Gary's deliveries

  27th Dec and my birthday!! The 1st picture shows what the weather gods and Neptune gave me as a present this morning when I came up for my 06:00-12:00 watch. WOW!  The water was like an oil slick it was so shiny and not a ripple to be seen. Very impressive. During Kel’s early watch he nearly had a heart attack when he noticed a red nav light that looked really close but nothing on radar.  Turned out to be a very low flying plane, possibly an ABF plane doing a low pass to have a look at us.  Then he had 2 ships pass at the same time about 3nm one off the port side and another off the starboard side.  It’s getting to be a bit like rush hour out here! I had the amazing sunrise and a small pod of very lethargic dolphins this morning and a turtle yesterday. 2nd picture is taken out my cabin window today. 3rd picture is just showing the sort of conditions we have been experiencing since leaving Darwin 2 and a bit days ago, amazing! As the day draws to an end it fini...

*  A note for my mate Pete in Guernsey  - with reference to your comment from Christmas Days blog see note 4 below!!!  When we arrived in Darwin I would have put a reasonable sum of money on us not moving for a week or more due to 1.  It being right on Christmas 2.  Being given a “Restricted to Port” notice by ABF as their was an offical form missing for the importation of the boat 3.  Having something wrapped around the starboard prop or shaft causing a vibration 4.  No way in hell am I diving into the murky Darwin waters only to have a chat with a prehistoric salt water crocodile! Sends shivers down my spine just thinking about it. Apparently they get around 300 of them a year inside the port area. 5.  Also the nasty jellyfish etc etc etc It seems everything up here wants to kill you. Needless to say nobody goes swimming in the sea in Darwin. In the end the miracle happened and all the stars aligned albeit at a cost. We left around midday and th...

We had a night at anchor when we arrived waiting for ABF to call us into the pontoon to clear into Australia. The call came and we were told to go alongside the pontoon for a 09:30 appointment with ABF and Biosecurity. The later took ALL our Chinese takeaway meals we had left over from Hong Kong and all the top up ones we bought in KK . I have only ever had the pork meals taken, but, no not Darwin they take ALL meat! Grrrrrrrr……. Then it came time for ABF. Well, we had 2 officers doing the clearing in paperwork with me, a sniffer dog going through the whole boat, THEN another 4 officers going through EVERYTHING for 45mins! OMG. Nearly 2hrs later and we were all done. Then at the end of all this the ABF officer give me a piece of paper that says “Restricted to Port”. There was 1 piece of paperwork missing for the importation of the boat into Aus so we were not free to leave Darwin till that was sorted and it was now the 23rd Dec and we wanted to leave on Christmas day, BUGGER. Another p...

Sunday 22nd Dec '24 Sun Dec 22 2024 13:27:00 GMT+0930 (Australian Central Standard Time) We have arrived! The picture shows what is the most expensive flag pole I have ever seen on a boat! The ships crane. When we arrived into KK I put the flag’s on the bow rail as we do not have a flag staff set up up high on the boat and it was the only place I could think of until I had a brain wave this morning! We have a very nice, shiny, expensive, crane that even extends and is also up high on the fly bridge aft deck . So I thought that would make a great flagstaff and get the flags way up high. It worked so I gave myself a big pat on the back for such a brilliant idea especially as it was still only 06:00! We arrived into Darwin and anchored in the Quarantine anchorage just before dark 18:00. Yah! Just have to wait for all 1 document from the import agent to arrive at ABF tomorrow morning and we can then go to the Quarantine pontoon outside Cullen Bay Marina where we will be met by ABF and ...

Well, everything calmed down overnight and we both had very relaxing watches. During today we have had no wind, 25-30kts of wind, calm seas, choppy seas and everything in between. We are finally on the downward slop to Darwin with only 250nm to go we “should” be in Darwin before midnight tomorrow, Sunday. Then the fun starts with the authorities. If we are lucky we will only have 2 or 3 ABF (Aussie Customs) come onboard, maybe 1 person from Health and 1 or 2 from Ag & Fisheries. Hopefully that should be it and it all goes smoothly… I saw a strange sight this afternoon just before i was going to call Darwin ABF to confirm arrival timing and where they want us to go, I spotted something floating in the calm water ahead of us. As we got closer it looked a bit suspicious. As you can imagine that spending so much time out here you get used to the way most things look so you notice things that look out of place. So I got the boats super effective stabilised binoculars out and had a look....

Yesterday, Thursday, turned out to be slightly different.   It was also pretty calm again, until, it wasn't!    I got up for my 06:00-12:00 watch and had to hold on moving around! The calm seas had gone and the squally weather had set in with 30kts gusts, 1-2m short chop, torrential rain and sheet lightning.  The waves  were on the beam so we are getting thrown around a bit and the boat was getting a salt water wash down, even the fly bridge!   With all the fuel off the bow yesterday, good timing, the boat is riding well and handling the conditions no problem, we just need to hold on walking round.  Can't really complain as we have had a decent run of good weather.  The seas did calm down a bit during the day, still from an uncomfortable angle but picked up again in the late afternoon/early evening.   The best news is we still haven't seen any fishermen, fantastic!

Not only did we have a really relaxing night, for the first time since leaving KK, due to lack of fishermen, we also had a big moon, calm sea and were lucky enough to have a stunning sunrise. The1st picture below was taken around 05:30 from the flybridge. What a way to start the day. The 2nd picture is of one of the many we will come across while transiting Indo and that is of a tug towing a very large barge. When Griff and I did the Selene we would come across these things with a mountain of sand, no AIS and no navigation lights. Maybe they have been told cause we have come across a couple so far and both had AIS we will see tonight if they also use their lights. The day turned into a productive day as we moved the fuel (picture 3 is of Kel looking after the suction end of the hose) from the forward boat tanks to the main aft tanks then refilled the forward tanks with the 2 x 1,000lts cubes we have on the aft deck. Then we transferred another 300lts out of the 6 x 200lt drums we have ...

It’s the early hours of Wednesday morning and I’m the 22:00-02:00 watch. We are still in the super highway current doing 10.5kts when all of a sudden there’s an almighty thud as if we were hit by a big wave but the seas are pretty calm. I suspect we just hit a log floating around. Will have to wait till daylight to see if there was any damage but the good news is that so far none of the 8 bilge pumps has been auto activated which is obvious a good sign. When daylight came I had a walk around to check as best I could to see if there was any obvious damage and to my relief I couldn’t see any. Now 02:30 on Thursday morning and we have had a busy Wednesday. In Indonesia they have a particular fishing method whereby they anchor what can only be described as a shed (see photo) on floats in waters 4-5km deep! Yes you read that right and apparently they use rope. OMG! Theres a story back in 2019 where an 18yr old Indo fisherman’s shed broke it’s mooring line and drifted for 49 days and thousan...

Tuesday afternoon and conditions last night were great. Very little swell from the port beam, hardly noticeable and in the early hours of this morning we saw the last of those pesky fishermen!!  Until next time. If you have been looking at my Garmin tracking page  https://share.garmin.com/FKHAP you may have noticed our speed reduced slightly down to 6 ish kts. We had a slight current against us but that is now changing as we into the “super highway”. The photo below, we are the blue dot, shows the west-east current I mentioned yesterday.  We are not completely in it yet and we are already cruising along at an average speed of 10.5kts when our normal average is 8.5  Also the wind speed and sea conditions have picked with the waves now coming from starboard aft quarter which is helping us truck along and when we turn to port by 15 degrees it will be right behind us.  Our watches come and go with regularity.  Our 3rd crew member was waiting for me to give him ...

  Kel and I have settled into our usual routine again, always takes a day or 2 after leaving port to get your body back into the rhythm. Going across the top of Borneo we seem to have had a nice current which was pushing us along at an extra 1 or 2kts up.   There wasn't much traffic even though we followed the shipping lane and there weren't many fishing boats in the way either because we stuck to the shipping lane fishermen don't like to lose their nets which is what would happen if the ships ran over them so the stayed to the side out the way.  When we came close to popping out into the Celebes Sea we were contacted by the Filipino Naval warship this time who asked us similar questions to the Malaysians but with the usual Philippine/American accent they were a lot easier to understand.  We are now crossing over the Celebes Sea and going to go round Talesie Island but we're heading slightly south of a direct line because there's an amazing west-east ...

Photos below are from when were at the fuel dock before we left KK yesterday and after we had filled up all the tanks. We ended up taking on just over 8,000lts. Even with all that we were still a slightly above the boat’s water line. The trip up the west coast was not pleasant. There was a good size moon so visibility was pretty good but the sea conditions were not which had us slowing down considerably and zig zagging to try and find a reasonable angel to the waves. This went on most of the night The other issue we had was fishing boats! Plus some of the fishing boats have mini dugout canoes that wander off, so their thing and return to the mothership once they’ve finished. BUT, you can’t see them as they don’t have nav lights and they don’t show up on radar. When they realise you are there, normally really close, they shine their very bright torch at you, which doesn’t help your night vision. On my watch around 3am we must have gone through 20 or 30 of them. As soon as one shone the ...

Just a quick update.   We left KK after filling up with diesel then to immigration to do the final clearing out.   We cast our lines at around 16:00 out the bay and turn north heading to for the northern end of Borneo.  Unfortunate we are heading directly into  wind and short sea chop making for a very uncomfortable ride especially with the extra fuel we are carrying so we are zig zagging up the coast trying to keep the chop off the bow and we have also had to reduce our speed to 3-4 kts to try and make it easier on the boat.  At some stage tomorrow we will turn the corner and hopefully pick our speed back up. 

  We have now been here for 4 days and we have had a reasonable amount of work carried out on the boat. The exterior has been cleaned of all the salt we got from the trip over from Hong Kong and the black soot/crap that was dumped by the rain while the boat was sitting in the Typhoon shelter in in HK. The hull is being cleaned by divers as I type. When entering either Australia or NZ they are very particular about any growth on the hulls as it has the potential to bring unwanted hitch hikers into their waters so it is alway best to have the hulls clean in the last port before you arrive. So we are having that done and getting a statement from the dive company. The fuel form the after tanks are also being emptied today so the tanks can be cleaned. Is is due to the dirty fuel we experienced on passage after transferring fuel from forward tanks to main aft tanks. I was going to have all 4 cleaned but the aft tanks are a bit more difficult to access. We had a small hydraulic leak in th...

Well, we made it to KK! We arrived into Sutera Harbour Marina at 16:00 ish, on Friday 6th. We would have got here in the early hours if we didn’t have to slow our speed down to 5 knots for the last couple of days due to the hitch hikers we have on both prop shafts, but at least we got here. I arranged for a diver to go down and clear the afore mentioned unwanted hitch hikers. OMG! By the looks of what was cut away it looks like we picked up several different fishing nets as there are multiple colours and size of nets. It is no wander we had to slow right down. It took the diver nearly an hour to clear the each side and that was with dive gear so there is no way we could have cut them away just free diving. I have also arranged for the diver to come back later in a few days to clean the hulls after the boat has been sat in the water in China and Hong Kong they are looking a little grubby and will need a clean before we head to Darwin as Australian officials there like to see a clean bot...

Ok, it is now 05:30 on Thursday and yesterday turned out to be a bit full on.  Kel woke me at around 05:30 to tell me he could feel a slight vibration.  As it was still dark I decided to reduced the revs till it near enough went away and wait for some sun shine before investigating.   As I was in watch at 06:00 I stayed up and got my trusty old (new) Dji camera and selfie stick out, woke Kel up a couple of hours later and went about the same process as we did with the port shaft.  Camera down and sure enough spotted a rope on the starboard shaft.  I stripped off to my jocks, donned a mask and fins and jumped into the water.  Boy was it warm in.  Anyway had a dive down and saw the problem but although the seas were calm there was still some swell and with that heavy boat bobbing up and down I decided it was too dangerous to try and cut the rope.  So popped back out and set the engine at low revs and we are now motoring at around 5.5kts.   If t...

Firstly, sorry if the blogs have been messed up, I am still finding my way around the new system and finding how to add photos is proving to be a bit of a challenge! What a lovely day we had yesterday, reasonably calm seas from behind and very little wind.  As soon as we went outside to do anything the heat and humidity hit you like a brick.  Love air con!! Although not ideal it was also good to see that the vibration and higher fuel burn was due to the fishing net and nothing more sinister. It has been strange after all the hustle and bustle of ships in the seas around Hong Kong, massive fishing fleet between Hong Kong and the oil rigs up to 100nm out that we only saw 1 solitary fishing boat all day yesterday and there is nothing showing on AIS for miles around.         

The higher fuel consumption and slight vibration mystery has been cleared up.  The pic above is of the starboard propellor and rudder.  Unfortunately a Chinese fishing net has decided to tag along for the ride.  At lunchtime today the conditions were safe enough for us to stop the boat, go out onto the duckboard and put the afore mentioned camera and 3m selfie stick underneath the water and have a look and would you believe it we are trailing what's left of a fishing net.  Now real surprise there! The sea conditions are not safe enough to go diving down under a 30+ tonne boat bobbing up and down in 1-2m swell so that is going to have to wait.  In the meantime we are now running the port engine at 1800rpm (30lph) and the starboard just in gear (600rpm) to lube the shaft.  With this set up the vibration has stopped and we are burning 32lph at an average speed of 7kts. As for the fuel contamination, the port side which had the major problem yesterday is lookin...