Cruising Log—7...Pancake Creek

The night of Sunday 11 June at Pancake Creek was particularly interesting. The log, written the following morning, reads:

“What a night! Unbelievable teeming rain. The 8 inch bucket on the back of the boat was full by morning. This bucket has no catchment so we must have had 8 inches of rain overnight (later radio contact with VMR station at Round Hill confirmed this).”

“I cooked tea early last night. I must have known. It was about 7pm, pitch dark, the tide was coming in and the stern of the boat was facing out to sea due to the south-east wind (the anchorage is open to the ocean to the north at hide tide, when the sand banks are covered). Suddenly, amongst heavy rain, we were hit by an incredible squall from the north i.e. right into the back of the boat. Rain was pouring in around the companionway doors under the sheer pressure of the wind. Masala heeled over to more than 15 degrees under the frightening blast. It was weird and eerie. Then she took off. We rushed to the navigation station and turned on the GPS. Horror! Masala was travelling across the anchorage towards the land at three knots! She was going over the top of the anchor, which was set the wrong way for this unexpected wind direction. We threw off our clothes, donned raincoats and got ready to start the engine to try and hold her off the shore, but decided to watch the GPS for a few more seconds. Masala’s speed began to slow. 2.6, 2.4, 2.0, 1.8, 1.0, 0.0. Thank heavens, we’d stopped. The anchor had held.”

In the morning, everything seemed very smelly. The washing hadn’t dried. My walking socks, although washed, had gone sour. Leanne blamed them for the stink in the boat, but rewashing didn’t get rid of the smell. We searched high and low but couldn’t find the source. Later in the morning, Malcolm and Yvonne from “Volcano”, who was downwind of us, turned up in their dinghy. “We think you’ve got a gas leak, there’s this really bad smell coming from the direction of your boat. Quick, we have to find it before you blow up!” That was the last straw. Surely a boat 100 metres away couldn’t smell my socks?

And indeed they couldn’t. We finally realised the smell was everywhere. It was the rank odour of the mangrove swamps being flushed by the vast quantities of fresh water working through the system, from all the rain we’d had overnight. Saved!

 In between all these little dramas were many days of great peace and quiet, some socializing, some fishing, and some walking. Then “West Wind II” left. Then “Volcano” left. And once again Masala was alone, still waiting for that weather window…

By Thursday 22 June, after four weeks, we’d had enough. We decided to leave next day for the 31-mile sail to Cape Capricorn, another lonely and remote place.

The trip was a dog. The sea state was simply awful after strong winds for so many days in a row, even though the winds were beginning to ease. The wind was right up the rear end and the boat was being thrown around so much that it was difficult to keep the wind in the sails.

It rained all day to boot, and to rub salt into the wound the wind died and we had to motor the last hour with no sails in highly disturbed seas – most uncomfortable.

The irony of the day was not lost upon us. Although we had not managed a suitable weather window to go out to the reef in four weeks at Pancake Creek, we did have a lot of lovely, sunny, excellent sailing days albeit a bit windy at times. After all this time we managed to pick one of the worst days in the month to finally leave. In our defence, the weather was nothing like the forecast for the day.