What happens at sea, stays at sea
Except what I'm choosing to tell you here. Tales from my cruise to Fiji with Paul Henry, aboard MY Olive, part one!
If the New Zealand television host Paul Henry ever calls you and says “do you want to take my boat to Fiji?”, tell him to "get fked!" No, not really, don’t do that. It’s just that in one of our many conversations throughout this trip, Paul joked that I should write that and it makes a suitably dramatic opening line to this adventure. It could also prove to be my genuine advice for this scenario, but to know for certain, you're going to have to read on.
So, Paul Henry - host of the upcoming The Traitors NZ - called me and said “do you want to take my boat to Fiji?”. Now, obviously, I said “yes”. It was an offer first mooted on the night of New Zealand’s 2020 General Election. Paul had cruised around the world on his luxury, “exploration-style” ship, MY Olive - named after his late mother - only to land in New Zealand and find the world shut down by Covid. Extensions were granted, but he knew the Cook Islands-registered Olive was on a limited visa in our land. She would need an international passage when that time was up, so he dropped in an invite over a wine at the Newshub election coverage party.
Fast forward to March 2023 and I got the call about joining the crew. Olive had to leave Kiwi waters by the end of June and Paul wanted her in Fiji for winter. Much of that phone call stuck, but none more than Paul’s closing line: “Best case scenario, we get there in six days. Worst case, we all die.” Stick to the facts, I suppose.
Presuming this was an opportunity to stare death in the face, from a safe distance, with comfortable quarters, en suite, USB wall sockets and a sea view, I made preparations to attend. Autopilot on, the boat would drive Paul, Skipper Dave and I across the Pacific to Fiji. Just like the second half of Jaws, only we’d be three men in a far better boat! What could go wrong?
Well, an Auckland Transport-led journey to the boat on the day of departure is one thing that could go wrong. And it did. In the time it took me to lug my large, hard-shelled suitcase crammed with food out to the farthest pier, where the Gulf Harbour ferry was due to depart from, AT decided to cancel said ferry. I was being dragged down the ramp by the weight of ten frozen meals, when my eyes caught the sight of a giant ‘C’ on the departures board. It didn’t stand for ‘calm’, as I initially reasoned, it stood for ‘cancelled’. Or ‘CLIMB back into the rideshare CAR’.
Fortunately, Paul’s ever-cheery and problem-solving Skipper, Dave, was able to scoop me up at Albany bus station and we travelled together to Gulf Harbour Marina (NZ Marina of the Year 2020-21). Paul met us at Olive, as we trolleyed our gear aboard ready for our voyage. Polished stainless steel rails, spotless wooden decks and not a grain of salt in sight, Olive looked every bit the superyacht she is not (by mere metres). My, how that was going to change!
Before departure, NZ Customs needed to sign us out. In my imagination, this would involve a full sweep of the vessel, carried out by multiple personnel brandishing searchlights and microscopes, while their fearsome, albeit leashed, hounds sniffed every crevice below deck for stowaways. In reality, this was merely a few checkboxes on some forms, ticked off by an affable chap named Neil1.
Neil checked our faces matched our passports, confirmed we weren’t packing arms, then signed us out of New Zealand. We were free to leave. In fact, we had to leave!
Paul fired up the engines - signifying their rest time was over - and backed Olive’s 80 feet, 90 ton hull out of her berth. Dave stood on the stern, calling out instructions regarding nearby obstacles. A brief turn of the wheel and she swung round in the marina’s flat water, clear for departure. We waved goodbye to Dave’s partner Gill and son Cameron and began the long drive to Fiji.
There was an air of excitement lingering in the cool, winter breeze. Olive swiftly cruised the flat water of the Hauraki Gulf, south of the island of Tiritiri Matangi, before pointing up to skim the northern coast of Aotea Great Barrier Island.
“By sunset tonight, we’ll be past the last thing we can hit,” Paul assured us as he poured a celebratory wine, dispelling any myths that this was a dry cruise. I had been given my watch times of 22:00-02:00 and 10:00-14:00, daily, which I very much saw as the “bonus shift”. Four hours on, eight hours off, 15 years a Kiwi, I was finally going to find time to watch Lord Of The Rings2!
The engines, oblivious to the challenge that lay before them, sat happily working their guts off. Olive was cruising at around 8 knots. As we travelled north, some swells funnelling through the Colville Channel - the stretch of water between Aotea and the Coromandel Peninsula - picked her up and made her roll. “Dave, let’s turn the stabilisers on,” said Paul.
Stabilisers are a fascinating and important bit of kit. They’re little rotors that stick out each side of the boat and spin when required, to help counteract the rolling caused by waves. Less roll brings benefits like a safer and more comfortable ride and a reduced likelihood of sea sickness. Note: I only said “reduced likelihood”.
Shortly before 17:00, I excused myself to my cabin to rest, read and watch some TV. I actually ended up napping for a few hours. Coming around sometime before 20:00, I lay in my tidy beam bunk, contemplating what to do next. I didn’t feel great, but I wasn’t completely seasick.
"Eat something and drink something", they say that can combat seasickness. I'm 99% certain somebody maybe once said something along those lines to me about seasickness; I'm 100% certain I went all-in on that advice just hours into this voyage.
Waddling into the galley, I said “hi” to Paul, who was perched on the seat, on watch in the wheelhouse. We were somewhere to the north of Great Barrier Island. “You’re up here early,” he remarked. My actions that followed can only be described as a display of naive defiance.
“I want to have dinner,” I stated. I then turned on the oven, proceeded to cook a whole pizza, sat down at the table in the galley to eat it, got halfway through, placed the plate holding the remainder by the sink and ran back to my cabin to be horizontal again. Horizontal is good for seasickness. It ranks up there with the likes of “looking at the horizon” and “being near the centre of the ship”3.
21:59 rolled around too quickly. I begrudgingly hauled myself from my bunk and hurriedly made my way upstairs to the wheelhouse. Paul talked me through the watch procedures: checking the radar (shows you boats and waves in the vicinity, mainly waves, since boats are rare at sea), checking the AIS (Anything Interesting Seen? A cool boat tracking thing shows you all the other boats in the vicinity, as long as they too have AIS), keeping an eye on the engine workload dials, remembering to look out the windshield for other vessels and filling out the log book. He then went to bed and I was left to it. I sat on the seat in the wheelhouse, bobbing up and down in the darkness, no horizon to fixate on.
For the best part of 90 minutes, I managed to convince myself I wasn’t ill. The boat lurched up and down and I just swallowed and smiled and kept on. Then shortly before 23:30, I felt the mouth salts. It was happening. I jumped up, swiftly flew like a ghost through the galley, through the saloon and out the rear door of the boat. I stood on the starboard stern, holding those stainless handrails for dear life and gasping at the air, hoping the onslaught could be called off. It couldn’t and I promptly vomited into the Pacific Ocean. Gross as it was, I felt amazing in the moments after. Bring on those next eight days at sea! I was ready for ya!4
Perhaps my mistake was attempting to wolf down a normal sized meal upon departure. Or was it? Is it fair to blame the food for this condition, known as ‘motion sickness’? Should one perhaps point the big finger of accusation at the motion itself?
Anyway, I got sick. I was sick as a poorly parrot; I went under like a dirty old seadog. The next two days went something like this:
Get up for watch
Dispense of unnecessary (all) fluid/food from stomach
Lie as horizontal as possible throughout watch
Go back to bed and sleep until next watch
Why waste time enjoying a trip of a lifetime, when you can spend it holed up in your cabin wishing you were dead?
Next time: only a storm, getting the wobbles and a ship, a ship! To be continued… read part two now!
If you’ve enjoyed this yarn and want to help support my future adventures, I’ve made paid subscriptions as cheap as $1 a month!
Just head here: duncwilson.substack.com/onedollardeal - cancel any time.
The NZ Marina of the Year 2020-21 doesn’t have its own Customs office, so Neil had driven from the city. I could have carpooled with Neil!
I make no apologies for this running order: move to NZ, explore a bit, watch The Hobbit, watch Lord Of The Rings. In fairness, I would have watched LOTR sooner if somebody had just called them what they are: hiking movies!
It’s no “not being on a boat”, though. That really is the motion sickness silver bullet.
I wasn’t! It didn’t last.
Awesome！
I want more!