Back to Port Lincoln

Back to Port Lincoln
We left the pen at the Port Lincoln marina at 8AM of Wed 4 June and motored to the fuel jetty. Fortunately Graham, who had given us a bag full of sardines the day before, was there and told us to raft beside him so that when he was finished fueling he could pass the hose to us. With his help I was able to use my Visa card to get the pump started and we took on 50 liters of fuel, including the 16 liters that went into our containers. We motored out at 8.45 AM and set sail against a 20 kn SE wind. We sailed West all day and wound up at the East side of Spencer Gulf, then tacked to the SSW. We put in one reef due to the increasing wind before sunset and a second reef at 8.30 PM. Just before sunset we rolled in the light jib (the heavy one is in the sail locker torn) and put up the stay sail (on the inner forestay) At 12.30 AM we hove to against a 25 kn wind and high seas. By 9 AM when we resumed sailing we had lost 15 nm to he SW.
We had a brisk but reasonable sail to the SW trying to get south of the Yorke peninsula. The forecast that we received that day was dismal: strengthening SE wind that night then moderating slightly the next day (today). We hove to before sunset expecting to drift SW and be in position to take advantage of any southerly shift in the wind. We had a hair-raising drift between N and S Neptune islands (5 miles apart) and kept on drifting in a SW direction. The wind speed was 30 knots.
This morning (Fri 6th) at 7AM we got another dismal report: more SE winds, going E NE tomorrow. We had a war council. Cape Spencer at the Yorke Peninsula was 65 nm to the East. We would face a very hard beat against a 25-30 knot wind and would probably wind up to far North. The next day we would face the E NE winds, right on the nose for getting into Adelaide. We decided to return to Port Lincoln, about 70 sea miles away, while we had the chance because one more night of drifting and even Port Lincoln would be beyond reach. We are now sailing on a starboard beam reach, double reefed with stay sail, past N Neptune Island. We expect to time our sail to arrive after dawn.
It has been a hard and fruitless sail. We were advised by Malcolm in Port Lincoln that a SE wind would be OK for the sail to Adelaide. Sailing SE into a SE wind did not make a lot of sense to me but because the predicted wind speeds were in the order of 15-20 kn and because of the relatively short sailing distance I agreed to go. Arnold had I have learned a lesson the hard way that we must depart only when the conditions are right. Forcing a sail to meet a schedule puts the crew and boat to needless hardship and risk and as in this case will not get you anything. We've revised our approach to the rest of this cruise. Instead of hurrying along to meet a schedule we will enjoy each place we go to and depart only when conditions are optimal, no matter how long we have to wait. This will of course blow my carefully planned schedule to pieces but I suppose that was inevitable.
The one big bright side of our sail is that the repairs we did to the wind generator were successful and the unit has been providing an average of 3 amps hour after hour, satisfying our power requirements. Also, the deck light is working against (blown globe).

Saturday 7 June
We had a remarkably good sail back to Port Lincoln yesterday. The sea was very rough at first and we took on what would qualify as our first “greenie”. I was below when a wave hit is on the starboard quarter and we took on water through the port quarter berth window that had been left open and a splash of water on the VHF radio and the electric switch panel. There was no serious damage other than a lot of wet bedding, but it did teach us to button down the ship when in rough seas, and this includes closing the main hatch. As we approached Port Lincoln the sailing got easier and easier until Pachuca was gliding smoothly through a following sea. We arrived at the shipping channel in the dark and made the four-hour approach to the marina with heavy use of the chart plotter. At ten minutes past midnight we were back at pen 21 of the marina.

Sunday 8 June

The weather prediction looks good for Monday and Tuesday. We plan to depart very early tomorrow (Monday) morning with a NE wind that will back to the N and NW and gain strength to 20-25 kn on Tuesday. Later on Tuesday we can expect a SW change which will still be a fair wind. An experienced sailor visited our boat today and is confident that we will make Adelaide on Tuesday before dark. (His record is Port Lincoln to Adelaide in 21 hours.)