Sailing Boat ‘Sea Feather’

We recently bought “Sea Feather” a Offshore 41 foot Fibre Glass Yawl made by Cheoy Lee in Hong Kong. We bought her in the Philippines from Dave an American Guy who had owned her for most of her 30 years. She is beautiful and sea worthy and sails very well… we are proud of the fact that we won the 3 day Easter Regatta at Puerto Galera 3 days after we took her over…see http://www.pgyc.org/home.html as a link to the Yacht Club at Puerto Galera.

Worth a look if you have time and have any interest in sailing. If you are ever in the area they will make you very welcome.

We intend to split our time between our house in Balingasag (See page entitled “Our House in Balinasag”) and exploring the beautiful Islands of the Philippines on Sea Feather. I am sure she will feature in many future posts.

To give you a taste of our adventures to date I wrote this article for the ‘Cruising News’, the quarterly magazine about sailing in the Philippines…….

 

 

“What do you think Darl, are you Ok to continue?” The Skipper asked feeling far from confident himself as another big wave dumped water over Sea Feather’s decks and the prospect of 12 hours of darkness plunging into big waves, hard on the wind, wasn’t exactly how he had imagined their first night at sea would be. But his 1^st Mates encouraging and brave smile gave him the confidence he needed. He didn’t feel they were in any danger, the Cheoy Lee Offshore 41 was handling things very well, it was stories of unlit fishing buoys made of enormous steel drums and a friend’s near disaster last week, in these very waters, in a very similar boat when the chain plates failed and the rig nearly went over the side, that played on his mind…..

We have just sailed 300+ miles from Busuanga to Bonbonon near Dumaguete on the South Coast of Negros!

Well, as you might gather from the opening paragraph, the trip was pretty rough at times.

We started out on Sunday morning after unsuccessfully trying to get Ice from the 5 star resort, the local Ice plant was reportedly out of Ice too and our fridge was not working… no cold beer on this trip! (Then the fridge started working and Able Seaman Jimmie had the only beer we had onboard but he deserved it… the fridge has stopped working again so it must be a loose connection somewhere-must try and find it) The wind was about 15 knots from the South East at the mooring at “El Rio” resort, not good news as we wanted to go South East but we were told that the wind should be East to North East once we got outside! The weather forecast I checked said the same thing, so we left. The wind must have had trouble connecting to the Internet to find out what it was meant to do because we spent the next 24 hours going against a strong South Easterly – Busuanga didn’t want us to leave!

We had seriously considered leaving Sea Feather in Busuanga. Our host Mike had told us there was a good mooring with a sunken buoy around the corner in a sheltered bay we could use but the diver he sent to locate it couldn’t find it. We took this as an sign we should make the journey to Negros and to take Sea Feather closer to home. It meant a 280 mile journey but we felt we could do it and hoped for moderate and following North Easterly winds.

Well it was a lot more South East than North East and strengthened by being funnelled between the mountainous Islands. Strong tides added to the size of the seas.

After 24 hours with many thoughts of “Why did we ever start this” when the next sea washed over the deck and she took another great roll we reached the coast of Panay but the second afternoon started with a light following wind and sea, life was good again. That changed a few hours later as we started to cross the Panay Channel between Panay and Negros The wind started to make the rigging sing again being funnelled through the straights between the two Islands and we started taking water aboard again! At least it was on the beam and we were travelling in the right direction. We had the foresail rolled to about 70% and the mizzen up, the mainsail was down. With this sail plan we were comfortable and doing 7.5 knots!

We got into the shelter of Negros by early morning and relative calm returned. We ran the motor to keep the speed up as we were hoping to make Bonbonon by nightfall. We would have done so except a broken fan belt lost us a precious hour or so and we had to decide to anchor for the night so we could arrive in daylight. The channel into the harbour at Bonbonon is mainly unmarked, twists back and forth and with the added excitement of fish nets put out across the channel some nights, so it is best attempted in daylight!

So we decided to anchor in a large bay about 30 miles from Bonbonon with good holding in sand. It should offer shelter from the Easterlies blowing we thought. We arrived about 2.00 pm and anchored about half a mile from the beach, not being sure how quickly the depth decreased close in. Less than an hour later we were pitching and rolling badly from a strong wind that decided to blow from the West for a change! It kept that up for a couple of hours then gradually dropped and gave us a fairly peaceful night.

We wanted to make sure we would make it in daylight so left at 6.00 am and had a wonderful reaching sail across the bay for the first 9 miles in water sheltered by the mountains to windward. “This is the life” we thought we will soon be there and even sent a txt ordering lunch and some cold beer to be ready when we arrived!

We should have known better.

As we reached the seaward end of the bay with about 15 miles to run, we could see white caps ahead and our peaceful sail suddenly changed to crashing to across the waves at nearly 8 knots, even though we quickly rolled in the headsail completely. Sea Feather sailed very well under main and mizzen but we were taking plenty of water across the decks with big bucket fulls throwing themselves into the cockpit every few minutes, So much for our anticipated early lunch. Thank goodness the water was warm!

We continued this way to our next waypoint and then the turn to the final waypoint at the entrance to Bonbonon put the wind right ahead, again! I decided to try motor sail with the wind just off the bow enough to keep the sails filled. With our speed much reduced the motion became a lot less and we were managing about 3 knots almost in the direction we wanted to go, so we were content to think we would get there in about 3 hours. We could do it, we were ‘Sea Feather Sailors’. We even made a Movie.

In fact the seas gradually moderated and the wind dropped a little and so our speed increased and it took us about 2 hours. 1st Mate Gina and Able Seaman Jimmy battled gallantly to get the Mizzen and Mainsails down and stowed… not easy on a pitching deck with the wind trying to blow it all away from you but anticipating that it would be difficult, we started with plenty of time to spare and all was ship shape as we entered the harbour.

3 buoys had been recently placed to mark the channel at the seaward end, which reassuringly confirmed my GPS entrance point, and as the shallow water at this point is very hard coral reef, I was very pleased to have that confirmation. The buoys ended once inside but we followed our nose at slow speed, pleased that the shallows were now mud/sand banks if we got it wrong. In fact the only problem we encountered was an anchor rope floating right across the channel from a moored fishing boat! I cut the motor and prayed… the rope passed safely beneath us without snagging anything, thank you Mr Cheoy Lee for your smooth underwater design.

The wind was still strong, but the water calm inside as we approached the mooring buoy,

“Slowly does it Colin, just hold her against the wind, just nudge up to the buoy”… especially as Nicky the local guy who owns the moorings came out in his tiny outrigger and was between the boat and the buoy. “That’s it right alongside, pick it up Jimmy, You have it…great, but you can’t get it aboard its too tight?” “Ok let go going around again…, there we missed all the other boats, let get it this time”…Same problem “Get a rope through the eye…cant do it!”…OK third time lucky…”Shit the engine has stopped!”

Skipper runs down below and restarts praying the wind won’t sweep us down onto that boat that is very close while having no control…Luck is with us and Sea Feather behaved beautifully, “Let’s go around again. Rope ready?…get it through and back on deck… Well done guys we are here!”

When the wind dropped enough the next afternoon, we winched the buoy with its too short rope out of the water and shacked our own hard eyed rope to the swivel, a chain just below and attached another line to the original line. I feel a lot more secure now. We are now riding to our own line, with the chain lying up and down under its own weight with the original line still attached as a third backup.

Our remaining problem was our very small dinghy, fine to row in sheltered water, but our landing place was upwind and the wind was strong. Did we use the mismatched oars or risk the outboard that gave the boat frightening instability? We made it with the oars that time but we have to buy a new larger, more stable tender. Nigel the amicable owner of a small and inexpensive resort just around the corner runs a small boatyard here, so he will probably have the solution to our problem.

Now I have to work out how I get the near new 3.5 HP motor I have in storage in Australia here!

Aint sailing Fun?

In a wonderful way the times of discomfort and challenges soon fade from memory but the feeling of achievement stays proudly with you. I guess you have to actually go sailing to understand.