Nine Days Alone- The Final Push to Australia WHSE 142

I'm 6 days into a 9-day passage from the Solomon Islands to Vanuatu on not the best weather window a bit too early in this season but I'm going for it anyway cuz I'm quite motivated to get to Australia so in this episode you'll see the final push the last 3 days I'm slowly getting more and more exhausted and more and more excited to get in before the next round of bad weather [Music] hits it's day six out here I have been doing a lot of sleeping today last night the wind really kicked up and the waves really kicked up and it all got really intense so I decided that I was just going to sleep all morning I was also exhaused cuz I haven't really been getting a lot of sleep lately uh so I officially woke up on the AIS alarm went off at 11:00 the wind is still pretty Furious I have my storm jib up and one wreath in the main but what I learned yesterday when I switched to the working jib was that uh even one Reef in the main and the storm jib is less sale than three reefs in the main and the working jib so there's some sort of a learning curve going on there but uh yeah the boat's happy with this amount of sail which means it's probably blowing about 30 knots um I'd say the seas are probably I don't know 2 to 3 m everything is supposed to start calming down by the end of the day today I have some beans that I really want to make but it's just too hard to cook anything right now now cuz the waves are just so violent basically I need one hand to hold the chopping board onto the counter one hand to hold the things I'm chopping onto the chopping board one hand for the knife and one hand to keep myself on the boats so food has been pretty simple every day I see feels a little bit different it's largely dependent on the weather is it sunny is it cloudy is it rainy is it squally is it beautiful blue sky is it puffy clouds what are the waves like what is the wind like on those chill days where I'm going downwind with full sale smooth Seas Blue Sky I've probably rigged up the little underway sun shade in the cockpit and I'm reading listening to music Blissful la la la and then on the nasty days I'm down below hunkered away trying to pretend I'm somewhere else on this trip ever since I'd say the first two days I had pretty cloudy weather and then once I got away from the Solomons it's been consistently nice and sunny which is amazing but it has been really windy it's probably averaged about 30 knots with 3 m se's and I'm pretty much close called so that's made it kind of intense this morning I woke up late so I was exhausted and I've kind of spent the day down below just reading watching a little bit of Netflix listening to music sort of not really paying attention to the fact the at see beyond the usual uh checking the is doing sale changes each day I probably do about three or four sail changes on this passage cuz the wind is really up and down for the most part it's just taking reefs in and out of the main but yesterday I switched head saes for about 6 hours until I switched back as long as it's sunny I'm usually pretty happy cuz it means the batteries are happy and there's just like there's not going to be squalls that I'm worried about and I can kind of chill everything just feels brighter all right one way to know that it's definitely less rough is that I'm making popcorn right now and the pot isn't falling off the stove check it out I don't have to hold it onto the stove even though the stove gimbals uh the pot was still falling off and yes I know they make those things that you can attach onto here and they squeeze around the pot but check out how janky the stove is it's all like wired together so those things wouldn't work anymore yes we are making strides and the bowl on the towel to increase friction leaning against the water pump is not falling into the sink cooking just became so much [Applause] easier it's 2: a.m. I just put out the working jib in replacement for the storm jib and I have the full man up this weather has just dropped like a hat um the seas are way down I could probably even open the hatch right now for some air but I'm still a little gun shy about that so I'm probably going to wait for the morning when I can pay more attention but I am almost at the point where I should put up the giant head sale uh but I just don't feel like I want to do that at night so hopefully the wind doesn't drop too much more right now I'm going about four knots which is all I really ever hope to get out of this boat close hall probably tomorrow morning I'll get up and do another saale change bigger head sale but for now I'm just going to stick with a little guy so that I can sleep it's day seven I have 330 mil to go and my next big decision that's going to happen at the end of the day is whether I cut through this patch of shs and reefs or go around it going around it adds 40 m to the trip and it also creates a trickier tack angle because this whole pass I've just been a couple degrees off of close hold and to go around it I'd have to turn off the wind a bit and then once I'm around it turn really hard on the wind and it adds 40 Mi which is a whole day of sailing going through it creates a way nicer tack angle that I know I'll be able to make but if the waves start to build and I'm around funky shs and reefs that can create really big nasty snarly surprise waves I need to make sure the forecast is for pretty flat water for the next 48 hours well I when I say pretty flat I mean less than 2 m uh if I'm going to go through this stroll patch which I'd like to do but it does make it a little more intense I'm squirting around reefs and Banks and I'm going to have to pay a lot more attention at night cuz right now it's like oh if I get 5 miles of course it doesn't really matter in the scheme of things well it's the columnist it's been all trip if you accept SE of the 20ish hours I spent in the Lee of the Louis aades I want to sit in the cockpit but I'm still getting waves in the cockpit so I'm a little bit worried it's also really chilly I am sailing South again today 8 uh last night wasn't very restful I knew it wouldn't be uh cuz I'm coming between all these reaps and I just wanted to be really extra sure that I was on the right course and that I wasn't heading off towards a Reaper or a bank so I set my alarm every 40 minutes uh I've been doing every hour and 20 before that cuz there hasn't really been much to deal with um but every 40 minutes ensures that I'm never fully asleep uh and then I'm more tuned to the boat and also to the course so I got up a lot to tweak the course the wind is really uh up and down um it has been for quite a few days uh which normally is something I can kind of ignore and the get kind of zigzags a bit which is fine that's just the wind Vin being a wind Vin but when I'm between all this stuff I don't want those zigzags I want to stay pretty close to my line so I was getting up for all the wind things and but there's a period of about 2 hours from probably 6:30 to 8 30 when there was this really nice almost full moon no spray or waves coming into the cockpit and the Seas were [Music] mellow look ahead the sea is coming I know we've been through a lot but just wait h M wait for better days to come and carry us like wind in our Sals hold on tight I can smell the shore it's right in front of us if we just hold on tight this Vision that I saw is getting closer every done ooh we are dreamers of [Music] the sure so I have 75 miles to go before I get to the edge of the Great Barrier Reef and down in my mom have both been very cor about what happens tonight but they've both hinted that something is going to happen so I'm guessing the waves are going to start picking up again uh but they haven't told me to how much so I don't know the weather on my Garin says nothing terrible is going to happen so I'm not really sure but um they both seem to be under the impression that the internet weather is being a little more ominous uh so we'll see what happens there this is breakfast it's musle this bowl is about five times too big for the amount of musely I have which is perfect cuz it means it won't spill out the sides and then I have my thermos of green tea waiting for me and I'm just going to read and eat this and uh yeah it's one of those days when it's rough enough that I don't really want to do much slash can't really do much because it's just everything is really hard when you're standing so I just had uh my mom contact Townsville for me to Townsville the whole town um Breakwater Marina in Townsville is where you go to clar customs and immigration but before I left I hadn't exactly nailed down where exactly exactly uh I was supposed to go cuz I kind of thought my God I'm so ready to be done with this um I kind of thought I'd be arriving during the day and I figured I could hail the marina and they would be around as it turns out I'm probably going to be coming in at night sometime between 8: at night and 4:00 in the morning uh so I decided it was better to figure these things out while people were awake it's going to be culture shock for sure I've just spent 4 months in places where they barely have roads the whole time I was in the Solomons I saw cars twice both in the same place gizo and even there the roads aren't paved and then in Vanuatu often I wasn't in places there were cars or roads I'm used to beaches and paths and straw huts and people in Dugout canoes coming up to my boat to trade stuff with me and it's all going to be a lot when I first arrive I'm aware of that kind of excited for it it's like a what is that Spa thing where they say it's really good if you do like plunge yourself into really cold water and then plunge yourself into really hot water cuz it kind of shocks your system and gets your blood flowing again I think this is the cranial equivalent of that um I think it's great to put ourselves in these situations where we challenge our mental capacities I'm so loopy for this passage has been wild I haven't seen a day where it's blown less than 25 the whole time I've had my storm jib up all but probably the first 3 days I had my working jib up and then when I got to the Louis AIDS it started to blow 35 I've only put the working jib up for a couple hours in between that just been a lot it's been really rough I hurt my wrist yesterday I was reefing the Maine and I would say it once an hour I'll get a really huge wave that just smacks the side of my boat pours into the cockpit sends the gck on her ear at the moment that the wave was hitting I was pushing down on the winch with my left hand to get the sail up and my body was thrown so that all of my weight was on the hand holding the winch handle but as it was pushed onto it the winch handle pushed down down as they are want to do in a winch and the little slidy hand grip bit slid and I basically overextended my wrist these things have never happened before on passages this has just been really fullon and I've been close reached the whole time so that just makes it even more exciting all these things are to say that although I am in High Spirits uh I'm really excited to get in and you know it's been a challenging passage and I've Had My Moments but last night I had a beautiful time sitting under the moon listening to music this morning it feels like the waves are way down which they are I mean they're still super wavy and I'm still getting spray in the cockpit it's always mental gymnastics when we put ourselves in situations like this in life but I think I love those mental gymnastics I am excited for being culture shocked in the same way that I'm excited to be culture shocked by going to Sea and just having everything St ripped away but the wind and the waves and the boat and myself cuz that's another form of culture shock too actually um is just being alone at Sea and I guess sailing is like that it's a lot of extremes and sometimes that greats on me but sometimes it's amazing it's like my mom always said the lows are often zeros but the highs are always t today is becoming a bit squally um this is the 24 hours that I'm in and amongst the shs so even though the waves are a lot shorter they're still really Steep and super regular I took one big wave in the cockpit already and everything is just everything is just so all over the place I don't know I'm getting tired of not being able to just stand or do something with both hands I always have to be holding on to whatever surface I'm trying to stick on to I believe I've talked before about um solo sailor hallucinations and I think every solo sailor experiences these at one point or another but I've just spent the last 3 hours smelling brownies like honest to God the most delicious brownies smell ever and obviously I know that there's no way I can smell brownies because I'm alone on a boat in the middle of the ocean with no ships within at least a ton mile radius of me and I'm not making brownies I don't think unless other Holly is but yeah I can smell them uh they smell really good and I've never had a nasal hallucination before or factory hallucination I don't know what you would call that but um yet here we are and I'm kind of enjoying it I'm just leaning in daydreaming about brownies now you know having this new sale is totally changing the way that I sale which okay I'll elaborate it used to be that reefing my old man was so annoying cuz I had the wrong sized cars the main was all baggy and blown out that I just would fiddle around with the head sales more but I only have three head saes so often I was either underpowered or overpowered but now I sort of find the head sale that most matches the conditions and then use reefing and un reefing the main as a way to keep my boat balanced and with this new main I can put a reath in in about 5 minutes sorry the glaves um in about 5 minutes which is just a third of the time it takes me to change a head sale and I'm not way up forward on the boat getting getting uh sprayed and tossed around and stuff pretty much every day now I'm doing a couple Reef changes of the sale and every time I do it I'm just so thankful so thank you Ry Tasker so much and thank you guys all of you who have uh sent emails in to rly osker um for my first video of installing the sale thanking them for sponsoring me and giving me a new sale to be safer they read them all and they reached out to me that's just made my partnership with them even nicer because they see how much you guys care about me and um how much of a difference that makes in my life Day N uh wind 20 to 25 SE is just a way better chop lad uh Land Ho the conditions are picking up right now there I think it's 10t waves at 7 seconds or something and as I was getting into the reef I could tell that the conditions were picking up because they were picking up in the reef but in a smaller way I have about 60 mil to go if I had been around other people at all in the last 10 days I would say I'm getting a cold but I don't know maybe I'm allergic to Australia 60 Mi to go so the unfortunate thing with this pass is that it's 70 Mi due north of Townsville and the wind is basically Southeast so I do have to make I think one tack which isn't as bad as I thought it could be which puts me in around 10 on the fuel Pier all I just did was get up to take a reef out of the sail so now instead of two reefs it's got one and the storm jib still really loving the storm jib I think if the wind is 20 to 30 the storm jib just works better when I'm close hauled the working jib is better if it's more like 15 to 25 and then if it's going to stay in the 20s I think this is how I want my boat balances really well I don't know with more of the what is what they say isn't it that when it's actually is that what they say I don't know someone told me that when it's heavy conditions you want the weight centered into the middle of the boat which kind of makes sense cuz sometimes if I've got three reefs in the main and the working jib it just feels like the bow is smashing into all the waves and on this trip I had huge waves and of course the bow did Smash too many a wave but I didn't feel as bad I guess people with roller filling can kind of play around with cell trim like that but um this is the first time I've really messed around with it yes it's calm she says I just made some celebratory lanto pancakes it's like a pancake crepe mixture times we act like a fool not aware we're trouble makers sometimes we try to be cool not being G only takers stop for a minute stop and breathe for a minute don't get over your head try to listen instead won't you think for a minute who you want to be for a minute don't get over your head you're like everyone else are you you could gain from me and have it nicer no when to talk when it shut your mouth feel so moody always set you fighter try to open up your mind sometimes you'll be just [Music] F you'll be just F sometimes we when we're sad and sometimes we laugh when we're afraid sometimes we smile when we're mad and some we wished we never said stop for a minute stop and breathe for a minute long it over your head try to listen instead won't you think for a minute who you want to be for a minute don't get over your head you're like everyone else aren't you you could G from being nicer KN when to talk when it shut your mouth you're so moody such a fighter try to open up your mind sometimes you'll be just man I haven't seen civilization like this since New Zealand it's been 4 months since I've seen anywhere near this much of going on and it's pretty wild I'm getting kind of nervous I'm not going to lie as the sunsets the beautiful full moon is rising behind me and all of these city lights are starting to come out and I knew Townsville was a big city but I thought it was smaller than this I'm in I'm tied up to the dock I don't think I've ever been this tired after a passage in my life uh as I was coming in through the break wall of the marina I had to keep reminding myself to stay awake I've sort of tidied up down below um partially it doesn't matter because Customs is going to tear it apart tomorrow anyway uh the rest I'll get up earlyish tomorrow maybe 6:30 I can't imagine they'll be here before 8:00 good morning from Australia I slept a solid almost 10 hours last night so this morning I got up finished tidying the boat um did some stretching which felt really good after 9 days of bracing myself I have a coffee that I have not yet drunk this is just awake collie with enough sleep and I have a game plan because in Australia they tear apart your boat so this is the strategy for making it easier for them so I've taken everything out of the main cabin all of the cushions and stuff I left the radio on in case they hel me but it's really annoying um and then I figure they'll start here and then all the cushions are in the v birth and once they're while they're working on the cabin I'll take everything out of the quarter birth and put it in the cockpit so they can do the quarter birth next and then while they're doing the quarter birth I'll take everything out of the VB birth and put it in the main cabin so they can then do the VB birth area and then all that's left is the Laz so I hope they like my plan you know I feel like we get annoyed with people who are just doing their job like when you're at the airport and they need to search your bag often times I see people getting annoyed at the people searching the bag but but they're not the ones who made the rules right they're just doing their job and I once had this lady okay I was flying from Maine this is a disco ball origin story so I'm going to stand in front of the disco ball which is taken kind of a beating um so I was flying from Maine I bought the disco ball I had a disco ball a skateboard a set of paints and a speaker in my backpack that I was carrying onto the plane and I guess the speaker uh flagged in the system and and so the lady said I'm going to have to take apart your hole it was a backpack and it was at the bottom and she looked like she was just ready for me to lay into her and I said you know what it's don't worry it's just your job I don't mind uh and she looked like she was going to cry from relief and um then proceeded to take out all of this stuff and I was like hi I'm normal uh but I think the moral that I learned from that story was that these guys who are doing these jobs are just people and they just are doing jobs so I'm going to try to make it as easiest possible for them because one way or another they're going to go through my entire boat is it annoying yes is it invasive yes am I nervous about it of course I am um but it's going to happen and I knew that coming to Australia this is what they do so I'm going to try to make it as smooth as possible and they charge $50 every 15 minutes so that's another incentive to make it as smooth as possible but mostly I just feel like I don't know if you're kind you get kindness back and that's what I want to do with the officials who are in control of telling me if I can come into the the country or not I'm so happy I'm so happy I'm in Australia I made it I picked a really weather window too early in the season cuz I just wanted to get here and was it shitty yes but I'm here so it all worked out in the end thank you guys for watching this week's video thank you in particular to everyone who donated and helped me to pay for my haul out in Australia and overhaul of the boat it was a bit pricier than I thought it would be I ended up stuck in the Boatyard for an extra week the Boatyard charge is a lot of money per day and I to get a lot of different parts that I didn't think I would need and get things replaced that I didn't think I'd need to replace so I do really appreciate all of that it is what helps me carry on with this because all the money that I get is from you guys from patrons and from the little bit of AD Revenue that I get from YouTube so thank you big big thank you for all of that um I put out new videos every two weeks on YouTube and for my patrons you guys get a snack on the weeks that I don't put out full- length YouTube vide for Patron snacks it's any requests that you guys have about things on my boat that maybe you want to know a little bit more about or just um life updates on what I'm doing currently cuz my videos lag behind and yeah just personal interactions of all the things you might want to know and thank you Tish for always reminding me when I need to do another edit uh so that I can sit down and make that happen on my little computer here at my newwork station this is one of the things I did in the overhaul is build this flip up table so that I can do edits on the computer um in an easier fashion and thank you guys for all of your comments I love reading them and thanks for your watches and for subscribing uh to my channel because that helps me get more views on my vide if you'd like to become a patron and join the patreon team my patreon is patreon.com tippy and for onetime donations I have a PayPal paypal.me and I believe that is all so uh patrons I'll see you next week on patreon and YouTubers I'll see you in another two weeks with another fill length episode

Channel: Wind Hippie Sailing

Views: 92,791

Keywords: sail, sailing, sailor, sailboat, grinde, wind hippie, windhippie, boatlizard, holly martin, gecko, ocean passage, ocean crossing, at sea, boat, tiny boat, small boat, liveaboard, low budget sailing, south pacific, Guadalcanal, solomon islands, solomons, cruising, solo sailing, singlehanding, alone at sea, low budget, ww2, circumnavigating, circumnavigation, female sailor, remote, simple, young, adventure, around the world, sailing tips, bad weather, storm, heavy weather, gale, huge waves

Id: wnLy_kKTOFM

Length: 29min 4sec (1744 seconds)

Published: Mon Apr 29 2024