Hi all from Skipper
Steve
Well!! what an eventful couple of days we have
had!!
We left Thursday Island at the tip of Eastern
Australia on Thursday at 11.00am along with the remaining fleet of just 10
yachts to make the 4 - 5 day passage to Darwin. We had an excellent time up in
the Torres Straight with an Ozzie bar and motel straight out of Crocodile
Dundee, a great briefing form Claire of world ARC and a talk from some guy she
had dragged along who had made this passage numerous times and put the fear
of god into us with stories of crocodiles on steroids! and 80 mph catablactic
winds from central Australia!!
The fleet is much reduced at the moment and it is
such a shame that so few made the leg start. There is much talk amongst the
skippers of the growing lack of confidence in WARC ability to professionally
organize our various stays as we have had a crop of poor advice and misjudged
placements. This is borne out by the few yachts now making the leg
starts. This has been confounded today by advice that we cannot get into
the Darwin Marina until Thursday (scuppering many of our plans to hed 'up
country' on arrival) and rumors that the marina in Bali is still under
construction! Our complaints have been passed to the WARC head office and we
hope the placements will improve and that the fleet will re group.
Now back to our eventful passage. As you may recall
I have Philip and Anita. Richard and Charisa with me for the passages to Darwin
from Cairns. All with previous sailing experience but not it would seem in ocean
seas and gale force winds!! The passage up to Thursday Island was brilliant
with some of the best sailing so far. They handled the night passage with some
trepidation but successfully and enjoyed there excursions around Thursday Island
and there first experience of ocean sailing, however the passage was
in sheltered waters.
We had our normal leg briefing from Claire at World
ARC, which they enjoyed, before returning to Kasuje for an early night whilst
the skipper made his preparations drinking and gambling with the rest of the
skippers. The short term weather forecast predicted strongish winds for the
first couple of days then backing off as we approached Darwin. Unfortunately the
forecast was a little light and we hit 35 - 40 knot winds (that's gale force
8-9) with 3-5 metre beam swells. The shit hit the fan, when night fall set
in and for the next 40 hrs Kasuje and I where alone whilst
singlehandedly mopping up copious volumes of vomit, and administering to the
sick and needy!! At one stage all four were spread around the floor of the
various cabins wishing for anything but to be on this bucking bronco ride.
So we diverted from the rumb line to Darwin to the
Wessell Peninsular to allow the crew to recover and rest until the winds abate.
We are now anchored in Two Island Bay, totally deserted apart from us and half a
dozen giant rays who seem particularly interested in our arrival. No crocs
spotted yet but we are on maximum alert.!!
Love to all.
Skipper
Steve