We are now at S 28degr 38min…

December 9, 2008

Monday 8 december we finally left Rivergate Marina Brisbane, but only after Peter Staalsmid of Asiaworld/Sevenstar reassured the Marina that all bills would be paid by Asiaworld.

In the moring an electrical company did finsh some jobs for us at the system on board enabling us to depart with a good feeling that all systems on board worked.

Jongkind has been tele-helping us loading the Transas charts and changing the cableconnections for the toplight.

14.30 we left, but since we decided for safety reasons to go North of Moreton Bay we needed to sail about 70Nm more than we would have done when going straight South via inland waters like Pinta-M has done last week.

The buoyage system is hopeless in these waters here (at least sofar). Buoys are either not on any charts and if they are -like on a local charts we bought- then the numbers are not on buoys itself.

In the middle of the night we had to negotiate Fliners Reef and we managed to go around it at 1.4 Nm. Only thereafter we went South. The most Northerly position we reached was S 26degr 53min.

Wind has been variable from 4 to 18 knots and since we turned to the South the tide has been helping us with speeds of 1 to 2 knots.

Now 23 hours after our departure we have managed 153Nm so that will be a reasonable score for our first 24 hours of sailing all on our old WB Mainsail and old WB Genoa III. The sun is really on top of us, exactly above our heads, and the temperature must be more than 30 degrees.

Rene was not 100% but is gradually recovering. We have not decided if we go non stop to Sydney NSW of make a stop somewhere. According to Herman Blei on Pinta-M none of the places he visited has been special of wortwhile to see.

Last but not least we did not think of notifying the Coast Guard (which is closed between 2100 and 0600 every night) so we wonder what kind of problems we can still expect. We keep our hands off the radio and we only listen to what other boats are reporting. Just we overheard a communication of a boat with the Coast Guard in which the boat asked permission to delay her arrival at Sydney NSW by just one hour (..).

We meantime passed the most Easterly Point of Australia, the one we visited the first weekend already, called Cape Byron and we are now at
S 28degr 38min.

We spotted some delphins though not so many.