by Julie Hartwig
September 2009
Kapalua II was five days into a month-long cruise up the coast from her home at Tin Can Bay. She was snugly anchored at Rooney Point near the top end of Fraser Island and her crew – Pam, Len, Jon and myself – had just spent an enchanting day oohing and ahhing at whales and all manner of sea life that was inhabiting the waters of our anchorage. Another beautiful sunset had bathed the daily celebration of Beer O'clock in a gorgeous golden light while the BBQ had done a commendable job of incinerating the rissoles that were on that night’s dinner menu. Overall, the cruise was progressing splendidly. ‘Hewey’ had bestowed perfect weather upon us and we were contemplating our next destination. Lady Musgrave was at the top of the list.
Our cruising companions, Don and Kay on Sequel Too, were happily anchored at Lady Musgrave and on that evening’s “sked” reported that conditions up there are idyllic; were we coming up to join them? They would be staying there until Sunday or Monday. A hastily convened crew conference consulted ‘Huey’s’ offering for the next day: 10-15 knots SW-SE with seas less than a metre; perfect conditions for sailing up to Musgrave. It was no longer a case of if we were going up to ‘Lady Mus’, but when.
A bit of fancy footwork on the chart with dividers (no chart plotter on Kapalua) revealed that it was 78nm. Sailing at Kapalua’s average speed of 5 knots gave us a travelling time of around 16 hours. A 0600 departure would give us an ETA of around 2200 the following night: not a sensible time to enter a coral-fringed lagoon. After some discussion and a check of the night’s weather forecast – 5 knots SW with seas to 1m – we decided to do an ‘over-nighter’, which would get us to Lady Musgrave around midday the next day.
Decision made, we stowed the boat for sea and pulled the anchor up at 2000. Len organized a watch system, with each couple doing two hours on, two hours off and position plots every hour. I had never been offshore at night and was a bit apprehensive, but with such a “perfect” weather window and a good watch plan, I was looking forward to some lovely night sailing on calm seas with light winds.
What we didn’t know at that stage was that ‘Huey’ had had a ‘fiddle’ with the forecast and hadn’t informed the guys at BOM. Thanks to that little oversight on his part, our apparently ‘perfect’ plan was about to deteriorate faster than a Kleenex in the washing machine …
We headed out of the anchorage into a night that was as black as the inside of a boot. There would be a moon later, but for the time being, everyone was moving around with LED head torches strapped on their foreheads, looking like characters out of Doctor Who. While LED torches are excellent for illuminating things, they generally screw up your night vision. So the decision was made: no head lights unless it was necessary. Which of course it was: the backlight on the GPS screen would only stay on for 10 seconds. So every five minutes or so, we had to flick a LED on to check the course and track. (I was lucky. My LED head torch has a red light as well as a white one. Needless to say, everyone wanted to borrow mine when it came time to check the GPS or make a plot on the chart.)
We talked about getting the main up but a quick check of the wind direction revealed that, yes, it was blowing around 5 knots … but out of the north - right on the nose and about as far as it’s possible to get from the south westerly that BOM had forecast. Barely a mile up the track and already The Plan was looking a bit dog-eared. The thought of sailing was abandoned and the task of getting us to Musgrave was handed lock, stock and barrel to our engine-room crew, Perkins.
Once out from under Rooney Point, our heading was 310oT. Astern, we could see the loom of Urangan and out to the west, the loom of Bundaberg. The Sandy Cape light was flashing every 10 seconds out to the east and the lights of fishing boats dotted the sea to port and starboard.
Initially, everyone was on watch, although Cedric the Autopilot had the helm. He took a bit of convincing that we knew where we wanted to go and insisted on veering wildly off the programmed course. Cedric finally got the message after Len programmed in a particularly drastic course alteration to put us back on course, and he settled down to steer us straight up the rhumb line to Lady Musgrave.
The easterly swell gradually increased as we emerged from the shelter of Fraser Island. Thankfully, there was little wind to compound the situation and though we were still inside Breaksea Spit and not yet exposed to ocean swells, the sea state was sufficiently uncomfortable and somewhat confused with lots of rolling, heaving and cork-screwing that I resorted to wearing my sea sickness bands.
The Plan finally disintegrated when the watch system quietly and unobtrusively broke down. No one particularly felt like going ‘off watch’ to sleep, so we all sat in the dark in the cockpit and rolled around in companionable silence. Continuous rounds of coffee kept all awake and munching on ginger nut biscuits settled the uneasy stomachs of those affected by Kapalua’s gyroscopic motion.
Around 2130 we picked up a hitchhiker. A White-Capped Noddy attempted to land on the aft solar panel, but he couldn’t get a grip and kept sliding off. After flying around the boat, he eventually landed on the port pulpit rail and settled down on this somewhat precarious perch for the night.
The moon rose out of the dark at 2300 and laid a silver track out to the east. We had travelled 13 nm. Sandy Cape was on our starboard quarter and only Breaksea Spit stood between the open Pacific and Kapalua. In the moonlight, we could see the swells coming at us and became acquainted with the phenomenon of the Seventh Wave. The swells seemed to roll in in sets, each swell higher than the last, until the seventh one lifted the boat considerably higher than any of its predecessors. Then, with a roll to port and a corkscrew as we crested the swell, it heaved Kapalua off its back and with a lurch to starboard she slid into the relative calm of the following trough. We watched the back of the swell roll west, then looked east for the next one. It was definitely “one hand for the boat”, but watching ocean swells rolling by in the moonlight was quite mesmerizing.
Jon and Len finally went off watch at midnight, leaving Pam and I on watch as neither of us particularly wanted to go below where the motion was worse. We talked, kept an eye on Cedric, our feathered hitchhiker, the fuel level in the day tank, three fishing trawlers out on the port beam, and faithfully recorded the hourly plots. In spite of everything, we were averaging about five nm each hour and were on schedule for our midday arrival.
By this stage, I had learned to go with the motion and not fight it. With relaxation, I finally started to feel sleepy and eventually dosed off with my arm over a winch for a pillow. I couldn’t lie down in the cockpit seat, either, as staying on the seat involved considerable effort because there was nothing to wedge against.
At 0200, I was finally tired enough to try going below. I woke Jon who had been asleep on the sea berth in the saloon since midnight. He appeared totally unaffected by the motion and was happy to remain below doing chart work, reading, sleeping.
Wedged in with pillows, the sea berth was surprisingly comfortable; the motion was not as bad as I’d expected and I fell asleep, leaving Jon on watch with Pam.
I rested and slept intermittently until a booming sound woke me. On deck it was daylight, but the motion was worse than ever and the need to get up on deck to “see” drove me up there at 0600. Jon was alone on watch. Len had somehow managed to wedge himself on the port cockpit seat and was dozing while Pam was asleep in the aft cabin.
The swells coming in from the east were bigger in daylight. Lady Elliot Island was a smudge of green eight nm off the starboard beam. We had travelled a further 30 nm since midnight. The wind was 5-8 knots SW. Our feathered hitchhiker had departed, leaving when the genoa was unfurled.
Motor-sailing with the genoa, our speed increased from 5.5 knots to 6.5 knots, and occasionally cracked seven knots when we were able to surf down a swell. The BOM forecast was for 5-10 knots E-SE with seas to 0.6m. There was no mention of the 1.5-2m swell or SW winds we were experiencing and it was about this time that I decided that night sailing was better, but only because in daylight you could see the size of the swells coming at you.
Pam came back on watch, allowing Len and Jon to go off watch. Several pods of dolphins joined us, swimming under and around the bow, darting from one side to the other. They were such carefree, happy-go-lucky creatures, displaying such a fluidity of movement that having them around made Pam and I feel better.
The 0800 plot put us approximately 12 nm from Lady Musgrave and Pam reported that we should see land within the next half hour. Almost straight away, I found the smudge of misty green low on the horizon, fine on the starboard bow, right where it was supposed to be - a perfect land fall. We roused the watch below. Breakfast was ginger nut biscuits and water; those with stronger constitutions managed coffee and cereal.
There were a few large ships hull down out to the east – tankers and freighters out of Gladstone. Then we saw the superstructure of a tanker approaching on our starboard quarter. It appeared to have passed north of Lady Elliot and we were concerned that he appeared to be heading straight for us: we could only see a bows on view when we looked through the binoculars, but when he was a couple of miles away, he changed course and we were able to identify him as BBC Vermont. He passed astern of us and appeared to be heading for Bundaberg.
At the same time, a large whale breached a mile ahead with a massive splash. A few moments later he rounded out directly ahead and apparently heading straight for us. Pam gave Cedric a tweak to starboard and the whale happily cruised past two boat lengths off our port side. That was the only whale we saw en route from Rooney Point.
Just after 1030, we reached our waypoint off the western end of Lady Musgrave. The wind had increased to 15 knots SE – stronger than the forecast, but at last from the right direction - and the sea was very lumpy and confused. Waves were breaking on the reef surrounding the island and lagoon and we could see several boats anchored safely inside the lagoon, one of which was Sequel Too. It was quite strange to see boats anchored out in the middle of the sea, knowing that the only thing protecting them from the full onslaught of the ocean swells was the island’s fringing reef. White sandy beaches surrounded the island and a walk on terra firma was very high on the ‘to do’ list.
We turned to make our approach for the lagoon and a large pod of dolphins greeted us, cavorting around the boat, crisscrossing under the bows, leaping out of the water and waving their flippers at us as if welcoming us to their coral reef home.
In the lee of the island and fringing reef, the swell quickly decreased. Don and Kay came out to us in their dinghy to guide us in. The entrance to the lagoon was through a channel in the reef, marked by red and green beacons, with an isolated danger beacon marking a large bommie in the middle of the inside end of the entrance. Inside the lagoon, all swell and waves had miraculously abated. Don guided us round a few more large bommies and by 1130, we were safely anchored in 8.5m of crystal clear turquoise water after a night passage of 78 nautical miles and 15½ hours at sea.
Sailing (or motoring if ‘Huey’ fiddles with the forecast) at night is a very sensory experience. The darkness forces you to use other senses – hearing and smell particularly. If no other light interferes with your night vision, you can identify the darker shape of land against the sky and white horses are visible in the dark. The amazing thing about night sailing is the noise. Because you can’t see, hearing becomes the primary sense and every sound seems amplified to a degree not apparent during the day. The engine’s note, the rig’s creaking, the halyards’ slapping and above all of this, the sound of the sea. In the moonlight, the sea almost seems to be breathing, with the crest of a swell a big breath in and the passing of a trough, a big breath out.
Finally a note on seasickness. The pressure bands do help, but they need to be worn at least two hours before you hit a sea state that induces the feeling, not when you start feeling ill. They are not a cure, but they do take the edge off the truly horrible feeling, reducing it to just unpleasant queasiness. My problem with seasickness is going below. Usually, it’s just a quick dive down below that I plan with almost military precision so that I do what I have to do down there and get back up on deck as quickly as possible. What is really interesting is that the only place down below where I am not bothered with queasiness is shut in the head, but I don’t think I’d want to spend 16 hours in there …