Saturday 31^st October 2015

The title of this blog ought really to be ‘Should WE stay or should WE go?’, but I found myself singing the song the title line belongs to – and thinking of our old mate Rob Bell who spent an entire sailing season coming up with a song title for every one of his blog entries, just for the fun of it. (Look it up if you don’t believe me – ‘Serafina’ is in the All Users list.)  So here’s thinking of you Rob – hope life is good. xx

Back to the plot:

Just before going to bed last night we checked the weather forecast again.  Blow me if it wasn’t now looking ok to go again!  We’ll check it again in the morning we said.

And we did. And it was still saying ok to go.  So we flew into a frenzy of doing the jobs we would have done yesterday afternoon if we hadn’t decided to postpone leaving, and by late morning we were just about ready.  We would have preferred that the forecasts had been a little more consistent, as there was a likelihood they would change again, but we were checked out and psyched up for the passage.  So we threw off the lines and headed off to the fuel dock.

Coming alongside the fuel dock was no problem, but as we were filling up, the wind increased and we realised we were now being blown hard onto the dock with very little room behind between us and a rock breakwater.  With the bowthruster out of action, we rigged a line to spring off, which worked a dream and got the bows out enough for the wind to catch them and take us round.  Apart from a few scuffs on the dinghy cover as it scraped against the jetty coming round, all was good.

We left the fuel dock at 1400, motored just far enough to get clear of the entrance to Port Moselle Bay, and raised the sails.  Australia here we come!