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Greetings all! Note: The first part of this blog entry is a bit redundant to the quick updates I sent out over the past couple of weeks… In Taiwan, our boats were tied up at An Ping Fishing Harbor. It’s a small harbor, far out of town, with nothing around it. Nordhavn’s factory, Ta Shing, selected this location because it was a good place to work on the boats. The original plan had been that we’d park the boats and then shuffle off to a hotel while Ta Shing worked on our boats. However, while the others went to a hotel, Roberta and I were stuck on the boat. Shelby (our dog) was not able to clear into Taiwan, so she had to stay on the boat, which also meant we had to stay on the boat.
Karen from Asia Yacht Services For our two day trip to Hong Kong I had asked Asia Yacht Services (www.asiayachtservices.com), the company that would be looking after our boats in Hong Kong, if they had anyone I could hire as crew for the passage. Roberta and I are fine to do the passage alone, but overnight passages are much easier with extra crew on board. Also, I liked the idea of having someone on board who had been into the Hong Kong port before. They agreed to send two people, including their head of maintenance. First one of these people dropped out, and then the other canceled the night before departure, due to visa problems getting into Taiwan. Instead, they sent Karen, who had sailed extensively around Hong Kong. We were very happy to have her.
Braun and Tina (Grey Pearl) gifted Sans Souci and Seabird a rubber stamp. I hadn’t been certain what I’d do with it, but it has been very handy in dealing with customs officials. They all expect me to have one, and insist I stamp it on all the official documents. Only Seabird and Sans Souci would be departing for Hong Kong. Braun and Tina, from Grey Pearl, had decided to fly to mainland China for a three week tour. They would be joining us later in Hong Kong.
Seabird following Sans Souci as we departed the harbor in Taiwan As we were departing, Roberta asked if she could take over and drive the boat. She wanted practice leaving the dock. She pulled us away from the dock perfectly, and I worked the lines. Before turning over control of the boat to her, I thought I noticed that the thrusters felt weak. I should have said something and gave them a full test. Not having done so would later turn out to be a serious error. Our first hour out of port was tricky. There were a lot of fisherman, and fishing gear in the water. We had a hard time zigzagging through it. Once we hit open water, we relaxed and settled in for a two day passage. But, our good moods didn’t last too long… Normally after departure our boats speak on the radio to discuss speed. It’s normally a short discussion, “How’s this speed feel?” And, the response, “Fine. Let’s give it a try.” However, this time, when I asked the question, Steven (Seabird) said, “My exhaust is hotter than I like. Let’s slow down a bit.” Half an hour later I radioed again to ask if the temperature had settled down. Carol said, “Steven’s in the engine room. He’s cleaning the air filter on the main engine.” This seemed very strange. A bit later Steven called back on the radio to say that he had cleaned the air filter and was hoping that it would solve the problem. This wasn’t something I would have thought of. Another half hour went by when I called Steven again, “How’s the heat?” He said it wasn’t improved and the boat was running the hottest it ever had. His entire drive train was significantly hotter than he had seen it before. “Should we be turning around?,” I asked. There was no answer for a bit, and then Steven said, “Yes. It is time to turn around.” His response stunned me. I should have seen it coming, but didn’t. I assumed that the worst case was that we’d need to run slow. We discussed what might be happening and both agreed that it sounded like he had either collected growth on his bottom or possibly wrapped something around his prop. He needed to get back to shallow water, drop the anchor, and dive under the boat to see what was going on. He suggested that I continue, and then with a little luck he would be able to clean up whatever the problem was and then catch up with me.
A very sad look at Seabird on my chart plotter, as Seabird headed back By a strange coincidence, I had just been doing a safety briefing for Karen, our new crew member… I had been explaining where all the safety equipment was, including fire extinguishers, life jackets, life rafts, and survival suits. We were trying to decide whether if there were an emergency, would getting into survival suits made sense? I mentioned that it was an irrelevant issue, in that the beauty of traveling with two other boats was that if anything went wrong we’d be rescued within minutes of hitting the water. However, this was no longer true. For the first time in over 7,000 nautical miles of cruising, we would be totally alone. I did think about whether or not I should also turn around… Our GSSR group has always said that if one of us is stuck at sea, the others would not leave them behind. In this case, we were still close to port, and I’d be in radio contact with Seabird all the way to port. If I continued alone, I would be the one who was at risk, not Seabird. Steven felt there was a chance he’d be able to clean his bottom, and flip around to catch up with me. I wasn’t convinced this was possible, but thought there was a chance he could at least catch up enough to get into radio range. I had high hopes that this would be possible. Slowing down to wait for Seabird could be dangerous. We had been alerted that a typhoon was coming. We were scheduled to arrive 24 hours ahead of the typhoon, but I didn’t want to give up any of our margin for error. The determining factor, in my decision to continue without Seabird, became our dog. Shelby had a tough time of it in Taiwan. She was stuck on the boat because we couldn’t clear her into Taiwan. Shelby is in good shape for a fourteen year old dog, but she’s starting to show her age. She seemed to be in serious depression and was just lying on the floor looking sad. We needed to get her off the boat. Also, we had spoken to animal quarantine in Hong Kong and they were considering Japan as our last port prior to Hong Kong. They knew we were stopping in Taiwan, but that Shelby wasn’t getting off the boat. If we turned around, and had to spend another week in Taiwan, at some point, Hong Kong would lose patience with us. Thus, we continued alone… Unfortunately, we weren’t moving very fast, and I wasn’t certain why. We were averaging only about 7 knots. Our speed was bouncing between as little as 5.5 knots and no more than 7.5 knots. Was the problem crud on our bottom, or was it an adverse current? I had no idea. One idea was to make a 180 degree turn and look to see if we accelerated. However, I had asked Steven whether or not his speed picked up when he turned around, and he said that he did not pick up speed when he turned back. When Seabird reached shallow water, just before the port, they dropped anchor and Steven dived under the boat. I was very curious to speak with him to find out if indeed our theory was correct, and his problem was growth on his bottom, and if he would be able to quickly wipe it off and rejoin me. I was also curious to find whether or not there was growth on my bottom, or if what I was experiencing was current. Steven did not call back until we were nearly twenty miles apart. “I have good news and bad news” he said. “The good news is that the problem is that the prop and keel cooler have a inch thick layer of a white chalky substance on them. The bad news is that there is way too much of it for me to clean off. I have already spoken with Ta Shing and they have scheduled a diver to come tomorrow.” All hope was gone that Seabird would be turning around to join us. We would be making the passage alone, and apparently, our problem wasn’t current. We would be doing the rest of the passage at this horribly slow speed. It was now apparent that we would be arriving in Hong Kong after dark. I felt terrible leaving Seabird alone in Taiwan. The distance from Taiwan to Hong Kong is 400 nautical miles. One very unusual aspect of the passage is that the majority of the trip is over shallow water, mostly only a couple of hundred feet deep. And, studying the chart, I could see a place that was under 50 feet deep. This seemed perfect as a place to drop anchor and inspect the bottom. I wanted to get out my scuba gear, and have everything teed up, so that we could drop anchor, I could dive, and be back in the boat within 30 minutes. However, when I shared my plan with Roberta, she talked me out of it. We were in 2-3 foot waves, and the bottom would be bouncing while I was underneath. If anything went wrong, with us 75 miles from shore, it would be a nasty situation. We were running fine, although slower than we’d like. And, Roberta wasn’t convinced that our problem wasn’t current. The simplest way to find out if you are in a current or not is to simply turn around and see if you move faster. Doing this probably meant a 30 minute to one hour delay, and we were fighting the clock for daylight arrival. Plus, it really didn’t matter. Unless I was willing to go under the boat and clean the bottom, it was what it was. We either were in current, or we weren’t, but nothing was going to change it. I should segue for a minute to talk about how we did our shifts driving the boat…. With three people on the boat, we decided to slice the driving into three hour shifts. Roberta would drive for three hours, then Karen for three hours, and then me for three hours, and then we’d repeat it. This meant that everyone would have six hours to rest between driving. Prior to this trip I had never met Karen in my life. She seemed competent, but you have to really trust someone to go to sleep on a long passage while they drive. I grilled Karen on her background, and mostly, she had done watches on sailboats, not powerboats. Sans Souci is complex, and was not running 100%. The gunk on the bottom and the adverse current were causing Sans Souci to run slowly, and warmer than usual. I knew that I had to sleep, or I’d be dangerous to have on the helm. I decided that the best answer was to do double shifts with Karen until I knew her better and had a sense of her watch skills. To my delight, she was an outstanding watch-stander. She took the initiative to step outside the pilot house every 30 minutes, to have a really good look for other boats, and paid very close attention to both radars. We had a good team, and sleep would be possible
Once Sans Souci arrived at the shallow water, something completely unexpected occurred. I had expected that the seas might get rougher due to the shallow water, but they stayed the same. What did change was that we started to speed up. In minutes, my speed jumped from 6.5 knots to 7.5 knots, then to 8.1 knots, and onward to 9.8 knots. Wow!!! Not exactly warp speed, but I was very happy with it. Our arrival time whiplashed from arriving at 10pm, to arriving at 4am. I know, for different rpms, how fast the boat should go, and we were getting at least a 1 knot push. This was weird, and not predicted on the current charts. After a couple of hours we slowed down a bit, to 8.5 knots, but then ran at that speed for another 12 hours. We were very pleased on Sans Souci.
On our second day, we were running along the China coast. We never saw mainland china, but always knew it was about 12 miles out the window on the starboard side of the boat. For me, it was a very strange feeling. I NEVER would have thought I’d be driving a boat off the shore of China. What was I doing here? The currents that were pushing us had accelerated our arrival to the point that we were on track to arrive early, perhaps even in the dark. We needed to slow down. However, we had a new problem… Over the past couple of hours, a swell had started. The typhoon was still a long ways away from us, but it was stirring up the water in the Philippines, and some of the swell was working its way our direction. Or, so I thought. All I really knew was that during a two hour period, our relatively calm seas had risen to where a gentle eight foot swell had evolved. We were climbing up one side of the swell, then falling off the backside. It wasn’t at all a problem. As we’d come down the backside of the swell, we twisted around a bit, and were perhaps losing some speed. However, it was what I didn’t know that was worrying me. How much taller was the swell going to get? Eight feet was fine, but twenty feet wouldn’t be. Perhaps the typhoon was accelerating? Perhaps it was no big deal and I was over-reacting? Perhaps I hadn’t slept as much as I should, and was getting paranoid about the approaching typhoon. I looked Karen in the eye and said, “Are you 100% sure you can guide us into Hong Kong in the dark?” She answered, “No problem.” And, I kicked up the throttle. It was time to move. By speeding up we would be arriving at the entrance to Hong Kong at 3am, in the complete dark. This would not be good, but Karen seemed confident, and I don’t like typhoons, plus, I liked the idea of being in port and getting some sleep. Under normal circumstances, I can ‘put the pedal to the metal’ on Sans Souci, and all is well. But, with the water around us warmer than most showers, crud caked on the bottom of the boat, thru-hulls partially clogged and caked-over props, my drive train was complaining a bit. I dedicated one of our three monitors in the pilothouse just to monitoring the temperatures of the engines, transmissions and shafts. The engines were the most worrisome. I’m not a diesel mechanic, so I really don’t know at what temperature I should start worrying. I’m accustoming to seeing the engines run 176 degrees, but now they were running 192 degrees. The shafts, which normally run 83 degrees were running 106 degrees. The transmissions, that normally run 125 degrees were closing in on 150 degrees! I phoned friends, all of whom asked the water temperature, and everyone felt I was fine, so, I continued to worry, but kept the speed up. The swell never rose any further, and actually fell a bit. As usual, I was being overly cautious. Generally speaking though, I’ve gotten in less trouble worrying too much, than when I’ve worried too little.
The final phase of approaching Hong Kong is to run through about 30 miles of islands. I plotted a course that took us alongside a special shipping lane set up for freighters. My intent was to run the right edge of the lane, but stay out of the freighters way. As we approached my right turn, I had probably ten freighters within a mile of Sans Souci, plus several freighters outbound that were showing on the radar, and some smaller boats heading my way that I was going to need to zigzag through. Roberta had gone down to sleep, so it was just Karen and I at the helm. The freighters tend to move at anywhere from 12 knots of speed to 20 knots. Sans Souci moves only about 9 knots, and whereas I had assumed the current would die, it remained against us, and intensified. I now had at least a couple knots of current against me, and was being overtaken quickly, on both sides, by the freighters. Meanwhile, the first of the two smaller boats headed straight for me. I had planned to pass behind him, but he started shining his searchlight at me. I was close enough now to see that it was towing the boat behind. I stopped dead in the water, causing Roberta to come rushing up the stairs to ask what was happening. And, this was all in about the first hundred yards. The next 30 miles were going to be ‘interesting.’ Soon after turning the corner, I realized that the right side of the shipping lane was lined with fishing boats pulling nets. I would need to run inside the traffic lane, meaning I’d constantly being dodging freighters coming from behind. I didn’t have to wait long to be put to the test. A freighter approached from behind, and I tried to squeeze to the right, but one of the fishing boats was there, and it was well into the traffic lane. It had big poles poking out the side and was pulling a net. I was caught between the freighter and the fishing boat. Once again, I hit the brakes, and slowed to let the freighter pass. I looked at Karen and asked, “How in the heck do you do this in a sailboat at night?” Soon afterwards, a little tiny boat crossed by bow at lightning speed, passing within 50 feet of my bow. Why? He could easily have passed behind, and not put himself at risk?
During the day this doesn’t look exciting, but at night it is a whole other experience. Then I was passed by a couple of freighters so large that it was incomprehensible. There’s a special horn blast reserved for the danger sign; five short blasts. Trust me, it isn’t fun when you hear that sound from behind you, and look back to see a city-sized freighter on your tail. There was one bright spot for the run, and I wish I had a picture to share. I put Navnet 3d into 3d mode, with radar overlay, and zoomed in to show about a 1 mile radius. It was beautiful! I could clearly see the traffic lane as well as all the boats around me. It also gave the ‘big picture’ of where all the islands were and what they looked like, and helped orient Karen and I. Once I had Navnet 3d going, learned to stick to the center of the traffic lane, and started getting the hang of spotting the other ships, my mood brightened, and things didn’t seem quite so tense.
At 5:30am the sun started rising, and I could see.
Daylight arrived just as we were pulling into port; the Gold Coast Marina in Kowloon, Hong Kong. I assume most people know Hong Kong’s history with the British, and the hand-off to China, but if not, check out this Wikipedia entry: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hong_Kong. Roberta and I were in Hong Kong for the handover of Hong Kong from Britain to China in 1997. We have very fond memories of Hong Kong, and were curious to see it again.
Hong Kong is very unique in the world. The population density is higher than in Manhattan, and there is a lot of money running around. Great restaurants abound, and the British history means that English is not a problem.
Entering our marina was a very cool feeling. It was the first time I had seen a ‘real’ marina, with real-live floating docks, and recreational cruising boats, in many months. \ There are ten or more restaurants at the top of the dock, an ATM machine, a wonderful grocery store, a 7-11 and even a McDonalds. We had shore power connected within minutes. I felt a little guilty about Seabird, stuck behind in Taiwan, so I sent this email (CLICK HERE) telling him what the marina was like. I wanted him to enjoy Taiwan and not be thinking about Hong Kong. Soon after though, I decided to be a little more honest and sent this link to some snapshots I took around the marina. The beach is immediately adjacent to the marina. http://www.kensblog.com/aspx/m/Gold_Coast_Marina
Here’s one funny thing about the marina that we’re in. There are a lot of big boxy boats! Most are steel and look like floating shoeboxes. They are clearly boats, not houseboats, but if you look around the marina you’ll notice that a significant percentage of the boats have no radar, or domes of any sort, on top. I spoke with one owner who said that he was using his pseudo-boat as a condo, and it had 2,500 sq ft, but that he would soon be moving to a larger boat-condo of over 4,500 sq. ft., and that a similar waterfront condo would cost $6 to $8 million! Apparently there are rules about what constitutes a boat, and what constitutes a condo, and a boat must have an engine. So .. there are some boxy ‘boats’ around me in the marina, but I’ll bet they don’t have a lot of miles on their engines!
And, here’s something else strange about marinas in Hong Kong (not the one we are in!) I spoke with a local boat owner (a 60’ trawler) who mentioned that his marina had no docks whatsoever. His boat is just floating at a mooring buoy! I asked if he had to pay someone $5 to tender him to shore whenever he wanted on or off the boat, and he said, “Nope – it’s around 50 cents”. I thought for a minute, “What about shore power?” His response, “This is Hong Kong. Anything is possible. They ran a power cable out to me, under the water, that pokes up from a pipe. And lastly, in my previous blog I mentioned that Roberta and I are making plans to move Sans Souci to the Med. I also mentioned that we might travel alone for a year without the other two GSSR boats. This triggered a couple of questions on the NordhavnDreamers discussion group that I follow regularly (http://groups.yahoo.com/group/nordhavndreamers) I am including here two answers I gave to questions about our plans. They should be self-explanatory. John asked whether we chose the Med, because it is the ‘best place in the world.”
Them, Ron Rogers asked whether or not this means the end of the GSSR…
That’s it for today! I’ll post again when Seabird and Grey Pearl arrive in Hong Kong. For now, they are on the move. This link should allow you to track their movement, live, over the next two days: http://share.findmespot.com/shared/faces/viewspots.jsp?glId=0QFfdZsomAjanceJLt1fsqyBLUHqnKLD1 I’ll be checking it often! Thank you, Ken Williams Sans Souci, Nordhavn 68 www.kensblog.com And, if you are interested in my books, check out : http://www.lulu.com/kenw
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15 Responses
Tom Groendahl:
Greetings! (for those who don’t know Tom, he took care of the GSSR boats during the off season last year).
We survived one more year, and are now in Hong Kong. The growth in Taiwan was shocking. Tainan is a factory zone and the harbor we were in is right at where a river meets the sea. My guess is that hundreds of factories dump crud into the water, and there was some chemical in the water that was coating our boats. I don’t think it was ‘just’ the water temperature, but I really have no idea. I think it was a combination of heavily polluted water, combined with high temperatures.
The water here in Hong Kong is not exactly transparent, but it isn’t as bad as what we had in Tainan. And, it seems to be cooler, but far from cool. The water temperature is now 85 degrees, versus 89 in Tainan. I have a diver scheduled to come every two weeks to clean the bottom. It has been about two weeks since the last cleaning, and things don’t look too bad.
I hope you are enjoying Canada. It must be a huge change after having lived in Japan.
-Ken W
Fred:
Seakeepers, as I understand it, provides (or, yacht owners buy?) equipment on private boats that monitors and transmits sea conditions. This allows for constant real-time monitoring of the ocean conditions. The primary recipients of this information are scientists who are doing research on the the oceans for environmental reasons.
The equipment looks too bulky to be installed on my boat, and installing anything is difficult given where we are. Were I in the US I might explore it, although I don’t know that I’d put a lot of energy into it. There are a lot of freighters that are in motion 24 hours a day 7 days a week, whereas even though I cruise extensively by private yacht standards, we’re not really cruising enough to make a meaningful contribution. I average around 4,000 nm a year, which is only about 500 hours of cruising. That’s not a lot of data.
Thank you,
Ken Williams
Are you a member or have you heard of the International Seakeepers Society? There is a good article in the Aug issue of Yachts International. Their members, who cruise extensively, collect information about sea conditions while travelling all over the world. They use some version of Simon software. Thought you might find it interesting. The link is
http://viewer.zmags.com/pub… (http://viewer.zmags.com/publication/4def0962#/4def0962/1)
I just thought I would check on the blog and see how everyone is doing. I am glad to read you are all doing well. I see the warm waters are causing a lot of growth on the bottom of your boats, but I was pretty surprised to find out it was an inch. Was it typical sea growth or something special? I am glad to hear that you are finally in a place that is well acquainted with yachts like the SS.
My thoughts go out to Shelby.
Ken,
Brooks & Gatehouse and Furuno offer thruhull sensors without paddles and there are experienced dealers in Hong Kong. If you choose to haul in Hong Kong for a bottom job, there are several firms that could perform the task. Knowing the delta between SOG and STW (Speed Through the Water) gives us info on the effect of wind, current, and tide on SOG. One can also compute set, although today’s autopilots do that automagicall. Owing to the thickness of a Norhavn hull, I suspect an inside mount would not work.
Ron
Andy:
Thank you for the tip. I had no idea these existed.
I’m not really certain what the capabilities of the staff are who will be watching over my boat. I don’t know that I have the courage to have them drilling holes in the bottom of my boat. I think I’ll save this project until the boat is back in the US.
Thank you!
-Ken W
Re: Speed sensors
There are ultrasonic, and also magnetic speed transducers that use no paddlewheel:
http://www.panbo.com/archiv… (http://www.panbo.com/archives/2009/10/airmar_cs4500_part_i_reliable_boat_speed.html)
Also, a triducer:
http://www.ybw-directory.co… (http://www.ybw-directory.com/Marine_Directory/products/consumer/full_review.jsp?r_id=636&category_id=15)
Andy B
Chuck:
I had been to Nordhavn’s Ta Shing plant several times before, when our Nordhavn 62 was being built, and then a couple of times when our Nordhavn 68 was being built. On past trips I primarily focused on my own boat and didn’t take the time to meet the Ta Shing staff or really look at how they build the boats. I’m not smart enough about these things, and haven’t visited enough factories to really constrast their methods with industry practices. All I can really say is that they have a very concientous team, with an enormous amount of experience. I think I wrote in my blog that they had 30 people with 25 or more years working at Ta Shing, and it resulted in them calling me to point out that I was low. They have 40 employees with over THIRTY years of employment. Ta Shing has been building boats for fifty years, and knows what they are doing.
Overall, I would be honored to have Ta Shing build me another boat.
But, that said, it isn’t very likely. Roberta and I always say that if we ever build another boat it will be “a lot bigger or a lot smaller.” Ta Shing builds the 56 motor sailor, the 62 (which is dead), the 64/68 series and the 72/76 series. I don’t see us ever moving up to the N76. It really isn’t much bigger and wouldn’t make sense. The N68 is at the grey edge of what we are comfortable operating with just the two of us. If we were to move to a larger boat, it would need to be large enough that we could add crew and maintain some privacy. We’re very curious to see the new 120. Realistically, I don’t see us moving to a larger boat until we are too old to run a boat alone. Maybe once we are into our 80s we’ll start looking at a larger boat. We don’t like the loss of privacy of having crew around.
More likely, but also unlikely, we discuss from time to time the idea of a smaller boat. One of our favorite summers was taking a little 28′ power cat through the Bahamas. It was a little rocket ship (40 knot speed) and we could squeeze onto any dock. We had a blast with it. We’ve also talked about something like a 47′ Nordhavn or a 55′ Nordhavn. Complexity, maintenance and cleaning on a boat rise exponentially with the size of the boat. Ultimately, I’m kind of lazy. I’d rather fiddle with my computer than wash the boat. But of course, if we got a smaller boat, then we’d have a lot less space, and things like the hot tub would have to go. So… I seriously doubt we’ll ever make the decision to downsize. We’ve got a boat that seems “just right” for us. But, it’s always fun to think about other boat sizes!
Ken W
Bruce Thomas:
I have lots of fancy electronics, but no hull speed indicator. How are these implemented? An old fashioned paddle wheel? All I have is my speed over ground and course over ground. With these I can usually guesstimate my hull speed, but not always.
If I were in the US I’d probably have a hull speed indicator added, although, I think I asked once and the problem is that the paddle wheel type senders foul quickly.
All advice appreciated,
-Ken W
Ken,
I am curious about your problem distinguishing hull speed from speed over the ground vis a vis knowing if the current is adverse. Is there a knotmeter on San Souci? You dont mention comparing gps speed over ground versus hull speed to know whether or not you have adverse current.
You didn’t have too much to say about your time at the Nordhavn plant. Did you learn anything new. Ready to upgrade? 🙂
Greetings Cliff!
We will get to New Zealand sooner or later. I’ve heard only great things about the cruising. Our present thinking is that Shelby’s too old to put through quarantine (she’s 14 years old). At some point she won’t be with us any more and we’ll head to Australia and New Zealand, but for now, there are plenty of places that are less picky, and we’ll just explore those.
So… see you in a few years.
Thank you,
Ken W
Ken,
Thanks for sharing your adventure. I am hoping you may come down through the Pacific to New Zealand for your next adventure. New Zealand has several excellent cruising grounds, Bay of islands, Hauraki Gulf, Marlbough Sounds and Fiordland. Also there are several islands south of New Zealand worth a visit but you would have to get permission to go there. New Zealand has an excellent service industry with top quality tradesmen. However Shelby would be a problem and would probably have to be left behind or go into quarantine. My interest is purely selfish in that I would hope to get a glimpse of your great ship.
Cliff
Alan:
I don’t believe there is an “Asian Attitude,” but do believe that Japan, Taiwan and Hong Kong do each seem to have a unique attitude.
In Japan, we saw almost no recreational cruising. The little we did see were sport fishing boats, and not many of them. The entire concept of dropping anchor and ‘hanging out’ or boats as floating motor homes, does not seem to exist. There are no laws prohibiting it, and the industry does seem to be emerging, but it’s very small. We did see some sail boats, but most seemed focused on local regattas, not on cruising.
In Taiwan, I was told by both an American diplomat, and a senior Ta Shing executive, that private ownership of yachts is forbidden. I did see a few private sailboats, but there is no power boat market as far as I know. I asked “why” and was told that the fisherman have a very powerful lobby, and don’t like the private yachts. Whether or not this is true, I have no idea.
In Hong Kong, the recreational cruising market seems to be alive and well. I don’t have a sense of how popular it is, but marinas are very visible, and the concept of anchoring does exist. A couple of locals have sent me coordinates of their favorite anchorages. I do not know if most of the cruising community is British or Asian. On the docks I have mostly seen crew, not owners, so I’m not sure who the owners are.
-Ken W
I wonder, Ken, if you have any observations about the Asian attitude toward recreational boating. It seems from your writing as if they are somewhat mystified with the concept–a paucity of marinas, concern about your motivation, etc. It seems to be a culture that just doesn’t embrace the idea of cruising, and maybe even the idea of recreation in general.