Morris Island and onwards

Blue Magic
Mark & Chris Dewey
Sun 26 Sep 2010 07:07

After a nights sailing with winds varying from 15 to 40 knots at times, we approached Morris Island late morning and began to furl away our sails.

 

At the last moment there was a pop and the furling line broke away from the drum on the bow and to our dismay the sail gracefully unfurled again and began flapping around wildly.

 

All hands on deck to connect and release the halyard at the mast and drop the huge sail whilst gathering it in along the side deck and strapping it down.

 

Unfortunately the sail had furled away very tightly during the night in high winds leaving us with less turns of rope on the drum so we literally reached the end of the line before the sail was away next time !

Thanks to Southern Spars for their quick response on how to fix the drum – unfortunately we managed to lose a part overboard whilst we had the drum apart – so the repair will have to wait until Darwin.

 

So -no twistling till then !

 

Morris Island was very pretty except for the 12 foot crocodile basking in the sun on the lovely white sand beach !

 

Laroobaa and Sol Maria ventured ashore in their dinghies and paddled along the beach (by which time the croc was in the water) and when they returned we asked them if they had seen the croc - they thought we were joking !!

 

We upped anchor at 6.30am on route North along the coast and around Cape York to a small anchorage at Siesa.

 

After 24hrs sailing we arrived right on time to catch the tide through the narrow Albany Passage at the tip of Cape York where we rounded the most Northerly point of Australia !

 

We settled at anchor around 10.30am, with many of the other boats deciding to continue another 350 miles across the bay of Carpentera whilst the weather was good.

 

Jackamy and ourselves opted for a good nights sleep and the chance to make a few meals in advance after a very rolly passage the previous day and night.