For those following us we will plan to depart for “North” around April 21st and sail to Mackay Marina to do a fast pit stop and paint the bottom again as we want two things 1) to be able to get into a marina in Darwin while I return to work and 2) get 2 years before the next haul, and not worry about it in Malaysia for awhile, maybe by the time we are ready to haul out again we will be sailing for Langkawi where there is a first class haul out facility.

Our new gennaker is ready for delivery and will be tested on the sail north, should be downwind most of the way north.

As the anchor drags………………….

She won’t be able to get past the spreaders until I get there, then she will crank me up to do the other half. This process takes all the oxidation off and preserves it as well, very necessary as they are bare alloy.

They have been tested overnight with 20+ kt winds as a front just passed through Tin Can Bay

Raewyn had covers made for the new fenders, we used the same one’s on our last boat and helped save the paint.

We awoke this morning in Garry’s Anchorage to fog - this is “Dragonfly 3″ owned by Jim and Anna from Brisbane, they are about 100 meters off our stern in this picture.  We plan to leave for Tin Can Bay on the tide this morning.

Here in the Sandy Straits we have caught fish & crabs, seen dugongs, dolphin and turtles.  Once the fog lifts we will retrieve the crab pot (hopefully with crabs) and weigh anchor for Tin Can Bay, with an overnight along the way at Pelican Bay so we can go into Tin Can Bay Marina on the high tide the next afternoon.

Sheridan Flats Bounty

Fishing the banks

Sunset

We’re off to pull up the crab pot, fog is lifting now, we have about 3 hours before the tide is favourable for our departure today Monday 19th September 2011.

We are 751 on right

National Champs!

Tomorrow, Sunday eve, we will head out of Gladstone for an overnight sail to Lady Musgrave Island in the Great Barrier Reef for a few days of R&R, fishing, diving and mayby some surfing (Sore rib from F18 sailing).

Our itinerary is Lady Musgrave Island, Lady Elliot Island, Gary’s Anchorage in the Sandy Straits then onwards to Tin Can Bay. Our arrival into Tin Can Bay coincides with the Seafood Festival on the 24-25 of September. We plan to stay in Tin Can Bay for the cyclone season and start our journey north to Malaysia when I return home from work mid April 2012.

Lady Musgrave

Lady Elliot Island

We may have limited internet capability while out on the reef (50 miles offshore) and may not have another update until Tin Can Bay. Tin Can Bay is on the southern end of the Great Sandy Straits.

Great Sandy Straits.

Cheers for now!

We made it to Australia, not where we originally intended but the same continent! Actually we left too late to make Darwin due to weather in New Zealand, we left late battling winter lows, and had a rough passage. We sailed NNE for 4 days before we were even  able to turn west toward OZ. Leaving NZ was NW winds 25Kt gusting into the 30’s so we were hard on the wind  and was not a fun way to start a major passage, however we pressed on, just got above the low approaching from Tasmania as it passed under us avoiding north winds, that was the first time in 4 days we were able to ease sheets, two days of nice reaching in 15-20Kt then the winds picked up to 25-30 gusting 35-40 for the remaining trip, some epic seas were endured, we were tossed around like a toy, however Crusoe made it with flying colors, a lighter less stable boat may have had some problems in the seas we were in, some breaking onto Crusoe, the pilot house windows (one of the things that we had reservations about) proved to be as advertised (supposed to be as strong as 8mm steel).

We traveled 1900+ miles in 11days 21 hours, about 158 NM per day average, there were a few dramas but nothing major we could not fix, some with the help of John Robinson (thanks John) but this trip was really the “shake down” sail as all others we did together were light airs and short overnight sails around the Bay of Islands.

We have decided to cruise OZ for a year before heading to Malaysia, as it was just turning into a delivery and we were not going to be able to see anything but ocean for months so we will cruise the Sandy Straits for a few months after Gladstone. I go back to work in about a week, and after I return we will head south at a leisurely pace, stop at Lady Musgrave, and visit Frasier Island, worlds largest sand Island. After the cyclone season ends around April we will start sailing north to Cairns, and around to Darwin. We have done this trip before (twice) and each time we were in a hurry to push hard to make a schedule, now we can explore, rivers, mangroves and reef passages as we have the right boat for it…and now time to do it.

John Fletcher, owner of Sea Sports and a long time friend of ours will sail his Adams 60 up to meet us in the Sandy Straits, see his web site at http://www.seasports.com.au/ChartersForSale/Sandy%20Straits/SandyStraits.htm  nice interactive map of the straits.

Each day the predictions on the 7 day forecast change slightly and you can see the changes from the Sunday picture I posted on the 16 June, very subtle but to the trained eye I see a better slant on the wind (more Westerly at the top). I will look at it again tonight and in the AM and see if there are any new changes and base our 1200 departure on that and the Sailmail grib files as well.

We will most definitely see some heavy going to start the voyage but we will punch through the 25-30kt stuff to the NNW and we will see some light and variable then SW winds for a short period, until another low pressure comes from under us with North winds!!! But only for a day and then we will see the influence of the High coming over Australia, and then things should turn to a more predictable south easterly flow. These are my predictions based on available info, anyone else on the same trip should do their own predictions. Crusoe is a big strong steel boat, built for heavy conditions, we also take that into account when planning this type of routing. We know from previous experience that crossing the ditch is always a challenge, but soon enough we will be in the tropics and the Tasman becomes a distant memory.

With any luck this will be the last posting for a few weeks. We have an appointment to clear customs at 1200 tomorrow, and we will get what we get weather wise, enough of this cold and wet winter weather, batton down the hatches…..we are headed to the tropics!

This is the little system we have been waiting to pass, you will see changes daily by going to http://www.metvuw.com/forecast/forecast.php?type=rain®ion=nz&noofdays=7 this is the 7 day forecast, we have seen it change little since it first popped up in North Queensland and worked it’s way down the Tasman. We will still have some strong winds for the first few days, but favorable direction, and a BFH (Big Fat High) comes in behind this with moderate SE winds, looks like we made a good decision to wait for this to pass, as you can see on the south Island they will have 40Kt winds, and we did not know where we would meet these winds had we left earlier. We will keep you posted with at least one more update before Sunday, this picture will change every 6 hours on the website, this is not a dynamic picture (from 16/6/2011).

Our friends Guy and Candy are getting married while we are at sea, if you guys read this CONGRATULATIONS!

Anyone with suggestions on a Blog unrelated to us or Crusoe let me know and I’ll start it up. Of course it will be from our next stop in Cairns, North Queensland Australia.

This picture was taken this AM by Raewyn at Ashby’s Boatyard, we decided to do some work since we are stuck in Opua, we will replace both headstays today (two boats recently returned from attempts to go North with broken headstays, and a mate of ours lost his mast in the round North Island race a few months ago…..paranoid I know, but they are due for replacement anyway).  John and Pam will notice the 2 vent scoops over the bow locker drain holes we installed yesterday.

Nice to be on a dock for a while as we live as a self contained unit on our mooring, this means no gen set running twice a day, batteries fully charged and all systems are go. Nice way to get the small jobs done while we sit out the wx, in between showers.

We are working on getting a Sat phone hooked up, we bought a Iridium satellite phone and have signed on to UUplus service, we are able to use the Internet and receive emails with a compression software program that makes it more economical to surf the internet, not to mention the added safety to having communications in case of an emergency or breakdown, We hope the compression software is here before we leave as it is shipped UPS tomorrow (California time), being a day behind us it will be tight to get here by close of business Friday, if we get it set up you will be able to send us free text messages, or if you feel rich you could even call us at around $10.00 a min!

We are now anxious to get underway, as we had a good window go bad with the formation of a deepening low off the North Queensland coast starting to come our way. Unfortunately this sets us back another week! With our limited time frame to make Darwin before I return to work, means we may spend the next 6 weeks of my work rotation in Cairns instead of Darwin. Either way is OK but makes allot of pressure for us to get to Malaysia on the next trip as we still have to get to Darwin to clear out of Australia. and takes the leisurely aspect out of the sail through Indonesia and Malaysia. To add insult to injury…there is no assurance there will be a good window after this next low comes through, it’s not so much the low and the 30K winds that come with it its the Northerly direction! http://www.metvuw.com/forecast/forecast1.php?type=rain®ion=nz&tim=78 this is Fridays wx pic with the mentioned northerlies, then we wait for the next low to meander it’s way through. The waiting game is frustrating, after all the preparations we are in a holding pattern…….more later as we get closer to an actual departure date.

We are looking forward to visiting our friends in Cairns Steve and Helen Dominikovic, and my work mate Gerry who lives in Trinity Beach, plus my friend Aubrey and his son will be traveling to Cairns, I would have missed them on the original schedule, but looks like we may hook up after all!