Grey skies, short seas and lousy anchorage

27th Jul 2010

Up pre dawn yet again, we were off at 06:30 in what looked like it might be an improving day. As it turned out this was not the case as the day remained tough all the way.

As a result of the persistence of the wind over the last week, the seas were very lumpy. In fact, the short steep seas of about 2-3 m demanded hand steering all day and this on its own was reasonably challenging as the seas were quartering us and persistently trying to drive the stern around, particularly when assisted by the bigger gusts which were reaching not far short of 30 kts from time to time. Combine all this with a grey sky and a grey horizon with nothing in sight for 360 degs. And you have a picture of the day.

Now this leg was a long one of 68nm to Townsville and the need to gibe away from course  occasionally was adding time to the day thus leading us to consider a stop off at Cape Bowling Green. Of this place, the Lucas guide was reasonably upbeat, referring to it as a good anchorage. however, on arrival, we noted that as this Cape is a very low landform it was not very likely to provide any protection from the wind. For this reason we travelled some 5 miles in to the bay looking for some respite but finished up anchoring in shallow water a good way off the shore with the wind blowing almost as hard as it was in the open water.

Having ‘spent’ 2 hours looking for this spot we had all but run ourselves out of options as both day light and our own energy reserves were running low. We therefore decided to stay and put up with what we had and hope for the wind to drop off.  This called for a lot of anchor chain and the nylon strop specially set to avoid chaffing as the boat tugged violently against the anchor as the wind and small wind waves drove the boat backwards.

Clearly not ideal  but none the less quite doable as the water is quite shallow and the anchor is expected to do its job. Still,  the night is destined to be long as constant anchor checks will be required and the general nature of the ride, while not too bad, is far from still. We shall see!