Day 25 SY Forté position 37:04 .36S 149:54.3E

Mark_needler
Professional Skipper
Sat 23 Apr 2011 01:03
 
0830NZT / 0630EST ~ Land Sited!!
 
    We have arrived in Eden at some ungodly hour of the day well actually NZT 0600 hrs, last night I made a decision to slow down and aim to be into Eden Just before our allotted time for our Customs clearance. The reason for this was, we were instructed to anchor off when ever we arrived and wait until 0630, well to be quite honest we didnât want to get the anchor dirty and have to clean it off again so we just took our time getting there. We had a few problems with the autopilot arm on the way with it jumping off the nipple that it fits over, I can here you saying why didnât they tie it down, we did and it was....still it only happened twice though both at the most in opportune times..read on:-
    We were just coming out of a rain squall the was as black as the Ace of Spades a little breezy but not too much, just to add to the Drama we were passing Montague Island which to us was a lee shore but with rocks (we were 3 nms off them I will say) so not scary stuff just interesting when you were planning a quite evenings steam down the coast, it all quietened off eventually and things went back to normal! (what ever normal is Iâve never quite figured that one out!) Then the wind and the seaâs built again and we had the night from hell! 4/5 meters seas and 25 knts of wind on the nose, the waves were moving so fast it wasnât an option to take the waves on the angle as I felt they may swamp us given there speed and volume. So I spent the whole of the night outside making adjustments to the helm so that forte was presenting herself at the best possible angle to the waves, we were motor sailing with a reefed main sail up and eventually it eased off a little at 0530 EST this morning.....I got about 20 mins sleep before we called in to Eden for Customs and Quarantine clearance. That was a thorough and professional job done by NSW Police, Customs & Quarantine officers, if i had anything illegal on board Iâm sure they would found it, however it was all over as quickly as it started with everyone happy apart from yours truly whoâs only complaint was lack of sleep...no ones fault but the weather. Plans are to depart on Sunday as long as the weather forecast holds.
I will have one if not two new crew members Stefan is off to Tasmania and Bruce Iâm not sure about last night he was suffering from chronic seasickness and after medication slept through the whole thing...Lucky bastard!......hmmm maybe not.