ETERNAUT

Crossing the South China Sea

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We finally made it: Our first long journey on Eternaut.
Last week we arrived Subic Bay.
All in all an uneventful crossing. But let me start from the beginning:

Sea trials over sea trials – getting ready

Unfortunately we were not able to extend our lease in Hebe Haven at the guest dock. That meant that we were out on anchor a lot of times and spent only a few nights during weekdays along the short term dock at the yacht club.
We used the last weeks to do many many sea trials. We had the boat out in F6 winds, we had the boat out in 4m waves. We tested and tried the paravanes when underway and the flopper stoppers when at anchor.
We also had someone preparing different sorts of frozen pre-cooked meals which we just had to heat up in the microwave. With other words: first time we felt well prepared!

Below a few pictures of Double Haven and Long Ke Wan (Hong Kong)

Go or no go?

To cancel might take more guts than to continue:
There was a small depression building up over Palawan which I considered a possible threat. I discovered it on Windy.app just after we finished Marine Department and Immigration for our departure. Additionally Rita had symptoms of getting a cold… all in all they were not good signs to start a four day long journey across the South China Sea. Late that evening, just nine hours before scheduled departure, I made a painful decision: cancel and postpone the trip.
That is something my senior flight instructors in the military had taught me: it will take more guts to cancel a trip than to continue as planned. Cowards are those who continue despite safety concerns! I cancelled and I felt bad as I knew this would mean an explanation to the Marine Department about the why. But: never leave in a hurry and never force a journey when feeling uncomfortable.

The COVID strike

It hit me at 3am, just 6h before scheduled departure. Headache as if a train had run over it and high fever that would have allowed Rita to fry breakfast eggs. I cannot describe how happy I felt that I had cancelled our journey just hours before. I would not have been able to do any watch while on sea.
Thankfully a friend of ours had offered me to use his swing mooring in Hebe Haven. We stayed there until we felt better. Probably thanks to the vaccines that did not take too long. One week later we were back on anchor at Double Haven. That’s a marine park with a few designated anchoring areas in the far northeast corner of Hong Kong. Surely not to be missed if you’re ever plan to cruise to Hong Kong.

The departure

Then there it was. Another weather window opened up. Yes, the first signs that Mawar was developing. But it was a one week window before Mawar could mean any threat to us. Mawar later developed into a super typhoon but thankfully steered clear of the Philippines.
Decision made: we would leave on Wednesday, despite that would mean arrival on a Sunday. Every day counted.
Another visit to the Marine Department, another visit to Immigration, another ‘last’ spicy noodle soup at ‘Eat Together’ in Mong Kok.
Next morning at 09:45 we waved goodbye to my friend and ex-colleague Chris and left Hebe Haven. Only 45 minutes behind schedule, delayed by a rain shower passing. Happy we were in a trawler pilot house, not outside at a helm in a sailing boat.

Routing

For months I had tried to get to grips with a software called qtvlm. It runs on various platforms.

Through saildocs I had subscribed for daily updates of grib files for weather and offshore current. Daily I uploaded the grib files (forecasts for the next ten days) into the PC which runs qtvlm for route planning as well as backup navigation. Although I was not able to get the wave limit height limit to work, it still gave us a good idea about speed, fastest routing and what weather to expect which day. In the pictures below a snapshot of our route.

Days at Sea

Initially we were very busy. Dodging fishing boats, small and big container ships which were entering and leaving Hong Kong port and sending farewell messages over our mobile phones while still having 4G connection.
Then we were off grid and our cruising really started. Seas were not really that high, but uncomfortable as they were confused. So within a short time paravanes were deployed which dampened the roll considerably.
As the night approached we were getting more and more busy to avoid the armada of Chinese fishing boats. Most showed up on AIS and radar. But they often just drifted or changed their direction in random matter. We never figured whether nets were deployed on bow, stern, sides, in between them, or all around. Best was to give them a wide berth.

At some point we had a small group of dolphins having a look at us. But unfortunately they did not stay too long.

Shortly afterwards we spotted a group of pilot whales. They did not care about us at all and were too far away to make a photo.

Hope we will get opportunities during future journeys.

Autopilot issues

Autopilot 1 always had a minor issue: since we took ownership it went into Stby mode without any warning. Sometimes it worked for days in a row, sometimes we had to re-engage it three times within ten minutes. I had reported it to the Hong Kong Simrad dealer: OBMG. That is also the Hong Kong company I had paid do the electric and electronic commissioning.
As the fault was intermittent there wasn’t much they could do… so they said.
Anyway, I haven’t been insistent enough: because it was only a few hours into our journey that autopilot 1 kept failing. Sometimes it just went to stby mode without warning and the boat drifted off course, sometimes there was a big alarm saying “no autopilot computer”.
After one sleepless night I flicked the control switch under the mattress (near the hydraulic pumps and autopilot computers) to autopilot 2. That unit cannot do tracks and is not connected to the chart plotter. It’s purely a backup unit. But it can hold the heading. And it did so very well for the remaining part of our journey. I am glad that I had opted for a second autopilot unit.

I have to admit: for nearly 30 years I have been a big fan of Mac. Think about Apple products what you want. My experience with them is generally outstanding. I never had a unit or software failing on me. If Apple were ever to design hardware and software for boats I would be the first customer lining up for them!

Other issues

Engine room bilge pump

There were a few other issues we encountered: During the times of the higher waves sea water was pressed through the outlet of the bilge pumps into the engine room bilge. SHM had installed the siphon too low. The amount of water was enough to trigger the bilge pump float switch and the bilge pump cycle counter, but never enough to really give work to the pump. At first it was worrying to see the bilge pump count going up. Only after a night of regular engine room visits I figured that it was not really a problem, just a nuisance. I will re-do the piping once I gain access to engine room bilge pump. Further I am considering installing a second pump: this second pump should be low flow – high pressure with a pickup point lower than the main high flow pump. Additionally a one way valve will be installed in that particular outflow. This way I can assure that the bilge stays completely dry.

Scary fishing boats

It was the early morning when we saw a fishing boat… in the middle of nowhere roughly halfway between Hong Kong and Philippines. We had raised the sails and passed quite close, approximately 500m away. At that moment the AIS of the fishing boat was switched off and they started picking up speed, straight towards us. The boat looked scary: the roof consisted of drying fish which smell had greeted us from far. It was that scary that I decided to run the old Gardner to max available RPM, switched off my AIS as well and gave it a run. Thankfully we were faster and that boat changed course – to pick up some other tiny fisher boats in the distance. Maybe they just wanted to sell us some dried fish… but I rather kept my distance.