Wednesday, October 16, 2013

...to australia - day/night #1

wow - so there we are...sailing to australia!

we left port moselle around 03:45pm yesterday afternoon, after a wonderful send off from our beloved Chilli Cats and Lazy Bones (that had me crying) and filling every last cm3 with duty free diesel at the fuel dock.
the weather forecast showed 20-25kn from the SE and 2-3m seas outside the fringing reef of new caledonia.
experience taught us to expect more wind and messy seas with a forecast like that - so we mentally prepared ourselves for quite a ride.

a good hour after leaving we went through the pass and to our surprise, the conditions were as forecasted - the sea actually more comfortable than inside the reef.
maloo started flying along doing 7,5-8kn on 3rd reefed main and 3rd reefed heady and we slowly try to find our way into passage-sailing again.

even though conditions did pick up a little towards the night, a late sunset followed by a bright moon and a very early sunrise again make for a great sail! if it all goes well, then we should have another 4 nights at sea.

and though mark and i had 14 months time to prepare for this....the thought that the next time round our feet will touch land it is going to be australian soil is bizarrely abstract - let's see if in the next 4 days we will be able to bring our heads around to that;)

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