Oz Circumnavigation
Thursday 7th May, 2009, Adelaide, SA, 34.27 644 S - 139.29.178 E
Arrived Adelaide SA at 0700 hrs on Wed 6th May after 5 days non-stop from Hobart Tasmania - going the wrong way as the “bar stool mariners” say.
We maybe got lucky as we were protected from harsh elements being in a consistent high pressure zone rising to 1030 hPa for most of the trip.
The run up to the NE corner of Tassie with wind from the west and reasonably close to shore, we had a nice comfortable run until we rounded into Bank Straits just north of Eddystone Point which has the 3rd highest wind average in Australia (19 kts).
Banks Straight, Tasmania. Image source: Google Earth
Going through the Strait on a flooding tide from the East and meeting the wind and sea from the opposite direction, we had 36 hours of bumping and grinding until we got out into the middle of Bass Strait heading in a NW direction that would have us shaving the coast of the mainland just off Portland Victoria to maintain the rhumb line to north of Kangaroo Island just south of Adelaide.
Blue Fin Tuna
We had been dragging 4 assorted lures from the boat all the way during the day hoping to run into the famed southern blue fin tuna. We were sure our luck would change when we got to follow the 350 m contours about 30 nm south of Portland and Port Macdonnell in SA. Fortunately we lucked it as just about the time to retrieve our lures, we finally had a strike and hauled in a nice 30 kg SBF tuna.
Phil the master chef in no time got to work with the filleting knife, a glass of red close by, and the vacuum packer, and the biggest smile you have ever seen, and prepared us dinner of fresh tuna after some shashimi as an appertiser.
Dave his brother was very content, but tired as he was the grunt man that hauled the fish in.
All of us agreed that the DVD I bought just before leaving Hobart on catching SBF tuna, gave us some great tips on how to do it correctly, even down to cleaning and filleting.
Blue Fin Tuna
From the third day into the trip the conditions became sublime when the westerly backed to the SW, and the wind dropped out to zilch, and sea became like a mirror. The only company we had were dolphins, as the sparse traffic, mainly cargo ships, were a lot more inshore than us.
We came across only one fishing boat chasing shark around the soundings, and we had a little chat to ask him how our red & green port and starboard navigation lights looked after rigging temporary ones on the hand rail after the inaccessible blown bulbs couldn't be changed because of their height. This is a step ladder job more suited to changing when docked and today we bought new LED bulbs.
Tuesday morning early had me out of bed in a hurry after terrible banging and crashing, revealing after doing a 180 to go back that we had just seriously spoiled a rock lobster fishermans day after running right over and destroying the ropes to his pots. I 'm pretty sure his ropes were in our prop and our Spur linecutters connected to the prop did the job they were designed for, causing the commotion we heard.
Utility room under water
Another incident caused some anxiety when the watchkeeper went down for the hourly engine room check to find the utility and engine room a foot under water. What had happened was a fresh water strainer in line to one of the toilets under house pump pressure had fractured, and sent 1600 lts of our fresh water down below.
What was most important is that the sump in the engine room that drains down into the bilge, and is easily despatched to the sea from the bilge pumps must have been blocked, resulting in the flooding state. This was not overly serious after all as we were only just moving our water from one spot to another, but we had lost most of it and showers were off the roster for the next couple of days.
Now in Adelaide it is a major job to get everything back in place, and prepare to cross the Great Australian Bight of 1150 nm to Perth, with almost nowhere to pull into for external assistance if something goes wrong.
We expect to be here in Adelaide for about four days, and I will be much happier when we get things squared away for this very difficult passage. Keep you posted.