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Provisioned shack for shipwrecked sailors.
Australia at last.
Jenny, our new freind, took us to Castle Rock with Ed.
The bearing will never budge again.
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January 28, 2014
35°50S 113°50E
Another cold front with huge seas has come and gone. The only land on earth at this latitude is the tip of South America and so the ocean swells have a huge fetch and build to be much larger than in northern waters with land masses. Our waves were thirty footers, dangerous for smaller boats but Onora’s sixty two feet would need waves twice that big to pitch pole. Still, we have to be careful and ride down the waves so they don’t catch us sideways and roll us over on our beam. Along with the 30 knots they make for a wild day.
Two hundred eleven miles to go and we hope to arrive at 6:00 pm tomorrow evening. We have doused the storm trysail and rolled out the jib, staysail, and our main-single reefed-and are on course at 8 knots.
Jeannie has been asleep for over five hours - the longest stretch in a month. She needs it.
Ed Bacharach, our Chicago friend who crossed from Brazil to Cape Town with us, arrived in Albany on Sunday from Chicago. It will be nice to see his smiling face.
January 29, 2014
35°21S 116°52E
The wind, current and waves all moved against us last night, slowing us to five knots under diesel power. Dinner on shore will have to wait another day. We should make it in by midnight and will have to anchor as directed by customs and immigration. We are boat bound until they clear us at 9:00am tomorrow morning.
05:07 UTC Land Ho! Can just make out the smudge of Australia on the northern horizon. Just ten more hours.
February 10, 2014
30°02S 117°53E Albany, Australia
We are almost ready to leave Albany with a fixed bearing, mended jib, filled tanks and new friends. Mark McRae was on the dock to take our lines with Ed when we arrived eleven days ago. Mark runs a one man yacht services company; we hired him to help remove the bearing and make a collar. It is now bolted down so it will never move again.
Mark is about six one, greying, always smiling and brimming with sailing stories. His most exciting are of his captaining a Russian racing yacht in an around-the-world voyage. Mark knows these waters and has lent us his charts and cruising guides for the next leg to Adelaide: 1000 miles across the dreaded Great Australian Bight. We have two months to make the trip so our strategy is to make day hops for all but the few days where there is no anchorage, about 300 miles of open water. We will pick our weather carefully.
We are ready for a peaceful cruise along this seldom-visited spectacular coast.
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