Someone asked me recently if I was excited now that my fly out date is approaching. On reflection, my answer was, and remains, "No".
Which feels ...odd. I should
be excited. I'm launching myself half way around the world, so to
speak, to consummate a long held daydream. It is An Very Big Adventure.
But
the truth is that I'm bone tired of planning, predicting and
purchasing. I think of it as 'preparation burnout'. There are so many
things that could go wrong. Have I thought of them all?. Hell no. Have I
prepared against most of them? No can do.
I have,
since I last posted, done some more 'stuff'. Really fascinating stuff
like comparing and purchasing Travel Insurance, setting up auto-payments
on all the bills that will continue while I'm away, and so on Yep, as
fascinating for you as it was fun for me.
Well it's now Monday morning, and I fly out mid-day Thursday.
There's still a largish pile of stuff that I should do. Like figure out
how to travel 250 km's to get to the airport at 10-ish
in the morning. Three and a half days is about where I expect to
suddenly remember all that stuff that I haven't done that takes at least
five days to do and MUST be done before I depart.
So it goes.
Oh,
and for those that recall my earlier excitement about buying a Sat
phone ... the freaking thing hasn't arrived yet. If it's not here in the
next 2 days then I leave without it. I may say a few rude words. It's probably best to not ask me about it.
Monday, January 30, 2012
Tuesday, January 24, 2012
Progress is a relative thing
10 days to fly out date. I can start counting down on my fingers*.
Received notification today that I passed the Marine Radio Certificate of Competency (including MF, HF and VHF) exam that I sat last Thursday. Now ... if I only had a Marine Radio.
Bought a used laptop for $100 last night. After much agonising I decided to buy an old one and leave my shiny new (ish) one with my Mum to use while I'm away. As I commented earlier, exposing Laptops to humid salty air isn't a great way to prolong their usable life, so I figure if this one packs it in, or I drop it overboard or somesuch, I wont be terribly agitated. Not as much as I would be if it was the newer one anyway.
Tomorrow I'm off to spend another small bucket of dollars on an EPIRB. For the non-nautical types that's an acronym for Emergency Position Indicating Radio Beacon. In the case of disaster one activates this little beastie, and it sends out a pre-coded distress message (via satellite) that alerts the search and rescue people, and gives them a location to start searching. I had thought I'd wait till I was in the US and buy one there, but then I read of possible difficulties getting OS models registered with the Australian system, and decided to buy it here. Of course, that means that I have to make sure that it's rated as safe for air transport**. Nothing is ever as simple as it first seems.
So , I said I'd fill in some 'big picture' stuff about the project, and I haven't done that yet. Here goes.
It started with a casual thought years ago. I had been browsing boat ads in Australia, just as a daydreaming exercise. Somehow I ended up looking at some US ads and thinking that the prices for comparable boats were a lot lower. Traditional wisdom though is that import duty and taxes and all that stuff make it uneconomical. Then as the US economy went a bit pear shaped around the GFC, there were lots of boats much cheaper. Then the exchange rate got better, and I got curious. With no real intention of following it through, I did some research on the tax and duties and all that other stuff. Sure enough, they add up to thousands of dollars. But ... not as much as I had been led to believe.
This then is the plan. I'll travel to the US, and look at what's available on my very small (in terms of the blue water yacht market) budget. If I find what seems to be a boat of suitable condition for a trans-pacific voyage in my price range, I'll then attempt to placate the ravenous beast that is the bureaucracy related to these sort of exercises. Even before departing US waters, I need to register the vessel as an Australian ship with AMSA, which apart from costing over a thousand dollars, requires a metric crap load of forms and original papers to be lodged with the Australian office of AMSA. They then send me some more documents, which I then send back. While all this goes on I'll still be paying through the nose for accommodation. Time is not my friend. If all that goes to plan, I then have to satisfy the US exit process.
At this point I should state that I will be trying very hard to not get carried away and attempt the journey back in an unsuitable boat, just because I've invested so much in getting to the stage where I'm looking at a boat that is in my price range. I'll need to assert a great deal of self-discipline to accept that it isn't going to happen, cut my losses, and count the exercise as a learning experience with a bonus sojourn in the USA. At least it will have gotten me out of the house for a while.
Assuming I do get through that, where to next? My plan at this stage will be to head somewhat south, with first landfall at The Marquesas Islands. In yacht cruising one hopes to manage about one hundred nautical miles per day. This means the first leg will take about 24 days at sea. From there, hopefully getting a push along from the South Equatorial Current, the second landfall, after about the same time at sea, I have to choose between Fiji or Tonga. From there it's a mere 20 odd days to Townsville, back home in sunny Australia.
Now, all that sounds quite simple if I write it like that. I don't really think it will be that simple. Even if the weather is remarkably kind to me, and I have no reason to believe that it will be, it entails spending 3 weeks on each leg with a ration of about 2 litres of water per day, to do everything, and probably no refrigeration worth speaking of. Even moderate weather will entail very large lumps of water moving towards the boat and trying to get inside it, or at least push it around. If something, even me, breaks in any way then I either fix it or do without it. Communication with the world at large will be very limited, mainly by cost, and communicating that something has gone very wrong in the middle of the Pacific Ocean is not like calling for a tow truck if your car breaks down. People die doing this stuff.
Then begins phase two of the bureaucratic nightmare: Importing a Ship. (Even little boats are called ships by The System.) Fortunately much of the paperwork that turns up at this stage can be fed the same documents that were used in the earlier bout. But it takes more than three times as much money to overcome the beast this time.
Some time after all that I try to sell the boat. Hopefully for what I paid for it plus what it cost me to get it here. Even if I fall short of totally recovering the costs, I hope to get close enough that I've had a big adventure for a moderate financial loss, comparable to paying for a three month holiday. If I make a profit on the exercise, I just might do it again. Ask me about that later, right now I've got more Stuff to do!
Cheers
* OK, fingers and thumbs. Whatever.
** Apparently some of them use batteries that are rated as 'hazardous materials' and can't be taken on aircraft.
Received notification today that I passed the Marine Radio Certificate of Competency (including MF, HF and VHF) exam that I sat last Thursday. Now ... if I only had a Marine Radio.
Bought a used laptop for $100 last night. After much agonising I decided to buy an old one and leave my shiny new (ish) one with my Mum to use while I'm away. As I commented earlier, exposing Laptops to humid salty air isn't a great way to prolong their usable life, so I figure if this one packs it in, or I drop it overboard or somesuch, I wont be terribly agitated. Not as much as I would be if it was the newer one anyway.
Tomorrow I'm off to spend another small bucket of dollars on an EPIRB. For the non-nautical types that's an acronym for Emergency Position Indicating Radio Beacon. In the case of disaster one activates this little beastie, and it sends out a pre-coded distress message (via satellite) that alerts the search and rescue people, and gives them a location to start searching. I had thought I'd wait till I was in the US and buy one there, but then I read of possible difficulties getting OS models registered with the Australian system, and decided to buy it here. Of course, that means that I have to make sure that it's rated as safe for air transport**. Nothing is ever as simple as it first seems.
So , I said I'd fill in some 'big picture' stuff about the project, and I haven't done that yet. Here goes.
It started with a casual thought years ago. I had been browsing boat ads in Australia, just as a daydreaming exercise. Somehow I ended up looking at some US ads and thinking that the prices for comparable boats were a lot lower. Traditional wisdom though is that import duty and taxes and all that stuff make it uneconomical. Then as the US economy went a bit pear shaped around the GFC, there were lots of boats much cheaper. Then the exchange rate got better, and I got curious. With no real intention of following it through, I did some research on the tax and duties and all that other stuff. Sure enough, they add up to thousands of dollars. But ... not as much as I had been led to believe.
This then is the plan. I'll travel to the US, and look at what's available on my very small (in terms of the blue water yacht market) budget. If I find what seems to be a boat of suitable condition for a trans-pacific voyage in my price range, I'll then attempt to placate the ravenous beast that is the bureaucracy related to these sort of exercises. Even before departing US waters, I need to register the vessel as an Australian ship with AMSA, which apart from costing over a thousand dollars, requires a metric crap load of forms and original papers to be lodged with the Australian office of AMSA. They then send me some more documents, which I then send back. While all this goes on I'll still be paying through the nose for accommodation. Time is not my friend. If all that goes to plan, I then have to satisfy the US exit process.
At this point I should state that I will be trying very hard to not get carried away and attempt the journey back in an unsuitable boat, just because I've invested so much in getting to the stage where I'm looking at a boat that is in my price range. I'll need to assert a great deal of self-discipline to accept that it isn't going to happen, cut my losses, and count the exercise as a learning experience with a bonus sojourn in the USA. At least it will have gotten me out of the house for a while.
Assuming I do get through that, where to next? My plan at this stage will be to head somewhat south, with first landfall at The Marquesas Islands. In yacht cruising one hopes to manage about one hundred nautical miles per day. This means the first leg will take about 24 days at sea. From there, hopefully getting a push along from the South Equatorial Current, the second landfall, after about the same time at sea, I have to choose between Fiji or Tonga. From there it's a mere 20 odd days to Townsville, back home in sunny Australia.
Now, all that sounds quite simple if I write it like that. I don't really think it will be that simple. Even if the weather is remarkably kind to me, and I have no reason to believe that it will be, it entails spending 3 weeks on each leg with a ration of about 2 litres of water per day, to do everything, and probably no refrigeration worth speaking of. Even moderate weather will entail very large lumps of water moving towards the boat and trying to get inside it, or at least push it around. If something, even me, breaks in any way then I either fix it or do without it. Communication with the world at large will be very limited, mainly by cost, and communicating that something has gone very wrong in the middle of the Pacific Ocean is not like calling for a tow truck if your car breaks down. People die doing this stuff.
Then begins phase two of the bureaucratic nightmare: Importing a Ship. (Even little boats are called ships by The System.) Fortunately much of the paperwork that turns up at this stage can be fed the same documents that were used in the earlier bout. But it takes more than three times as much money to overcome the beast this time.
Some time after all that I try to sell the boat. Hopefully for what I paid for it plus what it cost me to get it here. Even if I fall short of totally recovering the costs, I hope to get close enough that I've had a big adventure for a moderate financial loss, comparable to paying for a three month holiday. If I make a profit on the exercise, I just might do it again. Ask me about that later, right now I've got more Stuff to do!
Cheers
* OK, fingers and thumbs. Whatever.
** Apparently some of them use batteries that are rated as 'hazardous materials' and can't be taken on aircraft.
Thursday, January 19, 2012
Preparations going ... about as well as they usually do
So it's 15 days till fly out. Am I ready? Of course not, don't be silly. Am I going to be ready? I said don't be silly! 14 days from now I'll sit up and say: "Oh crap, I forgot all about the ..." So it goes.
So what have I been doing by way of preparation? Research mainly. Finding out about ... stuff. What it costs, who I have to send which forms to, how long it takes. Stuff is complicated!
Apart from that, and the ordinary booking tickets and accommodation and so on, I have:
I hear you, muttering away: "Why would he buy a sextant?" Hasn't he heard of a GPS?" Well, smarty pants, I have heard of GPS ... esses. So there. And I found out that they work really well. As long as as there is electricity available. Then they become expensive and ugly paperweights. So the fallback measures are to have a flash all bells and whistles GPS/Chart-plotter as the day to day unit. Then I made sure that the satellite phone that I'm buying also has a GPS function. So if the main one fails I can still get my position from that. It wont show me pretty maps, or how far away the nearest ATM is, but I will be able to plot my position on a chart. And the final fallback, in case that fails too, is a sextant. Damn tricky things to operate though. Or more to the point, the procedures and calculations that you have to do after you've operated it are damn tricky. Thus the books. So I've been reading. (Yup, is true!) And even practising. I don't intend to try to become a super accurate master navigator, but as third layer emergency measure it should be feasible to put myself close enough to a landfall to be able to see it. That's the theory, anyway.
The happy part of the buying-a-sextant story is that after doing a heap of research, I'd discovered that the range of plastic sextants available (pretty brass ones cost a heap) fell into super-basic, at $100, basic at $200, and slightly-pretty-and-user-friendly ones at $600. I decided on the $200 basic model and bought one from a USA marine supplies dealer. When it arrived I discovered that they had sent me the $600 model. After a not very brief wrangle with my conscience I emailed them and informed them of their mistake, offering them the chance to send me the basic one if they wanted to and I would return the first one. They wrote back thanking me for my honesty and told me to keep the upgrade. Pretty nice, I thought. So thank you, Southern Marine of Florida USA. If ever I'm in Jupiter, Florida, I'll drop by.
The boat licence experience was a bit disheartening. I decided to do the test in conjunction with a training course through a Registered Training Organisation that I wont name. When I got to the venue they had put up a number of posters around the walls. "Hmm", I thought, "these posters have information that would surely be useful hints (answers actually) during the test. I guess they'll take them down or cover them when we do the test." Nope. But at least the test papers have random set of questions on them right? Yes, all 40 of us had exactly the same set of random questions. I see... But it was done under test conditions right? Sure, if by "test conditions" you mean the 'supervisors' all left the room and people were openly consulting each other (and the posters) about the answers. There was a family sitting behind me and from what I heard, Mum was getting her answers from Dad, and doing her test and the daughter's as well! Oh yeah, boat licences are making a big difference to marine safety in Victoria. Not.
The satellite phone was a big, and expensive, decision. I tracked one down on eBlah for a meagre $550, and paid for it in late December. It hasn't arrived yet. I'm not nervous ... still got 15 days to go, after all. The 'pro' part of the decision was to have a means to get daily weather maps emailed to me. They'll cost about $2 each to download, but make a big difference in safety. This is also 'the theory'. I finally went for it when I realised that the unit I was looking at has, as I mentioned earlier, a GPS function built in to it. This means that I didn't have to fork out for a back up GPS unit so the price seemed a bit less daunting. The process of reading the weather maps means that I have to have a working laptop on board though, so I probably haven't saved much after all. Laptops operate very reliably in humid salty air, don't they? So I'm taking 2 (2nd hand) laptops.
So I will have (if it all works to plan) a means to send and receive emails. I haven't decided on which email service to use yet, so I can't tell you what the address will be. I'll post it up here when I know what it is. If you feel like sending an email to me duing the trip, please don't attach any big ... attachments. And use 'plain text' rather than HTML if you know how to do that. Downloading big emails will cost me ... a lot! I'll also be able to receive phone calls in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, if you don't mind paying several dollars per minute to talk to me. Good news is that there is apparently a system whereby you can send me SMS for free! I haven't tested it yet (haven't got the &*^%$! phone yet, have I?) but the access is here
Well, I'm off to do some revision for this Marine Radio test tomorrow. (Maybe there'll be posters?) Feel free to ask questions using the comments box. Or comments. Or ... whatever.
I'll tell you a bit about the 'big picture' of this project in the next post. (Filled with anticipation now, aren't you?)
Ciao
W.
So what have I been doing by way of preparation? Research mainly. Finding out about ... stuff. What it costs, who I have to send which forms to, how long it takes. Stuff is complicated!
Apart from that, and the ordinary booking tickets and accommodation and so on, I have:
- Purchased a sextant and a couple of 'celestial navigation for idiots' type books,
- Sat and passed the Victorian Boat Licence test,
- Booked in to sit the Marine Radio operator's Certificate exam (tomorrow).
- Purchased a satellite phone.
I hear you, muttering away: "Why would he buy a sextant?" Hasn't he heard of a GPS?" Well, smarty pants, I have heard of GPS ... esses. So there. And I found out that they work really well. As long as as there is electricity available. Then they become expensive and ugly paperweights. So the fallback measures are to have a flash all bells and whistles GPS/Chart-plotter as the day to day unit. Then I made sure that the satellite phone that I'm buying also has a GPS function. So if the main one fails I can still get my position from that. It wont show me pretty maps, or how far away the nearest ATM is, but I will be able to plot my position on a chart. And the final fallback, in case that fails too, is a sextant. Damn tricky things to operate though. Or more to the point, the procedures and calculations that you have to do after you've operated it are damn tricky. Thus the books. So I've been reading. (Yup, is true!) And even practising. I don't intend to try to become a super accurate master navigator, but as third layer emergency measure it should be feasible to put myself close enough to a landfall to be able to see it. That's the theory, anyway.
The happy part of the buying-a-sextant story is that after doing a heap of research, I'd discovered that the range of plastic sextants available (pretty brass ones cost a heap) fell into super-basic, at $100, basic at $200, and slightly-pretty-and-user-friendly ones at $600. I decided on the $200 basic model and bought one from a USA marine supplies dealer. When it arrived I discovered that they had sent me the $600 model. After a not very brief wrangle with my conscience I emailed them and informed them of their mistake, offering them the chance to send me the basic one if they wanted to and I would return the first one. They wrote back thanking me for my honesty and told me to keep the upgrade. Pretty nice, I thought. So thank you, Southern Marine of Florida USA. If ever I'm in Jupiter, Florida, I'll drop by.
The boat licence experience was a bit disheartening. I decided to do the test in conjunction with a training course through a Registered Training Organisation that I wont name. When I got to the venue they had put up a number of posters around the walls. "Hmm", I thought, "these posters have information that would surely be useful hints (answers actually) during the test. I guess they'll take them down or cover them when we do the test." Nope. But at least the test papers have random set of questions on them right? Yes, all 40 of us had exactly the same set of random questions. I see... But it was done under test conditions right? Sure, if by "test conditions" you mean the 'supervisors' all left the room and people were openly consulting each other (and the posters) about the answers. There was a family sitting behind me and from what I heard, Mum was getting her answers from Dad, and doing her test and the daughter's as well! Oh yeah, boat licences are making a big difference to marine safety in Victoria. Not.
The satellite phone was a big, and expensive, decision. I tracked one down on eBlah for a meagre $550, and paid for it in late December. It hasn't arrived yet. I'm not nervous ... still got 15 days to go, after all. The 'pro' part of the decision was to have a means to get daily weather maps emailed to me. They'll cost about $2 each to download, but make a big difference in safety. This is also 'the theory'. I finally went for it when I realised that the unit I was looking at has, as I mentioned earlier, a GPS function built in to it. This means that I didn't have to fork out for a back up GPS unit so the price seemed a bit less daunting. The process of reading the weather maps means that I have to have a working laptop on board though, so I probably haven't saved much after all. Laptops operate very reliably in humid salty air, don't they? So I'm taking 2 (2nd hand) laptops.
So I will have (if it all works to plan) a means to send and receive emails. I haven't decided on which email service to use yet, so I can't tell you what the address will be. I'll post it up here when I know what it is. If you feel like sending an email to me duing the trip, please don't attach any big ... attachments. And use 'plain text' rather than HTML if you know how to do that. Downloading big emails will cost me ... a lot! I'll also be able to receive phone calls in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, if you don't mind paying several dollars per minute to talk to me. Good news is that there is apparently a system whereby you can send me SMS for free! I haven't tested it yet (haven't got the &*^%$! phone yet, have I?) but the access is here
Well, I'm off to do some revision for this Marine Radio test tomorrow. (Maybe there'll be posters?) Feel free to ask questions using the comments box. Or comments. Or ... whatever.
I'll tell you a bit about the 'big picture' of this project in the next post. (Filled with anticipation now, aren't you?)
Ciao
W.
Sunday, January 15, 2012
Introduction
So ... here I go.
This will be an attempt to record the progress of Project Sinbad.
"But what is this Project Sinbad?" I hear you mutter in your search for the truth, the whole truth, and maybe something to sustain your interest. Well, it is a plan I formulated some time ago, though it only reached concrete levels in the last two months. It involves going to a far away place, called the USA, buying a boat, and sailing it back to Australia.
Pretty simple huh?
Well, no. It's been pretty complicated. Not extremely so, but enough to keep me on my toes, metaphorically speaking. I'll fill in the stuff I've done so far in another post, probably titled something like "Stuff I've done so far". No need to tax the imagination just yet, I figure.
And the really complicated part doesn't start till I get to the US.
It is without doubt a hare-brained, expensive and possibly very dangerous undertaking. It is also something I've wanted to do for years.
The big fact looming in my mind is that I fly out of Melbourne on the 2nd of February. That's like ... 18 days away. Gaah! So much left to do.
I guess the next few posts will be filling in the background stuff.
Later all.
W.
This will be an attempt to record the progress of Project Sinbad.
"But what is this Project Sinbad?" I hear you mutter in your search for the truth, the whole truth, and maybe something to sustain your interest. Well, it is a plan I formulated some time ago, though it only reached concrete levels in the last two months. It involves going to a far away place, called the USA, buying a boat, and sailing it back to Australia.
Pretty simple huh?
Well, no. It's been pretty complicated. Not extremely so, but enough to keep me on my toes, metaphorically speaking. I'll fill in the stuff I've done so far in another post, probably titled something like "Stuff I've done so far". No need to tax the imagination just yet, I figure.
And the really complicated part doesn't start till I get to the US.
It is without doubt a hare-brained, expensive and possibly very dangerous undertaking. It is also something I've wanted to do for years.
The big fact looming in my mind is that I fly out of Melbourne on the 2nd of February. That's like ... 18 days away. Gaah! So much left to do.
I guess the next few posts will be filling in the background stuff.
Later all.
W.
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