Team Seaduced arrives down under!

Seaduced
John & Jane Craven
Wed 23 Jul 2014 23:59
After 7 days at sea and some interesting moments we eventually made landfall in Mackay, Australia at 12.00 on Thursday 24 July - phew!
The trip has been great, after a bad start. Within about 10 minutes of crossing the start line at Port Vila, John noticed a tear in our mainsail! The mainsail is the big power sail, and over 1,000 miles without it wasn't an option. We turned round and headed back to the mooring to assess the damage. Rally control had managed to locate a sailmaker for us who could do a quick job if needed, but our hope was that we would be able to stick it back together and get underway again quickly without having to drop the sail.
Once we were tied up, I went up to see what had happened. We have a vertically battened mainsail which was a good thing as the batten had prevented the tear from travelling further. What had happened was that the sail stitching had simply come undone. When we were in Tonga we had been given some hot air balloon repair tape by Jonathon of Chez Nous, another rally boat, which had held their sail together for a good few miles, since St Lucia I think! I stuck this on, added some more sail repair tape that we had on board and, whilst it didn't look pretty, we were underway again and crossed the start line for the second time 2.5 hours late, crossing our fingers that the repair would hold up all the way to Oz!
By the next morning, we were about the middle of the fleet having caught up overnight, and sailing well. The weather was due to be a bit tricky, and there were some head winds, and light winds, but all in all it looked good. Over the next few days we had some great sailing. We have really struggled with heavy seas recently, on almost every trip, so when we got flat seas for most of this trip, it was bliss! Sailing is so much more comfortable when the sea is flat, and living aboard is so much easier!
All was going swimmingly until about 2 days out when John went to check the engine room and found that the shore power inverter box, weighing about 25kg was hanging off the wall at 45 degrees, directly over the engine - not good at all! After a few attempts at calling people to get some advice we realised we were going to have invent a solution and here it is.....

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A ratchet strap, a broom handle and lots of gaffer tape!!

Once this was held in place we got going again, and all was good until.....a near knockdown an hour from the pass! The first 1000 miles of the journey were in open sea until we got to the Hydrographers Passage which takes you through the Great Barrier Reef. This last 125 miles can get a bit tricky with winds and tides etc so we were prepared to be doing some motoring at this stage. Just before we arrived, we had full sail up in about 13-14 knots of wind, perfect sailing weather. I was hanging out in the cockpit, and John had popped down below to check our route through the pass when we were hit with sustained winds of 38 knots - really unpleasant. John rushed back up, but it took about 10 minutes to get proper control again and furl the sails away. Then I went downstairs, to see what damage had been caused there, but we had escaped unscathed! However, our carefully repaired mainsail was no more, the wind had torn through the sail again and it was now useless! We decided that we would just motor the last 10 miles to the pass rather than sail again!

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We thought this was fun - Donald Duck in the clouds!

After that, despite some horrid weather in the pass, 25 knots of wind and more and rain, the rest of the trip was fine and we arrived safely in Australia, a total relief! What was really cool, when we arrived we spoke to Rally Control regarding berthing etc, and then we had another call. A boat we had done our Atlantic Crossing with, Shaya Moya, was in the marina and staying for just one more night, so after 4 years we had the chance to catch up with them - small world!
Customs and quarantine was quite painless. We had eaten all the contraband food and were left with very little, but even so they still managed to take some stuff! We had a visit from the mechanical dog and also a real dog, complete with booties to protect the boat. The whole process was much easier than we thought and then we were able to move onto our dock and get settled in.
It has been a long trip, we have now covered nearly 30,000 miles, and both the crew and the boat are in need of a good long rest!

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