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THE END...continued |
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rested and Leanne sailed the pants off Masala. Then again: Sail similar to yesterday. Started OK, managed about 17 miles from Cape Upstart before being forced down into Abbot Bay and couldn’t sail out. Then a grinding 9 hours of motor-sailing into shitty easterly waves that were boat-stoppers. It was impossible to sail the required course. A horrible day best forgotten.
The rest of the return trip had its moments. A poor bugger on the fuel jetty at Abel Point Marina ruined his cruise by pumping 10 litres of unleaded petrol into his diesel fuel tank before realizing that the pump had both unleaded and diesel outlets and the signs pointing to each were confusing.
Catching the flood tide south through Long Island Sound, being whipped along by the 7 knot current.
Scoring an un-forecast land breeze off Prudhoe Island, enabling great sailing in flat water while the whales buzzed around us like flies.
A grinding 6 hour motor with no wind, against the spring flood tides to Port Clinton, making only 2.8 knots across the bottom. This at the end of a 142-mile overnight passage from Brampton Island.
A 48-mile reach down the coast to Great Keppel Island, sitting on 7.5 knots. |
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Left: Wreck Bay, Great Keppel Island |
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Leaving Great Keppel Island at 3 a.m. in the morning to enter The Narrows to escape forecast bad weather, then forgetting it was Leanne’s birthday. Being anchored in a muddy, hot, sand-fly-infested ditch in the Narrows waiting overnight for enough water to make the shallow crossing, with no birthday card or present for Leanne. We were both very tired and had a fight over my birthday duty deficiencies. She cried a lot. |
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Making the decision to stay put anchored out in Gladstone Harbour (below), while others sailing down the coast to Pancake Creek got plastered during the night by a genuinely nasty SW change. |
