The view back to Evans Head as we headed out
After seeking shelter overnight at Evans Head, the forecast for today was good and I was out of bed at 0530 and by 0600 we were ready to go. But the port motor wouldn’t run. It was start, but idle slowly and die away. After looking for problems and considering leaving on one motor, I finally realised that I had an empty fuel tank connected to the motor and it had no fuel. And by the time that was rectified, the ebbing tide had sat us on the bottom. With a bit of manoeuvring and brute force, we were in the channel and under way, and by 0700 were on the bar.
The wind started W-NW and we began sailing with main and genoa on a course of 020⁰ heading for a waypoint off Long Pt, and soon added the staysail looking for extra speed. By 0800 we were getting gusts over 10kts and making over 5kts over the land. The breeze lifted to the SW and by 0930 we had the spinnaker up. At 1000 we were seeing whales as we passed close by the Ballina breakwater. We passed the waypoint at 1100 and set another waypoint at Tweed Heads. There were whales everywhere, and they seemed to be on a similar course to ours, but a bit slower.
At 1115 we noticed a pod of whales ahead that did not seem to be moving north like the rest. They were dead ahead, and we continued on holding course until when maybe 300m away, suddenly two whales broke away and started to swim directly towards us, porpoising along side by side. As they came closer, coming directly towards us, I thought they had dived under us, but suddenly they came up for another breath and the one in front of the port hull took too long to go down, and as it lifted its tail clear of the water to dive, we drove straight over its tail. The port bow hit with a loud bang, the whole boat quivered and shook and the port bow lifted maybe half a metre out of the water. Although there was no splintering sound, just a dull quiver, I ran down into the port hull and looked around for any evidence of damage.
Nothing was to be seen. We were close offshore to the north east of Lennox Head, close to Jews Pt, and it ran through my head that if any sign of water was apparent, that I would head straight into the beach.
We continued on under spinnaker and main. The fresh SW breeze was up to 15kts with white tops and it was cold. Around noon, as we were passing close under Cape Byron, the breeze dropped to around 10kts, but then freshened again through the afternoon as the wind came around from the SW to the S and we poled out the kite to run DDW, but when it went SE we had to drop the spinnaker to gybe and reset it on stb tack. Through the afternoon we were getting gusts well over 15kts, and it was concerning that the autopilot might drop out and leave the boat out of control. But it was all good, and the wind eased as the heat went from the sun, and at 1730 as the sun was setting, we dropped the spinnaker and went back to main and genoa while we had light and were now clear of the reefs off Tweed. My objective all day had been to make it to the reefs off Tweed by dark, and that’s exactly how it worked out. Off those reefs, the current was very strong, with more than 2 knots difference between boatspeed and speed over ground.
As we turned more west on course to the Gold Coast Seaway, we were back on port tack, and although the night was dark, there was so much light off the city that visibility was not a problem. Sailing on broad reach at good speed under the city lights was beautiful.
We were on the Seaway bar at 2130 and had to muck around finding space to anchor at Bums Bay. Having been through the middle of the mooring field in the dark and unable to find space, we ended up anchored down near the boat ramp.
We travelled 14:56 at 5.4kt with a max of 11.1 achieved under kite in the afternoon, having covered 81.1NM and 92.4 through the water.
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