Velella Cruising Log

The description “hours of boredom, punctuated by moments of shear terror” could easily describe this particular passage. Sailing from Saipan to Hong Kong meant leaving the Pacific Ocean, passing through the Philippine Sea into the South China Sea and entering into a completely new weather pattern near major shipping centers. We were trying to pass through the straits between Taiwan and the Philippines during the brief quiet period between the NE Monsoon and the SW monsoon to minimize the chances that we would encounter big seas in the narrow passage between oceans. Being in a transitional period means that the weather is unstable and typhoons, while at their lowest probability during this time of year here, do occur, so we watched the weather closely. We were also nervous about having gale force winds in the straits where we knew we would also encounter intense currents of 1-2 knots with rips up to 5. It felt like a waiting game.

Our first 12 days featured mellow winds that were pleasant, although ever shifting. The winds clocked around completely 3 times, but were mostly less than 10 knots. We had small seas and were quite comfortable. We came to appreciate the wide variety of music we’d loaded onto the MP3 player, especially during the night watches. We found being able to listen to good music while gazing at the stars to be pretty nice, even at 3 in the morning. And we were glad to be able to communicate with the outside world to some extent through a very limited radio email. Sailing conditions aren’t always appropriate for setting up the computer, trying to read and type, but we had that luxury for quite a while during this trip. And, of course, we had the ever present stack of good books and reference materials to keep us entertained. We changed 2 time zones during this passage, which meant changing the clocks and readjusting our watch schedule to fit the new time zone.

We entered the Bashi Channel (between Taiwan and the Philippines) at dawn, in very light winds and flat seas, and noticed the water color change from a deep blue to a dull green. We crossed paths with a number of ships and fishing vessels. We also noted that the water temperature dropped 10 degtrees as we left the warm current heading North towards Japan and found the cold current flowing south through the Taiwan Straits. While we’ve only recently added a depth sounder that came with this feature, we suddenly realized its value in navigation. Within a few hours we felt the cold North wind funneling through the Taiwan Straits and saw big black clouds approach. We quickly added layers of clothing, battened the hatches and switched to hot chocolate to take away the chill. As the wind and seas built, the fog rolled in. And shipping traffic increased tenfold.

We saw container ships, cargo ships, cruise ships, and a kazillion types of fishing vessel (trawlers, longliners, shrimpers, etc) zigzagging in unpredictable ways. We relied on our hand bearing compass to help us track the positions of ships on the horizon. Noting the bearing of a ship helped us to ascertain its heading sooner than we could with our naked eye and prevent us from being fooled by an optical illusion as we bounced around in the waves. At one point we counted 26 lights on the horizon! We had to resort to emergency management, merely reacting to the most immediate threat, tackling each one at a time. Once a ship got close we would make whatever evasive maneuvers were needed. As the fog closed in, we had visibility of less than 2 miles with gale force winds and boisterous seas. Keeping an eye on shipping lights as the waves rose and fell around and beneath us was challenging. Bioluminescence, a phenomenon in which plankton glows when disturbed, made each breaking wave look like another ship out of the corner of our eyes until the moon rose each night. And the fishing boats were lit so brightly, they made the container ship lights seem dim. Huge container ships would appear out of the fog barreling down on us at 20 knots, much closer than we expected them to be, leaving us little time to react. As these huge hulks of steel passed within a half a mile, we’d breathe a sigh of relief that we hadn’t gotten creamed by that one. Relief was but brief as another ship was soon to absorb our full attention. We endured two very long days. Gradually the wind and waves abated. And the shipping traffic returned to a manageable level as we saw fewer fishing vessels. We didn’t spot the high rocky islets around Hong Kong through the fog until we were fairly close. We saw fewer container ships, but more ferries and tug boats towing small container barges with a crane for self loading. As we slowly sailed through uninhabited islands in the mist, Garth tried to figure out why the engine would not stay running. He found the fuel tank intake line was clogged, and worked to resolve the problem as we approached landfall. While we were in a narrow channel and Garth was finishing up with the engine, a trawler, who had been sitting still suddenly motored forward and began weaving in front of us, giving us one last scare and forcing some maneuvering at an inopportune moment. A racy looking sailboat sailed by as we neared our destination. Finally a vessel that couldn't kill us!

When we finally rounded the point into the bay, we were greeted with the sight of hundreds of private yachts on moorings in a virtual boating Mecca. Visibility was still fairly poor and we could barely see the tall apartment complexes hugging the high hills, but we could see well enough to be impressed and to safely come alongside a fancy new dock with a fine yacht club. In contrast to the hovering officials of Saipan, who couldn’t even wait for us to finish tying up before beginning their paperwork, the officials of Hong Kong only require that we go to their offices within 24 hours of arrival to check in. Hard work to get here, but I think we're going to have a great time exploring this fascinating place.

We have set up a blog where we can post updates without necessarily having to send out mailers. We plan to spice it up with images and updates and fix the formatting problem, but it’s a start. We will try to update it by email directly from the boat, so you can hear what we are up to more frequently than we can find land based email. Check http://yachtvelella.blogspot.com/ to see whether we've posted an update since our last email.

View our more recent photos at http://photos.yahoo.com/yachtvelella
and our older photos of our voyage at http://photos.yahoo.com/atomicsalsa

Cheers,
Wendy Hinman and Garth Wilcox
S/V Velella (Wylie 31)