Passage from Broome Australia to Cocos Keeling

Well we’ve finally left Australia!  I think we’ve given it our best shot.  We arrived in Sydney on 28 October 2014 and left Mermaid reef (160M WNW of Broome) on 29^th August 2015 – 10 months covering a total of 5700 nm from Sydney down to Tasmania and then back up the east coast, across the top to Broome and out to Mermaid reef in the Rowley shoals – it’s a big country!  Apart from a few sea snakes, 2 land snakes and a lot of crocs, we’ve not seen much in the way of real nasties – got bitten quite often by sand flies and mozzies though. 

So we’re now on the first leg of our passage across the Indian ocean – to Cocos Keeling – about 1300 miles from Mermaid reef.  We’ll be making a daily position report (weather permitting!) on mailasail as usual at:

http://blog.mailasail.com/sy-supertedv

But as a bonus here’s the first one!

Day 1

After 2 days of playing about in gin clear water, we left Mermaid reef at 08.30 on 29^th August (local WA time).  Not much wind forecast for the next few days but we have to leave sometime!  We set off with 7 knots of wind from the SW.  Seas flat with a swell but with a long period so we didn’t feel it much. Fortunately most of the day the wind has been forward of the beam so our speed hasn’t been too bad – around 5 to 6 knots on port tack.  However in the night it dropped right off so we were down to 1 -3 knots for a few hours – so that’ll bring our daily average down!

We’re back in that beautiful deep royal blue inky sea – haven’t seen it like this for a long time (maybe it’s Indian ink – ha).  It’s a full moon so the night is bright – good thing too as we discovered our tricolour isn’t working, though we have plenty alternatives.  Had dolphins bow-riding in the moonlight – very ‘Disneyesque’.  The trading between Oz and China seems to be booming – picked up on AIS about 6 cargo ships going south a few hours ago and now abut 5 cargo ships going north to China.  The seas have picked up a bit this morning with more of a swell but still relatively comfortable.

24 hours miles: 131

Position at 08.30 – 30 August (GMT+8):  S16:32:094 E117:32:155

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