I am not normally the one discussing the actual act of sailing the yacht. From the beginning we decided that Barry will be the captain, skipper or whatever name you wish to call him. Not that I have not, can not or do not actually have to sail and navigate on board Yrumoar but rather that I am the first mate, navigator, chef, teacher, mother and wife.
We have to this point had the same courses, the same instruction and lessons and the same experience when it comes to sailing. The difference being that Barry is far more confident and believes he can sail anything. Just like he can drive, fly or ride anything made by man. He is transportation crazy, he loves all types of transport from boats, planes, trains, bikes, trucks and cars. The trick being that he likes to be in control of these modes of transport. He hates being a passenger in the car, he always drives if we are together in the car, he hates being a passenger on an airplane, he would rather drive 2000km than fly it and he rides his bike like a pro…all this suits me fine but on our yacht he can not be at the helm and in control 24 hours a day on a 35 day ocean crossing so having 2 qualified, confident and competent people is an absolute necessity. Even our resident He-man needs to sleep sometime!
Now for me the 400 odd hours of ocean sailing experience coupled with the 400 odd hours of dam sailing experience have done nothing to improve my confidence. I panic when we get too close to land or when the area is busy. I don’t enjoy docking and departing under motor in a confined space and I feel as if every time I take the helm we either go off course or go into irons (turn directly into the wind to the “NO GO” zone). I end up getting frustrated and returning the helm to Barry who completes the task at hand.
In theory I understand how all the sailing works, but in practise I have struggled with feeling the wind and keeping the yacht on course. Barry on the other hand sails beautifully, parks and manoeuvres under power perfectly and generally has no problem. I am not unable to perform all the tasks but can only perform them if there is a competent sailor nearby (Barry fits this bill for me).
So this week we took Yrumoar out in a force 5 (17 – 22 knots of wind). Barry did all the sail and rope work while I took the helm for the whole day. I had to keep her into the wind for over an hour while Barry jury rigged a new tack (our main is still not fixed) and Barry and Rauen hoisted the main with a reef in it. We hoisted the jib and we sailed up and down inside the harbour practising the technique of tacking (we have had to use the motor to tack without the main sail up as our speed decreases to much once we have managed to backwind the sail. After a few practise tacks up and down we left the harbour mouth and headed offshore. I managed to keep Yrumoar on course and as close to the wind as she has ever been, we did not go into irons nor did we go off course and I felt the confidence growing with every minute.
Probably for the first time I thoroughly enjoyed the open ocean, Barry below dealing with Kyle’s fear (which I usually have to deal with and that is decreasing) and checking the charts and performing the navigation work (which he has never done before).
I felt exhilarated and had some of the most fun onboard that I have ever had. Barry discovered that his problem lies with the navigation an area where I am not at all concerned and once we were back a the marina I showed him a few things he had forgotten.
Many more things happen this past week but for me the confidence boost I got from actually being the helmsman and dealing with the wind, waves and the open ocean is a great step towards my confidence to drop the lines and push off when the time is right. We are after all taking to a life afloat!
Saturday, August 28, 2010
Saturday, August 21, 2010
21st August
Due to the current teachers strike our two boys have been unable to attend school. Most schools in the “burbs” are open and operating, their school is open but no teaching is being done due to the poor learner turn out. (They have averaged less than 100 students per day). So we kept the kids home on Wednesday and by Thursday we had decided to come down to the boat so I find myself, pleasantly I might add, aboard our yacht for an unexpected long weekend. Axel and Peta decided to come down for the weekend as well so we even have friends aboard.
I have taken the time with the kids at home to do a practise run for home schooling and it seemed to work out well. We completed some prepared reading, some unprepared reading, Rauen wrote a narrative essay of 150 words and Kyle wrote a half a page describing a character. We took 20 unknown words for the book we had completed reading and look them up and wrote out their meaning. We acted out the meanings of the words and even found some more words while doing the dictionary work to look up. All in all a very successful and enjoyable couple of days teaching and learning. I am sticking to English at the moment as this is a subject I have already received the work for. Other subjects will follow once the next order arrives with the complete syllabus for both boys.
When we arrived at the yacht yesterday the first tack was to open the stop cocks and close the bilges (which are still remaining dry). The next one was to search the cupboards and other areas the roaches were hiding before and to our delight there were none to be seen…I still don’t think we have won the war yet though. We then unpacked and cleaned the cockpit area before Axel and Peta arrived. We tried our the thinners on removing permanent marker and found it only worked on certain surfaces. We quickly removed all the Debenair names from these surfaces and realising we needed a few things, I headed off to Pick n Pay to find a permanent marker, some batteries and some food and coldrinks.
As I arrived back Axel and Peta were looking for a parking so we unloaded the cars and headed back to the yacht for some more unpacking and a grand tour before settling down for a few sunset drinks and lots of laughter! What can I say life a yacht is awesome!
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| The view from our cockpit |
I have taken the time with the kids at home to do a practise run for home schooling and it seemed to work out well. We completed some prepared reading, some unprepared reading, Rauen wrote a narrative essay of 150 words and Kyle wrote a half a page describing a character. We took 20 unknown words for the book we had completed reading and look them up and wrote out their meaning. We acted out the meanings of the words and even found some more words while doing the dictionary work to look up. All in all a very successful and enjoyable couple of days teaching and learning. I am sticking to English at the moment as this is a subject I have already received the work for. Other subjects will follow once the next order arrives with the complete syllabus for both boys.
When we arrived at the yacht yesterday the first tack was to open the stop cocks and close the bilges (which are still remaining dry). The next one was to search the cupboards and other areas the roaches were hiding before and to our delight there were none to be seen…I still don’t think we have won the war yet though. We then unpacked and cleaned the cockpit area before Axel and Peta arrived. We tried our the thinners on removing permanent marker and found it only worked on certain surfaces. We quickly removed all the Debenair names from these surfaces and realising we needed a few things, I headed off to Pick n Pay to find a permanent marker, some batteries and some food and coldrinks.
 |
| Before name removal |
As I arrived back Axel and Peta were looking for a parking so we unloaded the cars and headed back to the yacht for some more unpacking and a grand tour before settling down for a few sunset drinks and lots of laughter! What can I say life a yacht is awesome!
Wednesday, August 18, 2010
17th August
Had a rather exciting week so far…
On Monday morning we paid a visit to the SA Sailing office in Germiston and managed to get Yrumoar officially registered both into Barry and my names as well as complete the name change from Debenair to Yrumoar.
On Monday afternoon, we passed the tailor and dropped of our curtain to be stitched, we will get it back in 2 weeks ready to take with on the 23rd on September…funny to think it is still more than a month until we can go down again…we are becoming more and more desperate to move.
We also went passed the printers offices and collected our new boat stickers, boy are they gorgeous. The colour is bright and the stickers look great! We have 2 for the back of the steps and one for each side on the bow. First we must remove the Debenair stickers but that shouldn’t be too difficult.
We also took Kyle for his first swimming lesson last week Thursday and will be back today. He did so well, even putting his face under the water. He should be swimming in no time. As we are moving in December so he only has until then to get the basics. We can practise swimming at the yacht club on a daily basis once we are down there. As long as he can float, go under the water and doggy paddle we will all feel much better about it and hopefully he will feel better about the whole trip in general.
On Monday morning we paid a visit to the SA Sailing office in Germiston and managed to get Yrumoar officially registered both into Barry and my names as well as complete the name change from Debenair to Yrumoar.
On Monday afternoon, we passed the tailor and dropped of our curtain to be stitched, we will get it back in 2 weeks ready to take with on the 23rd on September…funny to think it is still more than a month until we can go down again…we are becoming more and more desperate to move.
We also went passed the printers offices and collected our new boat stickers, boy are they gorgeous. The colour is bright and the stickers look great! We have 2 for the back of the steps and one for each side on the bow. First we must remove the Debenair stickers but that shouldn’t be too difficult.
We also took Kyle for his first swimming lesson last week Thursday and will be back today. He did so well, even putting his face under the water. He should be swimming in no time. As we are moving in December so he only has until then to get the basics. We can practise swimming at the yacht club on a daily basis once we are down there. As long as he can float, go under the water and doggy paddle we will all feel much better about it and hopefully he will feel better about the whole trip in general.
Sunday, August 15, 2010
11th August
We arrived safely at 9pm on Thursday night and found Yrumoar still happily tied up to her mooring. We woke up early on Friday and discovered we had cockroaches on the yacht. Now, when we first moved on board we knew there were roaches, but after much roach killer and numerous traps we thought we had solved our problem…alas we had not!
We decided that breakfast on the yacht was out of the question and packed all food items into the fridge, placed good old Fumitabs around the boat and set them alight. We locked the door and left for the mall. Rauen mentioned that maybe machine guns weren’t good enough to win our war, but our nuke was bound to work! (sadly we found a lone roach when we were leaving – roaches do survive nukes!) We will be back at war when we return in September.
We decided that Breakfast at Maxi’s was a plan, followed by a little shopping for our supplies. We returned to the boat with arms full of goodies at 2pm. We then managed to get our new yacht membership cards from the yacht. We are now officially members of ZYC and can now officially apply for Yrumoar's name change! Barry and I spent the afternoon cleaning all the cupboards, shelves and floors in the yacht…great start to a long weekend.
Saturday morning dawned bright and we decided to take a sail. It was Dean’s first trip to the ocean, first time on a yacht and it was great fun to see things through his eyes.
He asked a load of questions and enjoyed himself tremendously. We first took a short trip around the harbour, then exited through the washing machine into the deep blue yonder, much to Kyle’s horror…
(this face makes me feel awful about taking Kyle with on this adventure – I am such a terrible mother!)
When we got back to the marina, the boys went down to the yacht club to play soccer while Barry and I emptied the fore deck lockers. The front one was empty (we have now put the shade cover in this one). We are trying to keep the weight closest to the middle of the boat. There was so much stuff in the second locker, we just kept coming up with more and more every time we entered into the depths of this enormous locker. We managed to get everything sorted and took a whole heap of things up to the storeroom. We now have a whole heap of things we want to fit to this locker, but first we want some hooks, brackets and the like to ensure we maintain an important boat philosophy: “A place for everything and everything in its place”.
On Sunday morning, I called my dad to ask if there was NEWS about the looming teachers strike. He said that he had received a letter stating that the kids would be safer at home….great! That literally meant an extra day (and an extra long weekend). We decided that to celebrate we would take a hike to the beach.
It was a little over 3 km’s each way and we took a walk, playing soccer on the way and a dip in the ocean followed by ice-cream before the long hike back made the day complete. We also managed to find a bucket and spade for Kyle to play on the “beach” at the yacht club with…we will spend many hours building sandcastles in the future.
Once we got back from the hike, Barry and I went up to the yacht club to catch the end of the Hobie cat racing taking place there. Neither of us have any idea about the rules and after a while decided that a good, hot shower and an early night would be more fun.
On Monday we woke up to the dreaded South Westerly blowing like crazy, it was overcast, windy and cold…guess we can’t have glorious weather everyday.
We decided to read the book I had brought with, this is one of the books we received for the home- schooling programme and we spent the day reading, analysing and discussing the themes, characters and plot. We also spoke about the use of grammar to create mood and many parts of speech…it all went well and the kids even commented that I managed to make English interesting. The book was also a great read, why not try it yourself? Tribes by Cathrine Macphail.(You can get it through the Kalahari link on the right)
On Tuesday we took the long drive home, after struggling to carry the bags to the car on a marina swamped with waves and moving like a roller coaster. Even the birds could not fly into the pumping, howling wind as a small wild bird eventually landed on my shoulder and allowed me to take him from the marina walk-on up to the more sheltered boatyard.
All in all, a successful weekend which had all the aspects of a fantastic holiday and a great school education, hopefully this glimpses of what we can expect in the future. We even did geography on the way home while playing our near famous countries game.
We decided that breakfast on the yacht was out of the question and packed all food items into the fridge, placed good old Fumitabs around the boat and set them alight. We locked the door and left for the mall. Rauen mentioned that maybe machine guns weren’t good enough to win our war, but our nuke was bound to work! (sadly we found a lone roach when we were leaving – roaches do survive nukes!) We will be back at war when we return in September.
We decided that Breakfast at Maxi’s was a plan, followed by a little shopping for our supplies. We returned to the boat with arms full of goodies at 2pm. We then managed to get our new yacht membership cards from the yacht. We are now officially members of ZYC and can now officially apply for Yrumoar's name change! Barry and I spent the afternoon cleaning all the cupboards, shelves and floors in the yacht…great start to a long weekend.
Saturday morning dawned bright and we decided to take a sail. It was Dean’s first trip to the ocean, first time on a yacht and it was great fun to see things through his eyes.
When we got back to the marina, the boys went down to the yacht club to play soccer while Barry and I emptied the fore deck lockers. The front one was empty (we have now put the shade cover in this one). We are trying to keep the weight closest to the middle of the boat. There was so much stuff in the second locker, we just kept coming up with more and more every time we entered into the depths of this enormous locker. We managed to get everything sorted and took a whole heap of things up to the storeroom. We now have a whole heap of things we want to fit to this locker, but first we want some hooks, brackets and the like to ensure we maintain an important boat philosophy: “A place for everything and everything in its place”.
 |
| Goodies from the locker |
It was a little over 3 km’s each way and we took a walk, playing soccer on the way and a dip in the ocean followed by ice-cream before the long hike back made the day complete. We also managed to find a bucket and spade for Kyle to play on the “beach” at the yacht club with…we will spend many hours building sandcastles in the future.
Once we got back from the hike, Barry and I went up to the yacht club to catch the end of the Hobie cat racing taking place there. Neither of us have any idea about the rules and after a while decided that a good, hot shower and an early night would be more fun.
On Monday we woke up to the dreaded South Westerly blowing like crazy, it was overcast, windy and cold…guess we can’t have glorious weather everyday.
We decided to read the book I had brought with, this is one of the books we received for the home- schooling programme and we spent the day reading, analysing and discussing the themes, characters and plot. We also spoke about the use of grammar to create mood and many parts of speech…it all went well and the kids even commented that I managed to make English interesting. The book was also a great read, why not try it yourself? Tribes by Cathrine Macphail.(You can get it through the Kalahari link on the right)
On Tuesday we took the long drive home, after struggling to carry the bags to the car on a marina swamped with waves and moving like a roller coaster. Even the birds could not fly into the pumping, howling wind as a small wild bird eventually landed on my shoulder and allowed me to take him from the marina walk-on up to the more sheltered boatyard.
All in all, a successful weekend which had all the aspects of a fantastic holiday and a great school education, hopefully this glimpses of what we can expect in the future. We even did geography on the way home while playing our near famous countries game.
Tuesday, August 3, 2010
3rd August
We have been at home for the last week and decided to get a few things done. We have between now and December to get the house completely finished and up for rent so we can start with our plan of 2 weeks here, 2 weeks there, but not sacrifice any income we can derive from the new arrangement.
We took a trip up to Deneysville at the Vaal dam to Star Marine to purchase a few items for Yrumoar, a wind indicator at the top of the mast (our current one is very small) and a few other odds and ends we found to be way more expensive in Richards Bay.
We also started the massive job of installing the 2nd bathroom (main en suite). We worked all day yesterday soldering copper pipes and tap fitting together to get the plumbing pipes that fit inside the walls completed, we are nearly there. Today we will complete this task and start the next one (brandering to erect the ceiling boards or testing the pipes under pressure, maybe building the bath walls or the shower floor height – we will see what follows in natural progression). We should complete this bathroom before the end of September and be able to move on to the next project (cupboard doors for the bedrooms).
We are going down to the yacht on Thursday and will receive our new membership card from the yacht club. This means that we can begin our SAS process for the renaming of Debenair to Yrumoar. The legal side needs to be done first.
Amy has asked to come with us to the SAS offices this time as last time she did not register to get her day skippers and still needs to complete that task. She visited us this weekend and gave me the new semester timetable, from this we have decided that a Monday morning would be the best time to go, so we will be doing this before the end of August. We then expect to wait a few weeks while the documents are sent to head office checked, updated and a new SAS certificate is issued with the vessel renamed and officially registered into our names.
This month Barry and I have been officially married for 10 years! That’s a pretty big number to me (at this point a 1/3 of my life) so we have decided that we will buy ourselves an anniversary present (we normally don’t). There is an EPIRB for sale in Richards Bay for a decent price, (licensing an registration will be extra) that together with a small monetary deposit into our “cruising kitty” seems like a great idea to me…we will see what the trip this weekend brings regarding the EPIRB.
Every time I look around the order and priority of each item required on the boat seems to come under scrutiny. While looking at the documents to register a ship licence we realised that we can with 1 registration fee apply for the licences for all our “radio equipment” on board. This includes an SSB radio, a VHF radio, Radar, Radar transponder, hand held VHF transceiver for our small survival craft, EPIRB and any other radio equipment.
Our current licence is on the previous owner’s name and needs to be reregistered. We have decided to wait until March when the annual haul out needs to be done. We have decided that we should prioritise the radio equipment to allow a new licence to be purchased for all the equipment at the same time thus reducing the initial registration costs. This means that items we would have placed lower on our “TO DO” list have been brought up to sooner to reduce registration costs.
I have also printed off a list of “required” items on the safety authorities CAT A list to ensure we prioritise any items we do not yet have on board to register the vessel as a CAT A (no restriction on off-shore distance) during the March haul-out. These items will also need to be prioritised and added to our “TO DO” list.
This weekend when we are down at the yacht we will be going through the yacht with a fine-tooth comb searching for all and any “Debenair” stickers, markings or writings on the yacht, this includes covers for harnesses, old logbooks, lifejackets, the actual boat stickers and any other items that contain the name. These will need to be either removed permanently or collected for the burning of the old name during the name changing ceremony.
I have also printed off a list of “required” items on the safety authorities CAT A list to ensure we prioritise any items we do not yet have on board to register the vessel as a CAT A (no restriction on off-shore distance) during the March haul-out. These items will also need to be prioritised and added to our “TO DO” list.
This weekend when we are down at the yacht we will be going through the yacht with a fine-tooth comb searching for all and any “Debenair” stickers, markings or writings on the yacht, this includes covers for harnesses, old logbooks, lifejackets, the actual boat stickers and any other items that contain the name. These will need to be either removed permanently or collected for the burning of the old name during the name changing ceremony, invites will go out to all those of you who have joined our Facebook group.
Oh well, off to carry on with the bathroom work, getting the house ready is becoming a pre-December priority!
We took a trip up to Deneysville at the Vaal dam to Star Marine to purchase a few items for Yrumoar, a wind indicator at the top of the mast (our current one is very small) and a few other odds and ends we found to be way more expensive in Richards Bay.
 |
| Vaal dam wall |
We are going down to the yacht on Thursday and will receive our new membership card from the yacht club. This means that we can begin our SAS process for the renaming of Debenair to Yrumoar. The legal side needs to be done first.
Amy has asked to come with us to the SAS offices this time as last time she did not register to get her day skippers and still needs to complete that task. She visited us this weekend and gave me the new semester timetable, from this we have decided that a Monday morning would be the best time to go, so we will be doing this before the end of August. We then expect to wait a few weeks while the documents are sent to head office checked, updated and a new SAS certificate is issued with the vessel renamed and officially registered into our names.
This month Barry and I have been officially married for 10 years! That’s a pretty big number to me (at this point a 1/3 of my life) so we have decided that we will buy ourselves an anniversary present (we normally don’t). There is an EPIRB for sale in Richards Bay for a decent price, (licensing an registration will be extra) that together with a small monetary deposit into our “cruising kitty” seems like a great idea to me…we will see what the trip this weekend brings regarding the EPIRB.
Every time I look around the order and priority of each item required on the boat seems to come under scrutiny. While looking at the documents to register a ship licence we realised that we can with 1 registration fee apply for the licences for all our “radio equipment” on board. This includes an SSB radio, a VHF radio, Radar, Radar transponder, hand held VHF transceiver for our small survival craft, EPIRB and any other radio equipment.
Our current licence is on the previous owner’s name and needs to be reregistered. We have decided to wait until March when the annual haul out needs to be done. We have decided that we should prioritise the radio equipment to allow a new licence to be purchased for all the equipment at the same time thus reducing the initial registration costs. This means that items we would have placed lower on our “TO DO” list have been brought up to sooner to reduce registration costs.
I have also printed off a list of “required” items on the safety authorities CAT A list to ensure we prioritise any items we do not yet have on board to register the vessel as a CAT A (no restriction on off-shore distance) during the March haul-out. These items will also need to be prioritised and added to our “TO DO” list.
This weekend when we are down at the yacht we will be going through the yacht with a fine-tooth comb searching for all and any “Debenair” stickers, markings or writings on the yacht, this includes covers for harnesses, old logbooks, lifejackets, the actual boat stickers and any other items that contain the name. These will need to be either removed permanently or collected for the burning of the old name during the name changing ceremony.
I have also printed off a list of “required” items on the safety authorities CAT A list to ensure we prioritise any items we do not yet have on board to register the vessel as a CAT A (no restriction on off-shore distance) during the March haul-out. These items will also need to be prioritised and added to our “TO DO” list.
This weekend when we are down at the yacht we will be going through the yacht with a fine-tooth comb searching for all and any “Debenair” stickers, markings or writings on the yacht, this includes covers for harnesses, old logbooks, lifejackets, the actual boat stickers and any other items that contain the name. These will need to be either removed permanently or collected for the burning of the old name during the name changing ceremony, invites will go out to all those of you who have joined our Facebook group.
Oh well, off to carry on with the bathroom work, getting the house ready is becoming a pre-December priority!
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