We got all of the wind that was forecast overnight, with 23 building to 28 knots in the early morning hours. We are zig-zagging back and forth across the shipping channels, as we gybe our way north, staying clear of the coast and inside the Great Barrier Reef as it angles into the coast, providing less and less sailing room.

It’s normal to sail within 0.5 nm of these reefs in the dark, before changing course on a new heading, to slide around the edge of the next one. With hundreds of submerged rocks and reefs around us, it’s hard to comprehend navigating in these waters without GPS.

We sailed into our Lizard Island anchorage at 0900 hours this morning, 5-minutes behind Salt Lines, ran off downwind to drop the staysail, before starting the motor and turning the bow upwind to drop the mainsail. The wind was blowing 16-25 knots through the anchorage and the water was crystal clear and turquoise blue. We decided not to lower the Silver Fern RIB in the higher winds and Jess from Salt Lines ferried our crew ashore in their “landing craft” instead.

After having salt water flow issues with the generator, I stayed onboard to pull the heat exchanger apart and check for blockages. My 1 hour job turned into 5 hours and thanks to help from both Sharon and Junior, I eventually had the job almost finished and then damaged one of the two o-rings that seal it up. Despite searching high and low, I could not find any spares oboard. So the genset is almost fixed (once again) but can’t be used until I can ship new o-rings to Darwin.

The crew had a great time ashore. Lena, Ken, Paul, Freya and Jerzy did the 90 minute climb to Captain Cook’s lookout at the top of the island and had a great vista of the surrounding area. After the 1 hour decent, Ken dived into the mesmerising water and went snorkelling with the large turtles. With no fear of humans, Ken filmed them on Go-Pro while they swam and fed around him.

The crew were back on board by 3pm and we had a late lunch before getting set up for departure. After spreading tools everywhere, I had a bit to stow away and the 20-25 knots still roaring through the anchorage, meant we had our work cut out, to motor up on the anchor, so Sharon, Ken and Lena could pull up the 40m of chain without overloading the windless.

We departed Lizard Island side by side with Salt Lines by 4:30pm and now have a 315nm sail to the Adolphus group of islands, north of Cape York. We' have a busy night ahead with navigation and an hour ago we had to gybe between 2 reefs, 1/4 of a mile apart, in order to avoid a cargo ship coming down the channel towards us.

David