A few days ago I composed the following brief account of our sail from Albany to Esperance.
Sail from Oyster Harbour, Albany, to Esperance
The crossing from Albany to Esperance took 3 days. We weighed anchor at Oyster Harbour, Albany at 0830 on 11 May. We motored for the first 30 minutes and found no substantial increase of water in the bilge after having tightened a clamp on a leaky joint in the water cooling system. The sky was clear and we sailed all night with a variable NE wind. The next day at midday we were totally becalmed and Robert took his bath in the Southern Ocean, about 20 miles off the coast. We all tried the new 12-volt shower that plugs into a cigarette lighter socket and pumps water from bucket. It was a great success. The idea is to bath with salt water and rinse with a minimum of fresh water.
On the night of the 12th the wind died early in the evening and we lay ahull (i.e. bare poles). Then the wind picked up and we sailed all night with the jib under a NNW wind. We then had a fair wind for most of the day.
The 13th was a matter of holding course with a jib under a NE wind. We then had an exhilarating final few hours of sail with a strong Southerly accelerated at times by squalls passing through the area. We reduced sail to the point where a tiny triangle of headsail was driving the boat at over 6.5 knots. We found our way to our anchorage just North of the Esperance yacht club in the dark of the early evening. In the final 30 minutes after having escaped serious rain and lightning throughout the entire trip we were hit with an extremely strong shower. In spite of the pelting rain and poor visibility nobody panicked and we dropped anchor at 7.30PM on the 13th of May at 33S51.706 a21E53.923 in 3.5 meters of water.. We had experienced the first challenging weather situation and boat and crew had done well.
In the middle of the night Brenda heard the anchor alarm from the chart plotter, which had been set to go off if more than 30 meters of radius was exceeded. We were in the midst of an extremely strong wind no doubt associated with another squall. The anchor appeared to be holding but we took the precaution of dropping the 50-lb Swarbrick anchor hoping that it would bite if we dragged further. In fact the anchor did not drag again and in the morning we calculated that the anchor had dragged about 80 meters, fortunately slightly away from the shore.
In the morning we made contact with the Esperance yacht club and soon the commodore, John D'Emden, found a free pen for us and along with Sue, another club member, met us at the pen and helped us tie up.
No comments:
Post a Comment