After a thorough study of weather information in the fifth edition of Jimmy Cornell's "World Cruising Routes" we reluctantly had to give up our original plans. We had planned to sail all the way through Micronesia to end up in the Philippines or Taiwan at the end of November 2008. We had then intended to leave DHARMA BUM III there, fly to Germany & spend Christmas and the 50-year wedding anniversary of my parents on 23 January 2009 in my hometown Flensburg.
At route PN86 (p. 328) Palau to the Philippines it says: "Best time January to March. Tropical storms all year." As well as "high risk of typhoons". And at route PN95 (p. 334) Marshall Islands to the Carolines one can read: "Best time December to April. Tropical storms all year." That doesn't work for us either, as our visa here runs out on 4 September. At US$ 300 for each additional month, a visa-extension does not sound all that attractive, anyway.
We have had a typhoon make a direct hit on our house in Garden City in the outskirts of Taipei in September 1994. The destruction was mind-blowing and I firmly believe that on a boat you have pretty much ZERO chance to survive such an onslaught. I don't really care about all the stories of people who "survived a typhoon" on a sailboat. None of them were anywhere near the center, which is surrounded by tornado-like winds (the German word is "Fallstrom" - it drove shards of glass THROUGH a piece of plywood, which I had put in the place where our bedroom window had been). I am simply not willing to take that kind of risk.
Hence we have decided to sail due south - hard on the wind as usual - and spend the cyclone season in New Zealand. That is about 3000 nautical miles (or 5555 kilometers) away and once we have crossed the equator, the winds will be even more on the nose. So, just in case we can't make it, we'll probably have to apply for an Australian visa as well.
We might stop-over in Kiribati and Fiji, but we know that one boat (AMULETTE, a monohull) gave up that plan and went to Vanuatu instead and another boat (HOLOKAI, a catamaran) had to motor quite a ways in a prolonged calm to make it to Fiji. And both of those boats go to windward a lot better than our trusty DHARMA BUM III...
As to the future: We just got an eMail from another boat which took part in the Sail Indonesia Rally, which was organized by http://www.sailindonesia.net/ in partnership with YCBI (Yayasan Cinta Bahari Indonesia). Here is what they wrote: "Spent a month in Darwin & left for Kupang on Sail Indonesia, end of July. It was a complete mess & ended up with all 116 boats being impounded by customs for 7 days! We were on an awful anchorage, boats dragged, ours got hit by the customs boat, (which had a dingy anchor for a 35' motor launch) & dinghies got turned over when they tried to go ashore! No one would say exactly what the trouble was & the atmosphere was awful. As we only joined up to get the paperwork sorted out for us it was a complete waste of time. We like many other boats left the rally as soon as we were allowed & are now in Bali."
I am not a big fan of these mass-events and this one removed my last doubts. We'll go through the Torres Strait, cross the Indian Ocean like our friends Wolf & Doris aboard NOMAD http://www.seenomaden.at/ and head back towards the Caribbean.
Right now we are waiting for an EPIRB emergency transmitter as well as a complete radio system, as my old long distance radio died of salty air and corrosion. My friends tell me that I got a pretty good run for my money, as I had bought the radio in San Diego for DHARMA BUM II. And that was in 1994. Let's see how long the new one lasts. :-)
