The view from Gove Boat Club
September 25, we passed the halfway point of the Gulf crossing around noon on our second day (story of the first half here).
The weather was cloudy, and we were running our batteries lower than normal on account of the navigation equipment and autopilot running all night. Being concerned about the amount of battery capacity that would be available tomorrow, I set a course to provide the best insolation to the photovoltaic panels rather than the best course to Gove. This was acceptable, as the difference was not great, with the course we sailed being mainly west, and at times slightly north of west, with the wind from the east.
I set the sails wing and wing to run dead downwind, with the mainsail out to south on the port side of the boat, with the wind slightly over the starboard quarter. We were able to get the batteries full by the end of the day, as the wind was easing off to a ghost. Through the evening and early night, the breeze dropped off to a zephyr, moving to the south-east and dropping to around 4 knots. Because we had sailed further north than intended through the day, we were able to come up onto this breeze, sailing across it, and making around 3 knots of boatspeed. Later in the night, the breeze went back to the east and freshened to around 10 knots, until after sunrise, it freshened further and went back SE again, meaning we were sailing hard with all sails up and making around 8 knots all day. After the calm evening, the seas were flat, and this was one of our best ever days sailing, going fast on flat water.
By sunset we were less than 20 nautical miles from Bremer Island, offshore from Nhulunbuy, but we never saw land. Knowing we were going to have to come up higher into the wind once past Bremer Island, making the apparent wind stronger, we reefed the mainsail at sunset, and sailed on up into Gove Harbour. With lots of unlit obstacles (mooring buoys for tugs, buoys for crab pots, unlit boats) we chose to motor in the last mile with the bright headlight showing the way, and creating a food source for the sooty terns to fly over and feed and we steamed along. Anchor went down right on mid night, meaning our trip was exactly 66 hours, three days, two nights, and the evening of the third night. The total distance was a tad over 360 nautical miles, so our average was 5.5kts. Now we have to get ready for our next sector, over the Arafura Sea to Indonesia.
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