Safiya arrives in Australia after a fast sail!
Safiya
Harvey & Sue Death
Mon 28 May 2018 03:38
We had a super-fast passage from Vauatu to the East Coast of Australia.
The trade winds spirited us along and after just 5 days, with an average
speed of 8.8 knots we arrived at our destination. Our voyage took us through
an infamous pass in the Barrier reef called the Hydrographer's passage which
is a busy shipping channel with reefs on either side and a strong current
tearing through it. In the dark, in the early hours of the morning this was
a challenging and very wet 60-mile stretch of water.
We were the first Oyster to arrive in Mackay, Queensland a small,
agricultural town with a great little marina. 7 meter tides in Marina!
After such a high speed sail it took a few days to clean up all those spills
which inevitably occur when the boat is leaning at such a precarious angle!
Luckily all the breakages were on the inside of the boat - one cafeteria and
2 melamine bowls (I thought they were supposed to be unbreakable!).
We celebrated our arrival in Australia with an Oyster party last night and
in the next few days we'll cruise up the coast to the Whitsunday islands and
the Great Barrier reef.
We had special introduction to the local wildlife with an early morning trip
to the beach. As dawn broke we saw kangaroos and wallabies feeding on mango
seed pods which had been washed up by the tide. They are very cute - I
definitely will not be eating kangaroo again!!
