Gary's Deliveries

 Looks like I deleted the last post by mistake and can't get it back - sorry! Wednesday 17th Dec '25 I have been keeping a very close eye on the weather forecast which is changeable to say the least!  There were 2 lows forming and as of yesterday they were forecast to turn from east to south away from Indonesia and into the big open sea then build into cyclones with up to 135kt winds.  Although we would not be hit by these cyclones we would potentially be effected by the waves produced. I checked again this morning and 2 has changed into 1.  Like I said, changeable. So with that in mind and although the conditions don't look too bad I had decided, as always, to be cautious and dive into Bali for a couple or more days and wait till things look a little more predictable or settled as the next leg from Bali to the channel were we change course from west to north into the more sheltered area is 650nm which is 3.5 days motoring.  As there are very few places to hide ...

 Sunday 14th Dec '25 It's been 3 days since my last note and the reason for that, apart from being a little bit lazy, is that virtually nothing has happened. We have sailed approx 600nm from Thursday Island to where we are now which is not far from being  directly north of Darwin and that has taken us 3 days and we have seen zero ships or any other life form, except for last nights watch we were apparently buzzed by an Australian Boarder Force plane.  They fly low over the top of you from behind so they can read the name of the boat on the transom then head away before calling you up and asking a load of questions about the boat, where we have come from and where we are going etc, all of which they know already because they have it on file but I suppose they are just dotting the I's and crossing the T's.  We weren't even in Australian waters. The weather up till now has been amazing.  It's been hot and if we have had any wind or waves they have been from behind ...

Thursday 11th Dec '25 After a lovely trip up the north eastern coast of Queensland inside the Barrier Reef which I always enjoy we stopped sailing north and turned west at the tip of Australia, Cape York passing Thursday Island in the early hours of this morning. The weather so far has been amazing.  No wind and calm seas and if there was wind it has been from behind along with any waves.  Now as we cross the Arafura Sea the forecast is for much of the same. The plan is to head south of the Indonesian Islands towards Jakarta as there will be less traffic and fewer fishing boats and floating objects which would be found on the northern route. ETA into Singapore is currently around 28th Dec but i ma sure that will change.   There are 2 low systems south of Indo that I am keeping an eye on.  One of the has the potential to turn nasty but we have plenty of time to change course or slow down to avoid it if we have to.   We have been running the A/C most of the t...

 Tuesday 9th Dec  So, the plan of spending a bit of time in the Caribbean failed! We arrived in Martinique on the 28th Nov and that day I got a WhatsApp message from the owner of a boat I delivered earlier in the year from Bora Bora to Fiji, my buck list boat a Nordhavn 76 trawler motor yacht.  He asked me what my availability was like in a weeks time as he needed his boat delivered from Cairns to Singapore and he wanted it to depart on the 8th or 9th Dec.                                                          She's a beast of a boat at 76ft long and 110 tons                                                        Well, as you can see from th...

 Thursday 27th Nov '25 The day started nicely with a colour sunrise.  But, you should always take note of old sayings - "red sky in the morning sailors warning".  And how that was right today.  We have spent the past 2000nm's in really nice conditions and now we are nearing the end the weather has turned up to slap us in the face.  It was a sign of things to come..... It is now 21:00 and we have spent the day with little wind from behind to 30kts and a change of direct of 90 degrees within seconds.  The head sail has been in, out, in, double reefed, in, out.......... you get the idea.  You can see the squalls lined up around us on the radar, and when you look outside all you see is an angry sea and black clouds with lots of rain.  It's been like that all day.    If that wasn't enough the GPS has spent the day spitting it's dummy out and saying it has lost satellite  signal.  Autopilot defaults to "heading hold" and we loos...

Wednesday 26th Nov '25 Obviously by the day numbering system you will notice I have skipped a day.  Well there's only so much you can talk about when every day seems to be the same, that is until it isn't! You may have already noticed the photo - so we had some guesty winds this morning on Kel's watch which got up to the upper limit of "big red" so he called Richard (the next on watch) to help him take it down.  Which they did successfully.  Wind dropped back to normal 15-18kts range so after 20mins or so "big red" came back out to play.  That was about 06:00 and everything got back to normal.  I came up for my 10:00-14:00 watch and sat in the seat at the downstairs nav station playing games on my phone and we were sailing along nicely.  Kel went out into the forward cockpit to sun himself while he read a book.  After 10mins he called me and pointed up, I went out looked up and saw this -  NOT GOOD!   We had no gusts, no rolling, nothing unus...