Start Loc: Curlew Island (21o 35.62'S, 149o 47.98'E)
Narrative: We spent the last two days sheltering at Curlew Island. Thankfully, TC Fina behaved as forecast and died quite quickly.
Having got into Curlew Island well after dark on Wednesday night, we raised the anchor on Thursday morning and moved around the bay to see if there was a better spot to anchor. We ended up dropping the anchor back in much the same spot. With the moving around and running the engine later in the day for hot water and power, we ran the engine for a total of 54 minutes.
The Friday afternoon forecast told us the winds for Saturday were expected to be SE at 15-20kts. Given that, we decided we would leave the next morning for the Duke Islands. We ran the engine on Friday for a total 1 hour 30 minutes, mainly for power given the overcast skies.
Heather didn't sleep well overnight. I was woken just after 4:00am to her swinging her book at a mosquito! Given we were both wide awake we decided to get an early start. We left the kids in bed, prepared to sail, raised the anchor at 4:47am and motored out of the bay. Once we were clear of the islands and had some clean wind, we set sail. Contrary to the forecast the winds were S at 20-25kts, with short steep waves at 2.5-3m. With two reefs in the main and the head sail reduced to 100% we sailed close hauled in a SE direction. It was rougher than we expected but at least we were able to sail in a straight line to where we wanted to go!
By 7:00am the wind had increased to 25-30kts and the waves were at 3m+. We had reduced the head sail to about 75%, but the sailing wasn't much fun.
Around 8:00am the winds dropped to 15-20kts and the seas were down to around 2m. We let the head sail out to 100% again. An hour later the winds were down to around 10kts with seas at 1.5m. With the wind down and the seas flattened out a bit, we unfurled the head sail to the full 130%. This was actually a couple of hours of enjoyable sailing.
By 10:15am wind had dropped slightly further again to around 8kts. We had shaken both reefs out of the main but even under full sail we still only made 3.5kts over ground, so we started motor sailing to bring SOG up to 5kts.
We were thinking we would anchor on the north side or Marble Island, but with the wind right down decided to have a look at the west side of Hunter Island which is more picturesque. We dropped sail, changed course to the south and motored around the reefs and shallows at Bamborough Island before approaching the bay on the west side of Hunter Island around 11:45am. Unfortunately, being spring tides with a 6m+ tidal range, we had to anchor too far off shore to be protected from the swell. We decided we would motor around to have a look at the southern end of Hunter Island. It was calm, but we also wanted to have a look at Marble Island, so we motored through Lola Montes Passage to the Bay at the east end of the north side of Marble. Somehow it had NE breezes and swell so was exposed. We dropped anchor at 1:15pm, had lunch and pondered where we would spend the night.
The SE winds were due to swing to the NE tomorrow afternoon, but looked like they might have swung 24 hours early. The bottom end of Hunter was calm, so we motored back through the passage and anchored on the south end of Hunter Island at 2:42pm. I took the kids ashore and we played around for an hour. I took my phone with me and had hit and miss reception, so we will have to go for a walk up a hill to have any hope of wishing family friends a Merry Christmas tomorrow.
Unfortunately, as the sun went down the wind decided to swing back SE. It blew up a chop and caused us to rock and roll a bit. We can't move though, or Santa might not find us!
End Loc: Hunter Island, Duke Islands (21o 58.95'S, 150o 08.66'E)
Distance run: 43nm (cumulative: 2641nm)
Engine hours: 4 hr, 13 min (cumulative: 89 hr, 33 min)