Melbourne Osaka News from Optimus Prime
Day 6 – Friday
The trip up to Sydney was pleasant enough. The rain stopped and the breeze picked up to 25 knots and plus a bit at times but was pretty cruisy in a southerly. We had to contend with a bit of tide but were not in hurry as such as we couldn't do anything until after 8:30 tomorrow anyway. This was when we hoped to get the nod from Frank, the marina manager at CYCA, that he had a vacant pen for us to be able to work in.
Learnt an interesting trick with the auto helm on the way north - you don't have to be at the steering pedestal to change the direction you want to travel. You can do it from the comfort of the cabin!. Had never had to bother before but with the rain and the fact that I am getting old and soft I guess, we worked out how to change the heading from the nav table instrument display. Apart from sticking our heads up every so often to check for ships we managed to stay down stairs for virtually the whole trip. Ain't life grand! I can just picture us now in the tropics, cabin closed up, generator and air conditioner on with a beer from the fridge watching a movie instead of sweating it out in the sun out on deck. Nah. It sounds nice but hopefully I haven't gotten that soft.
It is interesting the things you think about even if you are downstairs when on watch. How good would the conditions we have had over the past 3 or 4 days have been if we were heading to Hobart? 25 to 30 knot northerlies plus 4 knots of current kicking you along to boot. Conditions made for breaking records I should think. As with life, timing is everything because there we where crashing and bashing in the opposite direction.
In having travelled around Australia now during the last 12 months and having seen the number of ships parked up at Mackay (18 or so), Port Headland (30 or 40) Cape Lambert (can't remember) and Dampier (20 or 30) and on this leg Port Kembla (15 or so) and about the same out of Newcastle when we headed past there in the early hours of Sunday morning, I can't imagine how much money is tied upon with these huge vessels just standing around. Someone must be paying for it somehow which means us the consumer presumably. Anyway, just an observation.
Got to the heads on midnight and headed in to pick up a mooring at the entry into Rushcutters Bay for a snooze whilst we waited ,for the morning.
Day 7 – Saturday
Got up before the sun to get a bit organised whilst waiting to head into a pen at CYCA and refit the forestay. When it let go it was thrashing around for a while an put a couple of holes in the jib so we had a go at fixing them and made a start on getting the bottom end off of the forestay. This involved unwinding a fitting from the bottom of the rod rigging so that the bent foil could be removed and replaced. When in doubt wind harder. Isn't that how it works? Maybe not, because that is what I tried and unfortunately, the shifter I was using slipped and was under that much load that it took off and clipped me under the chin on the way through. Well I certainly knew I had been hit so sung out to Dan to come and check out the damage. Well stitchers would be needed it seemed so we rang Frank to see if there was a spot for us so that we could take OP in and I could head off to the hospital.
He had a spot, we tied up and I headed out to find a cab to take me to the nearest emergency department for some repairs of my own. St Vincents was apparently the closest and after a short wait I was ushered out the back ready for someone to patch me up. It was finally agreed that it may need someone with a little more experience to stitch it up so a young surgeon eventually arrived and did the dead. She confirmed that as long as I kept the wound clean and that there was no infection, then I would be good to continue on to Osaka. She gave me instructions on what Dan would need to do to take them out in a fortnights time – he told me to toughen up and do them myself when the time came. Thanks for the sympathy Danielsan! And thanks to everyone at St Vincents who had a look and made suggestions and got me away all fixed.
When I got back to OP Dan had managed to get the forestay down and on the wharf, the old foil off and the new section in, without any further damage to himself. With a little input from me this time, we reversed the procedure, got the halyard hooked back onto the mast, replaced the broken fitting at the bottom end and put everything back together so that we were ready and rarin' to head back in the fray. Craig (Knuckles), of Saltwater Images and a mate of Daniels from the Around Australia campaign on Brindabella, came to see us off and with a friendly wave goodbye scooted away in his on-water photography runabout. After a wait at the fuel jetty we topped up to where we figured it was when everything ran amok last Wednesday morning and headed out towards the heads. At 4:30 we passed through them, emailed race control to that effect and that we were back in the race.
By early evening and into the night we were sailing in similar conditions to those we had when it hit the fan as well – 20 to 25 knot NE erlies – so we settled in and headed out to try and catch Cadabarra 8, Spirit of Downunder and Wasabi about 300 miles north. We have 3 or 4 weeks to do so here is hoping we get there.
Day 8 – Sunday
The breeze had started to swing to the SW early morning and we managed to get a kite up early and headed ENE and then more NNE as the breeze swung through to the south, looking for the back eddy and northerly current that the IMOS – Integrated Marine Observation System – suggested would be there. Whilst we had a small taste of help to the tune of 1 knot for a little while we didn't really get into what we hoped would be there. At the very least though it kicked us a little more to the north than our heading and wasn't rushing at is at 2 or 3 knots so it wasn't too bad.
As the breeze kicked to 20-25 knots, we dropped the kite and sailed all afternoon and through the night with the jib. There was a bit of shipping traffic to keep an eye on but all in all a pleasant day to be out on the water. The 1800 radio schedule warned of thunderstorms off of the south Queensland coast and Spirit of Downunder reported that they where currently in one. Whilst we did see some lightening to the south of us there was no thunder so they were a long way off and didn't bother us at all.
Obviously. we are keeping an eye on where the boats ahead of us are and look forward to listening out for the position at both the morning and evening radio scheds. The Sunday ones were a bit disheartening as they had actually taken a few miles out of us which wasn't what we wanted to hear.
Day 9 – Monday (Clean jocks day)
The 0600 radio sched brought some good news as we had taken between 15 and 25 miles out of the three boats we want to pass by the time we get to Japan. At last we were making up for lost time.
Thanks to all of those that sent in an email following the last report. It is nice to know that some of your enjoy hearing about our little adventure. A few of you mentioned that we would not be the only ones to lose time through damage and the like before the race was out. It would seem that you are correct. Samarai Jack has had to call into Coffs Harbour for repairs to their keel casing and the Japanese entrant had rudder trouble so went into Brisbane to get that fixed and apparently when they went to start their motor to head off, the starter motor wouldn't work and because of the Easter break they will be unable to get a new one until Tuesday. Wouldn't that give the tom tits! The bottom line is as from tonight's sched we are now in front of Samarai Jack and will probably be north of Brisbane before Yasu and Masu, the guys onboard Souther Cross, come out from the Brisbane River. 2 down!
Kite went up mid morning and stayed up all day. Breeze has fluctuated between 10 and 15 knots from the S to SSE which has made for another very comfortable days sailing. So good in fact that Dan had a shower during his watch this morning which was a good enough reason for me to have one as well. I think it is the first for the trip. The clean jocks felt nice I must say.
Evening sched suggested that we had another good 12 hours and managed to take a bit more distance out of the boats ahead us. This included Escapade which is one of the boats that started a week before us and seemed to get the jump on the lot of us. She appears to be slowing down now so perhaps we may catch her before we arrive at Osaka. Had good patches of positive current during the night which will certainly help that cause.
A big black cloud heading our way so we took the spinnaker down at about 2030. Once that was done we had a feed of noodles and spaghetti sauce we had picked up from a place called Houlihans near Sandringham. I thank Sally and Robert Green for not only letting us know about them but also for taking me there and to the local Safeway store for a shop before we headed out. Robert is a veteran of 25 Hobarts and a couple of trips to Fiji so is no slouch in his own rights as an offshore sailor and I thank him for his help with names and phone numbers of people that could help us prior to heading out to sea. Anyway, at Houlihans they have a variety of fresh brews all lined up in large pots and you just take your pick and they package it up into 2 serve containers and away you go. Apart from the spaghetti meat sauce there was Chillie con carne and number of chicken and lamb curries, some stir fry mixes all lined up for you to choose from. We bought 8 different ones of these as the fresh meal component of the tucker we put together for the trip and very nice they are too. Thanks again Robert and Sally.
Day 10 – Tuesday
At the 0600 sched I checked our position on the plotter and emailed it through to race control and then again over the radio when we all get to hear where we are each located. After the sched we plot the position of the others by putting the cursor at their position and checking the straight line distance between us to get some idea of gains and losses. It is just guide because none of us are heading straight to where we want to go unless we are lucky or have positioned ourselves to be able to do so,but it gives us some idea on how we are going.
Anyway this morning when I checked our position I jotted down the co-ordinates of the curser on the chart and not the vessel. The curser just happened to be 100 miles further North and 200 miles East of where we actually were – dummy! This caused some consternation on our boat when we started checking on how we had done overnight so I can't imagine what the boats ahead of us thought. We let race control know our real position and I will have to apologies to the fleet this evening. The good thing though that was when using the correct co ordinates we still managed to take a bit of time out of the 3 Amigos we are chasing. They are a bit over 200 miles ahead now. Escapade seems to be doing it tough up ahead as she only managed 17 miles N and 14m E overnight. A sign of things to come perhaps.
Kite went up soon after the sched but came down again shortly after as the breeze picked up to 20 knots plus which is our cut off point for the moment, as we have a long way to go and only 2 kites left in working order. Dan has been looking ahead at the weather forecasts and doesn't think we will be using them for awhile anyway. Looks like jib only for the next few days.
Breeze is currently at 18 to 20 knots from the SSE and we are heading N into a bit of current at 9 knots.
That's it for now as there is a small banging noise in the starboard aft cabin that has just started up and I need to track it down. My next report should see us in the Coral Sea heading for the Solomons where we will need to decide whether we pass through them or leave them to the East or maybe even the West. …….decisions, decisions!
Be good
Trevor and Dan
