Dutch Tall Ships update

Dutch Tall Ships update

Dutch Tall Ships update

11 November 2013

The stop at Chatham Islands was a pleasant surprise, nice to have an unexpected stop in our big crossing, especially one with such warm welcome. Early morning a fishing boat came by to give us a crate full of lobster. We held open ship for all the school children of the island, while our voyage crew were on a tour of the island.
After one and a half day on the island we continued our journey to Cape Horn. We left together with ‘Tecla’ on Friday morning on the 8th and ‘Europa’ left the evening before. We had a beautiful sail along the coast and rocky islands. We had left just before ‘Tecla’ and she was gaining on us, but after trimming all the sails we slowly but surely left ‘Tecla’ behind.
In the afternoon we changed the date. Chatham keeps the date of New Zealand, while they actually are on the other side of the dateline. Also their time zone is peculiar: NZ time +45 minutes, very confusing.
That night we had little wind, but in the morning the wind came back and ever since we have been speeding along, doing 8 to 10 knots. Our last 24-hour distance was 203 Nautical Miles!
On Sundays the voyage crew have an appointment to talk to each other on the HF radio. The entire communication lasted more than 30 minutes. Sandy and Chris represented ‘Europa’, of ‘Tecla’ we do not know. Kaatje, Olav and Leo represented ‘Oosterschelde’. At first only with ‘Europa’ a connection could be made, and later on ‘Tecla’ joined in, but her report had to be relayed by ‘Europa.’

Nov. 13, noon ship’s time, ‘Oosterschelde’ reports:
We mentioned our early arrival at the Chatham Islands and the police officer coming alongside in his kayak. Quite a few of us enjoyed the day’s tour around the island. We then talked about Pitt Island and the Pyramid, which, because of the great hole on the side where we passed it, looked more like the nose of a giant, which was the impression on ‘Europa’ as well. That rock is the only place where the Chatham Island Mollymawk (also named Chatham albatross) is breeding. We saw quite few of these beautiful birds.
During the dogwatch, a petrel came a board and the bird flew away during the day watch and followed the ship for a while, before disappearing forever. We were doing 10 knots in fine weather, but have encountered dense fog at times during he last couple of days, as well as a bit of a drizzle.
Workshops are held every day about longitudes and parallels as well as the weather with beautiful drawings on the deck by Woody, made more pleasant by freshly baked cookies and popcorn. Saturday is cleaning day and we all got clean bed linens.

‘Europa’ told us the following:
They had learned from the locals on Chatham Island, that the person who died just before our arrival and who was buried on Wednesday, had been informed about the imminent arrival of the three Dutch Ships. His name in English means `Three ships`. His name in Moriori is: Clifford Kaipulle Whaitiri. Everybody, including the subject person, saw the appearance of the three Dutch ships as a very good omen.
On board of ‘Europa’ there will be eight anniversaries, and as it happened, a certain Steve had his anniversary the day before crossing the International dateline, so he had to celebrate it twice. One chocolate birthday cake was presented to him. At 08.00 am ‘Europa’ passed the Pyramid rock. Albatrosses, petrels but also a couple of sperm whales as well as pilot whales have been seen. On the second out after passing Pyramid rock, a New Zealand trawler came along to take pictures. ‘Europa’ has encountered showers and her speed was a bit less than ours. Workshops are held about celestial navigation and nuclear power.

We learned from the ‘Tecla’:
A barracuda fish was caught, but put back to sea and they have a started a photo competition about the most beautiful picture of an albatross.