Tuesday 17th Dec ’24


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 the nod to fly up to HK for the delivery but due to the delays he ran out of time as he had other commitments so had to bale.  

So since Kel and I arrived into HK it has been just the 2 of us getting the boat ready for passage.  Hat's off to Kel for getting stuck into everything that needed to be done.

As it's just the 2 of us on this delivery it slightly harder on both of us.  Our watches are 06:00-12:00, 12:00-18:00,18:00-22:00, 22:00-02:00 then 02:00-06:00  
We catch whatever sleep we can during our "off watch”.

This morning Kel was telling me that during his 06:00-12:00 he had a visit from the local dolphins who came along for a play in the bow wake.  Even after so many years on the sea and seeing so many dolphins they still bring a smile to my face when they come to say hi and have a play.

The boat is going well and the difference air con makes to a trip like this is amazing.  Most boats have to run the generator to run the A/C which you don't normally have the luxury of doing because you need all the fuel you for the engines and to get you to where you are going. 

If we had not been delayed in either Hong Kong or KK then we would be on track to bump into and pass Nico, the owner of Yacht Delivery Solutions somewhere in the Torres Straight as he is delivering a 65ft performance carbon sailing cat from Fiji to Sorong in Indo. He’s currently in the Arafura Sea getting hammered by 30+kts of wind on the nose which will not be pleasant.

Our current ETA into Darwin is 22/23rd Dec, fingers crossed!

Photo

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