After a fairly busy 10-day stopover in Cairns, the repairs and preparations were completed this morning and we were finally ready for departure. Our crew flew in over the last 2 days from all over New Zealand and Australia and as far away as Sweden (Lena) and California (Paul).

We gathered on the eve of departure for a combined crew dinner, with more than 50% of the crew joining us for the second or third time, on one of our adventures.

We had some last minute challenges with salt water flow in our generator on Silver Fern and a 4:30pm Friday call to Dave from Deman, (one of my favourite engineering companies in Hobart) confirmed I would have to pull the heat exchanger apart to clear a blockage somewhere. Dave is a friendly guy and one of just a handful of people, that would take a call from a customer, at 4:30pm on a Friday.

I decided to tackle it at 6am this morning and Sharon Ferris-Choat, (our new skipper) who is onboard on this passage, was up by 5:30am and back by 6am with coffee. We pulled the salt water pipes and heat exchanger tube off and checked them for blockages. I had left barnacle buster in overnight as well and we could not find any blockage issues. I reassembled it by 9:30am and water was flowing freely. The only challenge was new leaks around the heat exchanger end cap seals, that I will tackle tomorrow. Dave called me again today to check on progress and provided some extra advice on the reassembly process.

Sharon and Lena (who has completed 3 Sydney Hobart’s, a Tasman Crossing and a Brisbane to Hamilton Island Race with me) complete our commercially licensed crew of 3, with Taku taking a well earned, 6-week break. We have 10 onboard Silver Fern in total and they are a great bunch of characters with Junior, Jo, Michael, Paul, Jerzy, Freya and Ken rounding out our team.

We untied around 11am today and departed Cairns. Once clear of the channel we completed a man overboard drill, before hoisting the main with 2 reefs and the staysail. With the forecast at 15-23, gusting 25-30, we decided to ease into Leg 2 to Darwin gently and have had a glorious afternoon of sun drenched sailing. With dolphins, whales, cargo and military ships, there has been a lot going on.

Our first leg is 135nm as we head north, through the reef strewn waters, for our first stop at Lizard Island as we head deeper into crocodile country.

David