Dawn came, illuminating the fog shrouded mountain ranges as far as we could see on the mainland to the west. The Great Barrier Reef to the east was mostly underwater and invisible to the eye, even after the sun was high in the sky. I marvelled at the early mariners traversing these waters ...Cook; making the chart with only compass, sextant and leadline, and man watching from the crow’s nest for tools, Slocum; barrelling merrily along this same passage in his Spray with at least Cook’s chart, a sextant, chronometer, leadline, and compass. At this moment, as I’m writing these words, we are passing two miles away from Endeavour Reef that Cook”discovered” with the keel of the ship of that same name, and truly, my breath is bated with awe to be following in these, and other great mariners’ wakes. It is complicated enough with modern electronic charts, depth sounders, Magnetic compasses, the converging shipping lanes that are mercifully low on traffic, and fellow WARCer’s that blindly follow waypoints that their captains lay out, ( never mind that our boat happens to Be IN THEIR WAY, as they barrel along at nine knots to our six,...I moved out of their way because I realised that even though they were the overtaking boat and the upwind boat, and in each of those points , should have yielded to us, I realised as they came closer and closer to our starboard quarter THAT THEY WERE NOT GOING TO YEILD, so I moved over 20 degrees out into the shipping lane, to give them room to pass , as we were 1/4 a mile off from the reef and they , for some unfathomable reason, decided to pass us BETWEEN THE REEF AND US on the starbrd side!) My respect for the explorers before us has risen exponentially after spending just a short time amongst these reef strewn waters! It has not been a boring day. The wind filled in with a steady climb from 11:00 when we were full sail wing on wing, until 14:30 when we were down to just the double reefed poled-out Genoa at 170 degrees off the wind going 9 knots! As night fell, we reefed the Genoa even more and finally managed to get our speed down to a little over six knots. Most of the day the waves, which are now over two meters, and coming with that characteristic hiss and boom as they contact the boat, were behind us, and we were surfing along like a skateboarder carving a hill. The past hour since I’ve come on watch, we’ve hit a real nasty patch of waves from the starboard quarter that have sent us rocking and rolling like a Jerry Lee Lewis hit. The best part of our day was discovering that Glen and Mary on Danica were coming out of Cairns marina as we passed there, so now we have a buddy boat, as they are heading for Lizard isle, as well. Yay! We plan to have a reunion tomorrow! What fun! I know it’s a redundant mention, but the absolute greatest part of this crazy life is the reunions with wonderful friends!
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