Hidden Paths

Klaus Haeussler

Description

After finishing a circumnavigation over five years, Klaus and Maria Haeussler reentered the civil life with its struggle and routine. But they had underestimated the sustainable impact of the free life. And so it wasn't a surprise that they were on the way again after two years on land - this time without a solid schedule. They gave up their civil existence with all consequences. Over the course of 13 years from 1998 to 2011, they left 70,000 nautical miles in their wake and sailed in extreme regions from the Northern Atlantic to Cape Horn. During a one and a half times circumnavigation of the Pacific Ocean they came into contact with the different cultures of Patagonia (with an excursion to Antarctica), Polynesia, New Zealand and Australia, Micronesia, Japan, the Aleutians, Alaska and Hawaii. With a great love for detail, Klaus Haeussler portrays this adventure filled period of their lives. In 2010, in Cuxhaven, Germany, Klaus and Maria were awarded with the coveted Trans-Ocean Preis for this outstanding voyage.

Sujets

• Boating
• Sailing

Informations

• Publié par: First Edition Design Publishing
• Date de parution: 30 avril 2016
• Nombre de lectures: 1
• EAN13: 9781506901633
• Langue: English

Extrait

Hidden Paths


Sailing the Backyards of the World

Klaus Haeussler

First Edition Design Publishing
Sarasota, Florida, USA
Hidden Paths, Sailing the Backyards of the World
Copyright ©2016 Klaus Haeussler

ISBN 978-1506-901-62-6 PRINT
ISBN 978-1506-901-63-3 EBOOK

LCCN 2016935907

March 2016

Published and Distributed by
First Edition Design Publishing, Inc.
P.O. Box 20217, Sarasota, FL 34276-3217
www.firsteditiondesignpublishing.com



ALL R I G H T S R E S E R V E D. No p a r t o f t h i s b oo k pub li ca t i o n m a y b e r e p r o du ce d, s t o r e d i n a r e t r i e v a l s y s t e m , o r t r a n s mit t e d i n a ny f o r m o r by a ny m e a ns ─ e l e c t r o n i c , m e c h a n i c a l , p h o t o - c o p y , r ec o r d i n g, or a ny o t h e r ─ e x ce pt b r i e f qu ot a t i o n i n r e v i e w s , w i t h o ut t h e p r i o r p e r mi ss i on o f t h e a u t h o r or publisher .

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Haeussler, Klaus
Hidden paths, sailing the backyards of the world / written by Klaus Haeussler.
p. cm.
ISBN 978-1506-901-xx-x pbk, 978-1506-901-xx-x digital

1. BIOGRAPHY & AUTOBIOGRAPHY / General. 2. Sports & Recreation / Sailing. 3. Travel / Special Interest.

H6325
For Maria, my perfect partner not only when on sailing journeys but also in life.
TABLE OF CONTENTS


CHAPTER 1 The End of a Voyage – The Beginning of a Voyage . 1
CHAPTER 2 A new Era begins 6
CHAPTER 3 Let’s Go to Istanbul! 9
CHAPTER 4 And now? 16
CHAPTER 5 Winter in Seville - and the Disaster . 18
CHAPTER 6 Course North: Iberian Coast 23
CHAPTER 7 Irish Drizzle . 26
CHAPTER 8 Kinsale, a Winter Tale . 28
CHAPTER 9 A Rare Summer in Scotland . 30
CHAPTER 10 Lesson: Crinan Canal 32
CHAPTER 11 Iceland - Fish Factory and Puffins 36
CHAPTER 12 Across the Atlantic - Greenland? 41
CHAPTER 13 Mission Impossible: Greenland - Let’s Go to Newfoundland . 43
CHAPTER 14 Pure Wilderness – Newfoundland . 45
CHAPTER 15 Nova Scotia - Home of Legendary Schooners 52
CHAPTER 16 9/11 . 54
CHAPTER 17 Legal in the USA .. 57
CHAPTER 18 A Thousand Miles on the Intracoastal Waterway . 61
CHAPTER 19 The Bahamas - an Enclave for American Sailors 64
CHAPTER 20 Detouring to Cuba . 69
CHAPTER 21 Oh, How Beautiful is Panama! 75
CHAPTER 22 Costa Rica - Jump off to Hawaii 92
CHAPTER 23 Hawaii - 4200 Nonstop Nautical Miles 93
CHAPTER 24 Stopover Hawaii 96
CHAPTER 25 The Long Way around the Pacific High to Alaska . 99
CHAPTER 26 Labyrinth Inside Passage . 110
CHAPTER 27 Around Vancouver Island . 114
CHAPTER 28 Going South - US Pacific Coast to San Diego . 123
CHAPTER 29 Mexico -The Other America . 129
CHAPTER 30 Baja California . 130
CHAPTER 31 Costa Rica -The Small Pacific Circle . 137
CHAPTER 32 Ecuador - Bahia de Caraquez . 139
CHAPTER 33 South Pacific Winter: Storm .. 141
CHAPTER 34 Excursus: Life Aboard . 144
CHAPTER 35 Estancilla - A Near Disaster . 147
CHAPTER 36 Going South - the Patagonian Channels 150
CHAPTER 37 One Year in Patagonia - Rain, Snow & Ice . 175
CHAPTER 38 A Quick Side-Trip to Antarctica . 186
CHAPTER 39 Murphy’s Law .. 188
CHAPTER 40 The Long Way Back to Puerto Montt 191
CHAPTER 41 Social Life in Marina Oxxean . 198
CHAPTER 42 On the Way to the South Pacific Islands 200
CHAPTER 43 Excursus: The Trap of Hanga Piko . 206
CHAPTER 44 The Tuamotus - A Disappointment 212
CHAPTER 45 South Pacific Islands: French Polynesia - Suwarrow - Samoa – Tonga . 216
CHAPTER 46 Immigrating to New Zealand? 224
CHAPTER 47 Vanuatu - Still Exciting . 230
CHAPTER 48 Noumea - A Guarantee for Indispositions 242
CHAPTER 49 Australia - Tasmania - Bass Strait 259
CHAPTER 50 Papua New Guinea – A Balancing Act between the Stone Age and the Modern Period 276
CHAPTER 51 Micronesia: Pohnpei - Christmas on Lukunor – Chuuk . 284
CHAPTER 52 Via Guam to Japan – A Country of Irritations and Surprises 292
CHAPTER 53 To the Aleutians - Stumbling in the Mist 318
CHAPTER 54 Bering Sea - Alaska - British Columbia . 320
CHAPTER 1
The End of a Voyage – The Beginning of a Voyage

It was June 5, 1996 and our sailing vessel LUDUS AMORIS had just finished her trip around the world. We were dropping her anchor in the Bay of Nidri just outside of the Greek town of Levkas in the Ionian Sea. I watched my wife Maria as she steered our boat expertly to a safe spot in the anchorage. The spot was just the right distance from the other numerous yachts that peppered this Mediterranean gem.
The chain thundered out of its locker and the anchor dropped 30 feet to the bottom. Standing on the foredeck of our LUDUS AMORIS, a Hallberg Rassy Rasmus 35, I watched as the chain stretched and tightened. Out of the corner of my eye I saw a little yacht approaching. As it neared us I recognized Wolfgang and Hanna on the deck of MELUSINE yelling “Welcome back home!” in exactly the same spot where they had said their goodbyes to us five years earlier. In an uncanny foreshadowing of our future sailing life, our neighbors pointed towards a shipyard and Wolfgang called out “Over there on the hardstand is your dream boat!” We looked towards the shipyard where dozens of yachts were supported on wooden joists, high above the gravel. Smiling and waving we called back “Let us arrive first!”
Quietly, Maria and I sat down in the cockpit. Only now did we become acutely aware that a period of our lives was over. Five years of travel and experiences that we were blessed to have had, had come to an end. When we left five years earlier, I was a teacher in a public college and university. It was easy for me to get the time off. The budget was tight and I was able to take an extended sabbatical. Maria, employed as a music teacher, was not able to take time off. She left her job with the understanding that she would be rehired when we returned. Unfortunately, the promise wasn’t kept through no fault of the employer. When we came back the public cash boxes were empty and nobody was hiring in Maria’s field.
Although our situation was dire, it didn’t bother us too much because we were still caught up in that other world in which we had lived for the past five years. It was a world of freedom, a world which by its nature required us to be self-sufficient and to be leaders. In this world, we were freed from being told how to live, what decisions to make and where to turn next. Along with this freedom came great responsibility. We were cognizant that we had no safety net and that we alone would carry the weight of our mistakes. Any sloppy navigation, careless handling of our ship or negligent use of our limited financial means could turn into a life threatening burden since we did not have a fall back plan while living on the water. We learned quickly how to survive through the unknown and after five years we had become experts out of necessity. We learned that freedom always comes with a price. This kind of sailing is rewarding, but it is also a very tough teacher.
What was it about Wolfgang’s mention of our dream boat that stuck in our mind? Why did we march to the shipyard just a couple of days later to have a look? Did we not have enough of sailing? Was our hunger for sailing not satisfied for the moment?
None the less we took this irrational step which at once gave our lives a new and unplanned direction. We had heard and read about a “virus” that inhabits your body and never leaves. It may lie dormant for a while, but it will always prevail. Sailing literature is full of examples of those with the “virus” - Wilfried Erdmann, Bernard Pieske, Rollo Gebhard, Ernst Juergen and Elga Koch, Bernard Moitessier, Eric Tabarly and Eric Hiscock, just to name a few. The list is endless and is an eloquent testimony to how this “virus” lives in the blood. In our case, we had firm plans. We would allow five years for the circumnavigation and when complete, we would reenter civilization as we had previously known it. Our lives would include a job or career, stress, insurance, phones, stop and go on the Autobahn and television. As I recall, this plan was never questioned, at least not during the first three years of our trip around the world. We were very certain of our life plan. At this “three year point” in our journey we first started to have doubts.
What did we actually want to do at home? Did we truly want to go back into the mundane mess of duties, projects, routines and weariness? These questions started to come up more and more the closer we came to the end of our sailing trip. Our seemingly firm plans started to look negotiable but with an illness in our family, our immediate fate had been decided and we could not, nor did we want to, escape the responsibility we had to our family.
The ship that Wolfgang had pointed out to us in Nidri on the day of our return was a Hallberg Rassy 41 from 1978. We recognized it at once as a great cruising yacht. As we had a closer look, it was obvious that the ketch had considerable deficiencies because of her age. The engine, a Volvo MD 21A, was familiar to us, as our ship, the LUDUS AMORIS, had the same model. Over 7000 engine hours had left their fingerprints on the engine. The teak deck was also familiar to us and we knew it was hopeless. It showed the same warping that had affected LUDUS AMORIS. Little glasses and plastic containers, strategically placed in the cabinets, gave us hints that we could not ignore. The teak deck was beyond repair and it was leaking all over. A spot at the bow made it obvious that this ship had touched rocks. The repair was an unprofessional one, but it wasn’t a substantial problem!
Our experiences over the past five years had given us the ability to expertly assess a yacht. Our first purchase was entirely different. With that purchase, we had no idea how to assess a ship and we were helpless and dependent on the honesty of the seller.
These are circumstances known to every novi