The overnight sailing descended into motoring as the breeze fell away to 3-5 knots. We furled away the jib, and continued with full mainsail. It was mostly helpful, but every so often the wave motion will flick the battens inside out and back again with a “crack, slap, crack”.

Its never a comforting sound as each crack adds to the wear and tear on the sail. The alternative is no sail at all and rolling more violently in the sea swell, as the mast takes on a pendulum effect, magnifying the rolling motion.

If you are trying to sleep, the side to side roll wakes you regularly, forcing you to curse whoever is on watch with “what the f*#k are they doing up there?” even though it’s not their fault and there is little you could do to increase the comfort levels, if the roles were reversed. So on we went through the night with “crack, slap, crack” every so often, which creates a more comfortable motion and only seems to wake the person who has to pay for the sail repairs, while everyone else sleeps like babies.

I got to bed around midnight after catching up on blog posts, to be woken at 6am with Matt Harvey talking to our crew on the VHF about being Salt Lines approached by a boat of potential asylum seekers. Matt said he was in contact with Australian Border Force who had asked him to stand by on location incase emergency assistance was required.

Reunited with Salt Lines after their “boat people” experience

When I joined the crew at the nav station a few minutes later (and in desperate need of coffee) I noticed we had become separated from Salt Lines by 9nm overnight and were more than an hour from them. We decided to double back towards Salt Lines and promptly tacked and turned back up wind to head their way. I’ll leave it to Matt to fill in the gaps in the Salt Lines blog post, but this reinforced the need to stay closer together in case security or safety issues arise. With Indonesia just 250nm away, it’s only 10 hours in a high speed skiff.

Once the excitement subsided, we had breakfast and coffees and eventually Ken Dobler, set up some pretty fancy fishing gear he had bought along and cast a lure behind Silver Fern, to drag along at 8 knots behind us.

I have heard all sorts of debates by crew about going too fast to catch fish when we are doing 7-8 knots, but Ken dispelled those myths (excuses) by landing a beautiful yellow fin tuna, followed by a 80cm barracuda 30 minutes later. He threw the barracuda back, but the tuna was filleted and put into the fridge. Thats a keeper for tomorrows menu.

Its been a lazy afternoon of motor-sailing, passage planning, sleeping, celestial navigation, log keeping and dinner prep. We have 40nm to go to Hanover Bay, which takes us to the 15nm channel entrance to the St George Basin. We are on time to arrive on the turn of the tide and see land again 475nm after leaving Darwin. It’s our first stop on this leg and we are excited to make landfall in Western Australia for the first time.

David

Join the crew for a sailing adventure

Fishing Fun

Time and tide wait for no sailors

Buzzed by Border Force