Thursday, July 14, 2011

How Cold My Nose..

Tonight I put on socks for the first time in a year, last night I enjoyed warming chilled knees and nose under the blankets. The year of boat is coming to an end. 322 miles, three days to Coff's Harbour now.
This passage from New Caledonia to Australia has been a little frustrating, half the time we have been motoring, had two days into headwinds and just two days of good sailing so far, but there have been rewards. The sea has been very calm, even some glassy times. The other night we crossed the Capel Bank. Most exciting to be over just 60m of water instead of the usual kilometres. There was even a 10m patch further south. At sunrise the Wind dropped right away so I downed sail and put a line in... then wind came back. So put sails up again. The wind died. Dropped sails put line down, had bites! Lost bait, changed hooks and dropped line again, then wind really came back and I could barely get to the bottom, so back to sailing and no fish. Something big took the skirt and half the hook of the lure on the crash line, so I nearly caught fish twice that day.
Ellida came with a broken wind vane steering system, but Paul had said he could never get it working properly, so I hadn't worried too much about it. Nausica said I should fix it, Marcel nagged about it and found some bits of metal to repair it with and in Curacao we finished the repairs. Now, finally, Matt put the last bit's back on, attached the vane and tried it out. WOW!! it is a fantastic thing, they were all right! It works beautifully keeping Ellida sailing nicely as the wind moves around. Finally after crossing half the world.
I should mention here, how wonderful it is to have Matt and Sam on the boat. Three competent sailors. I have relaxed, perhaps too much, but they are both able to take on all the tasks and responsibilities of the boat. I'm extremely lucky to have them!

2 comments:

  1. Aren't you tempted to do just one more circumnavigation?

    ReplyDelete
  2. sure! but I'd need company. You've finished your thesis, what about a relaxing journey?

    ReplyDelete

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