Here are a few extreme stories of the worst things that have happened to me in my twenty years of sailing. This is definately not normal life on Wallaby Creek. CYCLONES AND HEAVY WEATHER The Great Southern Ocean 20th January 2000 _________________________ Lat 40 S Longtitude 127 East 1/3 across from West Australia to Victoria Sailing in the ROARING FORTIES _______________________________ It has been a hard trip. All the way down the west coast of Australia from Broome there have been strong headwinds. Mostly just Jan and I. Now I have Nathalie Di Toro my young Swiss girlfriend with me. Since leaving Albany we have been in strong winds and gales. Driven backwards for days as we tried to stand up against six metre waves and gale force winds. Now we have squalls and storms and winds and waves over the boat. Poor Wallaby Creek has been down with her rails under water, the deck winches under water - but bravely she stands up again and charges into the next onslaught. Nat and I have spent most of this trip inside. Outside is a cold and windy and terrible world. We have made lots of love, drunk a couple of bottles of rum, listened to Jimmy Buffet, and eaten frozen pizzas. All while wearing six layers of clothes and under three blankets. The no 3 jib is blown, the no 1 is totally shredded and almost tore the boat apart as it went. Left me exhausted and soaked in sweat as I battled to get it down, then left it and then faced another gale at dawn with the sail still unfurled. FUCK !! I STILL DON'T KNOW THE RIG IS STILL STANDING. Now we still have the mental battle to get through. 800 miles to go. Also both autopilots broken, solar panels broken, running backstay broken. I have done three trips to the top of the mast. Also pulled out the salt water pump and the heat exchanger and found a sea weed blockage. Now the engine leaks. One burner on the stove is still working. Water below, everything wet. Not one dry thing anywhere inside the boat. January 2000 Alan Phillips ` * ** *** **** FROM BALI INDONESIA TO DARWIN AUSTRALIA __________________________________________ I arrived in Benoa Harbour, Bali, Indonesia on Saturday 10 th December 1994 at dusk. Three weeks after picking up the anchor in Singapore. 1,000 miles at average speed of two knots. Fuck the monsoons ! Fuck the strong ocean currents ! And fuck my engine that was full of water ! And Fuck the whirlpools and ocean rapids and standing waves that almost put me up with the other shipwrecks ! Fuck those tourist yachts who wouldn't stop to pull me thru the dog-leg channel in the reef ! But now I had a real problem. I had entered Indonesia without security clearance. I paid 150,000 rp ($75) for permission to stay 5 days to fix my engine. Made of Bali Yacht Service came to my aid as he had done on my last visit 13 years before. The quote in Singapore was $2,000 just to start and now here in Bali I arranged a full rebuild for $75. I am also looking for new crew here. The passage down from Singapore was one of the most difficult of my life. Some of the monsoonal storms really frightened me. I can remember watching the black and purple clouds building up ahead while my heart rose into my mouth and my legs were actually starting to tremble. It looked like God was dropping huge atomic bombs in front of us and great black and purple mushroom clouds were rising and filling the whole sky ahead. Then we would get the wind, then the lightening and thunder and whitecaps racing along. A few hours of hell with reefs in the lee. Ten miles forward and five miles back in a day. No fun at all. I ended up staying for nine days while the Indonesian mechanic pulled the head off the engine, took it away, replaced it, removed it again. I am slow but I eventually realized that this guy was never going to fix that engine. The immigration police were on to me every day to leave. I was facing two years in jail if I didn't get out fast. I had been searching for crew with no success. But I had met a couple of English boys a couple of times and I eventually talked them into doing the passage. They were 19 years old. On the last night they picked up two 19 year old Danish girls. My crew was Michael and Spencer and Sandy and Pier. Today was the day that the police were coming to get me so we were up and raising anchor before dawn. I hoisted all sail in the non existant wind and managed to turn her before we drifted across the harbour and stuck on a mud bank. Twenty five metres away there was a 5 metre boat with a large outboard engine. I sent one of the boys to get it. He couldn't start it so he swam back towing the boat in his teeth. I started the outboard, put one of the boys in it and commenced to tow out through the reef. The sun was up as we towed across the harbour. An hour later we were outside the reef. Leaving Wallaby Creek to drift I jumped in the stolen boat and zoomed back to the reef. Some poor Indonesian guy was looking for his breakfast on the reef when this mad Australian sailor rushed him into a speed boat, sped him out to a yacht then jumped off and pushed him away. What happened to him ? I will never know. Once outside the harbour we drifted along the edge of the reefs until late morning when the tide started pulling us back and I had to drop anchor in 35 metres. Mid afternoon Michael and I managed to get the anchor and start sailing until we were becalmed again. Then we commenced being swept towards the steep cliffs of Nusa Besar. I was really stressing out. This looked like the end of Wallaby Creek. Then in light flukey winds and with nothing to spare we just managed to clear the end of the island. I had been very worried. We sailed out acrosss the channel towards Lombok. During this night after the wind stopped again we were caught in a strong tidal race. The current was sweeping us along at 3 knots and whirlpools were spinning us around. I was frightened again and this time I was trying to understand what I was doing out here, out of control and being swept to destruction. No answer. Then two good days sailing and stopped again. Weeks later after Xmas and New Year at sea we were still becalmed in a barely controled drift towards Australia. Xmas day we were all a little hung over after all the rum last night. We exchanged presents. I got a book on Denmark and a Bali painting; I gave Koala bears and chocolates. No wind at all; very hot and still. I had a swim, read a book and then had a bacon sandwich for Xmas dinner. All the crew are quiet and sleeping. I can see the mountains of Sumba on the horizon. On 6th January we sailed six miles forward and then drifted seven miles backwards. It is heartbreaking. Very low on water; we have food left for seventeen meals. I managed to call up an Australian military aircraft that was patrolling overhead and told them to report us to an Australian coast station and that if we were no in Darwin within 2 weeks that we would be out of water and in distress. A couple of days later a navy patrol boat pulled alongside and gave us water. With the radio tuned into Australian stations I heard the cyclone warnings. In tne clear still air I could also hear helecoptors evacuating all the oil rigs of the Timor Sea. All I could do was sit a wait.. and pray. In it came ! The barometre dropped below 1,ooo and I warned the crew to expect a belting tonight. It wasn't too bad that night. The next day it stepped up the attack. We rigged the boat for extreme weather and raced towards Australia. With the staysail up, standing out on the exposed back deck and steering by hand we surfed the waves. Wallaby Creek has a desigh hull speed of 8 knots and she had never previously exceeded that speed. This day and night she was surfing down the waves at 13 knots. The waves were about 14 metres ( 46 feet ) vertically and possibly about 40 metres down the face. There was no distiction between air and water. I mean you could not say that here is the ocean and here is the air. It was a malstrom. Much worse than what you might see in your washing machine with an ant on a matchstick. Time after time we were swept by breakers and every time we rose up and raced forward. The two boys and I took turns steering. One hour on and then two hours resting. I would lay down on the cockpit floor in all my gear ready for whatever might happen next. By the second day it looked like we were going to survive it. And then as I started to relax a little the boys were starting to enjoy it. Sometimes when they were steering and the boat was surging with white water halfway up the mast they would turn on the face of the wave. We were running at an angle down the face of a huge wave with foam and water up over the rails on the windward side; then they would give it full rudder to turn across the wave, like a surfboard, and within a secong we would be heeled over with the opposite rails under water. It was great fun and the boys loved it. My memory is of Spencer standing on the stern raising his clenched fist, cheering and yelling as a huge wave blotted out the sky behind him, then throwing his full body weight against the tiller and Wallaby Creek carving a Z on the face of the wave. Boys of that age have no fear and I could never have asked for better shipmates to help in this terrible storm. The sky was so black that my GPS would not receive signals thru them. The lightening and thunder were only background to the frenzy of the screaming rigging and the whirlwinds of white foam. We passed thru the very eye of the cyclone. On the other hand the girls fell to pieces. They stayed below hugging each other and crying. It was a wild place inside the boat during those two days It would drive many sane people to madness. One could not believe that the boat would survive. The noise alone was overpowering all other senses. They knew that they would surely die as the boat was breaking up in the violence and noise. On the second day I tried to get them to come on deck and have a look at the seas. They will never see a cyclone again so it was a once in a lifetime chance to see it. They wouldn't stop crying and they wouldn't move. When we arrived in Darwin Harbour they were off the boat within the hour. The boys ended up staying for months as we cruised on around Australia to the East Coast. When the mechanics came onboard they found that the Indonesian mechanic had stolen my injectors and replaced them with dummies. Cost me $1,000. January 1995 Alan Phillips * ** *** **** ON THE REEF AT NUKUORO _______________________ Elsewhere I have told the story of how I found an ancient Polynesian tribe on the island of Nukuoro. While I was anchored in the lagoon I had one of the most dramatic experience of my life when an extreme line squall threw my boat from anchorage up onto the reef. Here is what happened. AGROUND The day before New Year's Eve 1994 4 o'clock in the afternoon we had the polynesian school teacher onboard for afternoon tea. All the crew were aboard with a few other polynesian friends. Wallaby Creek was anchored about 100 metres from the beach and about six metres clear of a reef. We had a stern line out to a coconut tree. The anchor was down a steep bank and I believed that it would be impossible to drag it up that steep slope. A black line squall covered the horizon in the north, putting the reef in our lee. I watched it approach without undue concern. When it hit the coconut trees threw back their leaves and bent and bowed as I have never seen before. The rain pelted down and the wind screamed in the rigging. The waves in the lagoon quickly grew from nothing to 60 cm. In an instant we were sideways on the reef. It was so fast I didn't even see us move. I called below to start the engine. It started. I cast off the stern line and engaged forward gear. Then I pulled it back to neutral as I could see the rope from our turtle disappearing into the prop. We had been given a live turtle and it had been tethered to the back of the boat where it could swim. I was planing to eat it tomorrow. Now it was strangled, dead with its line around the propellor. Jim and Mark made repeated dives to cut it free while Wallaby Creek pounded harder and further onto the reef. Then it was free and the dead turtle was thrown up onto the deck. Running the motor full astern and we would not move. Winching on the anchor and full steam ahead and we would not move. Still pounding and laying sideways on the reef and all the time the wind was howling. We decided to get the big jib up to heel us over even further and maybe sail off. OK we rolled it out. Out she came with a tremendous roar and bellow of wind. The sheet was behind a lashed down running backstay! Got it free! Then it was under our blue plastic rain catching tarp! Cut it free! sAIL OFF! sAIL off! Engine full ahead, jib winched in tight, wind howling, waves now breaking, spray flying overhead, Wallaby pounding on the reef, heeled over with the starbord decks awash. Winching on the anchor. With each wave she lifted and with each lift she turned towards the wind. Slowly, slowly she turned as she pounded. Then with an unexpected rush we sailed off. The anchor jerked her to a stop and the dinghy rope went around the propellor. We raced and battled to get the jib down as it flapped and crashed and went wild in the strong winds. Once again Jim, my son, went under the boat to cut the rope free. We drifted back towards the reef. Then the prop was free, the jib furled and I powered away. The blue plastic tarp disappeared over the side and into the prop! Stuck again. Jim into the water with the knief while Mark got the big 120 lb Admiralty anchor away. The anchor went down, but too close to the edge of the reef and it would not hold. The prop was hopelessly entangled. I handed out more knives to native boys who dived again and again. Wallaby Creek hit with a crash again as we went up on the reef. We got the staysail up but the wind pushed us up even further so we dropped it. Sixteen natives had arrived and were now standing on the reef holding us off. But they couldn't! We went further on. Laying now on our port side with thw mast pointing into the trees. Still the wind howled and the breakers on the reef were a metre high and each one pushed us higher up. The rudder was pounding on the reef, the tiller arm bent 60 degrees.(even to this very day one can still see the scars ). The reef was breaking up under the hull so that visability in the water was zero. It was now extremely dangerous to get near this pounding boat. But still Jim and Mark and natives were going under to work on freeing the prop from that damn tarp. The work was death defying. At this stage I realized that it was hopeless. We were too far up. People were walking around the boat in less than a meter of water. The waves were still pushing us on. At this time I said to Mark that we would not get her off and that we would probably spend the next month digging a channel in the reef. Finally Jim freed the prop. I had all the polynesians pushing and they were singing and chanting. Many of them were swinging from the anchor ropes to keep on the strain as we surged up on the waves. The wind was lessening. The high tide was passing and the tide was starting to fall. Last night was the full moon. We were at least 8 metres up on the reef and in less than a metre of depth. The rudder was damaged, it was the very worst of all possibilities. I had two anchors out and the two women were winching on the main sheet winches. We continued to winch. Jan, and Dawn and Colin and numerous natives keep the anchor ropes at full stretch and then increased it. Sixteen big black bodies heaved us off with all their strength while other bodies swung from the anchor ropes. The coral was smashing under us and the water was churning with coral. There was the noise of the boat pounding and grinding on the coral, the smash and clap of waves breaking against the hull and all the time the wind continued to howl in the rigging. What I remember now was the women lining the shore and the men pushing and the chanting. I never thought later to ask what it meant. So to this day I do not know anything except that the singing overrode the noises of the shipwreck. As the coral smashed the boat slowly stood up and then smashed down on its starbord side. A dinghy with a 10 hp engine had come from the village and I had passed him the spinnaker halyard from the top of the mast. I was running the engine. Many times the prop was out of the water. The dinghy with the tow broke the rope, came in, reconnected and pulled again from a better position. We started to move. I saw a black body flash by in the water. I didn't understand we were moving. We shot off. Tangled an anchor rope around the prop. Cut it free. Cut the anchor rope. Hauled the big anchor. Motored clear. It was like a dream, a miracle, I just couldn't believe it. Anchored clear and had a cup of tea. WHOOOOOBOY!!! THE END ORCHILLA, shipwrecked in the Carribean INDONESIA, on the coral again WILL THE TIDE COME IN, on a mud bank in Queensland -----FEELINGS DURING A HARD VOYAGE-------- AND AFTERWARDS DAY 1 A bit anxious, uptight, nervous,worryimg about everything DAY 2 Quiet, depressed,sick, no eating, no talking, nobody on watch, much time in bed. DAY 3 Dirty day with rain, wind, squalls, dark clouds, slow progress, all hatches closed, first sail damage. DAY 4 Better day but everybody quiet, unhappy, starting to look for inner resources. DAY 5 Rough and rainy and wet. Anxious black night. Some suffering with wild disorentation, some just off colour, all feeling tense and nervous. DAY 6 Body clock is haywire, feeling tired, washed out, upset. DAY 7 Becalmed in cold rainy day. Gradually falling into a new life rhythm. DAY 8 A bad day for feelings of self-doubt, fear, worry and wishing to be back on land, frustration... sometimes in the black night the fear rises in your stomach. ..as the boat rushes forward surging on the big waves, tries to broach, corrects and speeds down you have a feeling that death lies ahead and your heart rushes into your mouth and you cannot swallow and on into the pitch black night you go. DAY 9 Feels good. I remind myself that I cruise for pleasure, I do not like cruising in the hard times, no macho stuff, no black rainy nights.. DAY 10 The more one seeks security the less secure one will be. The more security one appears to acquire the less security one actually possesses. Life is the ultimate insecurity. So don't seek security, live on the edge of insecurity and look over into the pit and feel the agitation in the belly, embrace it and affirm the courage to live. THIS IS REALLY LIVING. DAY 11 Passed half way. Tension in the air; no harsh words just a feeling. No report. Our moods and feelings are now almost completely dictated by the winds and seas. Outside life means little. DAY 12 Feeling depressed..can only think about getting there... the end. Everybody stays quietly in their beds all day. No talking. DAY 13 Dirty weather. Nobody moves, nobody talks, all sick and dispirited DAY 14 Overcast, cloudy, rough, slow, wet, slow, uncomfortable.... all completely dispirited, all in their bunks not reading not sleeping not talking just brooding just thinking wishing for somewhere else uncomfortable bored unhappy. One of us has not eaten for three days now. she is in bed in the fetal position. Wave right over the top OH OH OH !! OH OH !! No response at all from the crew. Looking out the cabin windows we were staring straight down into the scary green depths 4,000 metres to the bottom ! The boat was on it's side and rolled back up. DAY 15 The weather gets worse. We are now under bare poles, rigged for survival! All O K. A little talking. Made love after days of no interest. Fear of what the weather may do overrides all emotion. DAY 16 Exasperated, mentally exhausted, weakened, quiet, frustrated after two nights of storm. DAY 17 All O K, in a bit of a daze, triple reefed main and storm jib have us moving again. No talk, no enthusiasm, dazed and glum DAY 18 LAND HO ! We feel low, nothing. We just do not believe it. As we sail in we slowly start to relax, .. and talk.. and open a packet of biscuits .. suggest a beer DAY 19 Relaxed. Happy. Great trip wasn't it. Remember your face when.. etc DAY 20 Happy and drunk, laughing, retelling stories of the great trip. DAY 21 Planing the next adventure. Loving life !! NEXT WEEK WE WILL DO IT AGAIN. DAY 30 Anchored behind FAFA ISLAND. Spent the morning collecting coconuts and making coconut bread. Hot fresh steaming coconut bread ! Snorkeling and fishing this afternoon. Tomorrow we will sail to another island or maybe we will stay here another few days? For dinner fresh reef fish steamed in coconut juice. Then a rum & coke in the cockpit under the stars. WHAT A LIFE !! You know those beautiful islands like that one are actually very boring There is no energy no liveliness Nice to look at for a hour or so but then nothing WHAT DO YOU ACTUALLY DO WITH IT Have a sleep on the sand THAT'S IT NOW Think about Sydney Bustling, lively, lots of life, people, buses cars, noise, wires, tracks, roads, buildings crammed with people, people, hurrying, hungry, walking, LIFE LIFE LIFE I LOVE YOU now Think of the sea. The most boring place on earth. UNTIL it rises up and tries to kill you. After that you love it. FUNNY UH? SO The answer is ; it is not where you are that matters BUT HOW you FEEL Good feelings come from doing something satisfying NEXT GOOD FOOD AND LOVE SO The answer to happiness where ever you are is simply inside yourself Just simply make up your mind to enjoy it. It is not easier here then there. DAY 65 Sitting in the ROYAL FIJI YACHT CLUB enjoying a cool rum and sharing stories with the other yachties one can omly feel that life cannot get any better. DAY 70 Cruising from one tropical island to the next. Fishing and swimming all day. If the weather is windy we don't go. Usually we can see the next beautiful tropical island just over there before we pick up the anchor. PARIDISE IS TONGA AND FIJI.