Trevor Robertson on being frozen in, in the Antarctic:

First day back at work in a couple of months, ho hum. After checking emails and facebook and playing sudoku and STILL finding myself with time on my hands I went down the slippery google path.

I searched my way to an article about a man who spent 13 MONTHS wintering in the Antarctic, aboard Iron Bark II, which is a 35ft wylo gaff-cutter, sister boat to Tai Taki. I always knew Tai Taki was a tank - built like the proverbial brick shithouse.

Reading this article gave me immense comfort when thinking about us being aboard Tai Taki, taking in the crisp air of the Aleutian Islands, north of Alaska. I have however, made it abundantly clear to James that I don't think I'm cut of the same mould when it comes to the extreme adventuring experienced by Trevor! My rather romantic image of the proposed time spent up north is kicking back in a hot spring watching the northern lights twirl above my head...

From the article "The Ice Man of Iron Bark" by James Baldwin:

To give an example of how complicated the simplest chores become in the sub-zero world, Trevor explained the steps involved in making pancakes. "First melt some ice for water. To start the kerosene stove even the preheat alcohol has to be preheated before it will burn. Chisel off a chunk of frozen olive oil. Then melt the batter in a double boiler of water. Fry the pancake. Then melt the frozen jam in the double boiler. Then eat quick before it freezes up again."

To get drinking water he chopped and hauled fresh water ice from a glacier because all the ice surrounding the boat was contaminated with salt. Trevor's diet during the expedition consisted mostly or rice, flour, corned beef and butter. To survive the cold he had to eat a fat-rich diet of about 4,000 calories a day, he estimated. Even so, he came out of the Antarctic as lean as a marathon runner.

During the six hours a week when he ran the heater, the inside of the cabin - which was soon covered in a grubby freezer frost - would start streaming condensation. Everything, including clothing, bedding and books, got wet and then froze solid when the heat was shut off. To read the frozen books meant pulling off a glove and using his hand to thaw one page at a time."



Amazing. In 2004/05 Trevor spent another winter frozen in, at the opposite pole this time detailed in Annie Hill's blog: http://anniehill.blogspot.com/search/label/Greenland.

Annie Hill is the author of the book Voyaging On A Small Income which added fuel to the spark in James' eyes and was my first introduction to what a sailing life could be. Once I figure out how this blogger-thinger-mejiggy works I will update it to include nicer looking links instead of chunky URLs all over the post. Signing off for now...CHoNt

the story so far....

Tai Taki II... Our little beast... Our Kombi Van of The Sea....drifted into this Duck's life on the wave of an excited suggestion (read: near-coercion) to sail this baby all the way to Canada.

Built in New Zealand in 1982, Tai Taki had 2 previous owners before being trucked down from Cairns in 2002. She is a 32ft gaff rigged Wylo liveaboard designed by Nick Skeats. She has spent time on the mooring in Williamstown and puttering around the bay, and was run aground once in St Kilda when the ship ran dry and the lads decided it was a good idea to refuel...the pitt-stop cost 6 hours waiting for the tide to come in again.

With salt water rushing around his veins, James left to go sailing, had many adventures and returned to Australia in 2005. As the rest of the clan had also been to-ing and fro-ing for the last few years Tai Taki was left unattended in the water a little too long, and the electrolysis (stray current in the water) began to eat away at the steel hull.



She came out of the water in July 2006... and we're still working... working... The damage revealed post high pressure wash was enough to make a grown man cry - well, that and the trauma of having to hire a crane at a Grand a pop as the centreboard became stuck during the slipping process. Unable to go up, unable to go down - properly stuck - and did I mention that we had been broken into the night before coming out of the water? Ropes and tools stolen) . The sacrificial zinc anodes had long dissolved leaving the steel unprotected. Sections of the boat looked like swiss cheese, another month and she'd have been a Fishie Palace.




James learned how to bodge weld to back fill all the pits and replace a plate (he's since improved) and I got to work grinding off burn marks then painting over them with a stinky two-part hardcore epoxy. We ended up giving the entire 32 ft length of the boat this treatment, outside AND inside, blowing out what we imagined to be a conservative estimate of 8 weeks of maintenance (pre-high pressure wash) to 14 months... and counting! It has been an unbelievably daunting, exhausting, sometimes joyless and bloody expensive project, taking almost a year to get back to square one. What a way to challenge a relationship!!



We are crossing all our fingers and toes and arms and legs to get her back in the water by mid December so we can swan around the bay and maybe berth in the Docklands for the summer. Having never been sailing before it'll be a huge learning curve but she'll once more be a liveaboard and we three (me, him and her) can take our time learning to live with each other... Only a few tasks to go - finish remodelling the galley, make up some new cabinets in the fore cabin, apply the topcoats, connect all the pipes, build some gutters to collect rainwater, install a diesel tank, check the motor, major rewiring, install the electricals, get a new rudder, build a new dinghy, buy some new sails....um...wait there's more...

And there's a light there... somewhere... at the end of the tunnel... and a sea breeze and some warm tropical water...