We all slept well with 20 knots across the deck. It wasn’t the best anchorage but it was okay.

Kurt hammered out fresh pancakes from breakfast, while I called up Malcolm, the island caretaker on VHF 73 to check if it was okay to visit. The friendly South African voice responded with a “sure - come on up”.

We packed a bag with the VHF and Sat phone, some snacks for the crew and a stack of chutney, hot chocolate and pickles to donate to Malcolm. 

We headed ashore at 0900 with Salt Lines crew for the 90 minute hike up to the caretakers homestead. Phil and I dropped the crews off and then headed back to the yachts to undertake repairs, charge batteries and make water. 

Malcolm was a great host and is largely self sufficient on the island, growing his own meat, fruit and veggies and making his own flour.

I had success with starting the generator and making 200 litres of water. Definitely fuel starvation and needs an extra pump. The crew returned around 1:30pm, we put the pork roast in the oven and loaded the RIB back onboard. Keryn made some great sandwiches for lunch 

We looked the weather with gusts of 30+ and decided to go for comfort and put 2 reefs in the main and hoist the staysail. We had some delays waiting for Salt Lines after they had some temp sensor issues with their engine.

We departed Middle Percy around 4:30pm for the 110nm overnight sail to Whitehaven beach. We are sailing gybe for gybe with Salt Lines and currently 0.5nm apart as the sun goes down on another great day of adventure.

David