Monday May 31

Monday May 31 -Departed Fremantle Cruising Yacht Club pen at 7am – light winds and showers forecast for the day. The planned date of departure Saturday May 28 the winds had been light from the north. The ever cheerful Toby turned up with the not so cheerful girlfriend Tash. Not sure if this was due to Toby sailing away or having got up early to drop Toby off. I was glad for Toby’s company for the first leg as I was absolutely exhausted after 3 months of planning and organising my life to do this adventure. The day was uneventful other than a few showers of rain with a lot of motor sailing due to the light winds. In the evening Toby cooked up a fantastic stir fry– he can cook. Apparently another sailing fellow suggested that Toby should start his own cooking on a boat show.

Sailing at night, I find, is very serene, having the motor on spoils it a bit, but we were passage making. The Automatic Identification System (AIS) picked up the cruise ship the Sun Princess travelling at 18 knots behind us. It did not take long for the cruise ship to overtake us as we were only doing 5 knots. Toby and I alternated watches either 2 or 3 hours depending on how we felt. In hind sight we should have tried to sleep earlier on the first day.

We were abreast of Jurien Bay at 7 Tuesday morning – not much sun and decidedly cool. The winds were blowing 13 to 18 knots from the south east – time to give the motor a rest the winds being strong enough and from the right direction. The wind vane performed exceptionally well – nicknamed Smithy after Ian D. Smith. The autohelm, on the other hand, required some major surgery, which it very nearly did not survive due to deliberate poking with the soldering iron. The Autohelm is called Ken II and can only be described as a useless black bastard!

We were roughly abreast of Geraldton and 15 miles out to sea at 4am on June 2. I had chosen to log on to the major volunteer sea rescue stations as we sailed up the coast – Fremantle, Jurien, Geraldton Kalbarri and Carnarvon. VHF radio works on line of sight communications, where as HF radio can work over thousands of miles. Where I could I used VHF to log onto the coast radio stations. I was still coming up to speed on using the HF radio (Icom IC-802), which I had recently installed. I tried unsuccessfully not to show my surprise when I first used the HF radio and it actually worked.

Toby received a text message after passing Geraldton that his Mother was ill. What a dilemma, there is very little that we could do. I suggested that we go into Port Gregory, however Toby declined and we pushed the boat a little harder to get to Carnarvon. The wonders of modern day communications that you can still receive a SMS message 15 miles out to sea.

My attempt at cooking a Tuna Mornay by comparison to Toby’s cooking was well the less said the better. People have asked what does one do all day while sailing along, well,

- think about what to cook for the next meal

- watch the albatross glide effortlessly over the wave tops

- watch the flying fish leap from the water, skim over the waves and disappear into a wave a good distance from where they left the water.

- ponder the question of life the universe and everything.

- Navigate.

- fix the boat – ie the autohelm.

We had opted not to sail to Carnarvon vie Steep Point, a gap between main land Australia and Dirk Hartog island due to time of arrival and unfavourable wind direction. We entered Shark Bay from the top of Dirk Hartog Island just after midnight on June 4. The winds were light so we motor sailed. We arrived in Carnarvon fascine, after one minor grounding, on Friday at 11.30am - just over 4 days after leaving Fremantle. We sailed 442 nautical miles and used the engine for approximately 40 hours, using 1.2 litres of diesel and hour.

Saturday, the day after our arrival in Carnarvon, was wet – it rained and rained. It was a great day to rest and recover and check for all the leaks above the water line, which, so I discovered there are many. Water seeped out of some very weird places. I’m not sure if the 100% humidity and anhydrous salt content had anything to do with it.

The anchorage in the Carnarvon Fascine is great – one can not get much closer to the town centre. Carnarvon Yacht Club, which I was a member of back in 1984 has not changed a great deal. The yacht marina is a new addition and other than a few extensions on the original club house not a great deal has changed. People on yachts use the club facilities - laundry, toilet and hot showers.

I then had to get some more fuel and did the normal thing - found a supermarket shopping trolley and wheeled the jerry cans to the service station. I had a chuckle as it must have looked a bit odd filling up a shopping trolley full of jerry cans. The guy behind the counter did not bat an eye. He asked if I was on a boat and offered me a discount.