Full moon and smooth seas

24th Aug 2010


After waiting for a good weather window for the last few days, we left Cairns pre dawn and were in the leads outbound by 06:00. The expectation was for some headwind initially with a reduction as the day went on and this is pretty much how it turned out so we had a really good day, albeit under motor, in reducing winds and calming seas.

With the Raymarine auto helm and the Yanmar working well all day (note Paul's hard working posture left) we made surprisingly good progress to Maroulyan so it was at this point that I enacted my previously but confidential determined plan to push on to Magnetic some 90 kn away. This meant an all night sail but given the great conditions and a full moon this did not seem too much of a challenge. After dark I set up a two hour watch system which worked well and all in all the night passed quickly but for the occasional traffic issues.

On two occasions we had conflicting ‘heavy; traffic as we were in the shipping route but in both instances, the ‘heavies’ altered course to give us room so that was nice and , I suspect, was something to do with the fancy AIS kit Pilgrim has – money well spent maybe.

Originally we had an arrival time at Magnetic of around midday but as things worked out we soon brought this back to just after dawn. With the sun rising to a beautiful day and the anchorage in sight, the effort of the last night soon drifted away. Once at anchor I did some clean up and ‘post flight’ stuff and the after a deck shower – hit the sack for a beaut sleep to about 11:00.

We had escape the far north trades!