On Sunday, Nov. 13th we anchored for the night in the Torres Strait just before passing Cape York, the northernmost tip of Australia. The combination of wind, currents, poor visibility in the darkness and very shallow water made it too precarious for us to continue our passage. So at 0545 Monday we got an all hands wakeup call and about 20 minutes later we were taking turns on the windlass heaving up the anchor. I was glad we waited for daylight because the headlands were interesting and beautiful to see. We were close enough to see what I would guess are leftover WWII fortifications built into the hillside and a lighthouse on top of the hill.
We had sufficient wind for three and a half days after passing through the Torres Strait into the Arafura Sea to sail without using the engine. It wasn’t until Wednesday afternoon that we had to take in the sails and start the engine. The winds had died out and we have been motoring ever since with some of the fore ‘n aft sails set. The weather continues to be mostly hot and the sun is strong here (we are under the hole in the ozone layer) so we keep canopies up on the main deck and the quarterdeck whenever possible; and I use a lot of sunblock when I know I will be working in the sun. It’s hard to think that at home it could be snowing and cold; it certainly doesn’t feel like November!
Another week of sailmaking from early morning until late afternoon, followed by Coastal Piloting and Rules of the Road workshops before dinner. I finished stitching on the last two grommets on the new flying jib Monday morning (with much better results than the frustrations I encountered Saturday). In the afternoon I worked with Jill to make tabling for the new upper topsail. On Tuesday we started treating the flying jib with wood preservative, which makes the canvas last longer. The wood preservative smells horrid and I was glad when we had to stop the project on account of some confusion about containers that were mis-marked or unlabeled. One container on which someone had written “Yes I am wood preservative” smelled much more like paint thinner and it did not act like the wood preservative we had started with.
So, while the wood preservative confusion was being straightened out, I moved on to making window patches. The morning watch and riggers had brought down the fore t’gallant sail and replaced it with another old t’gallant that we had just repaired a week or two ago. The one that came down had two holes that we could see easily; while working on it I found a third hole that also needed to be patched. It took me the better part of three days to measure, cut and stitch in place three large patches. Each patch is much larger than the hole itself, going from seam to seam on the sail, to be sure that it is stitched onto strong canvas, not a place that is already stressed and likely to rip soon. The patch is stitched into place, then the sail is turned over and the old canvas is cut away leaving a margin of old canvas that is turned under and stitched down to the new canvas, thus making a “window” of new canvas in the old sail.
I slept on the cargo hatch at night and, with the canopy over the hatch, even the rain did not stop me from sleeping there. Wednesday the rain started about 0100 and it rained heavily all morning. We did our sailmaking in the Salon, stitching seams on the new lower topsail. However, since the Salon is the only dry place to eat when the weather is bad, we had to clean up at 11am for the 1130 seating and could not resume until the noon seating was finished and cleaned up. With some extra help from Brent, who likes to seam, we have nearly finished putting together the cloths for the lower topsail; 24 seams total. Susannah wants to have all the cloths stitched together before we get to Bali so they can lay it out to do a “second cut” of the sail.
My notes for the week include “hot and sweaty” for every day. Saturday was no different, except that perhaps it was even more hot and sweaty. We only work half day on Saturday, so in the afternoon we were trying anyway possible to keep cool. John Kemper inflated a small raft, hauled buckets of sea water over the rail to fill it up and sat down in it on the well deck to cool off. Naturally, water spilled onto the well deck, which has a slight downward slope from fore to aft, and soon he discovered the fun of sliding in the raft on the wet deck. To make the sliding even better someone turned on a hose (I think we were due to have a power shower). Very soon the hose was not just wetting down the deck, but everyone in the vicinity. Two more hoses were turned on and we had a grand water fight on the main deck. Anyone who tried to cross the main deck wound up soaking wet!!
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