Leg 3: Krakatoa to Cocos 160924

Gcwjones
Tue 27 Sep 2016 04:41

Saturday 24th September 2016    Position 12:5.26S 96:52.58E          Direction Island, Cocos Keeling

Conditions continued much the same as the previous day. As we bore away towards Cocos and brought the wind around onto the port quarter the motion improved and less water came aboard and as the wind and waves came around more from astern we were surfing more frequently. I saw 9.9kts, and the highest on Paul’s watch was 12.7kts. Sighted Cocos Keeling at 0800 as a long strip of palm trees on the horizon. These resolved into Direction Island, Home Island and Horseburgh Island as we got closer. Two large oil rig service vessels (cable ships?) were mooching around in the approach to the lagoon. The bottom rises steeply from 4000+m a few miles to the E of the islands and was still >300m deep when 400m from the tip of Direction Island. As soon as we entered the lagoon depths decreased to 10m and then to as low as 1.4m as we followed the recommended waypoints into the anchorage tucked behind Direction Island (known as Port Refuge).

We anchored finally with only 1m beneath the keel just 100m from the beach to our lee. It was still very windy in the anchorage (25kts), and to add to the difficulty the anchor windlass became intermittent, then failed altogether (later diagnosed as a solenoid failure). Despite to seemingly precarious position moving was not really an option and the alternatives were no more attractive (limited choice as there were 6 other yachts in the anchorage). Instead we decided to set a second anchor (Delta) to windward on a mix of chain and (mainly) warp.

Went to the beach in the tender in the afternoon (the repair worked and it stayed inflated – seam failure almost certainly caused by over inflation as the electric pump auto cut-out was only working intermittently). There were some Aussies from West Island visiting for the day (only 2 ferries per week), who offered us some lunch. Took a short walk up to the “rip” and signed up to the wifi.