On Our Way To North America.... Part 1

At 11:15 local time in Osaka Japan we left the Tannowa Yacht Club after clearing out with immigration. Before leaving we were given some lovely gifts of food and swag from some of the members including a burgee which makes us honorary members! Mr. Etsuro Kondo took the girls for last minute provisions and lead us out onto the Osaka Bay on board his sailboat, Pocapoca where he went fishing (the national Japanese pastime) and we started out on our epic 4800 nautical mile journey to Canada.

As most of you know (believe) the earth is round, so the most direct route over such a long distance is not a straight line, but rather a long curved arch. For us this direct route wasn't going to work because of the weather systems that track across this part of the world. Our goal was (and still is) to get under passing lows to take advantage of the winds from the south and west that will push us home.

The weather in June is one strong low after another culminating with some turning into typhoons later in the season. Even the early ones we left on were no picnic. After motoring overnight out of Osaka Bay, we started to sail the next morning aiming for an imaginary spot in the ocean where the threat of typhoons come to an end. This spot is 160E longitude. The Yacht club was at 135E which meant we had to go about 1500 NM before we could turn more northeast to make our passage home.

Life is different with 4 people on board Blowin' Bubbles. Watches are much easier, but it can get crowded in 45' sometimes. We do think however, we made a very good choice asking Christina and Derek to help us with the crossing. They have adapted very well and do more than their share of the work, making this as easy a passage as possible.

While it has only rained twice, we have encountered some pretty significant winds so far. The worst was a few days out when we had sustained winds over 40 knots. It was in those conditions we blew out our Genoa (the big sail on the front of the boat). Fortunately, we have a Yankee which is a high cut jib, that will see us somewhere we can fix or replace the Genoa. After our little disaster, we hove too (basically, parked the boat using the rudder and mainsail) for about nine hours until the storm abated a little to give the crew some rest. When we got underway again, we set our storm tri-sail (instead of a main) and deployed our "Galesail" which is a 100 sq.ft. heavy storm headsail. We have carted both of these sails around for the last 5 years and this is the first time we used them.

It was during that storm that Shelley (yes, Shelley) got seasick for the first time ever. Derek didn't want her to feel special so he got sick too... As the storm abated, so too did their sickness and have been good ever since... After about 4 days of this slow passing low, the winds eased a little and we have had good moderate wind sailing. Yesterday, was the first day we had to motor in quite a while. We used that time to make water and get some laundry done.

We have now been dragging lures 1500 nautical miles and haven't caught a single fish! Don't let anyone tell you the oceans aren't over fished! This morning we crossed 160E and can now begin the big arch home...

Here are just a few highlights from the last 12 days:
Have not seen another boat or ship in 5 days (by sight, radar or AIS).
Christina and Derek have now sailed in 40+ knot winds and 4-5 meter seas.
We have seen Dolphins 3 times (one was the largest pod any of us have ever seen) and Pilot Whales twice.
We have run the motor 68 hours and sailed 172 hours.
We have broken/fixed the stern arch (where the dinghy usually lives) after it got broken in the storm.
We have replace the belt on the watermaker, and repaired a diesel leak on the engine.
We paid over $2 a liter for diesel fuel when we stopped briefly at the last Japanese Island after leaving Osaka Bay
Christina has trimmed Derek's beard....

Happy Canada Day and Independence Day to all our amazing friends and family...
We will try to post again when we have good radio propagation.

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Osaka... And Help Is Here...

We have spent to last week in Osaka at the Tannowa Yacht Harbor.  The folks here have been very friendly and helpful...  In fact, I think we have been made honorary members!  It is not an inexpensive place to stay, but all in all everything has worked out very well.

A few days ago Christina (our friend who sailed across the Pacific with us in 2016 and her boy friend, Derek arrived to help us sail the 4000 or so nautical miles to British Columbia, Canada across the North Pacific.

It looks like we will depart tomorrow and it will take 40 -50 days to make the crossing.  We will have no Internet until we get to some kind of civilization.

Here are a few pictures from our last days here in Japan.  A wonderful place to visit!

We were warmly welcomed by Mr. Yoshida who looks after seeing all the foreign yachts

Shelley bought some lovely kitchen gadgets!

More soon when we get wherever we are going...

Tosashimizu and Tannowa (Osaka)

We had a rough overnight passage to Toashimizu from Yakushima.  That said, once we entered the well protected port things improved quickly.  We were greeted by friendly Coast Guard and Customs people and even to Police sent a man to visit to make sure that we were okay.

We tied up on another tidal wall where we knew we were expecting some very high winds over the next 24 hours.  The winds came, and we felt almost nothing.  it was wonderful.

We explored the small village and picked up a few groceries.  We even found a barber who spent over an hour giving me the most incredible haircut and shave ever! It was a little expensive, but the experience alone was worth it....

 

We learned about a street market so we visited it and found the biggest attraction was North American treats like french fries and corn dogs... Who knew...

Our best moment came when a lovely man knocked on our boat and with only one word of English handed us a beautiful pencil drawing of our boat and said, "gift"  and tried to walk away.  Shelley asked if he would let us take his picture and he said yes...  What a beautiful gift!

After the low passed the sun came out and the wind came on our nose as we tried to complete our journey to Osaka.  We beat against it for a few hours then decided we would be better off burning fuel and getting into the lee of the Osaka harbor as soon as possible.

By the next morning we were calmly motoring to our new home for the next week while we wait to pick up Christina & Derrek.

The Tannowa Yacht Club must have been quite a place in its day.  Today it looks a little tired and run down, but the people here more than make up for the facilities shortcomings.  We are way out on the farthest dock which makes to walk to the club house an event, but it is very peaceful where we are.  We hadn't been docked more than a few hours when a very distinguished gentleman (Mr. Yoshida Tsuneo) visited us and asked us to fill out the foreigners visitor log...  In it we found some old friends!   What a treat!  We will add our page before we leave.

The marina manager has been so helpful.  Yesterday he took us to a large (Walmart like) store where we did a big provisioning for the crossing.  I think we will either love or hate noodles by the time we get home....

We will post one more blog before we head out around the middle to end of next week...  Cheers!

Testing Radio Updates....

At sea, we have extremely limited access to the rest of the world. Without a satelite phone we only send and recieve "text only" emails less than 10 kilobites (very tiny), at limited times during the day.

That said, on our 40 day or so crossing we don't want folks to think we are gone forever, so we will try posting a weekly position report on to our blog...

This is just a TEST POST, to see if it works...

Cheers!

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Yakushima Island, Japan

The word we keep saying here is beautiful!  Everywhere we turn there are lush colors and nature at her beautiful best.  From 7000 year old trees to dozens of waterfalls the people of Yakushima take great pride in their lovely home...

The trip here from Okinawa was not the easiest run we have ever made.  After 2 1/2 days of rough seas and uncooperative wind we arrived here exhausted.  We made our way around the inner breakwall and side tied to the rough wall with the fenderboard out we feel quite comfortable.

We went to bed just after supper at 5:30 pm and didn't wake up until the next morning...  really tired I guess...  This morning we decided that since we only had one day here we would make the most of it and rent a small car and explore the island...

What a good idea that turned out to be... We had 6 hours to drive 40 kilometers...  No problems we thought.  We arrived back just before the deadline.  The roads on the other side of the island narrow down to less than a lane width in some places and if there is on coming traffic, someone usually has to back up a little.

Here are a few pictures of our awesome day....

 

 

Yes, That is the centerline of the road, and no, they are not moving out of the way....

 We stopped for lunch when we saw the ONLY English sign...  A lovely small restaurant with great local food...  We have never had a Mackerel pizza before!

The only difficulty here is at low tide when we have to scale the wall to get on or off the boat...  We borrowed a ladder but got yelled at.  Since we didn't understand the man, we just smiled, bowed, and put it back where we found it... (we would have done that anyway, we were just waiting for the tide to rise).  Oh well, not everyone can be happy...

Not quite low tide....

High Tide....

We will leave on the high tide in the morning and get as far up the mainland as we can overnight.  We need to find a port by Thursday afternoon, as there is a nasty low scheduled to pass over on Friday/Saturday.

We will add more when we get to Osaka...