I was really excited to do that. So search the website. 

Ocean Sailing Podcast: So andylamont.com.au. 

Andy Lamont: That’s it, yeah, www.andylamont.com.au, I thought at least it would be pretty easy to remember. I thought I wouldn’t forget it. You can go in there, and then with the website, then came the funding to Go Fund Me campaign where someone said, “Look why don’t you do this Go Fund Me campaign?”

So that was really easy to set up. So I set that up and I already had enough and it really, really humbles me. I’m really appreciative of the people that had made some donations to that, which basically there’s enough donations in there already for me to buy me a Delmore Reach Me tracking device. 

Ocean Sailing Podcast: Great!

Andy Lamont: So those little things like five or 10 bucks or whatever, it doesn’t sound like a lot but it still adds up.

Ocean Sailing Podcast: It all adds up, yeah because there’s so many cost there that just run away with you as you’re preparing to sail the trip. It’s great if you can fund the things that help you keep in touch with people, because they are interested in your story and in your journey and to be able to keep them updated of your location and how you’re tracking with stories and photos from the trip and along the way. If you can afford those extra communication devices and tools and stuff, that’s really, really cool. 

Andy Lamont: Yes, I’m really grateful for people for the interest. The money that they donate is really helpful but I guess even more than that, it’s the psychological boost that it gives you that… 

Ocean Sailing Podcast: Like you’ve got a team? 

Andy Lamont: “Ah, wow there’s people interested in me doing this thing,” and it gives you a good boost.  I am really happy to see that happen. 

Ocean Sailing Podcast: Yeah that’s great and then you had some sponsorship come along as well which is promising. 

Andy Lamont: Yeah Southport Yacht Club has been really generous and that’s been fantastic. Ray McMahon is the guy who has proven that here at the club and they’ve got quite a few meetings. In my opinion as well, I’ll just see what happens but they’ve been really, really generous in being able to give me a great sponsorship package, which means that a lot of the things I was worried about, like getting the boat out in the water and keeping it out for a month is a big cost because you’ve got to pay your marina fees and you also have to pay your hardstand fees, so having all of that taken care off is just such a load off. 

Ocean Sailing Podcast: Are they going to the anti-fails for you as well? 

Andy Lamont: Yeah, they would. 

Ocean Sailing Podcast: Well make sure you put about five coats on because you’re going to need it right? 

Andy Lamont: Yeah, so they give me a figure, which I can use on club fees, half stand fees, and anti-foul so that would be great. Hopefully we get that, there’s a new anti-foul product out that I might be able to use at that point in time. So hopefully that will happen. 

Ocean Sailing Podcast: Yeah, well that’s good. That’s good, okay and what about the work that you’ve have been doing on board here and as I look around, I can see your wheel’s gone and you’ve got a really, really nice looking utility out there. What else have you been doing? 

Andy Lamont: Well, I guess that is the next big job that had to be done. The cockpit floor is made from balsa sandwich and the trouble with the balsa is once it gets damp, it does rot and so we had to replace the side decks and the foredeck and the cockpit floor. I’ve already replaced one third of it and the plan was to replace the rest of it when we pulled out the wheels steering, the wheel and pedestal. 

So pulled out the wheel and pedestal, cut out all the floor and I had a bit of fun doing that and made a new floor out of just 20 mil marine ply, fibre glassed on top of that and coved it all in and got the new tiller. I was very lucky with the tiller. I don’t know if I have told you that story before, did I? I will tell you again, it’s a good story. 

Ocean Sailing Podcast: Is it from WA or something? 

Andy Lamont: Oh yes, that’s right. The fitting that goes onto the rudder post, a guy from WA went into the small works yard and picked it up for me out of a bin from when they used to make S&S 34’s and they had a whole lot left so luckily there was one in there and I wanted to make the tiller here out of mahogany and silver ash. Silver ash is an Australian hardwood, which is a very blonde timber and really contrasts with the deep mahogany. 

Ocean Sailing Podcast: Yeah, it kind of matches the Gold Coast theme as well, blonde.

Andy Lamont: Yeah and I was doing some termite work because I’ve got a pest control company, for a guy out in the Ormeau area, which is an area out in sort of the sticks a little bit around here and I noticed that he had a few boats being build. He turned out to be quite a famous boat builder and I said, “Oh, have you got any mahogany and silver ash around which I can make a tiller from?” He said, “Yeah. How are you going to make it?” And I told him how I was going to make it and he said, “Oh that’s silly, I’ve got a jig here for making tillers, you can just use that.” 

Ocean Sailing Podcast: Oh, what are the chances? 

Andy Lamont: Yeah and so anyway, so I did his termite work and I had all the drawings of how I was going to make the tiller. I rang him up about a week before I was going to come out and make the tiller and I said, “Tony, I am just going to come up and make this tiller at your workshop next week, is that all right?” And he went, “Oh no, I already made it.” 

Ocean Sailing Podcast: Really, so he made you a tiller? How cool is that?

Andy Lamont: So he made it for me so I was really, really appreciative of that. 

Ocean Sailing Podcast: Well I hope you got rid of all his termites then. 

Andy Lamont: Yeah, well so do I. So yeah, so that’s great. So the tiller is there, which is great for single handed. Of course when we’re doing the crewed twilight races, the crew will be upset now because I am walking the line. I used to be behind the wheel and as anyone knows, an S&S 34. The cockpit is really about the same size as a bathtub really, isn’t it? 

Ocean Sailing Podcast: Yeah, that’s right. It’s not very big and once you are behind the wheel you’re stuck there right, in the whole race?

Andy Lamont: Yeah and the tiller takes up most of the room. So now all the crew are sort of telling me I’m in the way. 

Ocean Sailing Podcast: So you’re bashing people’s knees now if you suddenly decide to turn suddenly. 

Andy Lamont: Yeah, falling on them, sitting on their laps and all that kind of stuff. Yeah but it’s fun so that’s good. So that was a big thing. That was a big thing for me. That was probably the last major structural job that we had to do was to remove the cockpit floor, remove the pedestal, take the wheel out and replace it with the tiller. The only other thing that’s really major that we’re going to do when we take it out of the heart is we’re going to lift the boat off the keel and check all the keel bolts and take the rudder out. There’s some kind of a bit of a leak in the rudder and so we’ll just dry it out and put a new one. 

Ocean Sailing Podcast: Well the leak will only get big not smaller, right, If you don’t do anything? 

Andy Lamont: Yeah, so that’s right. It’s not a big job, we’ll just cut it out, cut out half the rudder and dig out all the foam and re-core it and put fibre glass around the outside of it. That will be pretty much all the structural jobs on the boat would have been done by then and then when the boat comes out in August, we’ll take the mast out as well and we’ll just going to go right over the mast with a fine toothed comb. Anything that needs fixing, we’ll fix and that’s pretty much it. 

Now the other great news, the other thing too is that I know last time we’re talking, I was talking about these Turtle-Pac buoyancy bags. So two weeks ago, I have made the decision to actually install the Turtle-Pac system in the boat. It’s not cheap but to me, it’s something that’s just worth the peace of mind that it gives me, my family, my wife and everyone else. 

Ocean Sailing Podcast: It’s a pretty major plan B. To refresh everybody’s memory, to be able to inflate a really robust inflatable bag inside the boat that means if it gets compromised to some degree it’s going to continue to partially float at least so you can continue to live aboard while you find a solution or catch fish, or catch rain water or what have you. As opposed to having to just have a life raft as your plan B. So it’s a pretty good plan B. 

Andy Lamont: Yeah. So the system itself is six 1000 litre bags. 

Ocean Sailing Podcast: Right, so they’re still compartmentalised as well. So if you damaged one, you still got five that are intact. Is that how that works? 

Andy Lamont: Yeah. 

Ocean Sailing Podcast: It’s all just one big chamber? 

Andy Lamont: No, it’s not one big chamber. So there are six, basically cylindrical bags and they fold up quite small. So there will be one each in either of the quarter bunks, which folds up against the hull so they don’t hardly take up any room. There will be another one that folds up just in front of the chart table there. 

Ocean Sailing Podcast: So you can choose where you locate them within the boat as well. 

Andy Lamont: Yeah and there will be another one in the forepeak and two with the quarter burst used to be just folded against the hull and so they will be all controlled by two dive cylinders. 

Ocean Sailing Podcast: So you’ve got a back up cylinder as well. You’ve got two rather than just one as well. 

Andy Lamont: No there’s two we’ll take. So two will just fill all six. 

Ocean Sailing Podcast: You need all two to fill the six, all right. 

Andy Lamont: Yeah and so what happens is if I need to, yeah and this is one of the things that I’m planning on not to use. If I had to use it I’d just open both those cylinders and those bags will fill up in 45 seconds. But, they only fill up to four pounds pressure. 

Ocean Sailing Podcast: Okay, so there’s no chance of popping them. 

Andy Lamont: No, they won’t pop or they will conform if there’s something on the floor or in the way. They will just go around it. But he did say that when you fill them up make sure that you stand out of the way because if you got your whole leg by one, it can pin you.

Ocean Sailing Podcast: Oh right? Pin yourself inside a sinking boat. 

Andy Lamont: Pin yourself, yeah. So there is quite a fair bit of reserve in those 6,000 litres as well and the boat will float quite high. 

Ocean Sailing Podcast: Wow, because the 6,000 litres of water so six tons. So how much weight can it support? Does it literally transfer that weight? 

Andy Lamont: No, it doesn’t. Your transfer is much more than that because this is what the… 

Ocean Sailing Podcast: Oh because the boat has got partial floatation built into it anyway. 

Andy Lamont: Yeah and even, so for instance you just go also you’ve got the lead. I think it’s in the S&S 34, don’t quote me, but I think there is something like about two and a half thousand kilos of lead but that doesn’t worth two and a half thousand kilos in the water. It doesn’t displace two and a half thousand. 

Ocean Sailing Podcast: So if it all turns to custard, you just undo your keel bolts, let your keel bolts go. The keel then goes so your boat sits even higher on the water? 

Andy Lamont: Yeah, no it that might be upside down in that case. 

Ocean Sailing Podcast: Yeah, good point. 

Andy Lamont: Yeah, so the 6,000 litres is much more than this six-ton boat. 

Ocean Sailing Podcast: That’s great. 

Andy Lamont: Yeah. 

Ocean Sailing Podcast: Especially if you’ve got a hull that’s just above the water line or just below the water line literally up enough for it to stay out of the water potentially. 

Andy Lamont: Yeah, exactly. So I really did a lot of soul searching about it and of course with every project like this, if something gets spent on one thing it doesn’t get spent on another thing and I thought, “Look, you know to me, that’s probably the best,” about five grand it costs. “That’s about the best five grand that you can spend,” because it just means that, failing fire, we’re pretty indestructible, which is a funny story because the inventor Laszlo (not a funny story), invented this but it was a bit of a tragedy. It was a bad story really, but he had it on his boats and he invented it because he was caught in a cyclone with the boat filling up with water and he was out of the Gold Coast and his boat caught on fire of course. 

Ocean Sailing Podcast: They’re not going to help you then are they? 

Andy Lamont: They’re not going to help you then. 

Ocean Sailing Podcast: Then irony! You’ve got a solution for sinking and then you catch fire. 

Andy Lamont: Yeah, so you know? I’m taking the metho stove and that’s it so pretty much the chances of us having a fire of course… 

Ocean Sailing Podcast: Yeah, which is good because that’s ugly if you do have a fire. 

Andy Lamont: Oh, you know there’s not much that you can do is it there? 

Ocean Sailing Podcast: No, that right and it happens very quickly. 

Andy Lamont: Yeah so that was really great. That was a real sort of point of importance for me anyway to get that. It was one of those things that I have been playing with, equivocating about for about a year and a half. 

Ocean Sailing Podcast: Has that helped your wife and your family get their heads around the risks a little bit more knowing that that’s part of your plan? 

Andy Lamont: Yeah, absolutely. Because they know, they’re not silly. They know that while it’s not risky in the same sense as a lot of other activities are, there's still a certain element of risk. 

Ocean Sailing Podcast: Yeah, the isolation is the biggest risk, right? It’s not what goes wrong; it’s the fact that you’re so isolated that no one can help you. 

Andy Lamont: No one can help you. So it just this does give you that level of self-reliance that if something does happen, the boat is not going to sink. You’ve got days to solve it, not minutes and so that’s the… 

Ocean Sailing Podcast: Well and with what you’re planning on carrying. Whatever happens you might be able to repair it anyway by then if you’ve got enough time, right? 

Andy Lamont: You would be surprised if you couldn’t. 

Ocean Sailing Podcast: A little bit of epoxy and a bit of wood and a few tools. 

Andy Lamont: Yeah that’s right. Eventually you would be able to go, “Okay, here’s the problem and how to fix it.” It won’t be a big issue because the problem is going to be water is getting into the boat and somehow stop it, you know? 

Ocean Sailing Podcast: Yeah, absolutely that’s interesting. 

Andy Lamont: Yeah so I am excited about that. What else am I excited about? Yeah and the wind vane is finished so the vane’s not on there at the moment. 

Ocean Sailing Podcast: The accessory that it goes on, is it ready to go?

Andy Lamont: Yeah and it’s all there but because my stern sits out into the marina channel a little bit, I’m very nervous about someone coming behind and wiping it out. 

Ocean Sailing Podcast: Yeah even in twilight racing, right? When somebody crosses the stand, on port starboard.

Andy Lamont: So it’s all there but I’ve just got it basically all the flimsy bits are, well they’re not flimsy but the fit’s a bit… 

Ocean Sailing Podcast: They’re not designed to be collision proof. 

Andy Lamont: Yeah, not with a 40 foot cruiser or something like that. So yeah, they’re all off it but it’s there. So that’s great. It’s ready to go and that’s another big thing, another big expense but that ability then to carry on the journey without power is just of paramount importance to it. 

Ocean Sailing Podcast: Yeah, that’s a big tick of the box there in term of not forcing you to end your trip early. 

Andy Lamont: Yeah, exactly. So that’s good. I’ve been looking more into the Jordan Series Drogue. I’m going to put some chain plates when the boat’s out of the water down by the stern so that I will be able to attach a harness onto those chain plates. So basically if I do put out a drogue, they will just pull straight off the chain plates rather than off a winch or some kind of other thing, which is just bolted onto the deck. 

Ocean Sailing Podcast: Yeah, that’s good because when you’re reading about the engineering kind of rules and the loading that goes onto your boat. You try to slow it to 1 to 2 knots in it and 70 knots of breeze, and a sea that’s trying to drive along at 12 knots, the loading is quite amazing that you’ve got to work at those points where you attach it. 

Andy Lamont: Yeah, so I was doing that research and I thought and they’re saying don’t attach it. I was going to basically say, “Well I’ve got this nice winches,” but the load on the winch is no good. It’s the wrong way and all that so I will run them off some chain plates of about 300 mil’s long or 250 mil’s long with about six bolts along the side of the hull just before the transom and they’re just poking out in the transom a bit and they will distribute the load into the hull. 

Ocean Sailing Podcast: Yeah but that good and like all things, you hope you don’t have to use it but if you do, it’s good to know that they won’t rub the back off your boat. 

Andy Lamont: Yeah, or tear a winch out or something like that. 

Ocean Sailing Podcast: Well because technically if you’re in the line of fire as it got torn out, it will go with a bang. 

Andy Lamont: Yeah it would, yeah exactly and also then, it is actually pulling from it directly off the stern. 

Ocean Sailing Podcast: Okay and in terms of your list of all of the must haves and nice to haves, how are you getting along with deciding what’s really a must have and what you are going to be able to do and what you probably can’t do. Where are the trade offs or compromises sort of coming in now? 

Andy Lamont: Well Musto has come on as a sponsor, which was fantastic because Musto is the gear I wanted. It’s basically every piece of sailing equipment I’ve got is Musto. So the only company I approached for sailing here and luckily they were quite good about it and so they’ve come along. So all the, you know, I am getting basically all the HPX gear, the dry suit and all the mid layer stuff and everything from Musto basically. So that’s a lot of the must have stuff that as you know is really…

Ocean Sailing Podcast: It’s a big chunk of cost but value for money; it’s priceless, right? But you can’t not have it, but it’s not… 

Andy Lamont: Yeah you can’t not have it. Yeah and so I’m just really grateful to Musto that they’re willing to support me on that and like truly if they said, “Look, we’ll give you a 10% discount,” I would been happy with that of course, but they are really generous and so that was great. 

Ocean Sailing Podcast: It’s good. It’s good the support.

Andy Lamont: I shouldn’t say that, they might… 

Ocean Sailing Podcast: It’s too late now it’s in the bank, right? The bank is dry. 

Andy Lamont: Yeah. So I am really happy with Musto and that’s great. So that’s one big ticket that is out of the way. I am talking with someone else about supplying radar and a radar screen so hopefully they will come through. 

Ocean Sailing Podcast: That’s good.

Andy Lamont: Yeah. But we’re just talking at the moment and some of the other big must have tickets, so pretty much pulling the mast down and doing the mast is something I’ve arranged for anyway. A satellite phone is, that’s one thing that hasn’t been bought yet, HF radio is a sort of thing that, again, really expensive. 

Ocean Sailing Podcast: Yeah especially with the limitations it has. 

Andy Lamont: Yeah but then it does things that only an HF radio can do. So it’s not really a must have for me personally but then a lot of people I speak say, “Oh no, an HF radio is a must have because you can broadcast.” A satellite phone is great but you can’t broadcast with a satellite phone.

Ocean Sailing Podcast: Yeah of course.

Andy Lamont: so it would be really good to get an HF radio. Some of the other things, one of the musts was to just lift the boat off the keel and check the keel bolts and Southport Yacht Club obviously will come to the party with the hard stand and the travel lift, which means that it’s going to be nice and easy to just lift the boat up and check the keel box. 

Ocean Sailing Podcast: Which is great, Another big chunk of cost that you don’t have to incur. 

Andy Lamont: Yeah exactly. So most of my must haves now are, like they’re getting close to being covered. There’s a lot of things in the list that they sort of, they are must have but the boat is a good boat and if I had to go tomorrow, I’ve got it basically but will probably want a HF radio and a satellite phone but apart from that it’s a good little boat. So we’re pretty ready in that sense. I’ve got some Go Pros to take some footage so hopefully there will be some interesting footage of it. Yeah, we’ll see how that goes. 

Ocean Sailing Podcast: Have you thought about finding a media sponsor who would pay data for you so that you can access data for uploading content and videos and updating your blog so that they could benefit from the published story updates, but you benefit from not having to pay for the big thing, they put on the back of your boat and the cost of the data itself?

Andy Lamont: Yeah, so yeah I’ve looked at just basically having a satellite hub and the data is still pretty expensive. So yeah I haven’t really looked. 

Ocean Sailing Podcast: Because Jessica Watson had that data sponsor, which is what allowed her to do the blog updates and the video uploads. She had a media sponsor because of course, they can get her to write stories every so often and you know of news limited only to the Gold Coast Bulletin and you kind of wonder if that would be a possibility, right? 

Andy Lamont: Yeah, well I got to speak to Jess the other day through you actually, which was great and then I sent her another e-mail and so that might be something that I’ll talk to her about. 

Ocean Sailing Podcast: Yeah because you could get steered into the right direction. I don’t want to cost it out now but I’m sure it runs into the tens of thousands for data still. 

Andy Lamont: Yeah, I mean the funning thing is voice is cheap. 

Ocean Sailing Podcast: Yeah, well it is that’s right. As soon as you start uploading gigabytes of bloody video, or hundreds of megabytes, that’s where it chews through it, right? And probably photos to some degree as well. But you probably could publish content quite cheaply. 

Andy Lamont: Yeah, that’s probably one of the next things I’ll look at is if I can get someone, a supplier of data. 

Ocean Sailing Podcast: Yeah, well now that it’s a world record attempt. 

Andy Lamont: Yes, that’s right. It’s gathering it’s own momentum. 

Ocean Sailing Podcast: That’s right and then you can put that kind of stake in the ground, that might make that a little bit different. 

Andy Lamont: Well that’s right. I mean it wasn’t my original intention but I’m quite excited about it now because there are people that have sailed around the world and you can’t take anything away from them because what they’ve done is amazing by itself but to go down as the first person to do the official world record around the world west bound circumnavigation, there is only ever one first.

Ocean Sailing Podcast: That’s right. That exactly right so you should leverage it for all you can. 

Andy Lamont: Yeah so, we’ll we will try. We are doing it right now. 

Ocean Sailing Podcast: Yeah, that’s right. Exactly right. So if anybody knows of anybody or has an interest in sponsorship, then don’t hesitate to contact Andy directly. And your contact details will be at your website, at Andylamont.com.au. 

Andy Lamont: That’s right. That’s it, Andylamont.com.au. 

Ocean Sailing Podcast: So don’t hesitate to pass any suggestions onto Andy or anybody you might know that would be interested in sponsorship wise or support wise, contact Andy directly because he’d certainly love to hear from you. 

Andy Lamont: Yeah, that’s right and I really would because the thing has really changed in the last three months or two months from our little personal sort of goal for me and thinking, “Well I’m not going to be the first of anything or anything,” so I didn’t think there’d that much interest to be in the first west bound. So it hasn’t changed it a lot. 

Ocean Sailing Podcast: Yeah, that’s great and now so you got the chance to have a little bit of a chat to Jessica Watson a couple of weeks ago? 

Andy Lamont: Yeah, she is great. It was really interesting to talk to her. 

Ocean Sailing Podcast: What sort of takeaways did you have out of that in terms of some of the questions? Some of the technical questions you had that around your preparations. 

Andy Lamont: Well I guess probably one of the things that I immediately got out of that was that while I was thinking about getting one brand of wind generator, which was the most expensive and then talking to her realising that even she had that and that didn’t even last the whole distance anyway. So a couple of days later, I went to the boat shop here and I picked up two really good wind generators, but for the same price as one over the other ones.

Ocean Sailing Podcast: Oh, so you’ve got a plan A and a plan B. 

Andy Lamont: Yeah so knowing that look, if one makes it half way around the world and dies, then that’s to be expected and I’ve got the other one and even if you get the most expensive one, you’re not going to expect to make it all the way with that. So yeah, that saved me to get two of those. That’s three and a half grand each, that’s seven grand and I’ve got two of the other brand which I could say is Rutland, so I got a Rutland 1200 and Rutland 914 and they did me a deal to get two together so that was three grand so that saved me like four grand. 

Ocean Sailing Podcast: Yeah, right. So would you run two at the same time? 

Andy Lamont: No, I’ll run one and then I’ll just keep one boxed up and if something happens to the Rutland 1200, I have another pole. So I’m getting Phil George from Fleming Marine who made Jessica’s targa and mast for the wind generators and I’m getting him to make those for me as well because he’s actually got an S&S 34 down there that he’s doing up at the moment. 

So he can actually build the whole thing on his boat and then just post it up to me or send it up to me and that’ll have two masts so they’ll both be wired up but one will be just in a box and if the first one ends up dying for some reason, I will just leave it up there if I have to and put the next one of the spare mast. 

Ocean Sailing Podcast: On the opposite side or something? 

Andy Lamont: Yeah. 

Ocean Sailing Podcast: Yeah right. That’s good and are you going to take your extra blades as well? 

Andy Lamont: Yeah, I’ll take extra blades. 

Ocean Sailing Podcast: Because they can snap. 

Andy Lamont: Yeah so there’re only plastic boats, they’re not carbon blades these ones so the blade is not a big expense. 

Ocean Sailing Podcast: Yeah, what do you pay for a set of blades, do you know? 

Andy Lamont: I don’t know, I do know the guy told, “Oh yeah, you’ve got to get your blades.”

Ocean Sailing Podcast: Yeah, because the reason I ask is because I’ve got an Aerogen 6 I think it is and I chipped some blades and I found the Australian distributor and it was going to be like $630 for six plastic blades and then so I thought, “They’re only plastic.” So I Googled it and I found this UK website, they were selling them for 118 pounds for a set and so I could land them in Australia where the currency conversion and with freight for I don’t know? $240 or something. 

Which is still going to be less than half so just the reason that I ask is it’s amazing the loading that goes into some of the spare parts if they’re offshore, northern hemisphere type products. Don’t be afraid to use Google. 

Andy Lamont: Yeah, I know. That’s right but Rutland is a nice well-known brand. They’ve got plenty of parts in there. 

Ocean Sailing Podcast: Well, that’s good. 

Andy Lamont: Yeah, so that’s right. So we’ll take spare blades for that, takes spare vanes for the self-steering gear, all of that is taken care of. But yeah, so that is one thing that was really good to get from Jessica. It saved me $4,000. 

Ocean Sailing Podcast: Oh that’s great.

Andy Lamont: In a five minute conversation and she said she’s welcome to talk to me, or willing to talk to me about some other things as well, food and things like that which we will be setting up soon. 

Ocean Sailing Podcast: Oh that’s great and all that advice from somebody who has done it already, just it probably simplifies a whole bunch of stuff too that sometimes you overcomplicate in your planning that for whatever reason they don’t use or didn’t need. 

Andy Lamont: It’s amazing how sometimes you can just talk to someone. For instance with wind vanes, I’ve been thinking about wind vanes for more than 18 months but I had that conversation with her and just went, “Right. Okay, that’s what I’m going to do.” So it crystallised my thoughts so it was great. 

Ocean Sailing Podcast: Yeah because there is lots of contradictory advice out there and everyone has different experiences but yeah, being able to get advice with somebody who’s done a similar trip with a similar boat that doesn’t get any more crystal clear than that.

Andy Lamont: Yeah exactly so that was good. 

Ocean Sailing Podcast: Well that’s good and I’m glad that you could hook up and that she’s happy to provide ongoing feedback and advice because it all helps especially if it’s money that you don’t have to spend that you would have spent just in case and then you find out that you just don’t need to spend it at all. 

Andy Lamont: Yeah, exactly and that’s a lot of money you know and it is. It’s $4,000 I saved there that really basically I went $4,000 saved on that, $5,000 for the buoyancy bags, done. That’s how it all worked so yeah. 

Ocean Sailing Podcast: Well that’s good. Well that’s right even if the advice doesn’t raise sponsorship, if it cuts your costs down, it’s the same outcome right? Because a dollar you don’t have to speed, is a dollar you don’t have to raise somewhere. 

Andy Lamont: Yeah exactly, that’s so true. Yeah, that’s good.

Ocean Sailing Podcast: And have you settle on sail configuration or sail plans? 

Andy Lamont: Yes. I haven’t actually ordered a code zero yet and that’s not a must have, that’s a “would love to have”. 

Ocean Sailing Podcast: That’s a “I’ll get home sooner” type item. 

Andy Lamont: Yeah and that’s one of the things Jessica said. She said that if she were doing it again, she would have used the code zero more. 

Ocean Sailing Podcast: Well, you are more likely to fend your world record for longer too if you used the code zero right? You could just get it a few days earlier. 

Andy Lamont: Yeah, that’s right. I haven’t ordered it yet but it is just sort of one of those things that I’d love to have. I’d love to have that more than an HF radio.

Ocean Sailing Podcast: Well maybe you might be able to find a sail sponsor. That would be good. 

Andy Lamont: Yeah, that would be good too and Neil Pryde was really good to me, he helped me out with the sails that I’ve got now but of course, the Australian dollar’s tanked since then.

Ocean Sailing Podcast: Yeah, that’s right and substantially. 

Andy Lamont: Yeah, so it’s sort of getting sails out of Hong Kong is not as good as it used to be. So Mike Sabin from Gold Coast Sails may be a nice little 100% jib. So I am looking now and we’ll see. Like I said, I’d much rather have a code zero than an HF radio but I think I have to buy the HF radio before the code zero. 

Ocean Sailing Podcast: Yeah, right. 

Andy Lamont: Yeah, so anyway that’s about it and what else has been happening? I’m just about drawing a blank here now. 

Ocean Sailing Podcast: And so you’re still settled on October? That’s all fairing out? You’ve got a specific date yet? 

Andy Lamont: October the 2nd. 

Ocean Sailing Podcast: October 2nd, great. 

Andy Lamont: Which hopefully, my daughter, Sophie, is due on the 14th of September. 

Ocean Sailing Podcast: Okay, well she won’t run more than two weeks overdue. 

Andy Lamont: But they said she can run two weeks early or two weeks overdue.

Ocean Sailing Podcast: But at two weeks, she’ll be induce, right? So two and a half weeks you should be good to go right? 

Andy Lamont: Yeah, exactly. So that’s right. I would say, “Look, you know, 15th of October, come on let’s do it.” So yeah, that will be great. So as soon as, you know, I can’t leave before the baby is born but you’re right, they will induce it if it’s more than two weeks overdue, I think. 

Ocean Sailing Podcast: Yeah. 

Andy Lamont: So the second of October, which will be a Sunday, I’ll head out of here on a Sunday about 1 o’clock. I got a little widget on my website. I think there’s 115 days to go. That will be on a Sunday so that’d be good. I can’t wait really. It’s getting really close now. 

Ocean Sailing Podcast: Well, it’s like less than three months now, right? 

Andy Lamont: Yeah. Well it’s 115 days. 

Ocean Sailing Podcast: You’ll be pleased to know that you haven’t chosen a weekend where there’s offshore sailing so we’ll be able to see you off because we won’t be out there offshore. And it’s actually the revised Queen’s birthday weekend this year. 

Andy Lamont: Oh is it? 

Ocean Sailing Podcast: Perfect for people visiting you because there’s an extra day off. 

Andy Lamont: Oh okay, well that’s fantastic. 

Ocean Sailing Podcast: Because, you know, they moved it from June to October. 

Andy Lamont: Right. Just in Queensland, or? 

Ocean Sailing Podcast: Just in Queensland, just to do something crazy they just moved the Queen’s birthday back to confuse everybody for three months back. I always jot it down and I’ve got the sailing calendar in there for the next 12 months. So that day is clear. 

Andy Lamont: Yeah, it’s good. 

Ocean Sailing Podcast: Oh, it’s good. 

Andy Lamont: Yeah so that will be good. So hopefully we will have good breezes then around October, have a nice northerly and we’ll just head down and have a nice summer time breezes all through Bass Strait. 

Ocean Sailing Podcast: Yeah, well that’s right. It’s a much warmer time of the year right? The way you are planning it it’s actually a nice time of the year to go through there. 

Andy Lamont: Yeah. It’s much nicer at the start and really hopefully, the only part that’s really sort of playing on my nerves a bit is finding a window to get around Cape Horn because the big difference of west bound compared to east bound is that you can get to Cape Horn on the east bound circumnavigation and say it’s really bad. Well, you could just throw that Jordan Series Drogue out the back and just blow through really. Like I mean it wouldn’t be pleasant but eventually…

Ocean Sailing Podcast: You will get swept around there with the current kind of thing. 

Andy Lamont: Yeah, you will get swept around there with the current and the wind and everything like that whereas if you have to turn around and float a drogue, which is what happened to Bill, you just go back into it. 

Ocean Sailing Podcast: Backwards really fast and then you’ve got to start all over again. 

Andy Lamont: Then you start all over again because sometimes systems come through one, two, three, four straight after each other; you might go back in and actually get hit by another system. 

Ocean Sailing Podcast: So you could realistically have to have two or three or four goes at it in the worst case scenario, which is pretty daunting. 

Andy Lamont: Yes, so the thing is really is to pick a weather window and just go for it. 

Ocean Sailing Podcast: And then gun it with that code zero. 

Andy Lamont: Yeah. 

Ocean Sailing Podcast: It might come in handy. 

Andy Lamont: It might, and even if it does get like even if it does get a bit dirty, you just keep trying to punch through because…

Ocean Sailing Podcast: Yeah because the alternative is going to mean you’ve just got to punch through all over again which there’s nothing worse.

Andy Lamont: Yeah so this is a good little boat to do it in, so it goes to wind well and it’s nice and soft and a light sail. That’s what I am saying anyway. 

Ocean Sailing Podcast: Well that’s good Andy. And I see you’ve still got those lovely bolts coming through your cabin top there. You haven’t quite figured out all the final uses for those before your…

Andy Lamont: Yeah. No, I’m pretty sanguine about those; we’ll cut them off. It’ll take me like five minutes with the grinder but I haven’t made the netting yet. So when I get the netting made then I’ll know what the attachment points are for them. 

Ocean Sailing Podcast: Yeah then it will become logical. 

Andy Lamont: Yeah, I mean I could just leave every third one which would still probably be all right but I’ll just leave it for a little while longer. 

Ocean Sailing Podcast: Well that’s where the world is going because I read some changes to Cat 1 Regulations for these alum boats. You’ve got to be able to roll the boat upside down and have nothing fall out, nothing come loose, no floor boards, no nothing. So I’m not sure if that’s the direction for Australian Cat 1, but that’s the regulations this year coming so you will be ahead of the curve if you have got netting that covers all the stuff. 

Andy Lamont: Yeah. 

Ocean Sailing Podcast: It makes sense, right? 

Andy Lamont: You just don’t want anything…

Ocean Sailing Podcast: Hitting you on the head and cutting your eye open. 

Andy Lamont: Yeah. So that’s right. So that’s what we’re going to do before we go. It’s basically turning the boat upside down mentally. I mean what they do, turn them upside — they don’t do that.

Ocean Sailing Podcast: No. I don’t know, but I doubt it. But all your bed boards, all your floor boards like everything has to be able to stay intact and contained if you tilt the boat 180, which makes sense. It’s just if your boat’s not fitted that way, it’s quite a bit of work and costs in doing that but it makes sense. 

Andy Lamont: I know and I mean if you’ve got to pull up a floor board quickly, it is a bit of a pain if you… 

Ocean Sailing Podcast: That’s where you need the right sort of latches right because you don’t want to have to screw them down because you won’t be able to gather a screwdriver, knee deep in water trying to the boards up. 

Andy Lamont: No, that’s right, yeah. I mean it won’t be hard. This boat has only got one floor board so it’s nice and easy to put that down.

Ocean Sailing Podcast: That helps.

Andy Lamont: But that’s the whole, the exercise on what you're going to go through and have been going through and that’s why I haven’t cut those bolts is because I just want it to be basically everything bolted down and what’s not bolted down, contained. You do see pictures of boats that have been knocked down and stuff everywhere. 

Ocean Sailing Podcast: And injuries to people.

Andy Lamont: And injuries to people.

Ocean Sailing Podcast: A can of something hits you in the head it’s going to hurt.

Andy Lamont: Knock you out.

Ocean Sailing Podcast: Yeah, or a floor board will break your ribs. So that makes a lot of sense. 

Andy Lamont: And like I know it’s going to happen. 

Ocean Sailing Podcast: Yeah, it’s just a matter of if. 

Andy Lamont: It’s just I know and so I just want to make sure that if I get knocked down, there might be a little bit of water that come in but it’ll just a matter of like pumping it out and keeping on going. 

Ocean Sailing Podcast: Well if you pad your ceiling it’d just be like a kid’s playground won’t it? You will just be rolling around inside and it will be soft. 

Andy Lamont: Yeah, I know and I am thinking about doing it with that foam. It’s probably not a bad idea. That’s kind of like I’d like to have. 

Ocean Sailing Podcast: Then you’re bullet proof then really. 

Andy Lamont: Yeah and it will give a bit of insulation as well. 

Ocean Sailing Podcast: Yeah which will help in winter if you don’t have to wear so much gear all the time. 

Andy Lamont: Yeah, exactly. 

Ocean Sailing Podcast: Especially going to the toilet and stuff, to take that gear on and off all the time. So tell me how’s everything unfolding at home? How’s your wife feeling about the trip now that time’s marching on and she probably realises you are totally serious and committed? 

Andy Lamont: Yeah, it’s kind of funny because we’re doing things now and they’re things in preparation for me not to actually get ready to leave but to actually leave, so it’s becoming a lot more real for all my family. So that’s a bit of a process we’re going through but in a lot of ways because we haven’t been spent more than two weeks apart in 25 years. 

Ocean Sailing Podcast: It’s quite staggering when you think about what lies ahead there. 

Andy Lamont: Yeah, so I’m sure like I said before, I’ll probably miss her more than she misses me but in lead up to it, she’s the one that’s more vocal about missing me and so we’ve got a good satellite. The satellite plans are great so I will be able to talk to her on the phone nearly every day. 

Ocean Sailing Podcast: They’re pretty cost effective aren’t they? 

Andy Lamont: Yeah I think it’s 40 cents a minute.

Ocean Sailing Podcast: Well that’s good. Wow, that’s really good. 

Andy Lamont: You pay $100 plan and you get 40 cents a minute. 

OSP: Yeah, right with bulk. Because I pay a lower level plan just for the odd Cat 2 race which is I think we sit at 99 cents a minute but yeah, if you can go, especially if you’re going to buy a year’s worth or something. 

Andy Lamont: Yeah, you go on $100 plan and it’s 40 cents a minute. 

Ocean Sailing Podcast: Cool. 

Andy Lamont: It seems if you can get voice that cheap it just seems amazing that data is so expensive but that might just change it. 

Ocean Sailing Podcast: Yeah, I think that’s just the lack of supply, it means prices can stay high, unlimited supply is a whole lot better. It will change right? It’s just a matter of time because that’s right, because once that changes, you could just live at sea, work at sea, couldn’t you? If your business is online and then you can do it online. 

Andy Lamont: Yeah, you could. Anyways, so they’re going along. Each time it’s getting closer everyone is getting used to it. Doing that website was kind of a big “aha” wake up moment for all the family. 

Ocean Sailing Podcast: It’s like you’ve told the world now and they can all see it. 

Andy Lamont: Yeah, exactly. 

Ocean Sailing Podcast: Well if you are pregnant, you’d be the last trimester, right? The last three months but your baby is not arriving, it’s leaving? 

Andy Lamont: But I’ve got a big bump. 

Ocean Sailing Podcast: That’s right, the bump in your wall is getting smaller. 

Andy Lamont: That’s right, yeah so that’s good. 

Ocean Sailing Podcast: Well that’s great. It was good to catch up, good to check on how things are tracking along. It sounds like you’re well advanced now in the final three months. 

Andy Lamont: Yep, that’s it and so as the boat comes down in August, it will be out of the water for a month and then it’ll be back in the water and basically we’ll be off after that. 

Ocean Sailing Podcast: Which is great. 

Andy Lamont: Yeah. 

Ocean Sailing Podcast: And today we’re down at the Southport Yacht Club and we’re onboard Impulse and we’re officially nine days into winter. It’s 28 degrees outside so for our American listeners, that’s 80 something degrees Fahrenheit, which is kind of crazy thinking it’s winter and then we’re about to go twilight sailing. 

Andy Lamont: In a sea breeze. 

Ocean Sailing Podcast: In a sea breeze, yeah. 

Andy Lamont: Yeah which is a summer time breeze for over here. 

Ocean Sailing Podcast: Yeah, it’s bizarre but it’s good. 

Andy Lamont: So that should be good. 

Ocean Sailing Podcast: It’s great. Well thanks Andy for getting together again for a catch up and we’ll try check in with you again maybe in six weeks’ time as you get to about six weeks out and see how you’re tracking with this along the home straight for departure. 

Andy Lamont: Yeah, that would be great. 

Ocean Sailing Podcast: And I’ll make sure in the show notes that we put the links to your website as well and any updated photos I’ll put as well, any updates and bits and pieces but you gave me heaps last time. So, we went to the original ones too for those that haven’t looked at them yet. In the show notes folks from the episode with Andy in episode two and three, there’s lots and lots of photos of impulse and all the work that he has done to date. So don’t hesitate to check out those show notes as well as the ones with this episode. 

Andy Lamont: Yeah, fantastic and anyone that wants to contact me and give me some advice or tell me an idiot, you’re welcome. 

Ocean Sailing Podcast: Any advice, any feedback, any support, any suggestions of people or companies that might want to support Andy go to Andylamont.com.au and he will appreciate any bit of help, advice, or contact at all. 

Andy Lamont: Great. All right, well thanks a lot David. 

Ocean Sailing Podcast: Okay, thanks Andy. Let’s go racing. 

Andy Lamont: Let’s go sailing. 

Interviewer: David Hows

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Episode 10: Jessica Watson Show Notes

Thank you to the Queensland Cruising Yacht Club for hosting us for the interview.

Find out more about Jessica's new venture at Deckee.com

Deckee.com is proving to be a hit for yachties looking for advice on products, services and marinas

Ocean Sailing Podcast: Hi Folks, welcome onto the Ocean Sailing Podcast. This week we are at the Queensland Cruising Yacht Club and we are talking to Jessica Watson. So welcome along Jess.

Jessica Watson: Hello and thanks for having me.

Ocean Sailing Podcast: Jess, happy birthday for yesterday. I understand it was your birthday and ironically, as part of researching questions for today, it's just gone past your six year anniversary since you completed your circumnavigation?

Jessica Watson: It has, which is a bit scary. Six years feels like a while, a lot has happened.

Ocean Sailing Podcast: Has it gone fast or have you just packed a lot into the last six years?

Jessica Watson: It kind of feels like a couple of lifetimes ago which sounds ridiculous for a 23 year old to be saying that but it really does. I mean there’s so many things that have happened and it’s too much to keep up with, and it feels like another world.

Ocean Sailing Podcast: Well in six years, when you, given you were 17, almost 17 when you completed the trip, six years as a percentage of your life. You’ve had like another third of your life almost.

Jessica Watson: Yeah, well that’s a good way of putting it and that’s kind of how I feel.

Ocean Sailing Podcast: Okay, and I read in your Wikipedia profile that your nationality’s described as an Australian New Zealander. I hadn’t heard of that nationality before. Is that how you see yourself?

Jessica Watson: No, that’s the problem Wikipedia, don’t believe everything you read on it. I mean it is true to some extent but I wouldn’t call myself a Kiwi, sorry grandparents. Sorry Grandad particularly, he’d be a bit upset about that but Mum and Dad come from New Zealand originally, all my family are over there but I do see myself as an Aussie through and through. Sorry to the Kiwis. Love the place, great sailors but I’m definitely an Aussie.

Ocean Sailing Podcast: It’s a lot warmer here, right?

Jessica Watson: It is, yeah.

Ocean Sailing Podcast: Okay, so today I wanted to talk to you and touch on a few points and ask you a few questions about your circumnavigation. I want to talk to you a bit about life after the trip, which has obviously been a big chunk of your life really and then we’ll talk a bit about your new project that you’re working right now, Deckee, and how that came about. Then we’re going to give Andy Lamont a bit of a surprise call and talk to him. He’s got some questions for you about his upcoming westward bound trip around the world in an S & S 34 called Impulse.

Jessica Watson: Yeah, I’m looking forward to that, I’d love to hear his questions and have a chat to him.

Ocean Sailing Podcast: Okay. So I guess jumping back to your circumnavigation and just some questions around that. It appeared on reading your story along the way and afterwards in depth, that something that started out as an idea when you were a little bit younger, turned into quite a serious, well-planned, well thought out project that really gathered significant momentum in terms of the people and the sponsors and supporters that got behind it.

I guess my question for you is, were there moments as the departure date approached, where you suddenly had the flashes of panic, or you got cold feet, or you thought, “I don’t want to do this anymore but I’ve come too far, I’ve got too many people behind it?”

Jessica Watson: No, not at all. And I’m glad about that because that would have been a pretty scary position to be in. I think when I first started thinking about it I realised from doing that first bit of research, I was young. I was 13 by the time I had sort of made up my mind about it fully. So it was before then that I had been thinking about it for a while and I realised how much was involved and I always sort of knew from, even right form then that if I was going to do this, it had to be done properly.

It wasn’t going to be a matter of getting a cheap boat and throwing together a few bits of equipment, and a satellite phone and leaving. If I was going to do it, it had to be in the safest way possible and that meant a lot of money, and a lot of sponsorship and an incredible amount of support that did snowball.

First it was the local sail maker and rigger who were amazing and then it just snowballed into something bigger. I’m very happy that I didn’t have cold feet at the last minute because, as you said, there was a lot behind it at that point. I was just probably the exact opposite, I was just itching to go the whole time and that was actually probably the harder part was to actually slow down and go, “No, I need to do this last part of the preparation properly,” rather than just wanting to get out there so badly.

Ocean Sailing Podcast: Okay, and so I guess then by the time you left, you were so well prepared and well-travelled, and you had done so many thousands of sailing hours. By that point you were just comfortable and ready to go?

Jessica Watson: Yeah, definitely. I mean, you can always do more, particularly solo in that boat. I would love to have done more of that but it wasn’t sort of possible with having to be 16 and have your boat license. It might have been an issue around sort of legally being able to skipper a boat by myself. It just came down to time and the seasons. But we did decide that I’d sail through the pacific first so that also gave me the first few months in a much better part of the world if any issues did come up with the boat, which we weren’t expecting.

Ocean Sailing Podcast: You were headed in a warmer direction to start with rather than in a colder direction.

Jessica Watson: Yeah exactly and just less terrible bit of ocean to give the boat a good run in.

Ocean Sailing Podcast: Okay, and I read a comment, I’m not sure if it was a quote of yours, but it was along the lines of, “My mom and dad are quite timid when it comes to sailing and they just wouldn’t go out on a rough day but it became my norm.” I just kind of wondered have you always had that kind of gutsy, give it a go kind of attitude?

Jessica Watson: No, not at all. I think maybe it came from mum and dad who, you know, enjoyed boating and a little bit of sailing but really aren’t sailors at all. I was very, very scared and timid when I first started sailing and as a young girl and it was only few years later that I decided I wanted to sail around the world. So I kind of did a back with, I realised that if I was going to sail around the world I’d actually have to toughen up a little bit and yeah, pretending helped to start with.

But I think my approach was quite typical of I think a lot of adventurers rather than maybe sort of your typical kind of adrenaline junkie kind of idea of adventurer. My approach was kind of going back and looking at what could go wrong and that’s kind of the path that fascinated me more than the sort of adrenaline huge waves. I’ve always been interested in that but it was more about what can we do to make this safer? Which seems a bit boring but that’s the part that really fascinated me.

Jessica and her Deckee.com business partners

Ocean Sailing Podcast: I guess reading about some of the extremes going around Cape Horn and across the Great Australian Bight, you had to endure 10 to 12 meter seas, which most people can’t appreciate that sort of three to four story building in terms of height and winds of up to 70 knots and several knock downs. How would you describe to someone who has never sailed in rough whether what it’s like as a 16 year old on your own to out on the ocean and in the dark and those kind of conditions, how would you describe that?

Jessica Watson: Not easy to describe. I suppose the first thing is, I sort of say that not to just totally down play what the conditions are like but we were expecting, I was expecting conditions like that and the boat was built for those conditions in the end and that gave me a lot of confidence.

If you put me out in those conditions in any old boat, I would be utterly terrified but because I knew I had absolutely every chance and we’d prepared to actually deal with these conditions that gave me a lot of confidence. It’s incredible. They’re beautiful, the huge waves. It’s just not something you see, it’s just absolutely awe inspiring, obviously a little bit of terror comes into that as well.

You know, there are and there were particularly few hours in the Atlantic that were pretty horrible because I’d had a really horrendous knockdown where you’re thrown into the trough of the next waves upside down and just not knowing how the boat could possibly be structurally sound after that and I was sort of sitting there going, “If we get another wave like that, surely we can’t survive.” And pleasant surprise, I realised that the boat was actually still okay and it was my mind more than anything just getting away from me.

Ocean Sailing Podcast: With that, I guess one of the bigger risks for you was probably injuring yourself in the process rather than injuring the boat and the risk of breaking ribs and bones and skull fractures. How did you sort of manage your own safety in those types of extreme conditions?

Jessica Watson: Yeah, that was something to be very aware of, you’re completely by yourself, days or even weeks away from help. So really it kind of came down to the way I sailed, there was just no risks taken, I’m very proud of the fact I never left the cockpit in over 30 knots of wind. I think it was once where I went forward, not even on the foredeck, and that’s pretty kind of crazy really to think that you can sail around, the whole way around the world without leaving the cockpit in over 30 knots of wind. 

So I had my storm jib up when the storm would approach and I’d just reef down from the cockpit and fill away the last bit of head sail. So, very conservative and that was my approach to the way I did anything. There were lot of days when I was sailing a lot slower than I could have but again, I just didn’t like being cold and wet but also potentially hurting myself. I had little lap belts for storms where I’d sort of sit down and belt myself in to not be thrown around. Inevitably the worst knockdown happened when I wasn’t buckled in.

I remember walking up the walls onto the roof and you get pretty bruised up in a storm like that but I didn’t have any severe injuries at all. We did coat the inside of the boat with foam, probably as much for insulation but also kind of going, “Maybe it’ll help?” The great thing about an S & S 34 is that it’s quite small in the cabin. You go to see in a modern racing boat or even a modern cruising boat and it’s quite terrifying moving around down below because it’s this beautiful wide interior. It has the potential to be thrown 10 feet across the…

Ocean Sailing Podcast: That’s a long way you can travel before you hit something.

Jessica Watson: Yeah, exactly. So a nice small S & S 34 was a bit of a security there as well.

Ocean Sailing Podcast: Okay. Now, I have to ask, I was texted this morning by my daughter Madison who is 16 and has been doing a bit of off shore sailing with us now, a bit of racing. She’s reading your book at the moment and she just texted me and she’s like, “Dad, I hope it’s not too late, but I have a couple of questions,” and we’ve already asked one but the other one was, she said, “Did you ever feel that you had under estimated the scale and the enormity of the journey and the trip compared to how it unfolded for you?”

Jessica Watson: I can probably honestly say no. In those hours and those moments when you’re actually seeing those waves, you know I spent so long imagining them and trying to work out what they would be like and it’s still, you just can’t really imagine. But overall, I’m really quite proud of the fact that I had a lot of fun out there and that sounds a bit ridiculous but before I left was so hard and even that whole incident where I hit that ship which, you know, you look back and it did happened for a reason. As unpleasant as it was, I think all of that really did sort of toughen me up and I got out of there and I actually was tough. I’m told I do downplay it, but I had fun and I’m proud of that, I enjoyed it as well as having those tough times

Ocean Sailing Podcast: So did you find that any sort of fears around some of the more extreme whether just sort of eventually fell away and you were more in awe of the wonder of the forces of nature and just the natural beauty of it. Even though you can have the roughest, most crazy weather out there. The most I’ve been in is maybe 45 knots and six meters. That got to a point quite quickly where you realise the boat’s going to be okay and it’s just the awe of what’s happening around you. Did you get to that stage or did you still feel this sort of unnerving sort of, “Are we going to be okay? Can it handle everything that’s ahead?”

Jessica Watson: Yeah, after that storm in the Atlantic, I had a big sense of, “Wow, the boat coped with that. It’s still okay. Oh my gosh, if it can survive that, it can survive anything.” And that was a wonderful thing to experience and have that knowledge that it’s a really, really tough boat. But then coming back towards Australia, I sort of got a period where there was storm after storm after storm, and getting a bit closer to land again that was pretty unnerving again. 

You start throwing land into the mix, things get pretty scary. Sea room is an incredible thing. Most people still have this idea they want to run for shore and be near shore and it’s to me, as a solo sailor, it’s just the last thing you want to be near when you’re in bad weather. So that was hard and that was a healthy reminder again of how you never want to forget that as much as it’s incredible, it’s important to remember.

Ocean Sailing Podcast: It’s quite amazing when it’s just you on the ocean and you’re on your own little circle of the planet and there’s just clear water in every direction to the horizon, it’s just you and the ocean, there’s no traffic around, it’s a lot safer and it’s quite magnificent.

Jessica Watson: Obviously ships never gave me a lot of confidence having them around me and yeah, there’s something very special about an empty horizon in every direction and I don’t think many people understand that but it is an incredibly and, of course it’s lovely to share experiences with people and racing, but there’s also something very special about having it entirely to yourself.

Ocean Sailing Podcast: Tell me about your sleeping patterns once you set out onto the voyage, you hear about solo sailors being up for 20 minutes and down for 20 minutes and that sounds quite arduous if you’re going to have to do that for 10 days. So what sort of patterns did you settle into once you got established on the journey?

Jessica Watson: Yeah, it got better throughout the voyage. It started out across the Pacific where you do have more islands and more shipping where I would be doing sort of 20 minute cat naps, 40 minutes and then the advice we sort of have got in all the research we did sort of pointed towards “you really need to get a 90 minute sleep cycle in every 24 hours.” And I was getting in a couple of them. It sounds incredibly harsh, I think people just hear that and go, “Oh my goodness, how do you do that?”

Jessica Watson learning to sail when she was younger

You get used to it, it’s the first few days that are often very tough. The first three days typically and it’s a shame that most people are only ever at sea for three days because it’s wonderful after that once you’ve found your legs and you’re in a new sleeping pattern and I would get a lot of my best sleep in the morning, after the sun had kind of risen and you’d be able to relax just that little bit more. Then when I got further south, there’s a lot less down there in the southern ocean so I would be sleeping for 90 minutes at a time and then waking up quickly checking things and going back to sleep, it’s a lot better.

Ocean Sailing Podcast: In terms of collision avoidance at sea, did you use radar, AIS? And what sort of range alarms did you set? 

Jessica Watson: AIS, it’s just fantastic. I mean the radar is great but it chews through a lot of power and even just the alarms I don’t think are really, you know, when you're out in the middle of the ocean, really it’s just big ships or ocean going vessels that you're dealing with. So they are on the AIS, which is fantastic and the alarms that you can setup were just fantastic. 

Obviously once I was well out to sea you’d just, well anytime actually. By myself when I’d ever be thinking about sleeping, you’d have it just the furthest setting and if anything comes on to the screen at all which could be a quite a number of miles away depending on the conditions for the radio, and that would wake me up with a very, very loud alarm. My alarm was incredibly loud. The AIS was something we changed, I had a couple of them after the collision and one of the reasons for the collision was the fact that the AIS hadn’t gone off as it should have.

Ocean Sailing Podcast: Yeah right. So the great thing about AIS is especially in bad weather when you can see a vessel 90 minutes away, not just a few minutes away, how amazing that is in terms of being safe and confident at night in the dark, in really adverse conditions. Especially being able to understand the closest point of approach and how long that’s going to take you before you’re at that point, instead of trying to guess in the dark which side of your boat the vessel is going to pass, whether you’re on a collision course. It’s amazing how deceptive lights in the dark is and being able to judge depth and those sorts of things.

Jessica Watson: Without a doubt. You don’t have to sit there on deck for the hour it takes to pass and better still, there are a couple occasions when a ship would look like it was going to be a little bit close and I would literally call them up on the radio and go, “Hey, it’s looking a little close, hint, hint, do you want to get out of my way? Give me a bit more room so I don’t have to go out in the cold and jive?” A couple of times I talked them into it.

Ocean Sailing Podcast: That’s pretty good.

Jessica Watson: I think they were just so shocked from hearing this little girl’s voice on the radio that they’re going, “What’s going on here?”

Ocean Sailing Podcast: Okay, so let’s jump to the conclusion of your trip on May the 15th, 2010. You stepped ashore in front of 70,000 people. Did you do anything to prepare for that great down to earth speech that you gave in that moment or did you just sort of step ashore and just wing it?

Jessica Watson: No, I mean I knew. I think everyone had told me what I should expect and I’m glad about that because it might have been a bit too overwhelming if I had just stepped off and been hit with that. The most incredible thing was that the couple of days before because I was running, well not a bit early but everyone sort of wanted to set a date. Even all my New Zealand relatives and all the people that supported me wanted to be there. I was at that point, if I wanted to come in I would have just come straight in but I was very happy to sort of hang out and wait a couple of days, just slow ride down. 

And those couple of days were just the most amazing thing because I was able to sort of let it sink in and get my head together and then be ready for the day I got in. It was just overwhelming. I’m sure anyone who has been at sea knows that feeling of returning to a port and everything feels so close and you’ve had empty horizons and just seen, you know, I only saw land three or four times the entire time. It’s pretty boring and everything feels overwhelmingly close and intense. Every smell and every sight is just a lot more intense than it normally is.

Ocean Sailing Podcast: How challenging was it readjusting to life on the land, getting back into a schedule and having people all around you again?

Jessica Watson: Oh it was all just, I think I was riding a wave of adrenaline for a couple of years, I’m not exaggerating. It was incredible. I think a lot of people worried about how I might adjust but because there was just so many positive things happening, and I was a little bit strange and had a bad case of the sea legs. I think I used to never talk to people looking at their face and some silly little habits that I gained like that, just from being by yourself for so long.

But honestly, it was all so exciting and new because you’re doing these things you haven’t done, even the smallest things were a novelty. Just being able to go for a walk, which was still something I was enjoying months after.

Ocean Sailing Podcast: What doors have opened since May, 2010 as you entered the next chapter of your life that have really surprised you, that you didn’t see coming?

Jessica Watson: Look, there are so many things. One of the wonderful things was being able to go and actually do a bit of traveling afterwards. I’d sailed around the world but I hadn’t seen a lot of it. So whether that was sort of booked tours in all sorts of parts of the world and boat shows in Brazil and Europe and actually being able to do a bit of sailing in the Mini’s over in France. I really loved that.

I was sort of thinking whether I’d go down that competitive path for a while, and the Youth Sydney Hobart project we did is something I’m really proud of. That was a big project, it took a while, a lot of effort and energy went into that and really proud of the result. It taught me a huge amount sailing wise but much more than that as well.

Ocean Sailing Podcast: In terms of people management, leadership, and some of the skills like that?

Jessica Watson: Yeah, and we had the opportunity to work with some really amazing mentors and partners. Deloitte was one of our sponsors and they put us through some of their sort of leadership and team, very corporate style training and team work programs. That was really amazing to apply that to basically a bunch of teenagers on a yacht for sailing.

Ocean Sailing Podcast: I read about your role with the United Nations and your trip to Jordan and Lebanon where you met with Syrian refugees. Do you want to tell me about that?

Jessica Watson: Yeah, I mean obviously, the wonderful thing is that I’ve had the opportunity to support a lot of different organisations in the last few years and this is one that sort of has become a bit more of a long term role rather than a sort of once off. I have been over to Laos and to see the sort of school feeding programs over there and then, recently last year to Jordan and Lebanon. 

I mean they’re just an incredible organisation on a global scale and things like particularly with Laos. It was issues that are in our back yard and hunger and I think I’m just, you meet the families and the kids and they’re very inspiring. But I’m normally more inspired by the workers and what goes into, you know it’s not as simple as just dumping some food. So quite extraordinary and I’m just so lucky to have had those experiences. It’s again, changed me and taught me so much.

Ella's Pink Lady, an image that became famous across every household in Australia

Ocean Sailing Podcast: Well it must be a pretty amazing perspective you have of the world now that you’ve had the opportunity to see it from so many different angles?

Jessica Watson: Yeah. Yeah definitely, very lucky to have had that and the funny thing is you think I sort of expected to walk away very upset from the refugee camps. But I actually walked away so inspired because I met some people who were making the best out of these situations. You come back here and my big sort of feeling was that we need to make the most of what we’ve got here and not waste it.

Ocean Sailing Podcast: Yeah, it’s interesting, there’s a documentary called The Happiness Project, which is about where the happiest nations are in the world and interestingly, some of the African nations rank the highest because to gap between the expectations and how they actually live is nil.

Jessica Watson: Yeah.

Ocean Sailing Podcast: As opposed to many of the western nations where there’s lots of unhappiness because the gap between where they are today and their high ideals is vast. So it’s interesting when you talk about people being happy with their lot and being happy with exactly where they are despite how little we may perceive they may have.

Jessica Watson: Yeah, probably part of the reason I had a lot of fun sailing around the world as well because I had this expectation that it was going to be miserable a lot of the time. Got out there and realised it was actually quite enjoyable the majority of the time.

Ocean Sailing Podcast: Okay, so how much public speaking do you still do today? I guess there was a lot immediately after your trip, but do you still do much public speaking today?

Jessica Watson: A bit. A lot less than it was for a couple of years there but I still do a fair bit, and I have come to really enjoy it. I went through a period where I was just so sick of talking about sailing around the world but I’m really happy that I’ve found a sort of way of enjoying that again and bringing some of my other experiences into that which is something that I feel like is a good story and I enjoy talking about now.

Ocean Sailing Podcast: Okay, and where are you currently living?

Jessica Watson: Mostly down in Melbourne but I’m still up here in Queensland a fair bit with parents and family and I do seem to end up in Sydney a fair bit too. So East Coast Australia I think is a safe.

Ocean Sailing Podcast: Okay, and I read that you don’t really feel the urge to become a professional sailor and cruising’s more your thing. Did you ever feel the urge or the weight of public expectation when you returned from your circumnavigation with the questions sort of public about, “What’s next for Jessica?” Or, “What’s your next challenge?” And some sort of obligation to need to find new challenges to take on?

Jessica Watson: Yeah, there’s the one thing that people say and it seems to be literally the second thing they say to me is, “What’s next? What are you going to do to better that?” And I really struggle with that because everything I’ve done since, and finishing my degree and studying different things now, have bettered that to me. But people do seem to want me to go and do something more dramatic and media worthy than what I’ve done and I’m never going to do that for that reason.

Yeah, and it’s quite funny that some people seem to think that there’s some sort of ownership over me and what I should do that they have some sort of say in what they think I should be doing. It was something I was quite seriously considering whether I would want to pursue racing sailing and maybe race around the world by myself or something. But I kind of have come to realise, it took me a couple of years, that I just don’t have a competitive bone in my body, so it wouldn’t have worked too well for me.

Ocean Sailing Podcast: Sometimes when something become a job, it’s not as much fun anymore as well.

Jessica Watson: That’s something that I’ve become more and more aware of and that’s really important to me. I love sailing and I love every part of it and I want it to be something that’s a big part of my life for the rest of my life rather than something I do as a job.

Ocean Sailing Podcast: Okay, and how did you feel about Ella’s Pink Lady being preserved forever in the Queensland Maritime Museum?

Jessica Watson: Yeah, that’s a perfect place for her. I mean by the time we’d finished setting her up for the voyage, she was sort of set up for one thing only and wasn’t going to help me with any of the racing I wanted to do. So that’s the best place for her. Bunch of school kids get to go visit and I go visit every now and again.

Ocean Sailing Podcast: Yeah, that’s pretty cool and nice to think she’s not just going to deteriorate on a mooring somewhere and eventually get degraded like many other boats that don’t get the attention they deserve.

Jessica Watson: Yeah, exactly, it’s just wonderful. I didn’t have the time in those first few years to look after her and who knows what happens in the future, and this way she’s looked after forever.

Ocean Sailing Podcast: Let’s talk about Deckee and your investment in that. It’s a technology based solution around the marine industry and it’s had some investment to date of some $90,000 and the Deckee website talks about being a service provider to a marine industry of more than a million boat owners that spend some $2 billion dollars a year on services in store and products. 

You have aspirations as a business for going overseas at some point and the business has been part of the Slingshot Accelerator Program and picked up a whole bunch of awards including tourism awards, start up awards, and digital creativity awards. So tell me about your role and how did you get involved?

Jessica Watson: Yeah, I heard about it, gosh it would have been late last year, maybe even more like middle of last, it would have been more like middle of last year and Mike had been through the accelerated program. Mike’s the founder and I heard about what they were doing and I suppose I just immediately saw there was a need for it. As a boatie, you’re traveling up the coast and you want to know where you should be finding the best marine businesses and locations. 

And we have all these fantastic cruising guides, which are wonderful but, huge big books in’ 2016? There should be a place for that on the Internet and I kind of eventually got involved because I realise that that’s something I want to be a part of and to give the boating community, particularly the sort of cruising sailing community, a place and an amazing resource online.

So yeah, my role is sort of communications manager but there’s only the three of us so it does mean a bit of everything for now, which is really wonderful. I absolutely love it because it’s working with amazing boaties all over the place and really exciting. We’ve got some great things happening with a rebuild of the site, pretty much done now so looking forward to rolling that out and getting some feedback on that as well.

Ocean Sailing Podcast: Yeah, certainly great having everything online and on demand that you think of tips these days instead of having to carry everything on board and when you pull into a new destination or a new area, you may not have the information you need. So having that online and on demand is fantastic.

Jessica Watson rounding Cape Horn

Jessica Watson: Yeah, and obviously the other big thing about Deckee, so essentially part of it is that it’s a trip adviser for boating. So to have that information there from other people, not just the one author, you’ve got comments and reviews from a whole range of boaties who might have been there just the week before. So that’s where it will become really, really useful if everyone jumps on board as I’m sure they will be as they hear this and actually help the rest of the community out by sharing their opinion as well.

Ocean Sailing Podcast: Just to clarify, it’s Deckee.com.

Jessica Watson: That’s right, yep. Yeah, put it in Google or .com, it’s not that hard.

Ocean Sailing Podcast: Okay, and how old is the business now?

Jessica Watson: Well it would be, it’s just over a year now. Learned a lot in that first year, slowly and steadily growing and really hoping for some exciting things around this new website.

Ocean Sailing Podcast: Okay, and what’s your ultimate vision for the business and your plans beyond Australia?

Jessica Watson: Ultimately yeah, to provide a really helpful resource for the boating and sailing community. Australia first but certainly if it’s something that works here and it’s useful here, there’s a need for it around the world as well. So we’ll see where we go.

Ocean Sailing Podcast: Okay, and how many businesses do you have listed on there currently?

Jessica Watson: We’ve got close to 4,000, which I think out of six or 7,000 businesses, is significant. There’s still a way to go there so obviously we’re asking marine businesses to get in touch and definitely list their details and there’s the opportunity to be listed as a directory there but then also some of the ways it will be built in with locations and encourage your customers to actually leave the feedback there. There’s all this amazing feedback and people do want to say great things and this is the platform for it.

Ocean Sailing Podcast: Great, and what sort of feedback have you had so far from the customers and the businesses that are benefiting from the platform?

Jessica Watson: We’re certainly seeing that people are saying that there’s a need for it, there are only so many options from the businesses perspective where you can be advertising your product and where is it actually relevant to be advertising, getting the word out about your business. 

Certainly that customer feedback is quite new. We’re seeing in every other industry that that’s becoming a really, really important marketing tool and it’s just, there hasn’t been a platform for that for the marine community yet. From a user feedback, obviously the more people on there, the more useful it gets. Hearing some positive things so far but we just know that the more people using it, the better it gets and that’s the important thing to get to that point. 

Ocean Sailing Podcast: What are the biggest things that are driving the growth of the site at the moment?

Jessica Watson: Well we are seeing a lot of people kind of discovering it through people, friends telling them about it. We’re getting out and doing sort of being part of as many community events as possible and then also through sort of the stories and the blog style articles that we’re writing, putting out a couple, normally one or two a week. A lot of people are reading that, sharing that and hearing about Deckee that way as well, which is wonderful.

Ocean Sailing Podcast: Okay, I’ve been chasing somebody for some details for a survey for three weeks, for a survey that I need to get done for insurance and last night I thought, “Why don’t I just go onto Deckee, look up the Gold coast and see what’s there?” And sure enough I found a surveyor straight away in Palm Beach and got the contact details and straight onto it.

Jessica Watson: Wonderful.

Ocean Sailing Podcast: Otherwise if you can just Google the stuff, often you go mental because it brings up such broad results that it doesn’t often find what you’re looking for.

Jessica Watson: Well, that’s exactly it. Is that look, this is probably jumping ahead of myself a little bit here as I’d love to say Deckee become a bit of a Google for the boating world. It’s a place that you actually trust and you know that it’s actually boaties are on there, so it’s information for boaties rather than having to contend with everything on Google. Yeah, and we’ve had good feedback and that was around the award wins too about the design of the site. So something we’re keeping in mind as we build the new one as well.

Ocean Sailing Podcast: Yeah, it’s a good looking site and I found it easy to use, and I think the review based concept is a really smart one.

Jessica Watson: Yeah, right direction but as I said, learning a lot as well which is really important because we want to be providing the most useful tool possible.

Ocean Sailing Podcast: What do you need more of right now to drive your growth? Is it business listings or customers, or essentially eyeballs and traffic to drive leads and contact to those businesses?

Jessica Watson: It’s hard to know what comes first, but really our focus is with the user and particularly a lot of our cruising sailors who are typically really generous people who want to share. Your average racing sailor might be a little more busy and heads down to the boat all weekend and doesn’t have a lot of spare time.

But cruising sailors are really generous and want to spread their opinions which is wonderful. So really engaging with them is number one concern and getting them on board in using the site, and hearing what they want to be using and what they want to see and then I think the businesses are seeing, once there’s a huge amount of people using the site and finding it useful that it’s something they want to be part of.

Ocean Sailing Podcast: Are there any other similar websites in the world for the marine industry that are similar to Deckee, or is what you're doing here quite unique?

Jessica Watson: It is quite unique. There’s a few sort of similar concepts and in the States, we’re seeing, and globally a few sort of sites. Some pretty incredible marina booking platforms and things like that popping up, which is great to see that people are again sort of saying they want these resources online. But so far, yeah certainly it is quite unique but we’ll what happens I imagine in the next few years as well.

Ocean Sailing Podcast: So Jess, is there anything else you want to tell me about Deckee or anything else you wanted to share about Deckee and plans and ides for that before we give Andy a call?

Jessica Watson: No, look, I really want to encourage people to get on there and use it. Also we really love feedback and honest feedback. You know, that’s what’s going to help us grow and improve. So keen to hear that and hear what people think as the new site’s launched as well. So please do get on board and share your opinions, good and bad and your favourite anchorage. What’s good about that and what people need to be aware of.

Jessica enjoying the sunshine while sailing on Queensland waters

Ocean Sailing Podcast: The more people share, the more people get to benefit from that sharing and those reviews and that information.

Jessica Watson: Just becomes more and more useful, yes.

Ocean Sailing Podcast: Yeah, great resource from that point of view.

Jessica Watson: Definitely, yeah.

Ocean Sailing Podcast: Okay, so Andy Lamont, we’re going to jump online and we’re going to call him through Skype to his mobile and we have a chat to Andy because I spoke to Andy maybe a couple of months ago, he’s got a trip coming up, big trip going west, going upwind for some crazy reason…

Jessica Watson: Yeah, that’s pretty crazy.

Ocean Sailing Podcast: …around the world, and he’s, it would be fair to say, he’s certainly a fan of yours. When I spoke to him I said, “If you had some questions for Jessica Watson, what would they be?” And he said, “I’d ask her about this, this, and that.” So got me thinking at the time, “Oh maybe I could organise for you to have a chat to him and maybe he could ask you those questions directly.”

Jessica Watson: Id’ love to. I always love somebody who has chosen the right boat for the voyage.

Andy Lamont: Hi, Andy speaking.

Ocean Sailing Podcast: Hey Andy, it’s David here.

Andy Lamont: Hey Dave, how are you going mate?

Ocean Sailing Podcast: Good, thanks. Can you hear me okay?

Andy Lamont: Yeah, you're just a little bit faint, but I can hear you.

Ocean Sailing Podcast: Okay, I’ll try and speak up. So Andy, I’ve got somebody else here that is going to have a chat to you about your upcoming westward bound trip around the world and she’s listening in the background.

Jessica Watson: Hello.

OSP: In fact, we might have to sit a bit closer so she can hear you but I have Jessica Watson here Andy.

Andy Lamont: Oh Jessica? How are you going?

Jessica Watson: Yes, hi, good, how are you?

Andy Lamont: Good, thanks. 

Jessica Watson: Good to hear about your trip.

Andy Lamont: So is that you? Is that Jessica Watson, is it?

Jessica Watson: Yes, yes. Sorry.

Ocean Sailing Podcast: How many Jessica’s do you know?

Andy Lamont: I recognise your voice. Thanks for calling Jessica. Yeah.

Jessica Watson: No, no problem.

OSP: So Andy, we’re doing an episode for the podcast and Jessica and I have been having a chat for the last hour or so. When I had spoken to you a couple of months ago, you said if you could speak to Jessica, there are some questions you’d like to ask as part of your preparation. So now you have the opportunity.

Andy Lamont: Yeah. That’s right.

Jessica Watson: I love your choice in boat obviously.

Andy Lamont: Yeah. It was good to get an S & S 34 and just doing it up. Yeah, so where are you now Jessica? You’re in up north in…

Jessica Watson: In Brisbane, I’m down in Melbourne a lot these days but Brisbane today. You’re Gold Coast based, aren’t you?

Andy Lamont: Yeah, that’s right. So I head off in October and sail westward bound. But yeah, there were some things I wanted to ask you about. I’m sort of a blank at the moment.

Ocean Sailing Podcast: I thought you would, so I’ve written down your questions for you Andy because I remember some of them.

Andy Lamont: Good on you, all right.

Ocean Sailing Podcast: I knew I would be putting you on the spot. So one of the questions you said you would like to know more about is the sail configurations for each wind level and what Jessica found to be the best settings as the wind range went up.

Andy Lamont: Yeah, that would be interesting to know.

Ocean Sailing Podcast: And at what point she changed from a genoa to a full genoa, and a genoa to a jib and reefed the main, and things like that.

Andy Lamont: Yeah, that would be good to know how you went with that.

Jessica Watson: Yeah, I suppose I kept it all pretty basic It was certainly no racing trim with a lot of it. Really it was just the main with, I had three reefs in it which was fantastic and the genoa, which would just fill away a bit of as it got windier and then the big thing I did was used the stay sail a bit which was good but probably not. I don’t think it made a huge amount of difference but then I’d keep the storm sail on the stay sail and just I had to leave that up for quite a while, it wasn’t doing any damage before or after a storm to have it up there ready.

And I don’t know. I suppose the big thing is just getting the main down earlier so it’s not overpowering when you’re sailing, I don’t know if you’ll have a wind vane, but you just can’t sail with too much sail area with the wind vane, you’ve got to be a bit more conservative.

Andy Lamont: Yes, I’m just fitting, I just spoke to Phil George just sent me up a wind vane actually.

Jessica Watson: Oh wonderful.

Jessica Watson inspecting the top of her mast on her circumnavigation

Andy Lamont: I just fitted that last week, yeah. That’s the thing, you’ve got to balance the boat to just keep it underpowered.

Jessica Watson: Yeah. I highly recommend a nice small third reef not that on an S & S 34 sail it could be that big anyway, a third reef.

Andy Lamont: Yep. Oh good, so that’s good to know. Well I’ve got a small third reef, but I’m probably going to do. Did you just have the one main sail for the whole trip?

Jessica Watson: I did, I had a spare, which wouldn’t have been a great sail but I didn’t need it. I was stitching it up a little bit. There was little bits of damage and things.

Andy Lamont: Yeah, okay. So that’s good. It lasted the whole trip for you?

Jessica Watson: It did, but it was suffering a bit towards the end so I’d definitely be taking a spare.

Andy Lamont: Yeah, well I’ve got a spare. I thought I might get another new one made, but I’ve got a spare sort of the whole thing that came with the boat. That was the idea I had of having another main, just so I could have one ready to pop up just in case.

Jessica Watson: Yeah. That would probably do the job.

Andy Lamont: Yeah, well that’s good to know. And what about things like did you have a wind generator the whole way?

Jessica Watson: The wind vane sorry?

Andy Lamont: No, the generator.

Jessica Watson: Wind generator?

Andy Lamont: Did you have any at all?

Jessica Watson: I did actually replace that quite towards the end of the trip. It was fantastic, I liked it and I had a spare whole unit, which I might have been able to problem solve with the first one. I don’t know, someone with a bit more technical knowledge and experience might have been as well but I had the spare there and I just replaced it which was just fantastic. But yeah, you really need your different options with the solar and even being able to run, I was running in and out gear a fair bit, which is not overly great for it either.

Andy Lamont: So you say solar was pretty much, not really that much help down south?

Jessica Watson: No, I still found it surprising how down south it was more that they, or one of them particularly got a bit smashed up during some knock downs and was a bit less effective after that.

Andy Lamont: Yeah. That’s good to know and so you took all your water didn’t you?

Jessica Watson: Yeah but I was catching a lot. My water maker was only like a little hand backup one so it was really only going to get me out of trouble in a sort of survival situation. But I was very surprised and impressed with how much I was able to collect particularly through the Pacific, which might not be as much help for you but the gutter…

Andy Lamont: Well I’m going up and under on down straight home. Because I’m going out the way. So there were gutters on your…

Jessica Watson: Dodger. They were very effective. Yeah, they were great and then obviously just you turn and run with it if once you’ve sort of washed the salt off and put the topper on the end of the boom, pull it up a bit and let it all run off the gooseneck.

Andy Lamont: Yup. That’s good to know. What about, is there anything you would have done differently now that you’ve done it once like as far as the boat goes or?

Jessica Watson: What was that, sorry? Would I do anything differently?

Andy Lamont: Yeah, that you sort of think, “Oh, that was a bad idea.” Were you able to rely on certain things, or is there anything you would have done differently?

Jessica Watson: Look honestly, there was very little with the boat, which was fantastic. I don’t know if it was me now, I would probably actually enjoy sailing it a little bit better and get the code zero out and things like that but equipment wise, yeah, really very little. There was a few things that corroded and didn’t sort of work and rigged up a new little battery meter, but there were all such small things that didn’t really matter.

Yeah, no I can’t honestly say that there would be one sort of big thing that would really, I’d change. It’s the right boat for it and yeah, just keep it simple with the equipment and back up for everything, it’s really all there is to it.

Andy Lamont: Did you have separate bilge? Did you close up all your bilge or did you have it all draining in under the motor? Oh no sorry, you didn’t have the motor in it, did you? So did you have your separate bilge or was it just one big bilge of all that?

Jessica Watson: No, they were quite separate and that was some pretty impressive bilge pumps in all of them and hand pumps as well, probably a bit overboard. Yeah, so have you got the engine in the centre, do you?

Andy Lamont: Yep.

Jessica Watson: Yeah, that’s great.

Andy Lamont: Yeah I got the engine in the centre. I want to close it off, because it all drains into the bilge, the one bilge…

Jessica Watson: Yeah okay.

Andy Lamont: …under the motor and I was wanting to sort of change it all up so that I’ll separate to have a forward bilge, a mid ship bilge, and an aft bilge so that if there is bilge coming in, I know where it’s coming from. Did you have that? Or did you just have it all separated? The bilges?

Jessica Watson: Yeah, it was quite separated obviously at the front. I think the engine really was a bit separate but got to a point and it would just drain in and I did have a pretty leaky prop glands, stern gland.

Andy Lamont: Oh did you?

Jessica Watson: Yeah. Which didn’t worry me but towards the end it was getting a little worse, which wasn’t ideal.

Andy Lamont: Yeah. Was that just a stuffing box gland or?

Elle Bache; major sponsor for Jessica Watson

Jessica Watson: Yeah it was. So yeah, there wasn’t too much I could do about it but it didn’t even matter too much, I just had to make sure I was pumping out every now and again.

Andy Lamont: Right. Cool, well that’s pretty interesting. Is that right on you?

Jessica Watson: Yep, that’s right. I mean I don’t know how, my rig was definitely pretty overkill so whether that’s entirely necessary but I suppose the rigger just thought it was absolutely no harm at the time. Yeah.

Andy Lamont: Yeah. I know you say the inaudible were pretty easy to deal with, and you didn’t have any problem with accidents. Did you have a boom break?

Jessica Watson: Oh what sorry? A boom break? I did use one a bit to start with but I actually just found that really your only option is just to run a preventer and just run something towards to the front of the boat and back and because you’re only tacking every few days, it’s no big deal just to set it up and yeah.

Andy Lamont: Set it up, yeah.

Jessica Watson: That really is the only thing that I found really effective.

Andy Lamont: Yeah, that’s really cool. Well that’s quite all. I’m sort of in the boat ready now. I’ve been sort of working on it over 18 months. Just slowly getting everything done. That was sort of very interesting things to talk to you about. The main thing was just sort of pretty much the boat’s pretty much standard as it comes, and it handles everything pretty good and not really insistent. What navigation do you use, chart plotter?

Jessica Watson: Yeah, chart plotter but I also just had the software on the computer, on the HP Toughbook, which was great and then all the backup GPS handhelds and charts. Which hopefully never had to get used and there was even a sexton on board which I would have been in trouble if I needed that. Might have eventually found where I was.

Andy Lamont: Yeah it’s the same. I’ve got like a million different GPS’s and sextons.

Jessica Watson: Yeah exactly. Yeah, likelihood of needing it is pretty low.

Andy Lamont: Yeah.

Ocean Sailing Podcast: So Andy, David here, when we were talking, you had some questions around downwind sailing and whether you were going to pole out your genoa or run wing and wing, or what have you. Did you have any other questions around down and sailing sail configuration at all?

Andy Lamont: Did you run twin heads at all Jessica or?

Jessica Watson: I never did, no. I mean it probably would have helped. Yeah, but I never did, I had a code zero too which I reckoned was pretty useful. I didn’t use it a huge amount but yeah, poling out would definitely be a good thing to be able to do but I never tried the double.

Andy Lamont: Yeah, right. I was all keen to pole out and do that and I re-read John Sanders’ book and he was saying that he didn’t want to pole out the genoa because it rubbed the foresail too much and I was thinking, “Oh, all right.” So I might not do so much of that poling out. But that was what I was talking to David about, whether or not to use the pole or not.

Jessica Watson: Yeah, I mean I’d definitely have it with you but I mean, John’s the real expert. If you’re going to go around three times, you’re going to really going to have to really keep an eye on what’s going to wear out and what’s going to be an issue.

Andy Lamont: Well that’s really interesting. Yeah.

Jessica Watson: Yeah, well do get in touch if there’s anything closer to the time. Yeah I’m sure there’s a lot of good people and you’re talking to all the right people I’m sure…

Andy Lamont: Yeah, how much metho did you take?

Jessica Watson: I couldn’t tell you off the top of my head but it would be in the back of my book. I actually had far too much.

Andy Lamont: It’s in the back of your book? Yeah.

Jessica Watson: I think it is but if not, I’ll follow up with that but I did have far too much.

Andy Lamont: I’ll have to have a look at your book again.

Jessica Watson's route around the world

Jessica Watson: I didn’t need quite that much and it was great with the little cylinders that I had so it was completely sealed and there was no way that any meth could spill even completely upside down.

Andy Lamont: Yeah. I’ve got one of those, it’s fantastic.

Jessica Watson: Great.

Andy Lamont: Yeah, so do you know if you had a lot left over when you came back or whether you’re sort of go back and have a look at how much it took and do you remember that or not?

Jessica Watson: Yeah, no I do remember there was a lot left over. So however much I took, it was too much. But I suppose it’s something that you don’t want to be running out of so you know, cold food would be pretty miserable. Yeah, well good luck with the wind vane. It’s awesome, it takes a bit of getting used to. I’m sure you’ve used one before but lots of spare blades, loads of spare ones because I did snap a few of them and also lines you can never have enough lines because they did even if I set it up perfect, it will still chafe a lot.

Andy Lamont: Yeah. So that’s good. I’ll take lots of spare blades. It’s so light, so you can sort of take as many as you need, can’t you?

Jessica Watson: Yeah, exactly. Honestly, however many you think, just add a few more.

Andy Lamont: What about anti-foul? Do you remember what anti-foul you used?

Jessica Watson: It was an international brand and there was a lot of it on there.

Andy Lamont: Was there?

Jessica Watson: Yeah, there was. Probably the only thing there is you probably couldn’t go high enough because that’s where I had a bit of growth because you obviously healed right over and then so much water higher up that we probably should have gone even higher than we thought. 

Andy Lamont: Yeah, I hear you. I was thinking the same thing actually. I was thinking I might even put a vinyl strut above my water line and to sail that. That’s probably six or seven inches above the water line because yeah, they do tend to get dirty, don’t they? Close above the water line.

Jessica Watson: Yeah, definitely.

Andy Lamont: Well that’s good. Well, look I really appreciate you taking my call. It’s quite great to contact you. I sort of followed when you began to turn around and yeah, I thought it was fantastic what you did. It was very inspiring, so it’s great to talk to you. If I come up with something, I might have to shoot you an email or something like that, if I need some advice on something.

Jessica Watson: Yeah, please do.

Andy Lamont: Ah thanks. Your boat was pretty much perfect as it was, probably the whole way.

Jessica Watson: Perfect in that we didn’t get tempted to over complicate anything. If you keep it simple, there’s only so much that can go wrong. So yeah. I’m sure there’s more we could have done to get the right speed and different things out of it, but it wasn’t about that.

Andy Lamont: No it’s the same for me. It’s about finishing really, that’s the main thing.

Jessica Watson: Yeah, exactly. Good luck with it, I’m sure you’ll be sort of posting or updating somehow on the way and look forward to following you as well.

Andy Lamont: Yeah, well I will be and Dave will be working with me on that, so that will be great. Thanks very much for talking with me Jessica and you have a great day and I’ll shoot you an email and so you’ve got my email address if you ever want to talk to me about anything. Let me know if I can do something for you?

Jessica Watson: Sounds good, yeah, I’ll do that.

Ocean Sailing Podcast: Yeah, we can arrange that.

At age 23, Jessica Watson has packed a lot into her young life already

Andy Lamont: All right. That would be great. As I said to you, if I have some questions I might just shoot you an email and maybe get some tips, and I’d really appreciate it. So thanks very much and again for all of that. Thanks for your time Jessica.

Jessica Watson: No problem, good luck with all the work.

Andy Lamont: All right, thanks very much.

Ocean Sailing Podcast: Thanks Andy.

Andy Lamont: See you, bye.

Ocean Sailing Podcast: See you later on. So that was a few challenges just getting sound clarity and stuff.

Jessica Watson: Yeah.

Ocean Sailing Podcast: So thanks for doing that because I know Andy’s been consuming all of the good advice that he can, form all sorts of people and getting as much as he can read to prepare, he’s got a massive to do list as you can probably appreciate.

Jessica Watson: Gosh yeah.

Ocean Sailing Podcast: I know he wants to…

Jessica Watson: Never ending. Yeah. No it’s funny because I sort of go, “Oh, I don’t know how much there is.” I can sort of tell him but you start realising all these little things and yeah, there are a lot of simple little things that would possibly make a big difference.

Ocean Sailing Podcast: I saw one of your presentations once and the thing I actually truly felt sorry for you on the sail was having to rebuild the toilet because it’s not and a very pleasant job.

Jessica Watson: No, no that was one thing that it fell apart during knock downs. Bit annoying.

Ocean Sailing Podcast: Okay, that’s great and so is there anything else you want to touch on before we wrap up the day Jess? Is there anything else you want to share or talk about?

Jessica Watson: No, I think I’m good. I mean, as I said, I love sailing of all kinds these days and I love good stories and following and looking forward to following trips like that, it’s a wonderful thing to be able to do. I think that the Internet and things like this these days you can just follow such great stories from around the world from home.

Ocean Sailing Podcast: Actually, one question, on last question on that. What percentage of your trip was reaching or downwind sailing would you say? Versus going upwards?

Jessica Watson: I don’t know, probably maybe only half or I don’t know? I’ve never really kind of looked at it on percentage terms, yeah.

Ocean Sailing Podcast: Okay. Because Andy’s going the opposite way so I was just wondering if we were to work backwards on the percentage his was going to be upwind as opposed to downwind.

Jessica Watson: Yeah, he’s in a bit more trouble but I reckon as much of the course is into the prevailing but mine was probably a bit unique because I was supposed to be further south. The idea is you’re down south and you’ve got more wind behind, stronger and faster but I tended to enjoy sunshine warmth and the whole way across the Indian Ocean which is of course such a huge percentage of the trip, I was just so much further north than I really should have been. I was getting a lot more headwinds and lighter winds as well.

Ocean Sailing Podcast: Right, but you are warmer and drier.

Jessica Watson: Yeah, I was pretty happy about that. I was totally okay that it was a little bit slower.

Ocean Sailing Podcast: Yeah, and if you’re not in a hurry, you might as well stay warm.

Jessica Watson: Exactly, and just the severity of every storm that came past was just that you just see it, it was so blatant on the weather charts that if I was a couple degree further south it would be 20 knots more and that’s not good.

Ocean Sailing Podcast: Yeah. Okay, well, Jess, it’s been really, really great talking with you today. So thank you so much for traveling to the Queensland Cruising Yacht Club so we could sit together and thanks for sharing your story on the Ocean Sailing Podcast and thanks for taking the time out to talk to Andy as well. I know he really would appreciate that and I’m sure when he gets off, when he got off the phone he probably had five more questions straight away for you.

Jessica Watson: I’m sure, yeah no problem, it’s been great.

Ocean Sailing Podcast: Okay, great, good luck with Deckee. It looks like a great business model, a great idea and it’s going to be a great new website and a great service. So I encourage everybody to take advantage of Deckee.com and you’ll find all sorts of great help and advice and tips and stories and blog articles and reviews, and it’s a great looking the website, so good luck with that, that adventure.

Jessica Watson: Thank you very much.

Ocean Sailing Podcast: Thanks Jess. 

Interviewer: David Hows

If you enjoy the show and find the content valuable, consider the extra benefits of becoming an Ocean Sailing Podcast Patron.

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Episode 5: John Lucas Show Notes

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OSP: This week we’re with John Lucas. So welcome along John and thanks for joining us on the Ocean Sailing Podcast and we’ve got a unique opportunity this week, we’re going to talk to John about his story from more than four decades ago now about an amazing trip that he made. John, tell us a little bit about what was this trip, where did this start, where did it end and where did the idea come from to start with?

John Lucas: Sure and good morning David. We call this particular expedition The Daydream Expedition where upon we sailed a flat bottom houseboat from Geelong, all the way to Thursday Island taking approximately three months. The whole issue started when a group of missionaries got together in Geelong and bought this houseboat.

After they had finished the houseboat they found that they couldn’t get it up to New Guinea in any way shape or form. They’d run out of money by that time, things weren’t going too well. On a particular day I came across the guys that put it together and I said, “Why don’t you sail it up?” And they said, “Well, we’re not too sure if that could be possible because we can’t even get it out past Point Henry,” which is a local signal station in Geelong.

One conversation led to another a month or so later I was approached and asked if it could really be done. I said, “Well, let’s give it a try.” So myself, Len Day who is one of the owners of the boat and two other people and the three of them had never been to sea in their life before. The were novices going to sea however Len had flown in the London to Sydney air race, so he was a pilot, not a seaman. So we rigged the boat up, we had advised Canberra of what we had in mind and they sent down something like 26 different departments to try and stop us from doing it. 

We had to meet all the regulations and in the end there was no reason why we couldn’t do it. However, I would say today, it would be impossible and you would not get the permission because of safety at sea rules. So we set the boat up, it was a flat-bottomed houseboat with a draft of 18 inches, two big rudders on the stern, quite a comfortable boat being a houseboat inside. We also rigged a mast, which carried a cat gaff-rigged sail and that was for the sake of an auxiliary if we had any problems with the motor. 

The motor in particular was a water jet motor that traversed 360 degrees, it was the invention of a local in Geelong who wanted us to give this particular engine a try so that was installed and it was a 310 horse power Perkins diesel, converted to over eight with the sea and cooling and we put the crew together and set off. Our first trip was down to Swan Bay for the night where we pulled in and Swan Bay is a very small bay down near Queens Cliff which is The Heads. The next morning we setup to go out of The Heads. 

Now, The Heads are known as one of the, if not the roughest, the second roughest stretch of water in the world, second only to the Cape. We were very cautious about how we go and tackle that, the first episode of course getting out of Swan Bay is we what? We ran aground. Surprise, surprise. This was a good start to the trip. However when we sorted that out, we got in touch with the Point Lonsdale light, which organises the traffic coming in and out through The Heads.

We were given the okay to make our way out so we put the big engine on, sails up. At the same time, there was the start of the Melbourne to Devonport, the up rise. The weather was pretty bad and they actually canceled the start of that but we being a little better at sailing decided that we’d take the risk and go out. Not a very smart idea if we found out halfway through.

But having done that, we made it through The Rip and not too long after making it through The Rip, our sail tore. So that was the first bit of damage on the boat. We knew that there was a sail maker close in at Flinders. We stripped the sails off, took the sails in, got them repaired, we ported in at Flinders of course, prepared the sail and prepared to go around Wilson’s Prom which again is pretty tricky if you catch it on the wrong day. That’s why they call it the second roughest stretch of water in the world. 

Well we ended up going around that in a four seven which was not very comfortable but the lucky part for us was actually on the stern. So halfway around and a number of quick prayers, we thought we’d be in trouble but we then found a refuge bay which is a safe little haven around the point there, so we pulled in there for the night, sat in there comfortably and the next morning things had quietened down a lot, so we took up along the coast.

We then got to our next stop and we wanted to go in and pick up some stores which was relatively easy to do on a flat bottom houseboat because you don’t have much of a draft. I lined up the leads to go in and I advised the crew that they were the leads, that’s how we got in and there’s quite an active discussion onboard with the guys that hadn’t sailed before who thought that there was an easier and softer and more gentler way to get through the quite big waves that were coming in.

Big argument pursued and my comment was, “Well, your boat, your problem, we will do it your way but don’t call me if you get into trouble.” Well halfway through, we’re in trouble, we were starting to broach and those sorts of things and after a time we finally made it in to a place called Inverloch, at which stage I said, “Well, thanks for the invitation to join you on this cruise but I think under the circumstances, I’m out of here.”

OSP: That’s quite an interesting place to be, given that you’re part way into a pretty long trip, to come to that conclusion quickly.

John Lucas: Yes, well the conclusion was drawn because I had lost the authority to run the boat. As we say in the classics, one ship, one captain. Again, I had the experience. I’ve been sailing since I was about eight year’s old. However, we worked through that issue and Len then said to me, “Well John, from this day on, you are now 100% in charge, what you say goes.” That’s a good idea that put all the pressure back on me. 

We then stayed in Inverloch for about two or three days until the weather had changed a little and then we continued our trip up along the coast. The local newspapers and TV stations were covering the trip and so we had a chat to them about our experiences getting through The Rip on a flat bottom houseboat which weren’t very comfortable. They were quite surprised that we had made it through.

The local sailors in the area complained and said how crazy we were and that we would have no hope whatsoever of taking this houseboat up to New Guinea. However as the day pursued, knowing that we’d taken every step for our safety, one of the crew members decided after the rough trip that the first few days that he’d quit, he had enough. I think it was either too slow or he was too concerned as to what might happen with this trip.

OSP: What sort of speeds were you doing do you think?

John Lucas: We were probably doing speeds, conservatively, around three to five knots. We had picked that particular time of year because it’s the start of the south east trades. So we pretty much had the wind on our stern most of the way. If we picked up some northerly weather we really had to pull off and park somewhere until the northerlies are gone. Because the houseboat had a chisel nose on it, which obviously didn’t take too kindly to northerly winds.

OSP: So what sort of angle could you sail to within. Beyond a reach how much further beyond could you go?

John Lucas: More than likely just on a reach. Yeah you certainly wouldn’t go into a beat of any sort. Again, because of the southwest prevailing, it was mostly up our tail or on a fair short of a reach, shy reach, which would carry on to a broad reach if we got a little bit more easterly into it.

OSP: So we’re looking at some of the newspaper cuttings from the time of the trip and this is before mobile phones existed and this was before internet existed. How did you communicate your story and your updates and your progress to the people that were following you and then on the media side?

John Lucas: Okay, well the government said that we would have to get a radio that was strong enough that we must radio in every evening to let them know where we were. We were doing that but we weren’t getting any response from them, they just weren’t there or weren’t listening and weren’t available. So whilst we tried every night, we pretty much didn’t get anywhere near them.

Philips had heard of our trip and they decided to sponsor us with a big radio, so they gave us the radio, which helped us immensely through the trip and we could keep in touch with people back home. We made it up to Ballina, we made it around the cape and up to Ballina, which is — I’ll just go back on that. We’re actually back in Sydney, I’m reading ahead on myself here. Ballina’s a little bit further on. 

Well we made it in to Sydney and we pulled into the Cruising Yacht Club of Australia (CYCA) who welcomed us and gave us a free berth for as long as we wanted to stay there, at that particular stage of course all the TV stations and the newspapers was starting to catch up with us and finding out where we were, what we’d been through and how we were handling the whole situation.

So we stayed in Sydney probably for about four or five days and when the weather cleared a little bit, we again took off through Sydney Heads and headed up towards Port Macquarie. That part of the trip was reasonably comfortable and it wasn’t until we get near Coffs Harbour that the wind picked up somewhat considerably and we were fighting 25 to 30 knot breezes. There were big ships that were passing us by that were bearing their bow and the spray was probably reaching 30, 40 foot up in the air, which made us look very small in comparison. Of course made us think twice about what we were doing.

OSP: How long was this vessel and how wide was it?

John Lucas: It was 40 foot long, if we go back to foot and inches and had an 18 inch draft. One of the problems we had with the water jet unit, which traversed 360 degrees, was okay but we found that we couldn’t get a lot of steerage out of the boat. So we had to put two big rudders on one on each of the stern quarters, which helped us immensely to turn the boat or to control the boat. That made it a lot easier. 

We got up to Coffs Harbour and the weather had certainly turned nasty but we were doing reasonably well, we didn’t have a lot of problems and we’d put quite a few miles behind us. After leaving Coffs, the next stop would have been Ballina and we were fighting some pretty big seas by that stage but we were running a bit short on fuel and running short on food and what have you. So we decided we should put into Ballina. We had to pull the sail down, kick the big motor over, lined up the bar and boy did we shoot in that bar.

We got in on port up at Ballina and this old fella came down, big beard, smoking a pipe, dirty old jacket on, said, “Who is in charge of this craft?” Not being in the best frame of mind at that that particular time, I said to him, “Who wants to know?” He said, “I do. I’m the harbour master.” I said, “That’s great.” He said, “Well I’ve never seen anything like that in my life.” He said, “I saw you coming up the coast,” he said, “Our bar has been closed for five days. I was out doing the garden and I saw you and thought you’re going to run for cover down around the point. 

Next thing I looked up and you were lining up the bar. I thought, “Well, I better get to the garage and grab the port’s closed signs and run them up the masthead,” which I did. The only problem was when I got them to the masthead, I had no cleats on them. He said, “By this stage, you had started coming over the bar and I just stood back in sheer amazement and couldn’t believe what I was seeing as you came through, well done.” My comment to him was, “Quite frankly, if you got those signs up, we wouldn’t have known what they meant anyway and we were coming in.” That was quite a bit of a challenge.

OSP: Well and quite a compliment in a way from a harbour master who sees all sorts of things happen and then to put in context, the east coast of Australia, the sand bars most of the way up and down the coast are pretty treacherous and they change and move around a lot and lots of them aren’t suitable most of the time in the conditions that we have.

John Lucas: Sure. Well going back in the early days, of course they’ve got a long way lately to making a lot of the bars a lot safer than they used to be.

OSP: To put this in context, what year are we talking about here? What year was this?

John Lucas: We’re talking about 1972.

OSP: So 44 years ago, just to put some context.

John Lucas: So 44 years ago, most of the only boats that generally used the bars were the fishing boats that knew the waters very well and spoke with the harbour master before they came in and out.

OSP: Okay. In terms of the trip John, what is the total distance from Geelong to Thursday Island?

John Lucas: Over 3,000 miles.

OSP: When you think about that, and you put that into context, that’s more than crossing the Tasman Sea twice and it will get you a fair way to South America if you were to sail across the ocean towards South America.

John Lucas: It most certainly would.

OSP: How old were you at the time?

John Lucas: I was 27 at the time, that might give you an indication as to how old I am now but how many sea miles I’ve done.

OSP: With the trip, how many people did you do the trip with?

John Lucas: Well it started off four of us and as I said, one of them got off but when we pulled in at Inverloch, we went to the local hotel to have a bar meal and a quick drink. We had little to drink on board but went to the bar to have a quick drink, we were talking to one of the young farmers there and he said, “Well where are you guys from and what are you doing?” We said, “We have this flat bottom houseboat and we’re trying to take it all the way to New Guinea.” He said, “Do you need help?” We said, “Yeah, actually we’re one short in the crew.” Well within the next half an hour he’d been home, packed his bags and he was on the boat.

OSP: Quickly.

John Lucas: He had had a bit of experience, so he had worked on trawlers and what have you, over the years, in between his farming, when he was cropping and what have you. But he was very keen, jumped on board and was a great help of course.

OSP: You made it out successfully over the bar again and you left Ballina and what happened next?

John Lucas: Okay, our next big bar to across was of course the bar at Surfer’s Paradise, which was notorious in those days. Most of the fishing boats that came out through there, used to have to run up the coast, find the channel and run back down. We had different things in mind because we knew we had a shallow draft and we heaved the boat straight through. 

Now, it was a pretty rough day and those that were at the local hotel, all came roaring out and thought that we’re going to see the greatest demise of a boat that had ever come through or crossed that bar. When we got in, of course there were great cheers and many of them came down the boat, brought a lot of alcohol with them, congratulated us and sat down on how to chat all day, all night about what we’d been doing, how we got to that stage, and what our next big trip was to be.

OSP: Great, a classic Gold Coast welcome. So then you stopped in the Gold Coast, and how long were you here for?

John Lucas: So after the Gold Coast and we were in the Gold Coast for about five days, again, waiting for a bit of a break in the weather. However we knew that there was an inside passage so we used the inside passage to go up to Morton Bay and out through Morton Bay to continue our journey.

Our next big problem was getting around Double Island Point. Once again, the weather was very heavy, the bar had been closed for a week or so. So we were stuck out there, we couldn’t go in, so we had to find somewhere to hide, which we did just around the corner of Double Island Point, there’s a little lagoon.

We carefully placed it out to make sure we could get in, we popped in there and had to sit in there for about four or five days before they reopened the bar. Now, we were in constant contact with them and the first prawn trawler that came out when they reopened the bar, hit the sand bar and disappeared completely.

OSP: Gosh. So it just sank?

John Lucas: It sank and there were no signs of it or any of the gear and as you would know, most fishing boats carry a lot of floatation gear, none of that was ever found. So what we assume happened was they were coming out sitting on the top of the wave, it dried out underneath them, the bow dropped off the wave, hit the bottom, the sand completely encompassed the boat and nothing was ever seen of them again.

We were called in to help to see if we could find them because the way they had settled quite a bit by then. So we traveled up and down the coast whilst the coast guard also went out looking for them, but they were never seen and no parts of the boat were ever found again.

OSP: Wow, puts the challenges and dangers of crossing bars into context when you hear a story like that.

John Lucas: Yes, most certainly. I think we all learn when we go sailing that the first thing to do when you’re crossing a bar is to try and get some local knowledge form somewhere because the bars do shift, there’s quite a bit of shifting sand. They can be in one place one day and different place the next. So local knowledge is certainly very, very important.

OSP: Okay, so what happened next?

John Lucas: From there of course was inland passage, which was lovely of course, going inside Fraser iIsland, coming out of the top, by that stage of course, you’re basically inside the Great Barrier Reef, you’ve gotten rid of a lot of the big swells that come up from down south and traveling was a lot more comfortable by that stage. We’d made a couple of stops to pickup fuel and then made our way up to Hamilton Island where we were warmly welcomed and then up to the group of islands there. 

Now, a lot of the people on the island had heard that we were coming up. They met us when we got in, we had some very wealthy business men approach us and asked us if we needed anything. We really didn’t but they said, “Well, what we’re going to do is we’re going to let you order as much steak and as much food as you can carry and as much fuel as you can carry and we’re even going to organise some paint for you if you want to paint the boat when you get up there.”

So we loaded up with all those things, thanking them very much that they were quite interested in the trip that we had taken and talking about it and what sort of problems we’d had and where we were going to go from here. So that was very helpful.

OSP: That’s a generous offer and crew will never turn down a good feed or a good meal after a long trip, so it was great to be able to stock up there.

John Lucas: Well by that time, the idea of having a steak was very good. But we had good cooking facilities on board. Surprisingly enough, many would ask us how the boat was traveling and when it rode a wave, it was very much like a surfboard so it went up basically level and then sunk down basically level. So you could take on a big sea a two metre sea or a three metre sea and ride the wave out quite nicely with the salt and pepper still on the table.

OSP: Wow. And it’s 40 foot long, what was the beam of the boat?

John Lucas: I can’t quite recall the beam.

OSP: Looking at pictures, it’s pretty big, right? Probably at least 15 feet maybe wide?

John Lucas: Yes. 16, 18 foot wide.

OSP: Okay. So what happened next?

John Lucas: So we then left there, which was absolutely lovely of course, going up to Rockhampton Mackay. As I say, once again, we were in calm seas by that stage. The motor was running pretty much all the time, not a lot of breeze, the breeze had dropped out, so we were looking forward to doing the last laps as we went up past Rockhampton, Mackay following the passage up through there, Townsville, Cairns. Had an engine problem in Cairns and had to call back home for new parts to replace, to keep the engine going.

We did find that the sail we’d set up came in very handy quite often through the trip but in this particular stage, it was all we had. So it did help us a fair bit of the way. So we’re pretty well up at Cairns by now and heading inside the Great Barrier Reef, which was quite pleasant, a lot of whales. We made it up to the very tip of Australia and right at the very tip of Australia, there’s a little channel that you got through and there’s a Japanese Pearling company.

Now that pearling company had been there for 50 odd years or so, which was quite interesting because we’d had a war with Japan, but the Japanese were up there pearling, we were invited into the pearl farms, fed up very well, drank some nice Japanese wine and they presented us with some of the pearls in particular some black pearls, which are quite expensive. They were very happy to see someone come in and have a chat to them, pull in, what have you. We stayed there for a couple of days before we started to make our way over to Thursday Island.

OSP: Pretty unique opportunity that you probably never would have imagined possible, especially if the cultural differences maybe even then, given that it wasn’t that long after the war really, 25, 30 years.

John Lucas: Yes, not long after which was quite surprising. When we got up there, we were met by the US Navy who then advised us, unbeknownst to us that they had basically been covering us on our trip all the way up with their technical gear, which would have been happy to know of course. But they had us on board, gave us a lovely meal, presented us with a United States Navy officer’s ring and made the comment that our trip sounded more exciting than the RA and Kontiki expeditions put together. Cause one thing you don’t normally do is put to sea in a flat bottom houseboat.

OSP: That’s a really nice touch. What a nice way to recognise the trip you’re undertaking given by this stage you’re probably on your way to your trip and in the final stages.

John Lucas: Yes, the final stages, the trip from Australia across to the islands was very rewarding, very comfortable, big seas had gone, we were glad to get in and looking forward to booking our flight to get back home, having been away for two days shy of three months.

OSP: Okay and then to the arrival at Thursday Island, describe how that unfolded?

John Lucas: Well we arrived at Thursday Island, which is regarded as a first port of call into New Guinea. So they have all the customs there, they have a customs hall. We had the customs officers come down and meet us, we had to fill out the official customs forms for getting in there but we were made quite welcome.

There were not a lot of Anglo Saxons actually made it up that way, so they were quite happy to see us. We did our official bit and our official paperwork, we booked our flight and spoke with the missionaries over in New Guinea who were to come over and pick the boat up and take it up to the Fly River.

OSP: Did you ever follow the boat after that? In terms of where it ended up?

John Lucas: I have no idea where it ended up, after having spent three months on it, which probably two days short of what we should have spent. It was constantly used, the Fly River is one of the largest navigable water ways in the world. We certainly had very little to do with the boat once it got there but the missionaries did use it to travel up and down the river and because of the 360 degree traversing water jet, it was quite comfortable on the river runs.

OSP: So when you’re think back now about the construction of the boat and the condition of it when you stepped on board was it fit for purpose or did you have challenges along the way with things breaking and wearing out and coming apart?

John Lucas: No, the boat held up extremely well, the only damage we really sustained apart from a few problems with the motors and the sails, we actually took a big brass - huge brass bell that we were going to give to the missionaries, we had that parked on the bow and when we came over the Ballina Bar, with a fair bit of water smashing across there, we lost the bell. So I have no doubt the bell is still down the bottom of the Ballina Bar. But the boat was in good condition when we handed it over.

OSP: What was it constructed out of?

John Lucas: It had a steel hull on it, built very much like a barge. So it had a chisel nose on it and of course the upper deck was in ply. We put two ex-aircraft seats on the back so that we’d be comfortable sitting on the wheel, we ran shifts of course as we went up there, it was sort of four on and eight off as we swung to people looking after the craft while the others were asleep. But it was much appreciated when I got up there.

OSP: Okay, what were the bunks like in terms of sleep, did you get a good night’s sleep?

John Lucas: Yes, always a good night’s sleep because it had four cabins and each cabin had two bunks in it and they were very comfortable bunks and all in all from the point of view of those that do sail and sail mono-hulls where you’re on a slant most of the time. We’re on a flat surface and could get actually get a good night’s sleep.

The Houseboat - Daydream

OSP: When you think about that, that changes things a lot doesn’t it when you are flat almost all of the time. What about managing provisions, cooking and refrigeration, did you have refrigeration?

John Lucas: Yes we had refrigeration but once again because of the shallow draft, we could get in wherever we needed to get into pick up fuel and to pick up fresh goods, bread and milk, the lunch was normally two slices of bread with some sliced cheese in it and a raw tomato. The idea of losing a lot of weight on the trip certainly came true, I think I dropped about two stone.

OSP: Okay, and did you have much success with fishing along the way?

John Lucas: We did, we’ve had a line in from time to time, never caught much. However when we got up near Cairns and Townsville, there were a lot of Spanish Mackerel around. Spanish Mackerel are a very good fighting fish and you really don’t have to use bait, you can actually put a colored ribbon on your hook and throw it in and they’ll snap at anything.

The aircraft seat installed for helming comfortably

So we had a lot of Spanish Mackerel to eat, plus from time to time we would run into prawn trawlers and we would offer to buy some prawns off them but being the good fellas they are and being boaties, all boaties are good friends, they would give us bags and bags of prawns, which everyone would enjoy of course and did not want to charge us anything.

OSP: Okay. So if you think about the people in the three-month trip, it’s a long trip. After that initial incident coming over the bar, where you had almost had a bit of a mutiny going on, how did people get along? Did you have people all got along well? Did you have personality clashes at times? Did you have things that became large thorns in your heel by the end of the trip?

John Lucas: Yes, there were those times and that’s because you’re living in closed quarters of course. So there was a small breakdown between the crew and the skipper and the skipper and the owner were sort of 50% of the road and the crew were the other 50%.

So there were times when we had to call everyone into a meeting and say, “Look, if you’re going to let anyone down, you’re going to let the team down if you don’t participate and do what we expect of you. They all came around, there were no big blues or arguments, there was just some grumpy little incidents that came up over the trip.

OSP: Which is pretty natural, three months together in a space like that. You talked about the multitude of government agencies involved and getting approvals to do the trip, what did you have to do back then in terms of safety equipment and what was the plan if it all turned to custard?

John Lucas: Well, as I said, at that particular time, just prior to that, all the States used to look after their own coastline and three or six months before we did the trip, what the government did was they put them all into Canberra so that it then became the centre to say you have to go to Canberra. So I think Canberra were all interested in coming down and having a look at checking safety. So we had to rig the boat with a lot of safety gear up to date; jackets, right arrows, flares, charts and anything else you can think of that might be in our safety. As I say, today, you would not be allowed to do something like this. You just would not be able to meet the safety standards.

Quite the pin-up poster boy

OSP: Okay, when we think about the trip, did you have any really hairy moments or times when you actually wondered if you’re going to get through?

John Lucas: Yes, hairy moments, probably three months. No, not quite. Going out through The Rip is always a testing time. There were 19 commandos back then who had to paddle across the front of The Rip and they were all lost. They all drowned and they were commandos. There was a pilot boat and pilot boats are a very, very safe boat. They lock up all the hatches if they roll over, they pretty much come back up the other way, however two boats had been lost at sea going out through The Rip. 

It’s pretty treacherous passage of water. It’s one that the Sydney Habour sailors don’t look forward to when they’re coming across there because you’ve got all that big water coming across from the west, you got all that run down the southeast coast, you’ve got that big winds and seas coming up from the south and it all meets there and it can be flat calm at one instance and really bubbling at the next.

Hoisting sails required tw0 crew in stronger breeze

Wilson’s Prom was obviously a, more than a challenge. At one stage, I certainly believed that we’re in trouble until we come upon Refuge Cove but a lot of the yachties know where Refuge Cove is and a lot of them do use that as a safety mooring overnight. The bars up along the coast were obviously very challenging. Back in those days, once again, you didn’t have the advice that you have today. 

We did, it was one of the first books that Allan Lucas — no relation to him by the way — actually wrote and we were using that one as the bible as we went up. I found that very, very informative and very, very helpful but certainly many of the bars created a lot of problems but once again, once we got inside Fraser Island and up past the Whitsundays, it was just magic. It was probably some of the best sailing I’ve done in the world.

OSP: Okay, it’s interesting that the trip is more than 40 years ago but you’ve got really vivid memories of quite a lot of the detail of the trip. It must have had quite a big impact on your life obviously at that point. But what have you done since or what did you do next? Following something like that, it must have almost been a challenge to go back to a day job and a regular sort of nine to five life.
 
John Lucas: Well fortunately for me, I was in show business back then and we would probably only bring one or two shows. I was Elton John’s Australian tour manager, did shows like the Bee Gees, Suzi Quatro and what have you. So I would probably only do two big shows a year, so I did have a lot of time to do so many things like this. 

The Daydream motor sailing in fair weather

But I started at the Royal Geelong Yacht Club at the age of eight, in Yachting World Cadet dinghies and I was the youngest member of Royal Geelong to have a Quick Cat Catamaran which was designed by Charlie Cunningham, was a single handed boat. I was certainly too small and too young to handle it, so that was quite a challenge and I’ve had several boats since then.

OSP: Okay, and have you done much in the way of offshore passages or have you been mostly coastal cruising or done a bit of racing? What’s your sailing been year round?

John Lucas: Done a bit of everything. I spent a bit of time over in the Isle of White. Lived in the Greek Islands for about three months, did a lot of sailing around the Greek islands, lived in the south of France for about six months, done a lot of sailing through the South of France. So I spent a lot of time on the water doing racing and cruising.

OSP: Okay. That’s great, and what else would you like to tell me about the trip or your experience that I haven’t asked you about?

The Daydream under motor in spectacular conditions

John Lucas: Well, as I say, the newspapers and the TV stations covered the trip pretty extensively and so I have a good record of the trip and my son was looking over the records only a few years back and he said to me, “Dad, if I wanted to do something like that, would you let me?” And I said, “No bloody way son.”

OSP: What did your parents think of it at the time?

John Lucas: My parents and my girlfriend who I finally married and have been married to for over 42 years, all had a trying time waiting because it wasn’t all that often that they heard from us and they picked up most of their information from the newspapers. So they didn’t know where we were or what was going on. The family were very apprehensive.

OSP: Which is pretty natural because that’s not a common voyage that someone does, let alone in a houseboat. It’s not really made for that kind of thing I guess, but shows you what’s possible if it’s well constructed and you’ve got capable people on board. 

John Lucas: Yeah, we do think all things are possible and I think sailing comes down to riding a bike and driving a car and as much you’re on the side of caution and you just take everything as it comes and you work through the issues. But homework again is probably one of the most important things. Understanding the crew is certainly another one and the crew’s requirements. So it’s all a fair sort of a challenge, but something — this was a once in a lifetime opportunity, something that no one else has ever done, and no one else is probably silly enough to ever do it again.

OSP: They won’t be allowed to.

John Lucas: Let alone be allowed to, yeah. But it was an exciting voyage.

OSP: It’s a great story and I really appreciate you taking the time to share it with us today so that people can listen and understand and learn about a story that they would probably not be aware of. Particularly given this predates when even media content was online. Certainly what I’d like to do is scan or photograph some of the material you’ve got here and post it online because it will allow anybody listening to this to then go online to the show notes.

John Lucas: Yes I’m sure they’d appreciate seeing what the boat looked like.

Built like an ocean going tank

OSP: Yeah that’s right, visually, it brings it to life and when you look at it, it puts it into context. It’s quite staggering and the mast relative to the size of the boat, it’s not a big mast, so clearly it’s not going to be moving at a great pace. With that, how much of the time where you motoring and how did you manage fuel requirements and carrying enough fuel?

John Lucas: Look, we were probably motoring most of the time but once again because it had a shallow draft, we could get in and out when we needed to fuel.

OSP: Well that’s excellent John, I really appreciate you putting the time aside and we’ll capture this and post it online and be ready to share it, it’s really a fascinating story. I was amazed when you told me about the story, maybe about a year ago now, you mentioned it to me. What a fascinating story.

John Lucas: I do mention it from time to time and the local papers back home have a history of it of course and they’re always asking about it. But other than that I basically haven’t done much with it. I’ve been asked on a number of occasions to do a book on it. I’m not a bookie person so I wonder whether that will ever get done.

OSP: Well it’s a lot easier to talk than to write. Well that’s great. Well thank you for appearing on the Ocean Sailing Podcast this week and look forward to being able to share your story with everybody.

John Lucas: You’re welcome Dave

Interviewer: David Hows

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Episodes 2 & 3: Andy Lamont Show Notes

OSP: Good morning folks. We are on board Impulse this morning down at Southport Yacht club with Andy Lamont. Good morning Andy!

Andy Lamont: Gidday, how are you going?

OSP: Good. So, today we are talking to Andy. Andy is heading to do a solo circumnavigation later on this year so we have got an opportunity to talk to Andy and find out about his plans, find out about his background, find out about his preparation and hopefully over a number of episodes share his story as he prepares to depart on a very long trip. So, Andy, when are you planning on leaving?

Andy Lamont in the saloon of Impulse with his HP Toughbook on top of the engine cover

Andy Lamont: Well, we plan to leave mid October. We are just going to talk to Bruce to get the exact date that is going to be more favourable to get under New Zealand because Bruce doesn’t want to go under New Zealand because it’s going to be over 30 knots there. But, I need to go under there because one of the things I want to do is go under the five caps on the journey. So, we want to get a favourable window under there so I don’t get some really big seas and wind right at the very start of the journey. So, that is what we are looking for at the moment, we are getting some long term forecast probably in August and then we will set a date in August, but it’s going to be Mid October.

OSP: Ok. Great. If you are going under the five capes there is some pretty wild weather down there several times a year. What’s your wind tolerance or what are looking to stay below in terms of wind and sea conditions?

Andy Lamont: So, we plan to stay below 30 knots most of the time, but of course that is pretty unrealistic in the real world and most of the time we will be in conditions about 40 knots and no doubt actually as we come towards the end of the journey, we will be coming through the southern ocean in winter, so we are going to get hit with some pretty strong winds there. It will be unrealistic to not get 50 60 knots plus, but the trip is planned so that most of the really heavy conditions come, mostly we will be around the bottom of Tasmania and that is going to probably be the worst or the highest risk of bad conditions.

OSP: So, you will be on the home stretch at that stage?

Andy Lamont: Yes. I can sort of just close my eyes and just cry all the way home.

OSP: Okay, so, Andy, tell me what made you decide to do this? When was the point that you thought I am thinking about doing this and the point which you though I am really going to do this?

Andy Lamont: Well, it’s a bit embarrassing because some of these things you just set out to do in a couple of months and its has always been on my mind, as that was something I wanted to do one day right back to when I was a young kid. But, the moment came when I had a bit of cash due to the pending sale of a business and I thought, I am going to buy a yacht and sail around the world nonstop, that is the next thing I am going to do.

Andy's clearly articulated plan to circumnavigate alone in a yacht, written at age 6

That was in 2002 and its now 2016 so it’s been a long time coming, but I didn’t get that much money for the business that I sold, only about $20,000 so I looked around and really wanted to buy an S&S 34 at that time, but that was ridiculous trying to buy one at that price. John Dankenson is a really well known and well-respected designer and had designed a new kit boat and the kit was $20,000. So I went down and saw John in Melbourne and thought that was a great boat design, so I bought the kit and then I spent the next sort of 2 or 3 years building that boat which was about 2006-2007. I thought it was going to be finished in about a year, but it took a bit longer than that.

The boat was pretty much nearly finished when I started to develop a reaction to epoxy. So, I found it really difficult to work on the boat and then a few things led to my business needing me to be close to it, so I ended up putting my plans to sail around the world on hold. I also went and did a law degree and I don’t know why and then I was just looking at boatpoint.com.au at boats for sale, as you do - not really thinking of buying anything, but thinking about how am I going to finish this boat and there was a lot of things I had done on the boat so far were quite easy.

Andy's backyard kit set project to build a John Dankenson yacht

But now the build was at the stage of some really technical difficult things, like putting a one ton lead bulb in the keel and that type of thing started playing on my mind and I saw this S&S 34 for sale and they wanted just under $50,000 for it and it was probably about 11:30pm and I just sort of sent off an email and said “look, I will give you $35,000 for it”. Well, they accepted.

OSP: Wow! Just like that. And was it was called Impulse when you bought it?

Andy Lamont: Yes, it was called Impulse, the same name it has now.

OSP: It’s kind of ironic really?

Andy Lamont: Yes. Because I had to have the conversation with my wife and I said “I know we have got a beautiful boat sitting in our backyard and we have spent a large amount of money on it, but now we have got this other boat, isn’t that great?”

OSP: So you are still happily married and you have got two boats?

Andy Lamont: Yes, I have got a very accommodating wife. She is very good to me but she has said “one of the things (and there are a few things) before I leave to sail around the world that I have to do is finish the skirting boards”, because I put a new floor in our house with no skirting boards. That was like a year ago, so I just did the skirting boards and then the other thing was I had got to get rid of the half built boat in the backyard. It’s out there now, anyone can have it for free and all I want to do is sell the mast and the other bits and pieces that I paid money for along with the hull. We’ve have a few people come and look at it but its quite interesting. It’s probably harder to give something away than it is to sell it sometimes.

OSP: The yacht is not quite finished so you need the right person?

Andy Lamont: Yes, you have got to have the right person and some people have wanted to take it and I have pretty much talked them out of it because you need either the money or the skills to finish it.

OSP: Otherwise it could have been a sort of play hut for kids to hide under in a backyard?

Andy Lamont: Yes. I know. A friend of mine said I will put it on my farm and all the goats will love it.

Andy's kit set project had to go once he purchase Impulse

OSP: I guess it’s not quite the vision of how you wanted it to turn out, when you started building it?

Andy Lamont: Yes. Exactly.

OSP: What does your family think about your plans to sail off around the world, when your daughter has just got married recently and you have a grandchild on the way?

Andy Lamont: Well, the interesting thing is when I first started talking about this in 2002, my oldest daughter was 13 and now she is 25 so it’s kind of its something they have grown up with, that they expect to happen. So, it’s not come as a surprise or a shock to them and they have had a lot of time to get used to, it so they are all sort of pretty excited about it.

OSP: It’s good they are probably relieved you are getting on with it at last and not just talking about it anymore. You are actually doing it.

Andy Lamont: Yes, exactly, that’s right. They have told all their friends “my dad is sailing around the world”. So, it will be good to go.

OSP: That’s good, and how did you decide I guess on this particular design and model? What was the sort of decision points for you for choosing this versus something else?

Andy Lamont: Well, I guess John Sanders is a great hero and an amazing sailor and an amazing seaman. He sort of made this boat famous for circumnavigations and back when I wanted to do this trip, it was this boat that I wanted to do it in - the S&S 34. John Sanders sailed around the world twice in one of these and then David Dicks did his circumnavigation, then Jesse Martin did his circumnavigation and most recently Jessica Watson did hers.

They were all non-stop circumnavigations, so it is really comforting to know if something goes wrong, it’s not going to be due to the design of the boat and that is a really important thing. That is why, when I made that offer on an Impulse I wouldn’t have made an offer on another type of boat it was not the S&S 34 that I wanted. John Sanders did a triple circumnavigation on later occasion in a larger boat, but the budgetary factor with a 34-foot boat is that everything is so much cheaper with a 34 footer, when compared to a 44 or 48 footer. So, it is a great sea worthy little boat and it was cheap to buy and it’s cheap to get up to standard. So, all those things were factors.

The S&S 34 called Impulse was in need of new paint

OSP: And this size boat is physically easier to manage than another 10 foot in terms of physically managing bigger sails, bigger rigging and things like rig and sail loads become more challenging if you are on your own. So, it’s a nice size for physical management.

Andy Lamont: Yes, exactly, that is the other thing. I can pretty much lift everything on the boat and carry it. I have tried to lift up some big Code 2 Genoas and stuff like that and moving them around the boat is just exhausting. Whereas with everything in this boat, I can pick it up and carry it and don’t have any problems with putting new sails up or getting them down or that type of thing, they are all manageable. So, that is a big factor as well.

OSP: Ok so why don’t you talk us through the work that you completed already on Impulse and the things you plan on doing. Talk us through the things you are working on, the upgrades you are installing, the things you are doing to make it more manageable, safe and secure and the things that will help you to stow and secure everything, to be able to manage your way around the world.

Andy Lamont: I will start at the outer section of the boat. We are taking the wheel off as it’s got wheel steering and its nice little system, but the boat really wasn’t designed for a wheel and pedestal steering. It is difficult to get behind the wheel; you have got to step over the seats in the cockpit to get behind it. Operating the boat with the wheel single-handed is much harder than operating with a tiller single-handed.

So, I have had a new tiller built that by a good guy I met on the sea breeze forum and he has made a laminated tiller for me over in Western Australia, so that’s been great. So, thanks to him for that. I will be taking the wheel out and that’s probably the next big. When I take the pedestal that the wheel is attached to out, I am going to replace the cockpit floor. I have already replaced a quarter of the cockpit floor and the only weakness with this boat really is the deck in the cockpit.

It gets wet in there where the pedestal goes through the cockpit floor and the whole floor is pretty much rotten. So, I will cut that out; replace it with glass over marine ply and then add the tiller. So, that’s the next job and I love my Thursday afternoon twilight racing so it’s a job I have got to start on a Friday morning and finish by the following Wednesday. So, I am sort of arranging that right now so that I can still compete in the following Thursday’s twilight race.

The rotten cockpit floor in the S&S 34 needed replacing

OSP: You are certainly sitting pretty much to the top of the twilight series table and you finished well in the last series, so pretty means you are leading the overall championship for the year. As well as sailing around the world, you are a pretty competitive local racer even though you don’t say much about that.

Andy Lamont: Yes. I am a very competitive person. I try not to be.

OSP: I haven’t noticed.

Andy Lamont: I just can’t help it, I just love racing, I think it’s great fun and the crew here at Southport Yacht Club are a lot of fun to race with. No one gets too serious and we all have a lot of fun and also over the past sort of year of racing with this boat, we have really been able to get a lot of performance out of her, that we probably wouldn’t have got if we didn’t do the racing.

We commenced racing at Southport Yacht Club with a starting handicap of about 3:30pm, but by the time we did some things like trimming the sails better, putting on adjustable jib and genoa tracks and most importantly; putting a folding prop on and keeping the bottom nice and clean, we are now starting at 3:49pm with the faster yachts.

OSP: So, the difference of starting about 20 minutes in a 1 to 2 hour yacht race is 15-30% plus improvement in speed, right?

Andy Lamont: It is.

OSP: And its interesting because people often assume you are a racer or a cruiser but I think you can be both and if you become good at racing, your boat goes faster, well cruising is more enjoyable. It you have a long passage ahead of you and you can get an extra 1-2 knots of speed out of your boat, you will get to your next destination an hour or two earlier, or the speed may help you out-run some bad weather a whole lot faster. If you tune your boat well, you are looking after better, rather than being a lazy cruiser and having sails poorly trimmed or flapping and sheets chafing. I think being a good racer can actually make you a better cruiser and make your cruising more enjoyable.

Andy Lamont: Yes, definitely I believe that and of course when you are cruising there is a lot of joy eking a quarter of a knot of speed out of your yacht and that is one of the reasons I want to use the expedition software for my navigation, because it’s really a great tool to help you tweak your boat and measure all the different variables, so I am really looking forward to spending 8 or 9 months just tweaking my boat.

New sails arrive for Impulse

OSP: The expedition software is pretty well respected. So what else have you have to do all day?

Andy Lamont: Yes. I know. Other than checking my planning software, that’s it really.

OSP: It’s interesting having a feathering prop. I put one of those on my boat and I am adamant is made the difference of about ¾ of a knot and sometimes as much as 1 knot compared a fixed prop, so the speed difference is quite substantial. And if you are doing 5 knots, ¾ of a knot is a big chunk of extra speed.

Andy Lamont: It might be an extra ¾ a knot when you are doing 5 or 6 knots which is good but I think it’s probably an extra ¾ a knot when you are only doing 3 knots, that is a bigger deal.

OSP: Actually as a percentage it’s a big difference.

Andy Lamont: Yes, it’s massive. The biggest difference I have noticed is racing against the boats originally with my fixed prop and against them now with a folding prop. I noticed that when the wind was fairly light, it was an incredible difference. Congratulations to Gori Folding Props, because I have fallen in love with my prop. Even when I first looked at it, I was like “this is just a beautiful thing”.

OSP: It’s an amazing piece of engineering and that’s the great thing with twilight racing, when you sail against the same 10 or 15 boats each week, you have a great barometer when you make adjustments, because you can measure your performance against a like-for-like comparison. It’s not just guesswork and that’s kind of satisfying.

The feathering prop that folds flat when sailing

Andy Lamont: Yes, it is.

OSP: Moving from a wheel to a tiller makes sense as this removes another point of failure by not having the wheel and steering chain system, with the extra fittings and weak points that can also break under load. What else have you got planned as we look through the boat?

Andy Lamont: I have put in a new switch panel, which you can see underneath the stairs. I have got to tidy that up, and then I have got to replace my battery tie down systems. There are existing battery tie down systems in place, but I wouldn’t like the boat to be upside down and have to trust these, as they are a little bit dodgy. I have got all new instruments, as when I bought the boat it came with some really old B&G instruments that were made in 1976.

The original 1976 B& instrument panel

OSP: Wow!

Andy Lamont: Some of them still work but most of them didn’t.

OSP: Before the days of GPS

Andy Lamont: I have got all new instruments installed and they are set up with all of the connections and software to make them talk to my expedition software so that’s good. I have got to install the AIS and that’s going to be nice and easy to install and then I will connect it all up to the computer.

I went with a HP Toughbook laptop, because I thought one of the biggest things that knock people out of circumnavigations these days is a loss of electrics. With that in mind my Fleming Wind Vain is coming next week so I will have self-steering that is not reliant on electrics.

I will have navigation systems that will be independent of the boats electrical systems and that is why I went with the HP Toughbook as it’s got its own integrated GPS and power supply so we can run it if the worst comes to worst, as I can keep this charged off a solar panel and I will still have my navigations software running, even with a total loss of electrical power on the boat, not that I plan on having a total loss, but if it does happen, it is not going to stop me. So, I installed the new instruments and I have a plethora of GPS’s with a GPS in the chartplotter, a GPS in the AIS, a portable GPS and a GPS in the HP computer itself so that is four GPS’s.

OSP: So you will always know where you are.

Andy Lamont: One of the things you did ask me is what am I going to do with my time. Well, I am going to learn how to navigate with a sextant and take a daily sight and hopefully by the end of 12 months I will be proficient even competent maybe.

OSP: I also think that learning the art of navigating by the sun and stars is a fantastic skill to learn. It helps connect you to your ancestors who also used the same stars to navigate centuries ago. So, Andy, tell me about your plans with power generation and how you are going to manage charging batteries. It’s always a tradeoff between the extra comforts you carry and the amps they draw. What’s your plan with managing consumption and replenishing your batteries from a charging point of view?

New Raymarine instruments for Impulse

Andy Lamont: Well, I guess the first thing I am going to do is pretty much turn everything off that I don’t need. Turn the displays off and just have the whole thing running on low power mode. I have a Ray Marine chart plotter and a course master self steering system, but that will be turned off most of the time and I will just be using the Fleming wind vane for my self-steering. I will have the radar in sleep mode so it wakes up every 20 minutes or goes to sleep every 10 minutes.

So, basically I am going to run on low power mode as much as I can. I have 4 x 100 amp batteries so they should be able to run that gear and they shouldn’t really use very much of my capacity in any 24 hour period.  I still haven’t how to go about arranging solar panels on the boat. Conventionally with the boats most people are putting up a solar panels at the stern on top of a stainless frame or Bimini cover, because they have uninterrupted sunlight. However I don’t like them there, I just think there is too much windage in strong wind and they always seems to get damaged.

So, pretty much everyone that has gone around the world has come back with damaged panels or so all of that effort gets wasted because you get knocked down and the whole thing gets bent. I am more inclined to have flexible solar panels on the deck and maybe some kind of hydro-generator. Unfortunately in my boat it’s very narrow in the stern so fitting a hydro-generator along with the self steering gear at the back is probably going to be too crowded.

I know it’s all happening in October but these are the areas I haven’t really made my final decision on what we are going to do there, but pretty much it’s going to be running the solar panels. I think flexible solar panels is my plan and if we are in situation where there is a not much sunlight or we are not generating much, we can always run the boat on a no power mode and that’s a really important thing to me. We have a lot of guys going around the world in nice 40-foot boats, but once they lose power they pull out and they say oh we can’t sail the boat without power.

Impulse's new distribution panel is fitted

I can sail this boat around the world without power and so it’s nice to have power, have a radar, have AIS and all those things, but it’s not going to be something that is critical to the voyage. I could leave tomorrow with no power and navigation-wise, although I still need to do a little practice, but I have enough to be able to navigate with a handheld GPS and a box of spare batteries if I have to.

OSP: Now, that’s a brave approach to take and if you have got your navigation and your wind-vane self-steering, then you are well on your way in terms of being completely independent of whatever else you add on top of that, luxury-wise and necessity-wise because it will be a shame to have to pull out of something because of batteries. You don’t want to have to start motor every so often, just to keep your batteries supporting a big instrument panel and all the extra electronics that you live without if you want to.

Andy Lamont: Having said that I will run the motor every week at least and I am still thinking that you have got to open that self-feathering prop, because if you leave it shut for 10 months and you finally decide you have got to use it and it might not open. So, that the other thing it’s a non-stop unassisted solo trip around the world, but in all truthfulness I will have 90 litres of fuel and I will start the engine and open the prop once a week for half an hour or something like that. If the prop doesn’t open, it’s worse than not having a motor at all, isn’t it?

OSP: Yes, that’s right, and then if you lost your rig at point and you need to be assisted in some way if you can’t manage the boat by motor in a rescue situation, then all sorts of things start to get harder, don’t they?

The prop is a piece of art when its feathered

Andy Lamont: Yes that is exactly right. One of the first things that happened to me on the delivery trip from Sydney to the Gold Coast, where we motor sailed, we dropped below 5 knots with motor sailing and the starter motor stopped working. And we were lucky there was a crank handle here, so I took the engine cover off and gave it a few turns with the crank handle and just started up straightway. I had the boat like 9 months before I got a new starter motor because it was just so easy to hand crank it. I really didn’t mind hand cranking it, so another great thing about the engine is doesn’t need to rely on any electrics either to start or run

OSP: Simplicity is good.

Andy Lamont: Yes.

OSP: What about you rig? Is there anything you have to do with your rig to get it to where you want it?

Andy Lamont: Yes, absolutely. So, what we are doing and its going to happen sometime around June is we are going to take the mast out, we are going to take it to Cookie, the local rigger at S&H Spars and he is going to go right over it and make sure that there is nothing that is worn or near the point of failure or that might not be up to scratch. We will have a look at the whole mast for corrosion and then we will run a new VHS Aerial through it and do that type of thing to get the mast set up properly. Even when I bought the boat the first thing that I did was change the standing rigging so its only 2 years old, but I will change all that again and go to probably one size or two sizes heavier than actually is needed for the standing rig and also Cooky is going to put in an inner forestay so we can hank on the storm jib as well.

OSP: Great and an inner forestay is kind of useful because if you did lose your forestay for some kind of reason you act quickly it can allow you to have a backup forestay.

Andy Lamont: Yes, exactly.

OSP: So, it depends whether you have got it permanently attached or whether you have got it set up so you can just clip it on when you need it.

Andy Lamont: Yes, well the other thing too is I will probably put a little bowsprit on for a code zero sail. So, I will probably just run a spectra line to the bowsprit as well, just in case the forestay fails and the heavy spectre line will still hold up the mast.

OSP: Its good to have those kind of fall back plans.

Andy Lamont: Yes.

OSP: And with the length of your trip you have got a lot of provisions that you have got to take, you have got water that you need to take, you have got yourself to fit inside here and you have got sails and other bit and pieces. What are you doing with the layout, what sort plans do you have around storage and how are you going to handle all that?

Andy Lamont: Not completely 100% decided but I think I am just going to use the saloon berth as the bunk I sleep in. The engine is right at the centre of the boat and I have just started to make a new engine cover which will extend about 100mm behind where it extends now, which will then add a lot of storage space as it will be higher and longer.

Scraping the old paint off Impulse's hull

So, there won’t be much room to walk around the boat but that will provide me with a nice table in the middle of the boat and I will have a seat on the port bunk and also an area to get out of my wet weather gear on the port bunk as well. Then there is basically a whole lot of nooks and crannies in the boat, we have got all the whole area at the back of the boat that we can store stuff in and all the areas underneath the cockpit area that we can store stuff in as well. So, what we do with food is to put together one week packs, so all we really have to do is to take probably 50 one-week packs of food and I am pretty sure we will just be able to just stuff them into any nook and cranny…

OSP: Anywhere and everywhere.

Andy Lamont: And probably the harder to find the better because knowing me, I will go through all the one week packs and take all the chocolate bars out first. So, we will just basically fit them wherever they go. So when we are talking about all the provisions that you need, basically we need sails, food, water and some spare parts and tools. And some plywood, I love plywood. I love working with wood and I just think plywood is the most amazing stuff. So, I will take a fair bit of plywood underneath the bunks and just double up with plywood there. It weighs a little bit, but it’s just such a great material and you can easily cut it and do anything with it. It’s super strong, I will take a few large pieces and I will probably take 15 litres of epoxy, which is only 15 kilos plus hardener, so more like 20 kilos. But with 15 litres of epoxy you can just about do anything. Any sort of thing that is made up of steel or stone you can make an epoxy substitute for it.

I will take some fibreglass resin and matting, I have got plenty of glass at home from my other projects. So I will take a fair bit of glass which doesn’t weigh much and I have probably 6 or 7 meters of 600 gram glass and 20 litres of epoxy, which is going to mean I am pretty confident of fixing anything in the boat. So I will have my 50 one-week packs of food, 200 litres of bottled water and also 70 litres in tanks, so that’s 270 litres of water and I am going to make some water catching devices, so when it rains I will just spread those out and I will be able to catch a lot of water I will put that into the tanks so I am pretty confident I have enough water and I have an emergency hand water maker, although I have thought about an electric water maker, but at this point I haven’t gone with it, but I was really encouraged, actually amazed to see at the last boat show this little rain maker that runs on petrol , which I don’t really like on the boat, but he is saying on 1 litre of fuel it will make you 100 litres of water which is massive.

OSP: It’s a tradeoff with using fuel, otherwise you will probably use 100amps battery consumption to make 100 litres of water using a traditional water maker so that’s a pretty expensive tradeoff as an alternative.

Andy Lamont: One of the things of course is everything costs. My plan is look at people who have done it before; they just take their water and its fine. So, that is my plan to do that if I end up with sponsorship or some other form of unexpected wealth well, I would buy a water maker. But, apart from that I will just take bottle water. Bottled water is great because it’s really secure.

OSP: Can’t get contaminated.

Andy Lamont: Yes.

OSP: You are limited it to 600mils of contamination.

Andy Lamont: Yes. And the other thing that I haven’t decided to do yet, but am very keen to look into is to install the Turtle Pac self-inflatable bags inside the boat which basically turns the boat into an unsinkable unit, because these bags don’t take too much room and they attach to a diving cylinder and in the event the boat starts to fill with water, you just open your cylinder, the bags fill up with water and the boat still floats, even with a hole in it. A local here makes it on the Gold Coast. I have used the Turtle Pac fuel bladders on other boats, they are fantastic, durable and strong, you jump on them to get the fuel flowing out of the bladder into the tanks of the boat and they just seem to be indestructible. It seems to me to be a real great option and I am really surprised it’s not used more for this purpose.

OSP: Sounds like a great solution. I have read a lot of stories about people living in life rafts for 4-5 months and they are not really life preserving devices beyond 2 or 3 weeks, but if you can keep a hull from fully submerging and you stay attached to it you are more likely to be found as well and much more secure than getting off it.

Preparing the cabin top for repainting

Andy Lamont: Yes, exactly, if this thing fills up with water for some reason and I have my Turtle Pac system, I will float around for 2 years.

OSP: As long as it rains regularly and you can catch fish you will be fine.

Andy Lamont: If I have 50 weeks of food onboard and I also have emergency rations, I can float around for a very long time. I am still trying to understand why it’s not used more.

OSP: Instead of building a waterproof bulkhead as lots of boats do, you have got an inflatable bulkhead instead essentially.

Andy Lamont: Yes, exactly.

OSP:…that is waterproof that you can put in a pocket inside the boat.

Andy Lamont: Yes. And of course IRC racing boats and Volvo boats and even the class 40s they all have the space to do that to have full bulkhead watertight rear bulkhead. They have got enough space to do that whereas this boat, we could build a watertight bulkhead there but you are still using that space, the door is going to be open and for a cruising boat it seems to me to be a good solution. And the trouble with water tight bulkhead is they can fail If the breach in the hull goes both sides of the bulk head, then even it’s all over.

OSP: It’s just a function of time even with the smallest leaks they will fail eventually. So, what is the cost of something like that?

Andy Lamont: 5 grand. I spoke to the guy last year about it and he said look I have done this on an S&S before, it will cost you $5,000.

OSP: Its pretty good life insurance.

Andy Lamont: It’s pretty good. It’s the same price as a life raft really. Although I will have a life raft as well but it’s another 5 grand and every that old story with B-O-A-T standing for “Bring Out Another Thousand” and you want everything but as you were saying before it’s a factor of time and money. With a trip like this you are probably going to run out of money and not get everything you want, you are going to run out of time not enough have enough time to put everything you want into the boat.

OSP: And then there is space to add to that as well. You have to pull these stuff somewhere too.

OSP: Ok. So, what are the things about this trip that keep you awake at night at 4 am with your mind sort of overly processing and thinking about things you might have overlooked or things you certainly decide to make out a contingency plan for?

Andy Lamont: The biggest thing that keeps me awake at night is which is why I haven’t got in the recent offshore races is because I jumped in this boat and we just sailed back up till Sydney and I was getting in there and I was doing things. One of the things I did is I though “Oh I just better replace that exhaust hose that runs up under the companion way stairs”. And  I pulled the old exhaust house out and it was completely perished.

OSP: Wow! So you were one step away from carbon monoxide poisoning basically.

Andy Lamont: Yes, exactly. We ran that motor coming from Sydney with guys down there sleeping, it looked fine at the exhaust elbow and all the way up to where it disappeared  under the companion way stairs and under the companion way stairs it’s that hard against the hull and under the battery compartment and you can’t really see into that space and it was totally perished. So that kind of thing.

The perished exhaust pipes of the engine the previous owner had attempted to repair. 

When I was under there actually replacing that and looking around, I was looking at the seal on the rudder stock and the little piece of rubber pipe that sort of clamps onto the fibreglass housing and thinking that piece of rubber there is nearly 40 years old and, if that starts to leak, what are you going to do? It’s a big question what are you going to do. So, obviously you are going to take the rudder out and replace that. So, it’s like realising the things that you don’t know that are the problem.

Wasn’t it Donald Rumsfeld who said “the unknown and unknowns are the things you have to worry about.” So, it’s the things that you don’t know you don’t know that are the worst and that was one that, really I just really give a moment though to. I thought it all looked nice and solid but when I had a really close look at it, I thought gee this is a bit of a worry.

So, what keeps me awake most of all is the boat sinking. If the boat doesn’t sink, I can just curl up in a ball and cry.

OSP: Yes and set your EPIRB off.

Andy Lamont:…or just sit there and just wait for things to change things gets better because with everything there is greater energy for life and every storm passes and if the boat doesn’t sink well you are out the other side. So, that is the main thing that keeps me awake at night. That is why I put all new 10 mm lexan windows throughout the boat and type of thing.

If I can keep the water out, that is the main thing. I put a new PSS seal in and now I lie awake thinking, what happens if the PSS seal fails? An old stuffing box you can just tighten that up but you can’t do that to a PSS seal do I get a Zip tie and tie it up , surely there is sort of a set procedure for a failed PSS seal. Its things like that keeps me awake at night, but really what keeps me awake most of all is about like sinking.

OSP: Keeping the boat the right way up.

Andy Lamont: Yes. So, the keel attaches over on these boats over a really long period. It is very solid but when we take out the water, we are just going to drop the keel off it, check the bolts, if the boats are a bit suspect we will replaced the bolts. But again, it’s a great system the bolts come up through the boat and they tighten down with nuts inside the boat.

OSP: You can see them easily and you can see the condition of the boat.

Andy Lamont: And I have never heard of an incident where S&S 34 has lost its keel but everyone that goes around the world takes the keel out and checks the bolts and so that is just one thing to do.

OSP: Ok, and have you thought about what you can do to minimise the risk of injury, minimise the risk of falling over, falling off when the boat rolls upside down? How do you avoid breaking bones and puncturing lungs and that things like that, can that really debilitate you despite the boat being perfectly fine to carry on.

The S&S 34 engine in need of TLC

Andy Lamont: Yes. It’s a really good point. So, I am going to buy just a racing car seat with a seat belt which I can sit in and belt myself in. I am going to put a seat belt in the bunk so if the boat turns upside down when I am asleep I won’t just fly across the boat. I’m replacing the engine cover with a nice big storage compartment which is going to mean there’s not very far to fall inside the boat. There is a central pole which obviously people can’t see, it’s not in the boat at the moment it goes basically from the centre of the boat up to cabin ceiling that is going back in. plus I am going to put two more poles by the sink and just in front of the hatch so that it’s going to be 3 poles, it’s going to be like a little forest in here. There is just not going to be far to fall. So, that is going to be the big thing.

So, it is a nice little boat, there is not far to fall anyway but when I am asleep or drowsy or resting I will be in this and the weather is rough I will be in a seat belt so that is what I will be doing. I will take of course ok I have got some protective body amour and head gear so I will take that as well with me. So, if I got to get up the mast I will just put that gear on so that will give me a bit of protection from slamming into the side of the mast.

OSP: Put a helmet and stuff on because that is quite a risk really knocking yourself out if you…

Andy Lamont: Yes, I have a Gath helmet which is very light and nice and strong

OSP: I am sitting on your bunk and I visualise you being thrown across the boat and punctured by one of those bolts thats sticking down below your cabin top and theres about 20 bolts there and I am looking at them and they are about an inch long, thinking about the risk of punching one of those through your skull. Have you thought about that?

Andy Lamont: Well, so I have just left them long because the just look so handy.

OSP: Handy for what?

Andy Lamont: Well you can see I have attached some eye bolts (nuts) on them.

OSP: That could work.

Andy Lamont: So, then what I am going to do is I am going to make some netting so it attaches to those eye bolts so that anything that’s inside this shelf here won’t get thrown out and then what I will do is for every bolt that doesn’t have an eye bolt, so all those bolts I knew from the jib track for every bolt that doesn’t have an eye nut on it I will cut it off with an angle driver. I am pretty vicious with the angle grinder cutting off bolts at the moment. Sometimes I leave bolts a bit long because I am thinking I will use that for something. This used to have that basically similar to the car hood lining and foam underneath it.

The menacing looking bolts the hold the new genoa track in place

OSP: Like a final foam or something.

Andy Lamont: Yes. And it was all starting to sort of deteriorate and it was just raining tiny particles of foam from the holes in the lining on the boat. So, that was a big job. We had to pull all that lining off and I got the sander out and sanded it because all the foam  that sort of open cell  foam was glued to the ceiling, sanded all that off and then just put a coat of paint for the time being but I might put some closed cell foam just like Jessica Watson did to her boat which is quite a good idea. So, she just lined the cabin and the cabin sides in closed cell foam from Clark Rubber and that does a couple of things because its good insulation and it’s also all soft. So, that is one of the things. Those bolts won’t be staying long for too much longer.

But I am just looking at the design of the netting I probably have to get a sail maker to make it up for me but I think it will be great. One of the things you have to do is imagine about upside down and look at everything that could actually fall out of a place and make sure you have a system to have it all locked down but most importantly have that system that is nice and easy to use. You don’t have to go around, oh, there is a storm coming I have got to make sure you got through this to lock everything down, just have it locked down as a matter of course. That is what I want to do and make sure it won’t happen for that.  That is where I think the netting is probably great because a lot of stuff you are using all the time is visible and you just have to unclip the net and grab what you want and the clip the netting back on.

OSP: Its light, you can see it, it feels behind it. So, what do you think it’s going to cost you to get to the start line with what you have spent so far and what you are still to spend and then all of your provisions and all the other things you have yet to think about?

Andy Lamont: Is my wife going to hear this?

OSP: Probably not.

Andy Lamont: Well, the boat only cost 35 grand.

OSP: So, you already saved 100k.

Andy Lamont: So, we are already 100k in front. Well, I have spent a fair bit. I am probably of spending another 40k on it since I have bought it and I have probably another 40k before we go. So, that probably a hundred and…

OSP: 15…

Andy Lamont: one hundred fifteen thousand dollars.

OSP: And that is just getting essentials it’s not the sending it out fitting it out in terms of and this is really luxurious sort of items it’s just getting good solid safe see where the boat…

Andy Lamont: Something probably like this computer which is another one of those ridiculous things but it’s really it is kind of great in that way. Like let’s say the whole thing happens for less than $150,000 that is great for a trip like this which could cost millions and I know previous people that have been around the world nonstop, some items have cost more than that alone. The satellite phone for Jessie Martin back in those days cost him around $165,000 alone.

The new starter motor is fitted to the S&S 34's engine

OSP: Here is the thing. You can go out tomorrow buy $150,000 boat, it would not be great to sail around the world, you will still have to put another 40,50, $60,000 into preparing it to sail around the world. So the near end result because I have got an older boat and when you kind of build it from the ground up, you can of restart the life of every part of the boat that you then replace or upgrade like your engine, exhaust systems and like your steering and then you know that part of the boat is good to go for another 10 or 20 years. So, in some ways it’s a smarter approach than maybe to buy something that is 5 or 7 years old were due to its treatment or the lighter weight production these days and the way things are built you don’t need something that is robust anyway.

Andy Lamont: Yes. And I think every component has a life and if you buy a boat that is new you have got the maximum life for every component on the boat and then depending on what boat you buy all those components may or not be up for the serious challenge. So, some would be and that would be great but then if you bought a boat that was 7 years old, the every component needs to be replaced.

OSP: Yes. That’s right and manufacturers these days don’t actually spec things out for going around the world anyway they pick them out for coastal cruising. So, 2,5 or 7 years old may not be fit for purpose anyway despite paying three or four time the amount for the boat upfront.

Andy Lamont: Yes. And an interesting thing too, the difference in the newer designed boats and the older boats is really not that much, as far as cruising boats (I’m not talking about IRC boats)  there is not that much speed really it’s just space.

OSP: Yes some of the cleverness around the design…

Andy Lamont: They are not fast. They are probably more comfortable downwind , less comfortable upwind but they are not really an order of magnitude faster or more seaworthy probably less seaworthy some of them. It is an interesting thing. All the boats like this boat, now getting close to 40 years old, I can’t see why it is not going to be a viable beautiful boat in another 40 years.

The engine gets a complete makeover on Impulse

OSP: If you maintain the hull.

Andy Lamont: Yes. Very easy to maintain and that’s right if you maintain the hull and keep replacing the systems as they start to degrade…

OSP: Keep the water out, fix the leaks, stop rotting inside the boat. What things are not on track in your preparation from here October since like a long way to go away but it’s probably like having a baby you go from talking in months to talking in weeks, you are probably not far from talking in weeks soon rather than months so it will tart ticking down?

Andy Lamont: What is not on track? I have got my old Musto HPX sailing gear which is great stuff but I have already thought about getting a new set just probably a good idea you have to get some new off shore gear. The stuff I have got its great but I am sure it’s going to start to reach the end of its life pretty soon so that type of thing. So, the fitting out in the interior is – I am doing a fair of bit at the moment and it is  running to a pretty good schedule that is ok.

 The truth is the things I need to worry about are the things I haven’t thought about. So everything I have thought about I am going that’s ok. The mast is coming out and I am pretty sure if I am going to mount a radar on it even though probably it might be better on its own individual mast at the rear of the boat. It is just another mast getting knocked over isn’t it. 

OSP: Yes. And the higher up your mast or the higher the radar it does affect your range particularly with sails so that is something to consider versus a lower level. And when you like if you need things these days when I did a radar training course they talked about not standing in front of the radar because of radiation and when I had a technician recently say I should put my radar at the back of the boat I talked about that and he said the radiation was nothing, no more than a five flights to Perth or whatever the comparison is. But radiation I don’t think it’s good for you so there is a radiation effect if you consider standing in front of it and the height which gives you the range to consider as well.

Andy Lamont: Good point, so the mast is coming out so that radar going there, the new tricolour on the mast, all those things are pretty much covered. There’s a bit more work I will do glassing the inside of the boat but to be honest with you, the worrying thing is I think I have got it all under control which is … well that is the worrying thing.

What will happen is like everything else I have ever done in m life? It’s always like everything is under control until the week before and then it’s kind of pain stations. So, it’s probably what will happen. The thing for me is, really,  I can pretty much go next week onceI fit my wind vane on I could go next week, I would have everything I wanted, I won’t have my new storm sails but I could go, and  I would probably make it. So, I am not hung up really on having every last gidget and gadget that’s needed on the boat as long as everything is to a certain standard, one of the things I haven’t done yet is bought new stanchion for the boat. So, that will be nice to have new stanchion and stanchion bases. Again, if I didn’t do that, it’s not really the end of the world

OSP: Unless you are attached to them and they break and you don’t stand on the boat for some reason.

Andy Lamont: They are fine they are. Okay a bit bigger taller ones would be better but even tall stanchions are not going to stop you from falling off the boat, it’s really jack lines that is really their purpose.

Impulse's hatches are remove for refurbishing

OSP: Ok. So in terms of, what’s the safety equipment that you have got on your must have, must be bullet proof, must be triple strength, on your list

Andy Lamont: So for Christmas this year I got a set of jack lines, I also got a harness that doesn’t have life jacket attached to it just a harness which is really it’s a Bourke harness, it’s really light and I will just wear that all the time. I will just wear it all the time so it will just be like my undies. So, it’s nice and light and it’s never inconvenient to wear so and I think that the main piece of safety equipment.

OSP: And then be clipped on with that.

Andy Lamont: Yes. So, that is right. So, if I am wearing that and that I what I asked for, for Christmas was a harness, jack stays and a leash but I probably have 4 or 5 leashed. So, they are all over the boat and if run out and forget my leash there is a leash there. So I am pretty much probably going to sleep in this, in this harness and basically I won’t take it off.

OSP: And if you rush up in the middle of the night because you hear a sound and then you are not then racing out there in your undies with nothing else on and fall off in the back of the boat.

Andy Lamont: It is really I am not really fussed about a life jacket because it will be handy while I am close to Australia and when I am close to New Zealand. The last thing I want would to be sitting in an inflated life jacket halfway between here and South American watching the boat sail away. You probably feel like just getting a knife and because…

OSP: You would be pretty fortunate for somebody to just happen to be in the area.

Andy Lamont: So, really it’s the harness. Its making sure I just do not fall off the boat no matter what and luckily for me I am clumsy so I am not sort of going into this with a false sense of my own invincibility when it comes to having great balance.  I will trip over walking up stairs. So, I don’t have any illusions about that.  The main thing is to be hooked on all the time even when its dead calm because stuff happens.

OSP: That’s the time you trip and stumble when they do come and you are going twice the speed to do something.

Andy Lamont: Exactly.

OSP: So, prior to this trip what offshore sailing have you done? What is your experience been getting out of sight of land?

Andy Lamont: I haven’t really done a lot. I have always sailed. Sailing has been my sports and my passion since I was 11 years old but in sailed right through my teens and then when I was 17 I sort of met some people who were sailing to New Zealand so I sailed to New Zealand. When I got to New Zealand I just got bitten by the wind surfing bug and for me that was still my sport of sailing and I just had a passion for it, if there was an Olympics for enthusiasm I would have been gold medal player. I never really had a lot of talent but I just loved wind surfing and that was my sailing outlet.

The original Coursemaster 800 auto-pilot on Impulse

It was the first time I got in a boat and I just felt being on the water and being powered by wind that was to me I knew that was my thing and windsurfing satisfied that for me for all my adult life. I learnt to windsurf over in New Zealand then I came over back to Australia, stayed in Brisbane for a while, windsurfed in Brisbane and then moved to Western Australia purely for the wind. I just went out there I am going to Western Australia, I lived in Western Australia until my first kids were born then came back here and had a break from windsurfing for about 3 or 4 years than I was back into it again.

And then kite surfing came along in the 1990s 1999 and I kite surfed and then recently after more and more sailing but in-between – I have done south to Sydney quite a few times, South to Adelaide back to Port Macquarie with Tony Mowbray who sailed around the world nonstop in a Cole 43. So, I have done that. But I helped to deliver Wedgtail (RP55) with Cossie and John Gower they put up with me. I think it’s the funniest thing in the world and I am the butt of all their jokes,” you won’t get this one you are sailing around the world.” So, it’s been a lot of fun but I have learnt a lot with them and I probably have done more miles under Jury Rig than most people because we sailed back from Hobart to Brisbane twice under Jury Rig with a broken mast.

OSP: Wow! That’s a long trip.

Andy Lamont: Yes. two years in a row and so unfortunately they didn’t go to Hobart this year so we didn’t get to sail back because they are still trying to sort out their mast issues. And apart from that a few other little trips, but the main ocean trips that I have done are obviously New Zealand and from Adelaide to Port Macquarie which is not a bad trip quite a few miles. So, not a lot of offshore experience but enough to feel confident.

OSP: And the Tasman sea around Southern and Eastern side of Australia you can get all sorts of weather, you can get some big blows coming through, you can get stormy squalls, you get a fair taste of what is bad possible.

Andy in action kitesurfing

Andy Lamont: Yes. I don’t think the actual boat handling side of it I don’t think will be anywhere nears as challenging as the solitude side of it and that will probably be down to trying to maintain your capacity to make good decisions when you are tired. I guess this is really what happens to people. So, it doesn’t matter how much you know about seamanship and how many years you have been sailing around with a crew but when you are single handed, tiredness can be akin to drunkenness. The tireder you get the worse your decision making gets. Being able to sort of stay alone, you don’t have to make great decisions just have to  not to really make stupid decisions when you are super tired.

OSP: And just the fact you actually have to make decisions and not procrastinate and wait and wait and wait and things deteriorate.

Andy Lamont: Yes. There is plenty of cases like that and its pretty well documented. This is one of the things that happens to people who are solo sailors, they become paralysed and they just don’t make any decisions. So, they leave sails up and they are in all sorts of trouble.

OSP: Like the flight crash investigation one that indecision sets up a chain of events that snowball to the point of no return sometimes.

Andy Lamont: So, that’s the thing like act early act prudently and act early and all the other things and get enough rest like you just don’t know how I am going to feel after say 100 days by myself. So, that I what I am saying I guess they are more of the challenging things for me more than handling the boat pretty much this boat really to be honest with you. If you don’t have too much sail up and follow some pretty basic practical seamanship principles, you might not get there fastest, you might not be the most comfortable but you are probably ok. So, that side of things doesn’t really concern me too much and the other side doesn’t concern me too much either.  I am looking forward to that challenge but that is the unknown and how am I going to cope.

OSP: So, when you think about the solitude, have you thought about the ability to communicate with the rest of the world? Have you got any plans in terms of satellite or other communication options?

Andy Lamont: Yes.

OSP: What have you given thought to then?

Andy Lamont: I think the main option is the satellite phone. They are great now and the plans are much cheaper than they have been for ever so that will be the main thing. HF radio maybe but probably satellite phone is going to be the main conduit for communication with land. But having said that I do not want to be on the phone.

OSP: How is your day today? What do you see? Ocean.

Andy Lamont: Exactly. Part of me would be happier if there wasn’t that technology and I could just say I’d love to talk to you but I can’t but of course that’s me saying that now, that is not me saying that in 100 days into the journey so probably will be a whole different.

The rotten foredeck on Impulse has to be removed and replaced

OSP: And so have you talked about the communication side with your wife, what the expectation is and what – we are going to catch up once a week or once a month? Have you talked about that?

OSP: Its one of those things you often don’t get concerned until its only happening.

Andy Lamont: No. that is not a conversation we have had and it’s a difficult conversation to have, it’s probably one we will have as time draws nearer and like I said probably I am great one for these really strong ideas about how tough I am, how I am great I don’t need anything until I am right in the guts and that will completely change my mind. The roles will probably be reversed and I will be ringing – I will want to ring her up every half an hour and she will be going I have got a life to live leave me alone. So I don’t think calling anymore than once every couple of days is necessary at this point probably even once a week or something but I don’t know.

OSP: I found with crossing the Tasman the combination of I will send you a text every so often once a day or whatever and I will and I will call you at this frequency was kind of good because somebody just takes to say it’s all good rather than the obligatory phone call when there is nothing more to say than it was yesterday. So, you can get quite a frequency that kind of makes more sense and text through your GPS location.

Andy Lamont: Well actually I will have to have a tracker on the boat. So, that should actually just…

OSP: Great. You can track you progress around the world. So, we are getting on the Gold coast there is a bit of helicopter activity on the outside I am not sure how much of it is coming through the microphone but that’s ok.

Andy Lamont: Ok. So, my sail wardrobe plan I have a 150% Genoa and a mainsail with 3 reef points in it. So, that is a furling Genoa and then going down from that I have a 100% jib which is again on the furler. Once I am expecting more than 15 knots I will take the Genoa down put the 100% jib up because there is not a lot of performance lost over 15 knots with the smaller headsail and it’s just means that 100% jib is quite ok up to 25 knots downwind probably up to 30 knots but it’s quite ok and then that is on the furler too so if it is downwind we can furl that. After that we will go to probably a smaller headsail hanked on to the inner forestay.

I haven’t had that built yet but that would be probably 50% of the size of the 100% jib , that is going to be a fairly small sail then you can go to a triple reef main with that sail. I am guessing it’s going to be fine under 40 knots and then we will have a storm  jib with the triple reefed main which is going to be pretty much the lowest that we go and then we could put away the jib just to go under the main. So, that should be triple reefed main is pretty much going to act as my storm mainsail. I will carry a storm tri-sail as well. I may put a track on the outside of the mast to put it up but my understanding is that these boats under triple reefed main there is pretty much triple reefed main then bare poles.

OSP: In terms of, how much sailing do you expect to be upwind versus downwind?

Andy Lamont: Well, it’s probably predominantly going to be downwind although you never know. You might run into the wrong side of the system where it might be upwind for quite a while but predominately downwind then you as you go through the southern ocean, its mostly going to be north westerlies ,south westerlies and westerlies but it could can clock around to the east as well.

Then up to the Atlantic I think it’s just going to be complete variation of all directions and that is quite a long leg from basically from Cape Horn up over the Azores and back down into Cape of Hope. Probably be the longest time wise and that is going to be all directions. So there will be fair bit of upwind quite fair bit of light wind sailing that is where the 150% Genoa will come in handy. If the budget stretches and everything is good I will get a code zero as well something that will just ghost along in 3 knots will be great to have as well because the Genoa is not a nice heavy duty Genoa but it just doesn’t really it need 5 knots.

Significant repair work is need to the cabin top as well along with strengthening for new genoa tracks

OSP: It hangs in the lack on winds rather than fills…

Andy Lamont: Yes. So, it will be nice to have something like a big code zero that just sort of ghosts along.

OSP: I bought a code zero over last year and the predominant thinking was that sorts of 2 or 6 knots of breeze I read that you get another knot of boat speed easily. I bought it without realising its actually a brilliant reaching sail and as long as you are reaching at about 90 or 100° you can then carry it into the 15 to 18 knots, it’s just a great reaching sail. Obviously as its starts to come up on the head will drop dramatically because it overloads really quickly but as long as you off the wind around sort of 90-100-110 it’s a great reaching sail in 15 plus knots and it really is quite powerful.

Andy Lamont: Yes. Well, that right. So it will be great to get a code zero. Again but that’s on the wish list. So, that depends I probably priority wise before I buy a code zero I will buy a radar. So, I will buy a radar and then probably after the radar definitely need new VHF, definitely need a sat phone, HF is a nice one on the wish list.

OSP: Yes. And it’s a tradeoff between an HF versus be it I am going to spend more money on satellite phone credit given the number of people that aren’t on HF these days, it’s almost hard that you should get anybody and if they have got HF radios [inaudible] [00:05:27] anyway. So, that is a tradeoff to make.

OSP: I guess if you have got a lot of downwind sailing, what thought have you given to running wing and wing, calling out your jib or Genoa? How are you going to make the most of your going straight downwind if you get that kind of wind from behind a lot of the time?

Andy Lamont: Well, it’s interesting you asked because the boat goes great with the 150% Genoa and I have actually got much to the chagrin of all the local guys I have been competing against I’ve got a longer pole I’ve got a spinnaker pole plus a plus a long whisker pole that pushes the Genoa out to its full extent and the boat is really balanced and goes really well. I have got a spare Genoa as well so I could run twin headies and go down when with that. And that was my plan until I read John Sander’s book. It’s only a very tiny book and I have read it about 4 times and each time you read it something else jumps out at you and this time I read it and he said in downwind sailing where he went for his double circumnavigation in the S&S 34.

He dropped the genoa completely and just used the mainsail because he didn’t want to work the forestay because working the forestay is a potential cause of damage or failure for the boat. So, I sort of had all my plans of being really nicely setup running downwind and now I’m thinking “really I am going to do that now?” So, however I think as long as I make sure we have got really oversized fittings there and talking about setting it up properly plus I think the furling forestay arrangement is not going to flex and work as hard as a forestay without a foil in it. So, that is my plan anyway. At the boat it just settles down once you pole it out.

OSP: Yes. And there is a couple of things to consider as well. If you run wing and wing and put your main sail away, you have eliminated the risk of crash gybe or even if you have a boom break on and you have got none of that trying to happen, but also if you have got a bit of seaway out there, if the weight is forward seem to be pushing right in front of the boat, there is less tendency for the main to try and round the boat up. So, with all the pressure right in front of the boat, I have heard and read that running downwind is a lot more easier and the natural tendency to want to broach is just eliminated completely.

Andy Lamont: Yes, that also brings into its own self steering sort of moment at well because as it just wants to run dead downwind. So, everything works…

OSP: Great so it’s a nicer motion. You mini that seesaw motion that you often have running downwind with main trying to push it sideways.

Andy Lamont: Yes. So, I am going to run with two poles. I have set the boat up to run with two poles. I have got a new system on front of the mast so I can use two poles nicely. I am going to run it. I am just going to make sure we have got a not only the – will have the spectra line forward to the bowsprit it’s just on all the time just in case we do break some fitting or something fails on the forestays. I will have that built up properly and make sure that that’s all we have got failsafe and redundant systems there. But I have got twin grooves in the foil Basically you can just run both Genoas up there, in light winds running two 150% Genoas at the front of the boat will just motor along. And also you can just furl them both up.

Windows are refurbished and replaced with thicker 10mm lexan hatches

OSP: Which is pertinent to the manageability of the boat. And if you need to climb the masts, can you and will you?

Andy Lamont: Yes. It’s been one of things that I have been thinking about on the original boat that I built, I have got a mast built for that and I put steps little folding steps on them and that was great.  I was thinking about doing the same thing to this mast when it gets out but I just had to go and was looking at these rock climbing systems with the giri and then I can’t remember that name they lock onto the halyard and you just walk up the mast. When you attach the mast just walk up I had to go with that and I think I am going to do with that and I not worry about the steps because that system doesn’t seem to be very difficult at all. I am not really scared of heights so it doesn’t really worry me and it seems like a really – it’s a nice system that you – basically what you do is you run two halyards main halyard and another halyard onto a nice 20 mm rope specifically for the purpose and that is right the climb up. So you pull that rope up the mast on two halyards.

OSP: So, you have got safety.

Andy Lamont: One halyard for some reason breaks you’ve got another halyard on to the purpose built mast climbing rope that’s not going to break. It’s a really good system.

OSP: Well that sounds good. And if you know you are going to drill all those extra holes in the mast attached steeps too. I am just a fun of less holes things like that.

Andy Lamont: Yes.

OSP: So, in terms of if you want to just describe your plan and route into that were are you going to tell us where the toughest parts of the trip will be.

Andy Lamont: The initial first toughest parts will be while leaving the Gold coast and heading east to clear of all the shipping channels because as much as I probably wanted to be rested before I leave I probably won’t be and that is the biggest risk of all. That is hitting something and we will be straight out of the seaway into a well used shipping channel off the east coast of Australia. So, that is the toughest first part is basically making sure that I get at least 100 miles east before I can relax a bit. Luckily ships travel quite near to the coast here so I think I might sail 100 miles east I am much out of all what is going on apart from fishing boats. And then of course you have got the Tasman Ocean which it could give you anything. It’s a real interesting piece of water, isn’t it?

OSP: Yes. And you are straight into the action. There is no sort of 3-4-5 week build up, you are straight out there.

Andy Lamont: Which is what Jessica Watson did that was really smart, she was went up over the equator in the Pacific Ocean which gave her a nice window to get used to the boat and I was really tempted to do the same thing.

OSP: But the moment you are heading for the bottom of New Zealand right?

Andy Lamont: I was really tempted, but for me it’s always been under the five capes to me that is what it’s been. So, then if I was to go and start here and go up in the equator in the Pacific all the way back I will have to go under New Zealand or it seems like a waste of time doing that way and also it will be under New Zealand in the Middle of winter which is…

OSP: Which is not a good idea. Well, also if you are not fixed about your departure date you’d have the ability to wait two of three days if your weather router wants to kick you off as a system just gone through depending on how you want to approach it.

Andy Lamont: I think I will have to settle on a date probably a couple of months out which is go to be because I have got family coming up. So, it might be just a matter of a month out going whatever you do wait till the second half of October or whatever you do you go a bit earlier it’s probably the best as close as you can expect…

OSP: And you just got to go.

Impulse's refurbished hatches are ready for refitting

Andy Lamont: And then you sort of go of course you can slow down and so that will be- Tasman Sea will be – I only sailed across it once and we had 60 plus knots so….

OSP: Okay so, that’s as bad as its going to get most of time anyway.

Andy Lamont: Yes. And that is just the Tasman Sea so it’s quite interesting but then obviously under Stewart Island it’s predominantly over 30 knots. It’s very rare to be less than 30 knots under Stewart Island so, that is going to be the milestone to get around that probably to jump around that and depending on what the weather is doing I might head up, go down few degrees head north and get a bit of better weather or if the weather systems look alright you sort of continue down a bit lower.

OSP: So a shorter course around the bottom.

Andy Lamont: Yes. And I have got to remember it’s not a race but that’s the thing. Always when you are sailing you always want to go as fast as you can.

OSP: And if you are done you log each day knowing to see how much ground. You will always going to be conscious of those records days and anything less wouldn’t feel good enough all that stuff will start to happen.

Andy Lamont: So, then of course, after that is pretty much the big one is Cape Horn and that is where I will rely on Bruce a fair bit just to give me what he thinks is the best strategy to get around there. I definitely don’t want to be going round there with a big low pressure system. That will be kind of terrifying.

OSP: Yes. Timing that well because its so shallow through there the sea can really stand up. There is no point of rushing to get there if you can just sow down to get there a couple of days later and have a nice trip round.

Andy Lamont: Just go behind the system and get down and around and out.

OSP: Ok. So, you get around Cape Horn and then what’s next?

Andy Lamont: So, really and again this is going to be very reliant on the weather routing as to where I go next. I have got to go up over the equator up to the Azores. Well, I don’t need to go as far as the Azores but I am still not so sure under the world speed sailing record council whether I can go around a way point now or whether I still have to round and island. But anyway I am going to go around the Azores at the moment. So, that is quite a distance and there is a lot of different weather patterns so the way I go will really depend on the weather routing up there.

So, I will be doing my own weather routing and then I will be asking Bruce for advice on that because I will probably be saying,” look this is what I plan to do, what do you think?” He will say, “Stupid! You should do this. You haven’t factored in all these other things.” So to get up and down the Atlantic I don’t want obviously go too close to Brazil or any of the South American countries and I definitely don’t want to go too close to Africa and end up getting boarded by crazy pirates.

OSP: No.

Andy Lamont: I will stay like pretty much a couple of hundred miles off the coast so that is another factor. And once I am up and over there then getting down under Cape of Good Hope will be quite a fair distance under there. Then pretty much after that it’s just trying to miss many systems as you can to get back under Cape Leeuwin and then under Tasmania and the back home. But, that is probably going to be the worst, weather wise, section of the journey because that is going to be approaching winter, or getting right into the winter months.

So, that is where the systems will start running through pretty regularly and that’s probably the way to do it and the fact that the closer you are to home, the more  able you are to limp home if you do sustain some damage and also I will be a bit sea hardened as well. I have been probably have been though a few storms on the way and by the time I get into winter in the Southern Ocean I will be a lot better than I would have been 8 months ago or 6 months ago, that’s the plan.

The new tiller for Impulse gets to the finishing stage in the workshop

OSP: Ok. And staying warm will be a big factor too, wind chill and heat.

Andy Lamont: Yes. Because I don’t mind the heat so much but I do hate being cold.

OSP: It’s a wrong place to go during that time of year.

Andy Lamont: I don’t know why I am doing it. So, I just went and bought myself a nice sleeping bag rated to   minus 13 degrees C because it can’t be down so it has to be al fibre filled stuff so that’s good. So, I have got that lots and lots of layers. I use the Gill sappolettes which I find really warm. I found wearing those and some long couple of layers of long Johns and sappolettes and your wet weather gear and you are going to wear a beanie and gloves, you are pretty even in Tasmania you are pretty warm. But then again that’s the coldest I have been. The furthest South I have been is really Hobart which will probably make some people laugh but to me Hobart is like...

OSP: Antarctica?

Andy Lamont: I just think I have got lots and lots of woollen underwear, woollen base layer stuff and as well as the normal long johns and thermals and I will just take all that stuff and wash it when I can. They will probably stink, they probably won’t let me back in the country I will smell so much.

I think that’s the main thing is before I go that is one of things I will do I will buy some more wet weather gear. The gear I have got the Musto HPX gear is bloody fantastic I love it. I have got Musto boots. Probably don’t need a new pair of boots but I will get some of those seal skin socks which are really good and that should be it – a dry suit would be nice. Survival suits would be nice.

OSP: That’s when having your life jack with a dry suit could be convenient if you can float about for 12 hours ships will be passing by.

Andy Lamont: But if the boat just fills up with water you can just put the dry suit on.

OSP: True.

Andy Lamont: You can sort of slosh around in that. That would be good but probably even putting on your wet weather gear like when the boat is jumping around all over the place it’s a bloody pain in the butt.

OSP: It takes a long time. It’s a good 20-minute job to get it off get it back on.

Andy Lamont: I am just trying to imagine putting a dry suit on it might even take longer so I am not quite sure. But I just know the wet weather gear I have got get another set of that should see me through and just to stay warm. I have thought about getting a heater but it’s just another thing that can go wrong. So, I will probably just go with lots of layers, some emergency clothing in dry bags, towels and that type of thing. The other thing is those space blankets and those survival bags are quite good too.

OSP: And they take no space at all.

Andy Lamont: No space at all. So, that’s another thing if I am really cold I jump in the sleeping bag or jump in the survival bag and then into a sleeping bag. Then another thing I saw at burnings was the AEG heater jackets. You know the 18 volt lithium ion drill . They have also got where you just put a battery in the pocket and then you have got a heated jacket. So, I might even get one of those.

OSP: Could be handy if you have been outside for half an hour and the wind chill fixing something up and then you come down below and just seem to warm back up again.

Andy Lamont: You just put that up and warm up. They are only 150 bucks or something so it’s kind of for the job that it might do its pretty good value.

OSP: It’s more practical than trying to heat a hot water bottle.

Andy Lamont: Yes, exactly. That’s right and its instant and I haven’t got a battery grinder yet which is one of the things I want to have. So a little 4 inch grinders so if I need to cut stuff away.

New teak rails are fitted

OSP: And if you get the discs that carbon or something but way better for slicing through regiment trying to get a hacksaw or bolt cutters out if you have to cut mast away they are excellent for that.

Andy Lamont: So, one of the things I am thinking about is go the AEG route, getting the grinder and getting the jacket…

OSP: Happy days cutting the regiment away with your warm jacket on. So, if you can ask Jessica Watson questions about her circumnavigation, what would they be and when you start to think about some of the unknown few that lie ahead?

Andy Lamont: Well, there is lots of things we are really interested. One will be the polars for this boat. What strength and sea state did you change to different sails? That would be really good information. I might not do the same thing but it would be good reference point. So, that would be really interesting because basically it’s the same width it’s the same boat.

OSP: Yes. And traditionally if you find out you have too far that you should have changed sails once you break something.

Andy Lamont: Yes, exactly. So, that would be a good one to ask her. and then what would she do for power generation next time because I do know like I have read her book but she didn’t say anything negative in a book and good on her but there must have been things that really pissed her off and were really just bad systems or really just annoying and it would be good to know those things and what she thought about. She was very adamant she wanted the D400 generating wind system. Which is great it’s a beautiful systems its nice and quiet but she had to take it down every time it got over 30 knots and that type of thing. That will be interesting to find out power generation thing. But that will two key questions could be really interesting and also – I guess that will be the two main ones.

OSP: I saw a presentation she did she had some great photos of rebuilding her toilet after it had completely seized up.

Andy Lamont: Oh! Yes, right.

OSP: So, I know that she had that system failure which was pretty unpleasing by the sound of it.

Andy Lamont: Yes. So, that’s right. So I don’t have an electric toilet. I am just going to pretty much at the end of the day I don’t think you can beat the bucket, that a pretty good system. We always go over the side and that is not a good system single handed but I just got a pump out system – if you are just yourself on the boat then you sort of think that should be alright. I have go that system where your toilet paper and just get right down to the nitty gritty, you just take a big supply of paper bags so you use your toilet paper put in your paper bag, throw the toilet paper over to the side and pump out.

OSP: Because that’s the toilet paper that notoriously blocks those toilets up.  I am fan of the pump toilet it’s just one less thing that can fail electronically and it’s a pretty simple system and it only fails if you put too much down the hole.

Andy Lamont: Yes, exactly.

OSP: So, if you just don’t, that is probably not going to fail.

Andy Lamont: Yes, exactly.

OSP: If it’s not used by 10 people a day it’s definitely not going to get a lot of use.

Andy Lamont: Yes, exactly. Definitely when you sail solo the person that blocks the toilet up is the person who has to clean it.

OSP: Self governing.

Andy Lamont: Exactly, right. That is the best system I have seen it’s just the paper bag for toilet paper and a hand pump and what can go wrong.

OSP: It makes a lot of sense. Ok. So, what do you love being out in the ocean by yourself or what is it that you love about that because you are going to have a lot of that?

The final coat of paint goes onto Impulse's hull

Andy Lamont: I am interested to find out whether I will get sick of it because I am mid to late 50s and I am not sick of it yet so it’s quite interesting. For someone I am bit nerdy and that type of thing for something so basic to completely satisfy me and not just me hundreds of thousands millions of people. A whole thing about being on a boat and having nothing but the wind and I have never gone like this is boring of days and days and days and I am just like oh! God just give me another day so, it’s really interesting. It came down to the first time I got on a boat I was 11 years old and I got on a trailer sailor I was just watching sitting on the boat just watching the water separating from the stern of the boat it was a little hard chine trailer sailor.

OSP: Its quite hypnotising.

Andy Lamont: Yes. And it’s pretty much all I need. It’s a very weird thing if you get me off the water I need to be connected to the internet, I need to be get stimulating conversations, I need good friends, food and the excitement and the entertainment and everything and challenges. I mean there is this unending list of everything I need in my life so that I don’t go crazy from boredom or feel like I am wasting my life, but put me on a boat or a wind surfer or a kite board, that is all I need. It’s quite bizarre, isn’t it?

OSP: Its amazing isn’t it? And the nights will be as magical as the days for different reasons.

Andy Lamont: Yes, exactly. That’s it. The first ocean sailing I did from Brisbane to New Zealand some of those night sailing memories are just seared it into my memory I can remember them as if they were like yesterday and two days after I arrived in New Zealand was my 18th birthday and that was 40 years ago.

OSP: Its quite incredible.

Andy Lamont: Its just like yesterday. They are the peak moments of your life. For me, the peak of your life are your children being born and all obviously getting married and all that but the peak sort of – I am not a spiritual person but they are the spiritual moments of my life.

OSP: I think what I found is when you are out there on the ocean and it’s just you, there is not land on sight, there is not ships, it’s just you and the ocean and you are on the circular plate because everywhere you look every direction it’s just the horizon in this crowded world you got a piece of the world just to yourself and its perfect an un-spoilt and its magical and even the sea life comes to life. The light show that happens below the water once you really adjust your eyesight and the stars are like you never see on the land because of all the smoke and light interference. It’s quite stunning. It’s hard to explain.

Andy Lamont: As the stars have meaning to you as well. One rises on the horizon you follow that for a while.

OSP: You can see the shooting starts occasionally.

Andy Lamont: Its nice.

OSP: Well its good you are going to have about 300 days of that. So, when you are not sleeping or tending to your daily tasks in terms of checking on chafe and wear and tear and doing bits and pieces, what else are you taking along to be able to occupy your time?

Andy Lamont: Well, I will take a guitar a ukulele and some harmonicas so they are the three instruments.

OSP: But the audience will love you.

Andy Lamont: I will play some music and I will take probably a couple of kindles and iPad and all the books I can fit on that because I love reading. So, that would be pretty much all I need because I wouldn’t be bored. I can play music, I can read and I can even maybe write some stuff and that’s probably a full day.

OSP: And you have got a plan for each meal.

Andy Lamont: Yes.

OSP: After you finish this meal you start planning for the next one.

Andy Lamont: And probably make bread and do some other little sort of nice things during the day when the weather is right.

OSP: And put plenty of sleep in the bank so you keep topping your sleep up.

Andy Lamont: Yes. That’s then I guess that’s a really important thing, isn’t it? Making sure that I don’t get fatigued and don’t enjoy something so much that I sort of don’t leave enough sleep in the bank, sleeping all the time. But that is another thing about being on a boat which I never have trouble sleeping. It’s just I don’t know if it’s the same for you.

OSP: It’s the best sleep; it’s the most restful sleep I have ever have.

Andy Lamont: Yes, so you just put you head down and the next thing you know your asleep.

OSP: And it’s the only place I can sleep during the day. I normally lie down and sleep during the day but on a boat once you are in that rhythm about day 3 or 4 you just lay down and sleep because it’s almost like if the motion is great and you know your body needs it, it just changes your whole ability to rest and recharge.

Andy Lamont: So, that would be my daily routine I guess. One of the things I was thinking of doing like I would love to learn to play the bag pipes. I don’t know whether I would have the time to do that but I thought that would be fun. You mentioned like in the middle of a foggy day, in the middle of the ocean just the sound...

OSP: It would be stunning, wouldn’t it?

Andy Lamont:…on a quiet day with sort of low fog and cold and just the sound of bag pipes…

OSP: Just come rolling out of the mist.

Andy Lamont: Yes. So, anyway I have never played bag pipes but I can’t imagine it would be that hard.

OSP: I was forced to as a child.

Andy Lamont: Oh, truly?

OSP: However, I thought it was quite glamorous until I realised you spend the first two years learning to play I don’t know what it called but it’s like the flute part, you don’t see the bag for the first two years.

Andy Lamont: Oh!

OSP: So, until you learn to play the flute part that plugs into the bag – pretty much so you have got to wait two or three years before you are given a bag. I didn’t last that long.

Andy Lamont: So, you can play the piccolo

OSP: Exactly, so, I didn’t get to the good part but obviously it’s an amazing sound. So, what resources have you used to plan this trip? Where have you turned for information, research and advice?

Andy Lamont: I guess Tony Mowbray has been a help, so he’s been great. I have spoken to him. I sailed back from Adelaide with him. So, he sailed around in a Cole 43 nonstop unassisted. I read a lot of books of course John Gower and Kevin Costin they have taken me on as a bit of a project because really at the end of the day even though sailing has been my sport, ocean sailing I pretty much knew nothing and pretty much still know not much. So, they are both experienced ocean racers. So, they keep telling me like I am crazy going around with a slow boat I should be going around in a fast boat and they just think its nuts to go around in an S&S 34. You should go in something that goes faster than the waves. That’s one opinion. It’s quite a good opinion anyways except that the evidence just doesn’t beat it out. It’s the slow boats that complete.

The gold stripe is added to the hull as the finishing touch

OSP: They get there.

Andy Lamont: They get smashed along the way but it’s the fast boats that have problems. On a crewed fast boat going downwind at 20 knots well they are no problem, you have got someone on the helm all the time but on auto-pilot the boat has to be like an open 60 or an open 40 with all the systems been built to broach it has to be that type of boat to sail under auto-pilot. Like a lot of them don’t finish.

OSP: They break down and you are taking five times the overall cost plus and they are more demanding to sail and things are happen fast with bigger loads so you can get injured too and sleeping is probably a lot harder when you punching through stuff at 20 knots and when you are rolling along nicely.

Andy Lamont: Like downwind those boats are sailing. They just flat and stable and fast…

OSP: And wet.

Andy Lamont: Yes, if you haven’t got someone on the helm 24/7 then you relying on the autopilot so it’s the slow boats they are the ones that can do it on a budget unless your budget is in the millions. I don’t think a little maybe an Atlantic crossing on a small fast boat would be alright but unless you have got a really big budget with like some of these autopilots which are coming up of the shelf models now but they are pretty high end systems and they take in account the yaw of the boat so and everything inside it, they are not going to approach on a wave or…

OSP: And you still need a back up for them because otherwise if they fail your trip is over.

Andy Lamont: Yes. If an IMOCA boat or class 40 boat loses its electrics it’s just over.

OSP: Yes. And then working 24/7 under reasonable loads too.

Andy Lamont: Yes. Exactly and it happens. Whereas to have the systems would cost more than this boat the whole trip.

OSP: So, putting a Ferrari engine in a Skoda or something…

Andy Lamont: Yes. So, that’s all their opinions which is I respect their opinions but I just think look! This boat has been around the world more than anyone and at the end of the day everyone agrees: The S&S 34 you are going to get there.

OSP: Yes, it’s not going to break in half and sink.

Andy Lamont: Yes. And it’s not break any records but you are going to get there. But they have been great Mabo and Kozzie have been a real help for me and pretty much they are the main two guys that have been helping me out apart from everyone at the club here too, it’s just interesting like just the doing sailing I am doing here. Even, everyday you go out you are kind of learning a little but more, you tweak a bit more, don’t you?

OSP: Yes. that’s is right and the more people hear about your story and plans and what people popup and contribute also ideas and obviously the help and the strategic all that will create a bit of ground swell. You have to go now because once you tell people about it you are first taking the ground. Did you ever read that book about the guy that did that very first solo trip? He went out there and sailed around in circles for several months just sort of thrown in the towel and disappeared.

Andy Lamont: Yes.

OSP: Sad story.

Andy Lamont: Yes, a real sad story. Donald Crowhurst.

OSP: That’s it.

Andy Lamont: Its an interesting story, isn’t it? And then it was the slowest boat in the field was Robyn Knox Johnson’s boat that won.

OSP: That’s a very good example of choose a well prepared solid boat.

Andy Lamont: This is a good example of that rather than these trimarans. But those days have changed and now the – I guess it’s the most important example of that is pretty much about your mental state. So, it was Rob Knox Johnson that had pretty rock solid mental state where I think Bernard Mointessier I think it was the guy who was actually…

OSP: He was leading, right?

Andy Lamont: Yes.

OSP: And then he decided to carry on nonstop.

Andy Lamont: Yes. Exactly. So, he carried on. So, his state wasn’t to finish the race, his state was to keep sailing I guess and there were a few others there. It was pretty interesting story.

Andy in action in his kitesurfing training business

OSP: Great story and Robin Knox Johnston story is a good example of if you know your boat from end to end and you have got confidence in it then everything comes from confidence in your boat. I think the only think he didn’t like was he had a cover over his heel as a form of antifoaming and it started leaking into something and he had to get off the bottom in the Southern Ocean and go down below hammer a nail some patches on the boat or something and sharks were hovering around so…

Andy Lamont: He talked about that so matter of fact, I will just have to jump under hold some copper nails in my mouth. Have you ever tried to nail something underwater I would drop the nail anyhow.

OSP: I have tried to swing a hammer underwater you can’t do it. But he saw a great white shark and he short it but he figured there wasn’t any other so he as safe to proceed. I would be thinking about the other 100 waiting there too. Anyway, so great story. This is a bit of Mount Everest in terms of challenges short of going somewhere crazy like North Pole or South Pole. Have you thought of beyond the trip in terms of what happens when you get home and what you do next?

Andy Lamont: Well, definitely, I am ready for a new change in my life. I have run the same business with my wife for 20 years and she has done most of the work. I was basically on the kind of ideas guy and get everything rolling and doing all then we are a great team in that it works really well for me and she sort of figured out after 20 years it doesn’t actually work so well for her because we both really want to do some other things in our lives. So, that is why I did a law degree so I would like to do something with that when I get back and we would like to do some public speaking if that comes up after the trip then really life’s over too quickly isn’t it.

OSP: It is, far too quickly.

Andy Lamont: But luckily I am 57 I am fit enough and its interesting because I have had a fantastic life from the time I was an adult say from the time I was 20 to the time I was 57, that’s 37 years. Like it’s quite possible to have another 37 years of being active and doing stuff with the advances in medicine and all that type of thing. But even another 20 years its whole another life.

OSP: It is and once I was racing flying fifteens I sailed at the nationals against a guy who I thought this was in 2009 I thought he was in his early 60s and so it is 50 boats and flying fifteens are quite demanding to sail, he finished I think 7th at the nationals. He had been a boat builder all his life, he was 86 years old and still racing at a really physically level. I thought that is a great example of someone who has stayed healthy stayed active and he got to 60 and he has added another quarter of a century of active sailing to his life. I have always remembered that example.

Andy Lamont: It is. Its great and I have a friend a great role model who I have wind surfed with and kite surfed with for the last 20 years and he is a keener kite surfer than me, he is out every windy day and he is 69.

OSP: Wow!

Andy Lamont on the S&S 34 'Impulse' at the Southport Yacht Club

Andy Lamont: It doesn’t matter how big the waves are he is just there and at 69 these people they do forge a pathway don’t they. You don’t have to sort of get to your 50s and 60s and start to slow down you can just turn another page and open a new chapter in your life and do something new and exciting. Yes, that is what I want to do and the other great chapter of my life will be becoming a grandfather, which is going to be fun. So, they are all great things as well. There is a lot to look forward to and when we get back whole new chapter to write I guess.

OSP: It’s been great spending the time with you this morning. I think we have got two episodes out this we are at the two hour mark which is great and its going to be excellent Andy following your journey over the next few months as you prepare to depart and then keeping in touch with you as you head off around the world and seeing how your experience is going. So, thank you so much for sharing your story and I know people listening to this find it fascinating, find it inspiring as well and I just shows you that if you put your mind to something the financial barrier is not the bigger issue or the age barrier it’s just putting your mind to it and heading down the path and certainly the departure day will roll around.

Andy Lamont: If anyone can take anything from what I am doing you can fail your way to your goal when my goal was to leave in 2004. It’s been a massive failure and a lot of detours but failure is just someone said I don’t know who it was, someone once said that failure is a real essential part of any journey. No journey and nothing happens without failing.

OSP: Yes. And the irony is if we didn’t put these unrealistic timeframes against things other than the timeframe you did everything else right because you are about to go.

Andy Lamont: Yes, exactly.

OSP: If you hadn’t put and unrealistic timeframe you would have said the plan just took a little longer.

Andy Lamont: Yes, exactly.

OSP: The plan has turned out…

Andy Lamont: And that is the way I look at it.

OSP: But as often if we are not unrealistic about timeframes we don’t actually push ourselves hard enough to even get to what is a reality, otherwise if you just said I will do it in 10 years, of course 10 years comes and goes and there is no stake in the ground. Well, thank you Andy and we look forward to catching up and updating things as they unfold and good luck on all of your plans and preparations. I am sure you will start to have all sorts of people popping up the out of the woodwork and offering support and help, which will help you prepare for some of those extra things on your wish list that will get you off on the right foot with your fantastic lifetime bucket list type opportunity.

Andy Lamont: Well, that will be great, it doesn’t matter like when someone says what kind of things are you looking for and I said, “even a can of coke would be great” like anything would be alright. So, thanks so much for your interest and I look forward to speaking with you again.

OSP: My pleasure, great, thanks Andy.

Interviewer: David Hows

Checkout out the article on Andy Lamont in the Gold Coast Bulletin that was published following our podcast interviews with him.

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