Location Report - Morris Island
Sea Mist > Sold to New Owners July 2016
John and Cheryl Ellsworth
Fri 22 Jun 2012 10:53
Today can be summed up with one of 2 views ; calm seas or motor sailing....in other words we went from more than enough wind yesterday, to no wind to sail by today. The forecast calls for STRONG WIND WARNING tomorrow, Saturday and Sunday. We have a couple of choices: 1) stay anchored where we now are, or, 2) go another 58 nm north and tuck into Portland Roads but it will very likely be quite rolly there given the winds warning forecast. Will think about it tonight after we bring down some fresh weather data over the sat phone.
We had a bit of a lie-in this morning since we didn't have such a long distance to go....getting up about 6:30 am and anchor up just after 7:00. The four sail boats continued together today (Kilkea, Imagine, Y Knot and Sea Mist. We spread out a bit more since each of us have a bit different speeds when motor sailing; as Kilkea was arriving first at the anchorage, Y Knot had just over 8 miles still to go; Sea Mist and Imagine were in the midddle. I run at the most economical engine speed that I have found which is 1400 rpm....burning about one litre of fuel for each nautical mile.
When we dropped our anchor about 3:30 pm, David and Marian (Kilkea) already had their dinghy in the water and were alongside Sea Mist by the time I turned off the engine. David provided the dinghy taxi service to the beach for us (and later for Imagine and Y Knot as they arrived). We had a most enjoyable couple of hours before dark to walk the beach and around the island. At low tide, which is when we arrived, the bare sand covered reef seems to go forever; the reef is about 7 km long and 2.5 km wide....and, to a great extent, at low water, a large part of its sand covered surface is bare and ready to explore. We were warned, later in the evening on the VHF radio by a local boater, that there is a BIG resident crocodile here so that discouraged us from doing any swimming from the boats. I did take a quick. cool-down, immersion splash twice off the beach where I could see that there was no crocodile lurking in the clear water....and I have survived to write about the foolishn
ess in this blog posting.
The blue sky days continue as June rolls along....nothing but sunshine since Sunday the 3rd of June when we were at Magnetic Island. Water temp jumped today to over 26 C (79 F); too bad we have to worry about mean creatures as it would have been so nice to get in the water at this really beautiful sand beach/island...no one but me was quite so brazen.
Back on-board, we had the rude awakening to discover our diesel generator failed as Cheryl was in the midst of cooking dinner. At first I though it was just an impeller failure as I saw the overheating....but no such luck! It turns out the raw water pump drive cog is broken...and therefore no generator until I can contact Westerbeke and determine what parts and how to fix. THIS IS BAD NEWS!!!!! >> more on this in later posts. In the meantime, no stove as we have an electric cooker. This is definitly the most serious "break down" in the 7 hears with Sea Mist. I have a new raw water pump in my spares but I never considered or heard of the type of failure that has occured.
That's it for now....enjoy summer in North America and Europe while we soak up WINTER down-under.
Cheers, J&C
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