Start Loc: Marble Island, Duke Islands (21o 58.39'S, 150o 10.49'E)
Narrative: When we anchored in the bay on the north face of Marble Island last night, I confirmed we still had 2.2m of tide to go out before the next low tide of 2.3m at 7:12pm. 2.2m of tide to go out plus our draught of 1.7m meant I had to anchor in at least 3.9m of water to stay off the bottom. I normally add about half a metre of clearance, hence choosing to anchor in 4.5m. What I didn’t check was the next low tide which was at 7:29am this morning of 2.0m. I’m not sure why I didn’t check on this occasion – I normally look at the heights of all the low tides for the time we expect to be anchored in that spot. Anyway, all it meant was that the 0.6m of clearance that I had under the keel at the first low was reduced to 0.3m at this morning’s low. Not a drama - unless we swung over the rocky bottomed patch to our east and there was a rock sticking up more than 30cm. But we didn’t, so all good.
After a calm night, we lifted anchor spot on 10:00am and set sail for the Percy Islands, centred about 18nm NNE. We factored in the tidal cross current of about 2kts and set our course for 10 degrees east of where we wanted to go. The winds were from the SE at 10 to 15kts and we sailed nicely under full sail at 5 to 6kts. The seas and swell occasionally combined to produce a wave of about 2m, which being on our starboard quarter gave us a good roll every now and again, but otherwise it was comfortable sailing.
After changing our heading east to sail along the north side of South Island to our intended anchorage in the north east corner, we changed our minds and decided to go direct to West Bay on Middle Percy. The wind had now dropped to less than 10kts, still from the SE, so we lowered the main and ran basically NW under head sail only (otherwise the main would rob the head sail of all wind). With the wind at 8kts true and 5kts apparent, there wasn’t enough to keep even a reduced head sail full, so we furled it totally and motored up the west side of Middle Percy and into West Bay.
After accounting for the lowest of the next few low tides, we anchored at 2:30pm (basically on high tide) in 5m of water just off the northern end of the beach. The weather is still clear and sunny, max temp about 27 degrees, and the water is almost 21 degrees.
End Loc: Middle Island (West Bay), Percy Islands (21o 39.14'S, 150o 14.67'E)
Distance run: 25 nm (cumulative: 663nm)
Engine hours: 1 hr, 26 min (cumulative: 72 hr 12 min)