Day 52, April 27 - ETA 29 April

At 1830 UTC still on the 26th (0230 on the 27th Western Australia time) we crossed the 200 mile mark and were now north of Cape Leeuwin.

I had been getting up frequently to deal with a wind shift that I knew was coming, and now I was up to attend to the sail, which had begun to occasionally flog with a sharp snap in the moderating wind. The full sail had been out for about 12 hours so I rolled in half of it in hoping to quiet it, but that didn't work and it was time to put up the whisker pole in the middle of the night. That led to 2 hours of hard work running between the cockpit and foredeck.

Light was not a problem because I had a nearly full moon almost directly overhead, and between that at my head torch I did not even need to turn on the deck light. But the rolling was a problem as always and I had to move carefully. The first big problem with hooking the pole at the bowline knot at the clew is that I've got to pull the flogging sail in with one hand and hook the pole in with the other while standing up. I do this by working with an arm on each side of the inner forestay. That leads to the second problem. I must then go back to the cockpit and loosen the sheets enough so that I can push the pole out far enough to hook it on the mast ring. As soon as I do that the sail starts flogging harder and there is great danger that if the sail spits the pole out it will go over the side. To prevent this I lashed the pole with an independent line which I made off at a bollard so that if the pole went over I would be able to pull it back on board. But now in addition to the flaying sheets there was that third line attached to a pole that could jump anywhere and I saw a risk of getting caught up in a rope so I started carrying a rigging knife in the pocket of the wet weather trousers, something that I should have been doing all along. In fact the pole almost did go over the side. After loosening the sheets I made my way forward and just as my hand reached out to the pole the end came off the sheet and it was headed for the water. I grabbed the pole just in time and saved it by, well, a whisker. I clipped the pole back onto the sail then it was a matter of manhandling the other end of the pole onto the mast ring. This was not so easy because the pole was pumping back and forth violently and I had to control it with one hand. Finally I got the pole onto the mast ring then went back to the cockpit and set the sail.

I've tried to describe what the pole work is like in order to give an idea of how I felt when I looked at our heading and saw that the wind shift had come while I was wrestling with the pole. That meant a gybe which meant that I had to bring the pole down and do it all over again.

I was well rewarded for the effort because the result was that we were moving well again with a quiet sail heading directly for Cape Naturaliste 114 miles away. The forecast was for the wind to steadily back toward the S and eventually the SE, so I knew that the boat would clock around nicely with it and eventually I would be on a beam reach making for Fremantle.

I sat at the steering station to cool off and get some rest and it was such a lovely experience with the cool breeze, calm sea, bright moonlight, that I didn't want to get up again. But I have always been partial to moonlight sailing.

I woke up after dawn and found the boat headed NNE. The wind had backed to the SSE much faster than I had expected. The wind would now be on the beam so once again I dropped the pole. While I was at it I removed the staysail from the foredeck and stowed it below for drying later. I needed clear the foredeck in preparation for the task of moving the chain and anchor from the clothes closet below to the bow of the boat.

----- ETA -----
The morning's spot report looked amazingly good, with moderate SE and SSE winds for the next 2 days. I should be able to reach the vicinity of Rottnest Island at about midnight on 28 April. (Yikes! That's tomorrow night !!!!) I will stand off until dawn on Monday the 29th and try to be at the Customs dock before noon.
----- ETA -----

I soon sent a notification of my ETA to Customs, Quarantine, and others.

I spent two hours doing a bit of cleaning in the cabin. The principal objective was to clean out the refrigerator and ice box compartments, throwing out all fresh vegetables and whatever perishables might remain. Overboard went a half dozen very good onions and potatoes that had passed their prime but were still good for cooking. Garlic went overboard too. At the end both compartments were clean and in good order for the Customs official. I also moved the laptop from the main table back to the navigation table. Moving the laptop to the main table had been a great move and probably saved the computer.

The morning's SAMMNet session was not good, at least at my end. After a 90 second wait called out my numbers, saying everything twice. I was confident that Graham had copied me OK. I told him that I would try again at the "lunch" session which would me setting an alarm to wake up.

My nocturnal pole dancing on the foredeck must have paid off because the 24 hour sailing day numbers at 0800 UTC were surprisingly good:

POS 38S32, 113E45
NND 124 nm
DMG 4778 nm
DTG 134 nm

We were on the exact same latitude as Cape Naturaliste 60 miles to the east. Soon we would be passing Bunbury, and perhaps I would detect my first ship on AIS since South Africa.

I ran the engine for 90 minutes because I was now running the chart plotter 24 hours a day. Had I done a 1-hour run I would have been able to boast of a complete engine run with no oil pressure alarm. Alas, in the 75th minute the alarm went off.

Because of the fantastic throughput I've been getting from Sailmail I downloaded my first grib file in many weeks, for 2 days, every 3 hours, and the rectangle between the position of the boat and Fremantle. The wind predictions were very good, and if the wind remained strong enough to allow me to keep sailing throughout the coming night, even at a minimal 2.5 kts, we would be a shoo-in for making the ETA.

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