Passage Making

To All

We hope this finds you well and ready for summer. It's winter so to speak here with day temps in the mid 80's and surrounded by the deep blue sea.

We departed Vanuatu last Saturday. All our preparations had been made and we slipped off the mooring ball at 0900. The initial part of this passage is 1350 nautical miles to get us to Raine Is. off the northeast coast of Australia. There we go through a pass in the great barrier reef and then on to Thursday Is. off Cape York. Lots of different factors come into play trying to plan for a passage. First we consider weather but then again the forecasts are only accurate for at best 3 days. On short passages we like to figure an arrival time to avoid weekends where we might incur overtime charges for customs etc. For this passage our first 3 days of wx looked OK so off we went.

The first days winds were light and from all points of the compass but always enough to sail. We were traveling with our friends aboard "Scarlett O'hara" but as their boat normally averages a knot faster than us having visual contact only last into the first night. We do keep a radio schedule with them to talk twice a day and then we are also checking in to the Pacific Seafarers radio net which is who posts our daily position reports so you can follow along. That would be found under pacsea.org and then our call sign KG6IDC along with the yotreps site.

The 2nd days afternoon bonus was landing a nice size 20 to 25 lb. tuna. This especially made the cats happy as the love their fresh fish. On "Po Oino Roa" while underway we stand a strict 4 hour watch so one of us is always up. It takes a few days to get your sleep routines working and on day 2 your always tired so the cats were the only ones to enjoy tuna that day. We have all been enjoying it since.

The next couple of days we continued sailing along in nice SE tradewinds averaging 6+ knots of boat speed. We normally figure our passage to average 5 kts. or about 120 mile a day. We were ahead of schedule. We get wx forecasts via email and the outlook was for lighter winds which as long as we can sail was OK by us too. Late Friday evening the light winds were upon us. With the seas from the port stern quarter along with the wind things aboard were rocky and rolly. We would sail when possible and motor when necessary. The forecast was for this to continue most likely till our landfall.

Surprise, surprise when I came on watch Sat at 2100 or 9 pm Kathy was sitting in the middle of the cockpit tethered in with her harness on and eyes glued to the sailing instruments. We had 35 kts and she had seen a gust to 45. It's quite amazing how calm it can be below and rocky and noisy in the cockpit. It's now 20 hours later and the conditions continue. Current 37 t0 40 and gusting higher. We're sailing along with 3 reefs in the main and just the tiniest bit of staysail out now at speeds of 6.5 to 7.5 kts. I just got the latest wx and they continue to say we ought to have winds in the 15 kt range. It appears as we're in for another bumpy rolly night.

Now Monday morning and our wind and large seas continue. "Scarlett O'Hara" is now at the pass through the reef so on our evening radio sked we'll hear how things are. We should be there on Wed. morning.

That's enough for today as I need to now check wx. More later J&K