10:29.43S 142:44.63E

2^nd day of passage

Wednesday 25^th August 2010

Entering the Torres Strait

The following morning we seemed to have lost the adverse current and by 10 am arrived at our first waypoint, Brambles Cay where we turned south west into the Bligh Passage (yes named after him this was the passage he took when he was set adrift after the mutiny)

 This is the only recognised route around the top of Australia it is renowned for strong tides and is littered with reefs and shoals.  The good thing is that once behind the protection of the reef we had near perfect sailing conditions with a smooth sea and a gentle 10-15 knot breeze just forward of the beam, the perfect wind for Kanaloa we were slipping along at over 9 knots! We even had a beautiful 4 metre blue marlin surfaced alongside the boat, this together with a pod of around 30 Spinner dolphins playing off our bow made it a perfect day.

As we entered the shallow waters towards the Torres Strait islands, we had a wonderful display from the small dolphins, they followed us for at least half an hour

We never get tired of watching the dolphins play around the bows of our boat

I have recently fitted a new toy to the boat called AIS - Automatic Identification System. It transmits a signal with one's vessel details and at the same time receiving those of all the surrounding ships and displaying them on the electronic chart in graphic form. This proved a real boon whilst negotiating the very narrow Prince of Wales Channel.  We were able to see exactly where all the ships were, where they were heading and to talk to them by name when necessary. We had one ship call us before we reached the channel he was English be his accent and I think that he just wanted a chat.

Run Noon to noon 172 miles  Total 208 miles

Soon after reaching the narrow shipping channel to go through the Torres Strait, we get confirmation from this ship that they see us on their AIS on their chart, as seen below

The three green triangles show the movement of ships around us

Thursday 26th August : Captains’ log:

We arrived at the entrance to the Channel at around 3.00am and boy was it busy.  There is a reporting system, where one states arrival time at a certain buoy and which direction you will be going through the pass.  We were called by one tanker who was approaching from a different direction as we could see that we were going to arrive at the reporting buoy at the same time, he was doing around 11 knots at the time and we were doing nearly 10 so I offered to slow down to let him through first which was greatly appreciated by the captain.  I think that we must have spoken to about 6 ships in all, one asking for right of way even though we were right on the very edge of our side of the west going channel. 

By the time were just in the narrowest part of the channel the wind had died and it was time to start the engine - that's when the trouble started.  I went to bed but was soon up again because of another ship, only to find the aft cabin 2" deep in water - a solenoid that controls the flush water to the toilet had stuck and the bowel had overflowed empting 200 litres of fresh water into the bilges at the same time there was an awful smell coming from the batteries due to their overheating from a charging modification carried out by an electrician in Port Moresby.  After fixing all the problems I ended up with about a total of 2 hours sleep that night

We ended up going through the Torres Strait at night, via the Prince of Wales Channel, just North of Thursday Island, which is the one in the middle of this photo.

We had smooth seas, speeding along at 9 knots with 20 knots of wind behind us.  One of the ships called us to advise that we would both be reaching a buoy at the same time.  David offered to slow down and allow him through the narrow channel first.  On my watch, just as we were going through the final Prince of Wales channel, a ship coming towards us insisted he has right of way through the narrow channel.  I woke David, who had only just gone to bed to ask if I should go out of the channel and anchor as it was only 10 meters deep!  David just veered to the outside of the channel, leaving a distance of half a mile between us as we passed each other.  It was a busy night, David was on watch most of the time, with so many decisions to be made every time we had a ship going  past in the channel.