Articles by gmalan

One last challenge remained as I made my way to St Helens yesterday: the Georges Bay barway. Early morning I contacted Tamar Sea Rescue and asked about the state of the bar. If it was expected to be impassable I wanted the option to still divert to Flinders Island

They called up St Helens who advised that they would not give instructions but would send a rescue boat out to lead me across the bar.

St Helens / Georges Bay Bar

I felt fairly comfortable as the day progressed, having done several bar crossings in the last couple of years, some in breaking surf. My apprehension grew, however, as the day wore on. By 1500 it was blowing 25 knots from the north-east again, directly onto the bar, and I was dog tired. The Marine Rescue also indicated that they would inspect the bar and only take me through if the conditions were safe. The likelihood of safe conditions was reducing with the rising wind and I couldn’t bear the thought of another 10 hours sailing, in the dark, to get to the anchorage at Wineglass Bay.

The Marine Resque RIB arrived within minutes of my arrival in Georges Bay and they weren’t happy: the tide was late (still rising) and the bar was breaking in a mass of white water.

We agreed that I would cross at my own risk. By that stage I had doused all the sails, had my lifejacket on and had the boat closed up in case we got swamped by the surf or thrown on our beam ends.

As we went for the bar I suddenly felt a lot of vibration, and realized I’d picked up some kelp on the prop. I stopped the engine, put her in reverse to fold the prop, and restarted. Gunning her in reverse I felt the familiar smooth running and knew the kelp had been cleared. Then it was full throttle behind the rescue boat. Crossing the breaking surf was relatively easy – I only surfed down one breaking wave and then we were in the calm water of the river. What a relief. I then ‘bumped’ my way past Pelican Point in slightly less than 6ft of water, closely following the rescue boat.

The Marine Rescue organisations are entirely self funded institutions, operated by volunteers . Chatting with Ian Hollingsworth at the base later I was amazed to learn that they help around 100 boats annually that get into all sorts of trouble (2 to 3 times a week), sometimes towing boats in from over a 100 miles away. Needless to say I was only too happy to make a donation to help them continue the great work.

Another early start today. The sunrise was spectacular… It was so good I went and dragged Melissa out of her bunk to come and see it…

Made Airlie late afternoon after a pretty uneventful downwind day. Gotta love the tradewinds.

After a series of early starts, ever since we left Kauri Creek really, I thought I deserved a lie-in today… However, “luck” would have it otherwise.

Around 7am there was a knocking on the hull. A person looking rather ‘the worse for wear’ peered at me over the transom, with his greeting followed immediately by “you wouldn’t happen to have a 16mm socket spanner, by any chance, would you?”

My first reaction was to deny ownership of any tools, because handing over my sole socket spanner, extension and 16mm socket could only have one outcome: loss of the tools. However, I took pity on my fellow mariner and handed him the wrench, but only after tying a lanyard on and encouraging him to tie the other end to himself. His response? “Ah, no worries mate, that won’t be necessary, I’m working in the boat’s engine room, not outside.” This did nothing for my fear that he was going to lose it out of the dinghy while paddling between his boat and mine, but hey, I tried…

Anyway, about an hour later my new friend returned, with wrench, restoring my faith in humanity. I invited him aboard for a coffee (”don’t mind if I do”) and gently prodded him for his story.

Appears he’s bought a (rather nice looking) 10m motor cruiser in the vicinity of Brisbane several weeks before, and was now trying to ferry it to his home base in Townsville. Along the way he managed to get washed up on the beach at the Wide Bay Bar when both engines failed as he was crossing the bar in the middle of the night. A long repair followed at Tin Can Bay. Subsequently he managed to lose a propellor on the way to Keppel Bay (another delay) and now he was stuck at Pearl Bay with a duff alternator (ergo the need to borrow the wrench).

He had engaged a commercial skipper who was now helping him, but still refused to motor at night because he knew that “there are people like myself who go fishing of a night without showing any lights…”.

The most priceless snippet was that his last name was “Luck”! “Just call me Lucky…” he said!

We had a lovely peaceful day at anchor, snorkelling, sunbathing and re-charging our batteries for the next leg.

With the heads repaired, we set off Monday and motor sailed for a large part of the day. After we passed Port Stephens we managed to sail for the occasional thee-hour stretch, but we still motored for 18 hours out of the first 24. I was very grateful for the new soundproofing I had recently installed as it made a vast difference to comfort aboard.

The crew were coping remarkably well with the offshore conditions. Only Pascale had done any real offshore sailing before and, at the other end of the scale, Melissa had never been on a sailboat before. Melissa struggled a bit with seasickness initially, but boy she recovered quickly after vomiting, always returning with a big smile and infectious enthusiasm.

The watch system was easy on everyone, with a 6 hours off, 3 hours on schedule giving everyone adequate rest. I took Melissa on my watch, being the least experienced sailor, and Helen and Pascale, who were by far the two better helmsmen and had more experience than the others, led the other two watches. The crew kept log and wrote short stories in a notebook, some of which (like Melissa’s “Dolfie the Dolphin” story) had us in fits.

By the time we reached Coffs Harbour early on Wednesday 27 May, everyone had settled in and there was much relief at being able to go for a hot shower.