NORDLYS - Trip to australia

Trip to australia

NORDLYS

David and Annette Ridout

Tue 18 Oct 2005 07:02

Vanuatu to Australia

Bundaberg, Queensland, Australia

18th October 2005

As I write it is a grey day with a soft drizzle making everything wet and the humidity very high. Nordlys is still and quiet in her marina berth and her cabin seems strangely large as our visitors for the last five weeks have departed. This is a marked contrast to the conditions prevailing on board for the last week. The four of us, myself Annette plus David and Kate, cast off the mooring owned by the Aora Resort in Luganville at lunch time on Monday the 10th October. There was no promise of wind but some days of waiting had stimulated the passage nerves and we were all anxious to get going. In the event we did much better than those who waited longer. At no time was the engine used for propulsion for the first eight hundred odd miles and only for twenty of the last thirty six hours of the voyage. We had day after day of beautiful sailing with the wind never over twenty knots and never forward of the beam. We also suffered very little from too little wind too far aft producing slamming sails. There were only two drawbacks to what should have been perfect conditions. The first was a leaking stern gland. This in retrospect had started a month earlier although at the time we thought it was a leaking rudder gland and a couple of days out settled down into an unstoppable three or four litres an hour. Nothing serious but enough to take the icing off the cake of relaxation. The second was the fact that poor Kate never really got her sea legs and although never sick was not able to enjoy what was for the rest of us a dream passage. Nordlys ploughed gently on over a moderate sea clocking up 160 to 170 mile days. At night an almost full moon and usually clear skies made watch keeping a pleasure. Wild life was notable by its absence but one evening a group of boobies tried to land on the spinnaker pole which was boomed out to windward but not being used as we were on a reach. Their antics made for an entertaining half hour. The end meter of the boom is covered in a protective rubberised material and the rest is shiny varnished carbon fibre. The birds, at first two but eventually three, on the end were fine but the remainder who tried to land on the middle simply found themselves on the proverbial greasy pole and despite using feet, beaks, wings et al were unable to remain in place. The birds on the end were very aggressive to any who tried to squeeze in with them. Eventually the three who succeeded stayed the whole night with us and flew off next morning some seventy miles away from where they landed. I wonder how their navigation technique copes with this?

We managed to catch and land a good sized yellow fin tuna on our fourth day out and two evenings were spent eating this excellent meat. It is on the menu again tonight and unlike skipjack tuna which goes very dark and strong tasting as it ages the yellow fin meat remains a joy.

One result of the leak was that with much sadness I decided that it was not sensible to stop at the Chesterfield Reefs. Theoretically the leak was unlikely to get much worse but I could not see myself or Annette enjoying our time at anchor knowing that we had such a problem. In the event we were lucky with our decision as if we had stopped we would have been faced with either nearly five hundred miles of motoring or a lot of sailing close hauled in a stiff breeze if we had delayed there even longer due to the lack of wind that came to the area after we had passed through.

Arriving in Bundaberg River at midnight on Sunday night we dropped anchor just outside of the main fairway almost exactly a thousand miles after casting off six days and eleven hours earlier. By eight o'clock we were called alongside the quarantine dock and by nine we were cleared in. A $160 charge for this service and the loss of many tins of French Cassoulet, because they had pork in them, to the agricultural inspector did not dampen our pleasure at having made it to Australia. Back in the late seventies and early eighties when Annette and I had done Sydney Postings with British Airways we had both, yes you doubters both, looked forward to the day when we sailed our own boat to Australia rather than arriving by aluminium tube.

This morning with much sadness we said goodbye to David and Kate, they had been good company and added to life on the good ship Nordlys. I do not think Kate will go offshore for any distance again but for coastal cruising she will always be welcome. Hopefully as I write they are winging their way to Sydney and a few days with friends before the long flight home.

Annette and I will regroup, sort out several technical problems and then sail south to Brisbane. Bank account to open, local SIM card to get, all the usual minutiae of the cruising life to be arranged.

Happy times to you all.