Oyster News 49 - Oyster Yachts

RUNNING
THE GALES
OF THE
SOUTHERN
OCEAN
8 www.oystermarine.com
By Fiona Campbell
Oyster 55 Carelbi
Fiona Campbell
Christopher Smith and Fiona Campbell set off on their world
circumnavigation from Marmaris in Turkey in the spring of 1998.
They crossed the Atlantic with the ARC in 2000 and went through
Panama to the Pacific arriving on May 1st 2001. Chris has sailed
dinghies all of his life, and has owned a cruising yacht since his
mid-twenties; sailing around the world has always been his dream.
Fiona took to sailing for the first time when she met Chris almost
five years ago, so is a debutante in time but not in distance!
Hundreds of yachts each year sail what is
now the well-trodden path from Panama
to New Zealand through the beautiful
Pacific islands of French Polynesia, the Cooks,
Niue and Tonga. Some North Americans return
via Tahiti, but only a handful brave the roaring
forties to the Australs and Gambier. We had
loved our short time in the Tuamotus so much in
2001 that we were determined to return and
since we had been seduced by descriptions of
these southernmost of the French archipelagos,
they were to be our first landfall.
So it was that, at the end of April 2002, with
Carelbi in great condition after five months of
hard work, we held a 'Big Sniff' party at Whangarei Town Basin (we grade the severity of
partings by the size and number of the sobs and sniffs), and set sail for Auckland to pick
up our final crew member, Ken Russell, who was flying in from Australia to take a break
from six years hard slog in the oil industry. The passage from New Zealand to the
Gambier Archipelago is 3000 nautical miles and is well known for its challenging weather.
Chris felt that we needed a minimum of four on board to cope with the expected bad
conditions and long night passages, and we found our two other crew members through
an ad in the local paper.
One crew member, Peter Ansell, a New Zealander, was an 'old sea dog' and could turn
his hand to anything on a boat, electrics, engines, woodwork, housework; Pete was in
there almost before we knew it needed to be done. Before we left he had built in a herb
garden container for us; fresh coriander, thyme, mint, basil and rosemary flourished in
pots well secured against the worst the sea was to throw at us, and it did. His other chef
d'oeuvre was to make 'mags' for us; these are 'multi-angle gravy stoppers', and consist
of a round of wood covered in tasteful blue non-slip material, set at an angle of about 15
degrees. When sailing to windward with your boat well heeled over, you place your plate
on the 'mags' and, magically, your food is horizontal and no longer wishes to rush off the
table onto the floor.