12:46.46S 143:28.9E - Never a Dull Moment
Irene IV - World Adventure
Louis Goor
Thu 8 Sep 2022 23:19
Life is never dull onboard Irene IV! As George will recount below. However,
before I hand over to George, I would like to mention that he just caught a
beautiful 2 kilo Blue Fin Tuna! He reeled it in alone, only enlisting Louis'
help at the last moment. Good on you George! We are in the unfortunate
situation of having very little cooking gas onboard, so sashimi for dinner
is perfect! Luckily, we will arrive in Thursday Island, tomorrow, wind
allowing, or the day after at the latest, then the situation will be
rectified. I must say, having to conserve gas has given my creative juices
full rein - it has been fun!
Over to George:
On the 7th of September at 13:00, after a lovely breakfast, we set sail from
Lizard Island heading to Bathurst Bay. The sail took about seven and a half
hours, and we were racing Seabird! It was beautiful sailing, the 20 knots of
wind filling the sails. We had our main and genoa out and we were keeping at
an average speed between nine and twelve knots. We, of course, won the race!
In the last hour the wind picked up very high, gusting to 37 knots. The bay
was very choppy, possibly the worst sea state of any bay we had visited. We
all got on the deck in the dark, windy and rollie conditions and let all 90
meters of anchor chain out. We wore life jackets and clipped on in case of
falling off the boat. I was working on putting the anchor snubber on to take
the pressure off the windlass. Suddenly, the black rope holding the snubber
got caught in the windlass and we were unable to get it out. Dad continued
to try as I went back to get Rob for help. As we got back to the deck, we
found Dad screaming in agony. He had accidentally kneeled on the anchor "in"
button while he tried to get the black rope out of the windlass. The anchor
had trapped his left hand's middle three fingers between the windlass and
the anchor chain. He managed to get them out, but he was severely bleeding.
I sprinted back to the cockpit to tell Sabine and she brought up the medical
kit. Rob and I continued to try and take the black line out of the windlass,
as the wind howled, water splashed over us, and Dad huddled up on the deck
in agony. Eventually Dad's pain slightly eased so that he could tell us that
putting the pressure of the anchor onto the snubber would allow us to remove
the black line from the windlass. We did so and managed to get the black
line out. Sabine took Dad downstairs as Rob and I stayed on the windy deck
moving the spinnaker pole forward, putting soft shackle on the chain in the
case of the anchor snubber breaking. Once we had done that, we headed
downstairs to see Dad all bandaged up beside Sabine. Rob and I took off our
lifejackets and sat down in the warm saloon. Shortly afterwards we headed to
bed after a rough night.
I am happy to say that Louis is doing well. All his fingers can move,
nothing is broken. He has hardly any swelling, and minimal pain today,
Thursday, 8th September. We have had a splendid day's sail, with 15-20 knots
of wind out of the southeast. The main and genoa are goose winged as we head
northwest towards our anchorage in Lloyd Bay.
We are in the company of our good friends on Seabird. They are having some
electrical problems, with intermittently failing AIS, autohelm, Raymarine,
and more. We are sailing ahead of them to guide them on their way. Herein
lies one of the great values of this rally, we have gained friends and we
all help each other out when the need arises.
In conclusion, we as a crew would like to send our condolences to the
DeBromhead family who sadly lost their son and brother, Jack, in a horse
racing accident during the Rossbeigh races, in Co.Kerry last weekend.