12:3.47S  131:15.46E

Anchored in the lee of Cape Hotham

Anchor down 0345!!! 04/07/13

Hmm, well the day started OK, I woke up and then it was all down hill. The only time this trip the anchor was stuck. It took a half an hour of patient, then impatient, then virtually incandescent motoring round in circles and shouting loudly at the World in general and the anchor in particular and up it came. Think Basil; Fawlty warning his car to start or else.  I was away by 0530 which was about on planned time but I wanted to be a little early if possible.

The planned five knots passage speed didn’t materialise for hours, until after I turned into the Dundas Channel and the wind got up a bit. The promised sleigh ride never materialised (neap tides) and the best I saw fir a couple of hours was 6.3 kts, beating into what was almost a dead ringer for a ‘Solent Chop’. Still, the Sun was shining.

I couldn’t lay the course so beat over to Melville Island and took an inshore passage. No great dramas but as soon as the tide turned against me the bloody wind disappeared! Engine on. An hour went by and I did some calculations. Uh oh, it was all going pear shaped. More revs. The old surging problem reappeared. About thirty minutes of good revs then down to idle for a minute or so, then a minute to gradually build back up to set RPM. Bollocks.

This continued through the night. Although the neap tides meant that at worst I would have 1.5kts current against me I kept thinking that one of these times the engine would go to idle then stop. Talk about a nervous wreck. There wasn’t much to hit where I was but no wind at all and it was too deep to anchor. I made for Cape Hotham, which was more or less on the way anyway.

I reached the point where it was either straight ahead for seven miles and anchor or ‘right hand down a lot’ to make for Darwin. The tide was about to turn foul so really it was a no-brainer. The only question was would I get to the anchorage before the foul tide reached full strength and did I really intend to have four hours sleep and up-anchor at 0830. OK, that’s two questions. The answer to both turned out to be yes.

I’m writing this whilst en route to the South Channel, on Fri 5^th. I got away on time if a little groggily but my morning Milo and sugar got me through the travails of hoisting the main and pulling up the anchor. A chance VHF conversation made me look again at the chart and plan a slightly different route via the South Channel which saves about 5nm. Mind you, it’s still 40 nm to Fannie bay and I have seven hours of favourable tide and at the moment no wind so it’ll be a damned close-run thing. Give me the revs or give me the wind, as Wellington might have said if he was crewing for me.

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