Second half of the Passage
Saturday was good sailing. We are racking up the miles. Only 260NM to go as the sun set on Saturday.
Then, around midnight, after far-away lightning effects, storms were upon us with strong wind squalls and rain. These persisted for a miserable 10 hours after which the sky turned blue and we were again sailing well. We failed to get a reasonable portion of sleep as a result of the storms. Unlike our usual practice, we did not heave-to (stop) because we need to squeeze out every mile to minimise our exposure to the predicted bad weather Monday-Tuesday. So we sailed through it all and this probably decreased the time spent in the storms.
On Sunday the motion of the boat became quite jerky. We had experienced adverse current for a while but now it dramatically worsened to 2.3kts against us! Suddenly, our arrival time was drifting further and further away.
Our spirits sank lower as the predicted Southerly Buster for Monday became earlier and stronger. On top of that, the wind direction was likely to be totally unsuitable with big seas. So, this was our lowest point of the passage. We discussed attempting to change course for Brisbane but that had other associated difficulties. In the end, feeling miserable, we decided to plug on as fast as we could and just hang in there.
What made this particularly dispiriting was that we had carefully planned our route based on CSIRO data and there SHOULD have been current ASSISTING us exactly where the reverse was true. It can only be because the CSISO data was older (14 days) than it usually is (4 days) so the swirling eddies of current had presumably moved. If there had been no current, we would have made Coffs Harbour Monday morning in 6 days and so missed the bad weather. Sigh.
Finally, after 30hrs, the current started to drop away and the sea temperature increase. We got to a point where we actually had a little current with us! Our spirits rose from the depths as we cranked out mile after mile very fast.
At 2245 we had 126NM to go. We are not going to avoid the bad weather bud this great speed means we can minimise it to less than we thought possible.
Monday dawned with strong Northerly winds and we continued to sail with more sail than normally prudent. When the boat became overpowered, we would go down to another reef. It was a fast, wet and furious ride. We expected to be 42NM out from Coffs when the front hit. It arrived with a "bang" a 1420 (New Cal time) only 20mins after our predictions. The great news was that by then we were only 32NM from Coffs. We thought we could handle ANYTHING for that relatively short distance. We had gale force winds and we hove to & stripped down to storm sails. We then got going again and the boat was only just manageable at well over its maximum theoretical speed & crashing through the building seas with huge fountains of spray and water going everywhere. Penny and I were permanently and totally drenched.
One tack was reasonably comfortable but the other was horrible with the east coast current opposing the lage 3metre waves.
Regds,
Penny & Dave
