We watched Nicky and Nicole and Kate and Alex fly out of Luganville in bright sunshine. They finally got to see the beautiful turquoise waters and white sand beaches of the islands after all..albeit from their window seats on Air Vanuatu.
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| The pain of empty nest syndrome is about to descend..Nicole leaving the boat in Vanuatu - note our warm jackets!. |
Tony stayed on board to enjoy the sunshine and joined us for the 6 day passage from Vanuatu to Mackay, our port of entry in to Australia, and the halfway point of our circumnavigation.
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| Tony at the wheel before the clouds descended. Universe still smiling on us.. |
For the first 3 days of the trip we rolled blissfully along in the aforementioned sunshine and then all the Universe got mean again...
A big frontal system started moving in from the South West and of course this is exactly where we needed to go to in order to traverse the Hydrographer's passage...a narrow gap in the black fangs of the exquisite but wicked Great Barrier Reef.
The Hydrographer's Passage is a narrow channel through the reef, only charted in 1984. The sail through it is fine if the wind is light and the strong tides are with you but there was a good reason that Captain Cook and his men avoided the area a couple of centuries ago when they bravely mapped most of the coast of Australia.
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| Captain Cook is a hero in this part of the world...and rightly so..to brave these waters in days of yore was a formidable feat. |
As is often the case, Greed..with a capital G... was a powerful motivating factor in the discovery of the Hydrographer's passage. It cuts 250 miles off previous routes through the reef. And if you are in a hurry to get the so called Black gold or coal of Queensland to your markets in the east, then you're going to make sure you find a quicker passage if there's one out there!
Greed wasn't our motivation for choosing the new passage...we had very little choice ..we were in the northern most islands of Vanuatu so we could either bash our way south for 2 days, or grit our teeth and take the pain for several hours.
And of course we thanked our lucky stars that we were in an Oyster and not the little beauty on which we sailed around the world 25 years ago!
As the wind and waves began to build, we strapped on our harnesses and pulled on our mouldy sailing boots..bare feet having been our only footwear on board for the entire trip so far.
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| Al getting boots out of locker ..not an easy task in rough seas..or even calm ones! |
The boots came in handy as we entered the passage just before dark and started slamming into brick walls of water ( 30 knots of wind against 3-5 knots of current) that broke into furious green waves over our bow and drenched us in the cockpit..no one mentioned this sort of thing when I signed up for this cruise!
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| Al tries on footwear for suuny weather...go ahead and have a good laugh..we all did! |
I am not sure if it was a good thing that it was dark for the next 12 hours as we thrashed through this maelstrom..we couldn't see what was coming and had no idea when to pray or when to duck!
And then, after the storm, the peace of pussy cat waves inside the protection of the reef and the sight of numerous humpback whales breaching in the sunrise.
The reward too of heightened senses, the joy of being alive and a sense of pride and accomplishment. That has to be the secret of the Universe...I think the aim of the powers that be up there is to keep us mortals on our toes..otherwise we get too complacent and don't appreciate the good stuff!
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| Happy to be surveying the reef from above rather than navigating a passage through it. |
I am not sure about Tony and Al, they are not the philosophical types, but I was proud of the fact that I had stuck it out on deck during my watch and hadn't hidden down below reaching for the the Bombay to ease the pain!
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| No photos of the rough passage...too busy ..the camera only came out once we had our feet firmly on terra firma. |
You are looking gorgeous Jean, love to you both!
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