Departed Fitzroy Island
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Noon Position: 16 59.6 S 145 55.6
E We experienced an uncomfortable night at anchor with Sylph bobbing and dancing around her anchor cable as a small sea set in from around the west end of the island and bullets of wind came down over the island's steep hills from all and any direction. Conditions were particularly bad at low water, around one o'clock in the morning, when presumably the ebb stream was still flowing strongly through the strait between the island and the mainland, causing Sylph to hobby horse, regularly slamming her counter into the short sea. I decided to close the exhaust valve as a precaution, recalling an incident back in my early days of owning Sylph when caught in similar conditions which flooded the old Yanmar engine. This morning I contemplated my options: stay at anchor, pick up a public mooring - two of which had been vacated, or weigh anchor and either continue south or return to anchor in the shelter of Cape Grafton. I discounted the idea of moving onto a mooring as this would not have made us any more comfortable; in fact, may have made things worse with the mooring buoy bashing against the hull as it did last time we were here. Indeed, another boat on a mooring had dragged the mooring buoy up onto his fore deck, which, apart from not being strictly legal, must have been a real chore as the buoy is large and heavy and has a mass of heavy mooring tackle attached to it. Presumably he was planning on staying on the mooring for more than the 24 hour limit to have gone to so much trouble. As for staying at anchor, I didn't see the point of this as I figured it would not be much more uncomfortable sailing up wind, and as I am always loathe to give up precious ground made to windward, I decided on weighing anchor and continuing south. Thus, after about fifteen minutes of cranking the forty meters of chain in with the trusty Muir Hercules manual anchor winch*, we motored slowly to the west of the island while I secured the anchor for sea, then got the main set with one reef and partially unrolled the jib to about seventy percent. Conditions have proven rather boisterous since clearing the island with, as expected, fresh headwinds; but with the sails acting to stabilise Sylph, the motion is not much worse than at anchor and of course has the compensatory feeling of satisfaction of making ground in the right direction as opposed to feeling frustrated bobbing around merrily going nowhere. As to exactly where we are going, I am not at this stage sure. As mentioned yesterday Mourilyan Harbour is some forty miles away, and I estimate will take about 20 hours of sailing. Mourilyan is pretty and, more importantly, a very well protected harbour but there is little there apart from a sugar loading terminal and the anchorage area is strictly limited. So my plan is to settle in for an overnight sail, see what conditions are like tomorrow and decide then whether to have a rest in Mourilyan Harbour or to continue on. All is
well. * Sailors used to call any device that required muscle power an 'Armstrong patent'; however, in this instance 'Hercules' is not a bad name. While no doubt the manufacturers intended the name to refer to the winch it also has the tendency over time to make the winch operator more closely resemble Hercules (or so I would like to think). |