Guest writer appearance from Melissa here!

After a 2am arrival into Port Lincoln’s fuel dock, a well deserved partial-night’s sleep was had by the Salt Lines crew. There may have been a few late-night whiskeys consumed on arrival due to the stresses of navigating through an unknown port in the dark hours of the night. There is still the Lincoln mystery of the ‘Phantom Tanker’ that was visible to the eye but not on the radar, that might never be solved - was it there or not or was it a floating tuna farm??

It has been a lovely but unexpected three days break in our circumnavigation journey. Port Lincoln welcomed us with open arms and quite a few locals following our progress. There are worse places to be stuck….Coffin Bay oysters, maritime museum, Spencer Gulf King Prawns, National Parks, King George Whiting, swimming with Australian Sealions, Garfish, and even shark diving (for anyone brave or stupid enough). Did I mention the seafood?? I think we may have consumed a few kilograms of amazing oysters each, stopping short of having them for breakfast.

Aaron and I headed out to Grindal Island and snorkelled with the Sealions, nicknamed the ‘puppies of the sea’. They are so dang cute, inquisitive, quite tame, and incredibly playful. Others in our crew were not so keen to become shark bait! A big shout out to skipper Tacka and crew from Calypso Star who were a wealth of local knowledge and so genuinely hospitable - thanks for following our travels guys.

A local Port Lincoln tip-off, is an old boat anchored offshore with an Osprey nest and two tiny chicks worth checking out this webcam:

https://www.geocam.ru/en/online/port-lincoln-osprey/

Legendary circumnavigator, Sandie, who has been on Salt Lines from the start in Southport, managed to leave a tooth behind in Port Lincoln. A warm round of applause please to the lovely dentist who looked after her at very short notice. It’s been a while coming for our amazing lady from Tassie and has the beginnings of a great country song…

Chris-topher has been working hard at editing (and eating crumpets) all the amazing photos and video footage he has gathered on the trip so far.

Dave, our resident boat historian, was in boat-heaven at the maritime museum, even picking up a historical boat identification discrepancy, that will now be corrected.

Captain Matt deserves a diesel engine medal (if there were such a thing), after spending the better part of three days crawling through the hull, looking for our intermittent engine issue. We think he is now more qualified than the expert, experts, and we have now managed at least four engine starts without the alarm continually ringing. Fingers, toes and flippers crossed that is stays this way as we head to our next destination, Kangaroo Island.

Silver Fern reluctantly headed there the day before, and we are hopeful of meeting them there on Saturday morning for a sheltered anchorage. The upcoming weather is looking interesting as a high, a low, and another high are sandwiching themselves towards us…

Till next time,

Melissa :)