Episode 18 of The Sailing Podcast is with Tobias Fahey, a Tasmanian sailor who is planning a solo, non-stop, unassisted circumnavigation and planning to leave in November 2012. I have to say that there’s a fierce determination you find with sailors from across Bass Strait – it’s very similar to what you find with those hearty New Zealand sailors and after talking with Tobias, I think he has what it takes to take on a circumnavigation which he begins in a few weeks time.
If you would like to follow along with Tobias on his journey just go to his website – www.tobiasfahey.com.au
I heard Sir Robin Knox-Johnson saying the other day that the list of solo – unassisted circumnavigators is around 80 people mark – while over 200 people have been into space. There are some different lists of the people who have solo circumnavigated and Sir Robin has his own collection at – http://www.robinknox-johnston.co.uk
Next episode is Anasazi Girl with James and Samira
Transcript of the interview with Tobias Fahey
Introduction This is the Sailing Podcast with David and Carina Anderson, episode number 18. We would love you to come and join us on our journey. Hello everybody and welcome to the 18th episode of the Sailing Podcast. I heard Sir Robin Knox-Johnson saying the other day that the list of solo, unassisted circumnavigators is around the 80 people mark, while over 200 people have been into space. And today’s interview is with a Tasmanian sailor, Tobias Fahey, who is planning to add his name to that list, and I have to say there’s a certain quality you find with sailors from across Bass Strait. It’s very similar to what you find with those hardy New Zealand sailors, and after talking with Tobias, I think he has what it takes to take on this circumnavigation, which he’s planning to begin in a few weeks’ time. Just before we start the interview, I want to let you know that you can get a free audiobook download from audible.Com. If you go to thesailingpodcast.Com forward slash free, that’ll take you to the audible trial where you can try them out free for 30 days. I do have a book to suggest to you, and I’ll leave that to the end of the podcast as I want to get straight into today’s interview. Now you can find the show notes for this episode with Tobias Fahey at www.Thesailingpodcast.Com forward slash Tobias Fahey, that’s T-O-B-I-A-S-F-A-H-E-Y, and now here’s the interview. I have a secret obsession. It’s going to come out into the open today as I talk to my guest Tobias Fahey. Tobias is planning to head off on a single-handed, non-stop, unassisted circumnavigation of the globe, and he’s planning to leave in a few weeks’ time.
David: Tobias, welcome to The Sailing Podcast, and thank you for finding some time to chat to me today, and how are you going?
Tobias: Yeah, very good, thanks. Thanks for having me on the podcast.
David: I’m really excited. I think I told you on the phone, I’m extremely jealous of your trip. I mean, my obsession with single-handed circumnavigators really only goes as far as reading every book I can get my hands on about doing it, but you’re going to attempt the trip yourself, and how long have you been obsessed with this idea?
Tobias: Oh, probably the same amount of time as you, I guess, all my life. It started off as, yeah, a childhood dream that I thought about when I was sailing around the bay, and you kind of read books, and you see, yeah, single-handed feats.
David: How old are you now?
Tobias: I’m 26.
David: You’re 26 now, and how did you get into sailing?
Tobias: I grew up in a little town called Dodgers Ferry on the southeast coast of Tasmania, and it’s a great bay. It has surf, and a really good area to keep yachts and go diving and everything. So as a kid, I was always in the water, either out in the surf or sailing a dinghy around in the calm waters, and it just kind of, yeah, it started off from there, and then I started to just slowly grow. You outgrow your dinghy, and then you get a bigger boat, and then you outgrow that, and you get a bigger one, and the hunger to keep going on. It sort of developed, and then the hunger to, I suppose it started off as just not having someone to go sailing with. Some days you’d go by yourself, and then, yeah, you start kind of getting and wondering how far you could actually go. Yeah, and then I think when I was about 12 years old, we found a TS-16 in a paddock just on the way there to town. It was only about five minutes from home, and we were kind of eyeing it up as a winter project, and then we got it. We went and saw the guy, and after we went and talked to him about it, we found out there were a few problems with it, but we fixed it up that winter, and at the end of the winter, you could take this around Tasmania to life, and he was only joking, but the idea kind of was placed in my mind, and it just kind of let the mind wander, and I guess I started thinking, I wonder how far I could sail, and how long I could handle it by myself, and yeah, so it started off as a dream, and then I think towards the end of my teens, I started focusing and reading and watching a lot of single-handed sailors, and I watched Ellen MacArthur when she went around the world, and when I watched her video documentary, I think that was probably one of the bigger points in my life where I went, that’s exactly what I want to do. I want to do that one day, and yeah, and so I thought, well, yeah, it’s got to be great to do it, and I thought, well, the only way it’s going to happen is if I start working towards it, and so yeah, I brought my first keel boat at about 19 or 20, and then from there, yeah, I’ve just basically for the last six years been working towards making this trip happen, just racking up as many nautical miles as possible, and just getting as much experience as I can, and just basically doing as much research and planning as possible so I can get it right.
David: It’s a massive project. I mean, you don’t just sort of come up with the idea one day and go, oh yeah, I’m just going to head off and do that, but just going back to that sort of first part of the idea coming into your mind, when did you actually start breaking that news to your family and people? I mean, when did you actually come out of the woodwork and say, yep, guess what everybody, this is what I’m planning to do?
Tobias: Yeah, it kind of came out in stages. Yeah, when I brought my first keel boat, which was an Adam’s 8, I said to them, I said, I want to sail around the world one day, and this is something I want to do. I’ve got this really big hunger for it, and like anyone that you talk to that has a dream, you kind of, you can go, that’s great and everything, and a lot of people were really disappointed about that. It’s a great dream to have and something great to work towards, but I think I was so determined to try to make this trip happen, and it just became more and more of an obsession to the point where it consumed me. It was, I was basically starting to sail further and further, and then I decided I needed a bigger boat, so I upgraded to a 32 foot yacht, which was set up for more distant cruising, and I had a lot of gear which helped out, being able to go shorthanded, and the hunger just kept growing more and more and more, and it got to the point where I was just, I think, like a lot of the houses we build, one of the builders has a job, and a lot of them were on the coast, and I was just looking out to the water, everything without work, just thinking about this trip, and I just thought I can keep thinking about this for the rest of my life, and it’s exactly what’s going to happen, and so I thought there’s only one way it’s going to happen, and that’s to actually commit to doing it, and during that time I’d been talking with a few people about the trip, and yeah, possible boats, and ways in which I could make it happen, and Don McIntyre actually was aware of what I was looking at doing, and contacted me a few years ago, and let me know of a Radford 50 that had become for sale, which was pretty much the perfect weapon of choice for the trip.
When I was talking to him previously, I basically talked to him about the concept that if I was ever going to do the trip, I wanted to, I think my exact words were I wanted to do it properly, I said I want to have a really good boat, a really strong boat, I want to have a fast boat, and I want to do it quick, and just that whole idea of surfing waves in the Southern Ocean just seemed really appealing to me, and so I needed a boat that wasn’t too fast and too weak to handle the different conditions I would get, but I just wanted something that was going to get really good daily runs.
David: So the boat itself, it’s a Radford design, isn’t it? It’s a Radford 50, and those boats, I was looking them up on the internet, they were built sort of for a specific competition or something?
Tobias: Yeah, Don McIntyre, he actually built the boat. He was setting up a, we were trying to set up a race based out of Australia called Together Alone, and it was going to be a race around the world, there was going to be two divisions, single handed on these 50 foot boats, and then crewed 55 footers, and the race fell through due to a reason I’m not sure of, but basically these 50 footers were built for this exact trip, for a single handed circumnavigation, and they built them so incredibly strong, the philosophy behind them was to build a boat that could handle six world circumnavigations and still be in one piece, and so they put a lot of thought into these boats, and yeah, they’re a bit narrower than your modern 50 footer, like the beam’s only 3.66, And yeah, but they absolutely scream. They’re a great all round boat, they track really well, they can run, they can reach, and they can go to windward really well. So it was just, there was a lot of those things that were quicker boats that were taken, there were slower boats, maybe more like a German army tank, but it was just, this was a perfect compromise between speed and safety, so when it comes to sail, it kind of, it made sense, but I had no way of paying for a boat of that caliber, so that was an extra challenge that I had to overcome, trying to find finance for a boat that big, and yeah, that was very, very hard. There aren’t a lot of banks that will quite happily lend you the money to go out and buy a 50 foot yacht, especially when you’re playing on sailing around the world. It’s what the computer comes up as a high risk line, so yeah.
David: But you got over the line, I mean, that’s amazing, so you actually, you own the boat that you’re taking?
Tobias: The banks own it, but yeah, I pay the repayments, but yeah, it’s one of those things, I weighed up the idea, I thought, well, I could try saving up for a boat like this, but that could take me the rest of my life, and I thought, well, I’m probably never going to have the spare money to afford to buy a 50 foot yacht. I thought, well, the only way it’s going to happen is if I just make it happen, and so yeah, I basically, I said suddenly I’ll buy the boat, and I still had my 32 foot at the time, and so I had to sell that, and I basically just had to get rid of it, so I had money to secure the boat with a deposit, so it was a pretty crazy summer trying to find finance for the boat, and yeah, as stressful and as horrible as it has been trying to get it all organised, it’s still worth every second of it, I think.
David: I think it’s amazing the way you describe the boat, and you say, you’re telling us it’s a 50 foot boat, and just sort of chatting away, I mean, to me, to think of being on such a big boat all by myself, it’s such a big boat.
Tobias: Oh yeah, when I picked it up in Newcastle, I looked at it and I thought, how on earth am I going to sail this around the world? I was looking around and I thought, this is crazy, but it was just because I’d stepped up so much size and load, it was crazy. The boat, it is huge, and there’s a huge amount of loading, everything, and yeah, I say to a lot of people, when you mess up, it’s pretty spectacular. You can’t just go and manhandle something on a 50 foot boat, it needs to all be done through winches and it all needs to be very well calculated because you’re dealing with ridiculous loads sometimes, and you’re not going to be able to just pull a sail down all the time by yourself, you have to actually have a system in place. Yeah, and it’s been a lot of trial and error the last couple of years, working out the best way to run the boat without breaking it, basically. Yeah, you’re dealing with a lot of speed sometimes as well, and that’s another danger as well when you come unstuck at high speed, you really come unstuck, and so it’s just a matter of finding that balance with the boat, knowing what it likes and what it doesn’t like, and knowing when to push a bit harder and when to back off.
David: And Tobias, there’s a great little video on your website there that somebody’s done that’s on YouTube of the boat sailing, it just looks just beautiful just cutting through the water there, that’s a great little movie.
Tobias: Yeah, yeah, a guy came down from Victoria and he actually got in contact with me through Don McIntyre, and he actually sailed a 26 footer back from Europe by himself, but he came down and stayed, and he took a couple of shots of the boat when I was out there, and yeah, it was a really good print with a little video, it was only pretty calm that day, but it was a really nice sail though, a really nice steady breeze, and yeah, a nice way to spend the afternoon, that’s for sure.
David: Yeah, that’s good, I might be able to just post that with some notes from this show so people can have a look.
Tobias: Yeah, yeah, that’d be great.
David: That’s awesome. We’re talking about your preparations and things for getting up and going, I’m just interested to give people a bit of an insight into what it’s like in this pre-, this getting ready stage to go for your big trip, I mean, how are you dealing with things at the moment, I mean, what sort of things, tell us what you’ve been up to today, I mean, what are your days like at the moment?
Tobias: Oh, the days are absolutely horrible, it is so stressful, and I cannot emphasise enough how serious the stress loads are involved in this trip, there’s so much to do and so much to take in on a boat, and I think you could take 10 years to do the trip and you’d still be rushing to get to the start line, you’re still always going to have things, you’re like, oh no, I’ll do that and I’ll do this, and yeah, average day just basically pulling things apart and putting them back on the boat, today we finished off the rack on the back of the boat, just excuse me for a second, I’ve got a bit of a cough because I’ve been working late nights, but we were working on the rack on the back of the boat which has two wind generators and the solar panels and the radar, yeah, just finished off mousing through the wires on that, we mounted the second auto helm which is on the starboard side, so I’ve got two independent auto helms just in case one fails, the other ones are wired up, ready to go, and we also did put the wheel drum on for the wind vane which was finishing off the wind vane until George from Fleming Wind Veins has been down from Victoria to give a hand putting all the wind vane together which is awesome, the boat showed up quick and the parts change quite often and I was a bit worried about how wind vane would handle it on the boat, but it was one of those things I thought well, if I lose all my electronics on the boat then I’m going to be in a bit of a pickle and the big thing for me is making the trip, that’s been the challenge of my life is wanting to do this trip and do it successfully, if I could do it quicker than any other Australian before me then that would be incredible as well, but the big thing for me is having the boat ready so I can sail around the world no matter what, so yeah, everything we’ve been doing on the boat we’ve tried to have a trivial redundancy for, so we’ve actually tried to cope with every single possible scenario that we could possibly be faced with and then basically have three different answers for it and then an emergency plan put in place so yeah, absolute worst case scenario, I’ll be able to make it my way around with no electronics and yeah, still come back in one piece, there’s certain things you can’t, yeah, there’s certain things you can’t obviously help and that’s if you were to lose the rig or the keels to snap off or things like that, they’re just unseen circumstances, it’s just bad luck at the end of the day, if you hit an iceberg it’s bad luck, yeah, and there’s certain health things that can go wrong as well and it’s just bad luck, yeah, but it’s just all part of the risk of doing a trip like this, but a lot of people say to me as well are you worried about how dangerous the trip is and it does worry you sometimes that I think the only way to overcome risk is to try to be as safe as possible and to have those immediate procedures in place to try to make something so dangerous almost safe because you’ve covered all those avenues and at the end of the day you can be walking across the road and it can be far more dangerous than being down in the Southern Ocean on a calm day, it’s just that you just have to be prepared for it.
David: Yeah, I always like to think about, I mean, when I talk to my kids and we talk about how dangerous is that activity, I just always say to them look, and usually we’re having the conversation while we’re driving the car, and I say you guys, what we’re doing right now is the most dangerous thing you’ll ever do, sitting in this car, driving on the road, the odds of having a crash are huge compared to something like sailing, you know, the risk level, they don’t even compare just to some of the daily activities that we do.
Tobias: Yeah, yeah, like there’s a lot less people that can have a good world and are on the road, like that’s the thing that you are on the road and so you are part of those statistics. And it’s one of those things, I’ve always kind of lived my life by, you live your life in fear, then I think you’ll never actually live. Sometimes you have to face your fears and challenge yourself and yeah, this is a scary thing to do that I can’t see a life without doing this trip. It’s been such a huge passion of mine and I’ve just, yeah, it got to the point where I thought well the only thing that’s actually stopping me from doing the trip is myself. I’m the one that’s stopping me from doing it, no one else is holding me back and saying you can’t do this and I thought well, yeah, God, okay, I’ll do it, that’s it, I’ll do it and then that was, it was as simple and as hard as, yeah, that simple kind of question.
David: Yeah, you know you mentioned icebergs before and I’d written that on my notepad here because I just, I recently, not that long ago, I read the book by, it’s his name, Ken Goulet, is that right? He’s a Tasmanian who actually I think now he holds that fastest Australian around the world but I grabbed his book out of my library the other day and had a look through because it did occur to me that I thought he mentioned icebergs and just not too far into his trip.
Tobias: The ice movement can extend quite far north and obviously you have to drop down below 60 to get through New Zealand and yeah, there is that risk there. I’ve got Bob McGavitt on board as a meteorologist, he’s one of the most experienced meteorologists for southern hemisphere weather really as far as I’m concerned and he’s a Kiwi so he’s got a great eye for whatever is happening around New Zealand especially so it’s going to be really good having that input as well and obviously once I’m gone I’ll be relying on outside information and my radar to pick up anything like that but yeah, God, I just hope I don’t come across anything like that. Yeah, it’s the ones that the radar that don’t pick up, they’re the scary ones because they’re usually the small ones that will actually do the most damage. Yeah, but again it’s just one of those things. The only way I’ve been able to combat that risk is the boat was built with 5 airtight bulkheads which were pretty much all removed and changed around so I would basically have to spend all the winter re-sealing up these bulkheads and making sure that I’ve got the collision bulkhead and then I’ve got a secondary airlock chamber and then it goes into a third, fourth and fifth and each compartment has a 3700 gallon per hour pump and then which is backed up by a whale gusher as well.
David: Okay, well that sounds good, obviously the boat was designed for this trip really wasn’t it with those things in place already?
Tobias: Yeah, that’s it, it just seemed silly to buy a boat and try to make it into a pedigree ocean racer or just buy something that was built exactly for that, like if you’re going to go cruising you buy a boat that’s fit for cruising and if you want to go racing you buy a boat that’s fit for racing and if you want to sail around the world you buy something that can handle going around the world. I was looking at some more high performing yachts in Europe like some of the open 50s and things like that and it just wasn’t really for my budget and so what I wanted to achieve I could have probably pulled it off and done it a lot quicker time than what I’m aiming for but at the same time it just was one of those things I wanted a boat that I knew was strong and it would do those good daily runs so you just have to find a happy medium I guess.
David: I was just wondering if you could quickly go over the route that you’re taking and how that fits in with the requirements for the get certification for having done circumnavigation?
Tobias: Yeah, well it was quite a hard decision to make and I actually needed to change the website because originally I was set on going with the World Sailing Speed Record Council as the governing body to recognise the trip, and after speaking with Ken Goulay, the current record I’m aiming for who didn’t go through the World Sailing Speed Record Council he said to me it’s an Australian based record that you’re going for and to go to the World Sailing Speed Record Council is going to cost me about $2500 to get it recognised and Ken said to me is it really worth paying that when Australians recognise his circumnavigation as official because he complied with all the regulations and basically covered all the rules there’s certain rules that you obviously have to comply with and that’s all sailors have to make up the minimum distance of 21,600 nautical miles which is the distance of the equator, part south of all the major capes, part full lines of longitude and the southern hemisphere so it’s a requirement that we sail into the northern hemisphere yeah and have a team point up in there so and the World Sailing Speed Record Council came back to me with a few different options of the Azores and the Dominic Republic and both the routes and there’s no other options that they would basically provide me with and the Dominic Republic put me in great danger as I would spend up to three weeks through major shipping lanes in Central America and then sail up into a basically a marker about two miles offshore and then sail back out of their waters and the other route was in yeah the North Atlantic and took me through the middle of the North Atlantic high.
After talking with Ken I decided it was most important to probably just stick to a route most Australians have done before and that was use St Peter and Paul Rocks as a turning point and so yeah that’ll be the route I’ll be taking. Ken is going to Australia as the governing body to basically record the times for his trip and to recognise that he covered all those regulations basically and they went to his log books and took daily logs of his Nordic miles that he made up for the trip and just basically they had a representative at the start and finish line so I’ve got Yachting Tasmania to basically record those times and then they’ll be doing a thorough check on all my distances and everything as well upon my return so it was one of those things that just it was another two and a half thousand dollars towards the trip and there’s far more important things that I need for this trip than international recognition it was yeah for me like I said it’s the trip. I wouldn’t feel any more satisfaction from it being recognised with them as I would with it not being recognised but yeah like I said it was a personal challenge for me and something that has been a lifelong dream and so just like it and that’s the thing like I know there will be critics with, there are always critics with anything you do but there will be people when I get back and they say the same with Ken and they say the same with a lot of people but they’ll say oh you didn’t do a certified navigation with world sailing speed record council but yeah basically it’s just it’s brought off a duck’s back because I’ll make sure that I comply with every single regulation and we’ll put a lot of our research into making sure I’ll be making up the right distances and covering all those grounds so. It’s probably, it’s a minority that anybody who’s going to sort of take that line of things. I wish the best for anyone that’s out there to challenge themselves in whatever passion they had in life. I think it’s a great thing and I’ve taken inspiration from so many people in my life and I just get satisfaction from seeing people achieve.
David: I love it. It really is a good thing and I think it can be really hard to chase that dream that you have and yeah I think the best thing we can do for anyone trying to do something like that is just yeah support them really and yeah get behind them because like I’m the same as you I love seeing people especially being yeah passionate sailors I love seeing people do trips like this it’s yeah it’s a massive like it is the pinnacle of single-handed sailing to do this trip so it’s yeah I love watching how it happens. Now the fun thing for us is hopefully we’re going to be able to track you, I mean we haven’t actually said yet when you’re planning to leave have you sort of been able to put a date together yet?
Tobias: Yeah originally I was aiming for the last week of October and I’ve had a few hold ups with gear which is a bit of a hassle but the weather window the latest I can leave basically I could leave at any time but for the favourable conditions and the favourable winds the best time to leave is no later than the 15th of November or mid November so yeah I was trying to get away in the first weekend of November so at this rate I reckon it will definitely be around yeah the second weekend of November it doesn’t really matter too much when I leave because like I said I’m not taking anyone else although I will have the Vendee Globe chasing up behind me pretty quickly but yeah it’s just one of those things as long as I leave before mid November I should be pretty good with the weather and winds.
David: You wouldn’t actually cross paths with the Vendee Globe people would you?
Tobias: They wouldn’t. They’ll catch me pretty quick they get around the world in about three and a half months I’m on the 60s it’s well three and a half months I think and yeah like I could only be at my halfway point up in the Atlantic by then so they’ll be yeah making their way up through the Atlantic by three months so yeah they’ll be doing twice my daily averages so they’ll they move along at quite a reasonable speed they’re pretty impressive boats.
David: Now you taught me something about the distance I didn’t realise that was the length of the equator.
Tobias: Yeah it’s one of those things we can’t sail through the middle of the world and so we have to make up the widest point I guess.
David: And how many what sort of times I mean how many days do you expect the trip to take you?
Tobias: We’ve done a lot of daily averages over the last few years when I’ve been actually training on the boat and what I can maintain and a lot of trips send ringing about a 7.4 Average they’re about yeah the average wind speed at 50 degrees south is about 30 knots and the average wind speed for the trip should be around 15 and in 15 knots I can average that 7.4 Knots so quite easily so basing it off that I could potentially do the trip in five months or less but due to budget I’ve had to cut back on a lot of my wishlist over here with the wardrobe so what went from having wanting to have yeah some a good range of kites and things like that have gone down to basically more stronger head sails and just boat proof sails to make sure I get around.
David: Yeah I think that’s always going to be the number one goal doesn’t it to get around.
Tobias: Yeah that’s it yeah so the only new sails I’m getting for the trip are a new number three, a new hurricane jib which is half the size of my storm jib and a new main so I’ve got a couple good reasonable number ones, I’ve got a couple of pretty had it kites, yeah a couple of other sails that will be okay that it’s yeah like I said it was the three in the main and my working horse sails won’t make up the sail plan for a majority of the trip so yeah the one’s quite large so it’s really good to just kind of get that up to get you moving and anything on the nose you’re down to the three really because you can just shed it in a lot better.
David: You’ve had a few people come and you’ve sort of shown them through the yacht what sort of systems are people interested in having a look at that you’ve had to set up for the trip?
Tobias: A lot of people are pretty interested in yeah my sleeping arrangements and things like that I’ve had to move a nav station back from east to forward of the mast in the next section forward of the main cabin it was just a stupid spot for a nav station it was dark and dingy in you have to go through a watertight door to get there and yeah so I’ve had to cut all that out move it back into the main cabin and I’ve actually set up a nav station that I can basically sleep at as well as yeah sit in a chair and kind of yeah navigate the boat and get a bit comfortable and that yeah it’s pretty tight I’ll build it to suit myself basically so yeah any six foot eight guy’s going to have a bit of trouble getting in there but yeah it’s yeah I’ve done a lot of glassing I’ve had glassing in a lot bigger battery banks and beefed up a couple of ribs that I just knew would take a lot of load in the trip yeah this has been tons of stuff yeah glassing to auto helms yeah just like countless bits and pieces that I’ve had to do yeah we um and I had to move yeah glass up the door to the head and just put an escape hatch through there and I had to move the head back to the mast section so I can basically not go through ten doors to get to the toilet every day and it’s just a more central point in the boat less movement and um yeah it’s been yeah just yeah the boat has been completely changed really
David: Over what time frame have you been doing all these changes? Two years did you say?
Tobias: Oh no my big the big thing I uh the big focus when I got the boat was to rack up as many miles as possible get comfortable with it make sure I was comfortable with doing the trip on it um and take lists and like pages of lists on things I wanted to change and modify to yeah basically suit for the trip and then yeah so April I moved the boat up to town and yeah I’ve been going non-stop since then to do it already like there until 1.30 In the morning a lot of nights doing wiring and bits and pieces like that I had to rewire most of the boat and put in a lot of new network cables and things like that so it’s just been massive.
David: So have you been working full time on the boat?
Tobias: Two and a half months yeah I’ve been going flat out full time yeah up until then I was working every day as well and then going up after work and it got to the point where I knew I just needed to stop working and um I couldn’t afford to which is pretty horrible but um it just had to be done means um yeah nailing even more debt than what I planned but uh it was all those things that just you’re too far committed like turning back isn’t really an option you just you’re you’re on a mission so I have to keep going um and yeah it’s um but it’s been good and I’ve we’ve been very, very thorough with everything like we’ve had we’ve had just about everything off the boat checked and redone and I’ve done all the work myself as well so I just know where everything is I know I can trust it and um it’s been a big thing with all my boats I’ve had the more you work on your boat all of a sudden they start feeling a lot smaller the boat doesn’t feel that big anymore because you know it and you know every um yeah every every nut and bolt and you can yeah you can put your finger on everything so yeah they start yeah almost shrinking because you just they don’t seem overwhelming and massive anymore
David: Tobias I feel I feel really um embarrassed now because I want to ask you selfishly about how we’re all going to track your trip I mean here you are doing all this work for the trip and uh I’m just wondering how am I going to get to enjoy it without having done any of the hard work?
Tobias: We’re fitting um five high definition cameras on the boat um one thing I’ve always loved is watching good sailing footage um I love yeah seeing good sailing clips and so I really want to be able to yeah bring that back and show people um so we’re mounting yeah some GoPros all around the boat that will be just basically placed in different places so we’ll have a couple of them on the bow and one off the trans and then bits and places just to try to capture a lot of different angles I won’t be able to send a lot of that footage back because it costs so much but um Satcom Global will give me a pretty good rate with uh air time so um I will be sending back imagery and blogs probably every couple of days um the up tracker are going to put a um tracker on board.
David: Excellent.
Tobias: We’ll probably do it at 12 hour intervals um just yeah but that will look a bit yeah pointless in the summer night when it’s just the ocean but yeah you will see the progress on the larger scale and yeah so I’ll be sending blogs back um people will be able to yeah comment on them and um yeah and then when I get back we’ll try to chuck it all into a bit of a mini doco so everyone can yeah just check out what the trip was like one of the big things I want to capture is and lots of we don’t get to is just yeah some of that high speed surfing the Volvo 70s have done it really well you’ve been able to capture a lot of good footage but just yeah really capture some of those um I don’t know I’ve always wanted to just yeah show people what it’s really like when um when it really starts blowing up and you’re really yeah going down some big waves um to be able to have a couple of different camera angles and yeah.
David: Do you think you’ll um do you think while you’re sailing you’ll have time to answer people on your blog as well?
Tobias: No um a lot of the time uh like I have a confidential email for the trip just because um yeah you need to know how to kind of work um the emails probably can’t otherwise people can resend your own email and press reply and things like that so um yeah there’ll be um people will be able to contact me through my normal email but it will get filtered basically um only relevant things to the trip can really get sent forward to me unless it’s urgent um just because yeah like I said I’m on a shoestring budget and um I can’t the last thing I can afford to do is come back to a massive bill. But yeah god I’d love to be able to just yeah yeah like talk all day about you know things and stuff but I’m also looking to that for that down looking forward to that downtime for the trip as well.
David: Yeah that’s right you’ll need to get some sailing. You’ll need to get some rest at some stage.
Tobias: Yeah that’s it yeah it’s um yeah it’s a big thing making sure that you’re not overworking yourself on the boat because it’s easy to do.
David: Tobias can you can I just ask you a question I’m just interested to know who is helping you out. You have you lined up some sponsors that you can let us know who they are?
Tobias: Yeah um my biggest sponsor today to date which has been the biggest help like I’ve ever asked for was B&G they jumped on board as my yeah equipment um electronic equipment sponsor they’ve basically yeah put a an unbelievable system on the boat yeah not far off what the Volvo 70s are running so it’s a really bulletproof system yeah great CPU awesome pilot awesome instruments and um and it’s just meant that the trip’s that much more likely to have success because I’ve got really reliable and well tested gear um it’s a big reason yeah why all the Volvo 70s have B&G gear and that’s because it works yeah and so that was great because I didn’t have the budget to be able to afford that gear um I had money set aside and they basically yeah were willing to yeah offer me a great yeah sponsorship to make sure the trip was a success so yeah I can’t thank them enough really.
I’ve also had Hammer Pro Arcos rigging and have yeah helped out with the rigging which has been awesome and Riley Marine in Tasmania so they re-rigged the boat for a great price for me yeah we did all the standing and running rigging and deck races which is really good yeah just you know to make sure that’s all solid um and so the mast should be stepped next Monday but I thought we were going to do it tomorrow but unfortunately and silent winds we’ve yeah put on the um a great wind generator on the boat which is awesome um because you know how noisy they can be so it’s been great having that on board and yeah I’ve had a lot of support from Tasmania as well a lot of businesses has um got behind the trip and been really supportive and a lot of just people coming in and asking if they can help out and yeah just holding screwdrivers and bits and pieces like that so yeah it’s been great but it’s like I said it’s as painful as it’s been it’s been awesome it’s um I’ve never I don’t think I could ever handle putting myself through this much stress again but it’s been a great learning curve and yeah looking forward to going sailing now
David: I bet you are and it’s like when you get on an aeroplane and you’re going on a big trip it’s just when you when you finally sit down in the chair and you know whatever you’ve forgotten you’ve forgotten and you’re on your way it’s such a nice sensation to actually start a trip. It’s the preparation is the worst part.
Tobias: Yeah yeah that’s it yeah the difference is I’ve got an aeroplane service and a nice cold beer that’s the in-flight movie yeah that’s it yeah that’s it’s gonna be great fun though it’s like there’s been a lot of work now and I haven’t had a decent sail since April so I’m hanging out to get the boat yeah sailing again next week and just yeah just get into the trip
David: That’s awesome what about a decent sleep? How long has it since you’ve had a, how much sleep are you getting?
Tobias: Oh none probably when I get back I reckon that will be the next good sleep I have yeah but um I have one I have one bad night’s sleep and it takes me days to sort of get yeah you can’t get as you as you’d probably know from coming from a sailing background you soon adjust to not sleeping on long trips you your body just seems to adjust fine well mine does anyway but um yeah at the moment like it’s only five to six hours sleep a night at the most and um yeah in the trip it’ll be down to four yeah there about so I will like it at the most um yeah especially on a boat like mine where you need to be onto the sailplane pretty often yeah so it’s yeah it’s just um one of those things you just have to deal with it grit your teeth and bear it.
David: I guess you can sleep when you get home. Well it just it sounds amazing and like I said I really appreciate you just uh you know taking my phone call and letting us know that you’ve sort of uh getting everything lined up and ready to go it’s such a huge endeavor to take it all on by yourself I though I am I’m guessing you probably have a pretty uh nice family as well with the support
Tobias: Yeah absolutely amazing family um yeah like I hear people say uh anyone can do whatever they want but you really do need good support by you um like a lot of this trip I’ve tried to do too many things on my own and the hardest thing has been to ask people for help and yeah you really have to just um yeah you like everyone needs like good people behind them really like to do it on your own um it just would be impossible I think yeah you have to let people in and um and that’s the hardest thing because I like to check everything on the boat I’m so pedantic and um and oversee everything and then for a long time I just couldn’t accept help because I was just like no I need to do this myself and make sure it’s done properly and then you feel probably like well the boat’s never going to be ready if I have these parachutes. So yeah like I said yeah you’ve got to have good people in your life um to make yeah good things happen um and that’s the same as well
David: I was going to say congratulations to your parents because they’ve obviously brought you up with uh with the belief that you can achieve your dreams and with the confidence to say yes it’s possible for me to do it I mean that’s good parenting they must have lovely parents
Tobias: Yeah they’re awesome um yeah and that’s a good thing that they did they planted the seed and um and then they also yeah gave me the opportunity to actually yeah to work towards it and um and that was really good they never doubted it for a second and um they’ve seen how much work’s gone into this over the last six years and um they’ve really they know that yeah um I’ve lived and breathed this for so long that yeah I’ve tried to cover everything um and dad said to me you’re not leaving unless the boat’s 99% ready and he knows everything so I’ll probably have to do it under way as well but it’s one of those things um he’s been taking time off work and coming and helping and um yeah you can see how he’s asked a lot of questions and um yeah basically and that’s been a good thing as well getting people on board to look through the boat and um yeah no questions stupid because it could um be something that’s very vital for the trip so the more eyes that look through the boat the more chances you’ve got of covering everything so yeah
David: Look I’ll definitely put links on my website to help people find yours but can you let everyone know where to find you?
Tobias: Yes my website’s just Tobias Fahey so it’s Tobias Fahey and it’s f-a-h-e-y.Com.Au yeah there hasn’t been much happening on there for the last month because I’ve been too busy um it’s been like just I haven’t had a chance to sit still but once I’m under way I’ve got to yeah get blogs happening and yeah and the update
David: That’ll be the place to go to find the update see where you’re at and how everything’s going as uh as well as I think you’ve you’ve got a Facebook page with it so I think people can find the link on your website if they like Facebook as well and hopefully somebody will update that for you while you’re away
Tobias: Yeah yep um with um I might be able to um just depending on if I get this software that I’m looking at I might be able to update the Facebook from on board um there’s some pretty good compression packages that you can get now that are linked to your Facebook account so um yeah I didn’t have a Facebook till a few months ago um I’ve just never been someone that’s had the chance really to get into it and um but yeah I have seen a useful tool to be able to update progress on the boat and things like that it’s a lot quicker than jumping on a website and doing that so um yeah so there’ll be updates on the website and on the Facebook and the trip but um yeah yeah it’d be good to have a few people follow it and ask a few questions and um yeah I hope I can do yeah yeah I’m proud yeah make the trip successfully
David: No it’s exciting it’s exciting for us as spectators to watch somebody doing it and congratulations to you
Tobias: Yeah watch me slowly go crazy
David: Yeah no you’ll be you’ll be fine it sounds like your head’s in the right place you’ve planned everything you’ve covered all the bases out there now you’ve just got to get out there and do it
Tobias: Yeah that’s it yeah just get out and sail and that’s that’s something I know how to do. Getting to the start line it’s been something that you don’t no one can really give you the right advice and yeah that’s been hard so yeah no it’ll be good now thanks heaps for um having me here on the podcast
David: It’s my pleasure Tobias good luck with the trip and uh just know we’ll all be there uh cheering for you as you go along even uh even though you won’t be able to hear us out there but we’ll all be eagerly watching to see how everything goes
Tobias: Excellent thank you very much David
David: No worries thanks for the chat see you later
Well I think that Tobias really deserves success in his endeavor and I’ll be keenly following his trip over the next six months or so I’ll put some links to his site at thesailingpodcast.Com and that’ll be with the show notes at thesailingpodcast.Com forward slash Tobias Fahey and also pop that video from YouTube with Tobias Sailing on his vessel SeaQuest For you, the listeners of The Sailing Podcast, Audible is offering a free audiobook download with a free 30 day trial to give you the opportunity to check out their service Audible have over 100,000 audiobooks and there’s quite a few sailing and adventure stories there that you can download and listen to at your leisure Now I mentioned at the start of the show that I’d recommend something for you to download and what better place to start than with the famous circumnavigation story of Joshua Slocum His book is called Alone Around the World and there’s a couple of different recordings on Audible and I prefer the voice of Bernard Mays and he’s a little sample of his reading of the story “The wonderful sea charmed me from the first At the age of eight I had already been afloat along with other boys on the bay with chances greatly in favor of being drowned When a lad I filled the important post of a cook on a fishing schooner But I wasn’t long in the galley and the crew mutinied at the appearance of my first duff and chucked me out before I had a chance to shine as a culinary artist The next step toward the goal of happiness found me before the mast in a full rigged ship bound on a foreign voyage Thus I came over the bows and not in through the cabin windows to the command of a ship My best command was that of the magnificent ship Northern Light of which I was part owner”
I’ve been a member at Audible since 2009 and I have the gold membership which is $14.95 Per month That gives me one credit per month and most books on Audible are just one credit to purchase You can access the trial of Audible using my link just go to thesailingpodcast.Com forward slash free and this will take you to the Audible trial sign up page where if you sign up for a monthly gold plan you get the first month free and then you get a credit to download a book and if you decide to cancel your membership you’ll still get to keep that book that’s part of the free trial If you sign up I get a commission which will help support the show and I’d really appreciate that so just visit thesailingpodcast.Com forward slash free for more information Thanks for listening I hope you have a great day and thank you for joining us on our journey You’ve been listening to Dave and Carina Anderson of the Sailing Podcast