17.9 Knots

Hi all,

This last week has been so much fun, I’ve been grinning continually that’s for sure! We’ve continued sailing up the coast doing on average around 50 miles a day which is quite a happy distance for the boats that we’re sailing on as they’re fairly quick! Usually we set off mid morning around 10ish and are usually in by sunset.

It’s got a lot hotter now and I’m so pleased to be back up in the tropics. True shorts and t-shirt sailing conditions! Today’s sail was such an awesome one too. We set off this morning, and as we headed out of the bay I was a little uncertain of what the conditions would be, but as we found the offshore breeze it was just perfect! 15 knots on the quarter. The spinnaker was already up and we took off averaging 12 knots or so.

After putting in a few gybes to dodge a few little islands and navigate around some rocks in the area, the wind picked up a few more knots to 18 or so and wow were we rocketing along then. One hull skimming along the surface and the guy on the helm just playing with all the troughs to find the best boat speed. We hit a top speed of 16 knots but to Steve and I that just wasn’t enough. So we tried and tried for 17 knots which we got after a further hour of playing the waves.  We hit 17.1 which awesome as it was just this little barrier which of course meant nothing to anyone else but meant a lot to us!

But that wasn’t enough of course, I wanted to go faster! I later set the top speed of 17.9 knots under spinnaker which I was pretty chuffed with. In fact, its probably the fasted I’ve ever been under spinnaker! Sure I’ve been faster in a lot more wind but I’ve never sailed that fast in only 17 or so knots of wind on a flat sea!

We arrived into our anchorage early this afternoon (unsurprisingly) on Middle Percy Island and went ashore to put a sign up in the shack on the beach. The bay is called West Bay and there’s some history behind it. People have put mementos of theirs up in this shack for over 50years so it’s a pretty famous cruising place to visit in Aus which is pretty cool.

Currently sitting down to a well deserved rum and coke with Bruce, Steve and Suzanne after a great days sail up the Aussie coast.

Mike