Another early start today. The sunrise was spectacular… It was so good I went and dragged Melissa out of her bunk to come and see it…

Made Airlie late afternoon after a pretty uneventful downwind day. Gotta love the tradewinds.

As forecast the southerly came through early this morning. I sensed the wind shift (the calm before the shift, rather) at about 3am and quickly got up to leave. Our anchorage was not ideal in a south-easter as we would be on a lee shore – every sailor’s nightmare.

I weighed anchor and motored out of Whites Bay and west, bending on the mainsail as we entered the channel between Middle and South Percy Isles. The wind picked up and soon we were hard on the wind in a fresh south-westerly, backing all the while to the south. I soon decided to make for the protection of Scawfell Island as that would put us on a run before the breeze, making life a lot easier.

We dropped anchor in Refuge Bay, Scawfell Island, in the early afternoon, and by now it was blowing 25 knots from the south-east…

This day was memorable for two reasons:

• I anchored too shallow at high tide; and
• the crew went exploring and lost Melissa on the island…

I decided to move first thing this morning as the wind was forecast to back to the west, which would leave us a bit exposed where we were. We re-anchored about an hour before high tide, and I foolishly dropped the anchor in 5 meters of water, knowing full well that at low tide the anchor would be in 1.8 meters. We swung out into deeper water and, as long as the wind blew from the west AND we didn’t want to pick up the anchor at low tide, we would be okay. However, the 3pm weather forecast from Charleville predicted a southerly change in the early hours of the morning. That meant we could potentially swing into shoal water, or be unable to leave the anchorage. Not a good setup when on a lee shore.

By now it was low tide too, so I couldn’t really motor up to the anchor to pick it up, and nighttime was approaching. The solution? I put on my mask and snorkel (no fins) and “walked” the anchor about 40 meters into deeper water. Being submerged made the (42lb) anchor significantly easier to carry, but I had to do it while holding my breath! The 30 meters of chain also had to be dragged out to sea as there was very little breeze and so very little pull on the anchor line. An interesting exercise…

The crew decided to go for a walk on the island around midday. They planned to walk to West Bay and back, which is quite a long hike. When I saw them disappear in the wrong direction (despite giving them the handheld GPS with pre-programmed coords) and immediately split up, with Melissa going in a separate direction, I just shook my head. My skepticism was justified when Peter, Helen and Pascale returned mid-afternoon, sans Melissa. By nightfall she still hadn’t returned, and I was now beginning to worry that she may have fallen and hurt herself. I calculated that, had she gone to West Bay to rendezvouz with the others as they had agreed, the best we could hope for would be that she returned by about 6:30pm. Peter and I took torches, food, water etc and paddled to the beach at 6:30pm, intending to start our search at 7pm. We were all very relieved when Melissa appeared about 5 minutes before we set off…

I did my usual trick again this morning, weighing anchor around 5am and watching the sunrise on my own with coffee and rusk at hand.

I had a couple of trolling lines out, one hand reel as well as my trolling rod. About mid morning, while motoring, we had simultaneous strikes on both lures! Being a bit slow to get to the throttle, we lost the fish off the handline, but the reel-drag on the rod meant that one fish was still on and fighting. Peter killed the engine and I started bringing the fish in. Imagine my delight when I landed a 3kg frigate mackerel (a small tuna species)! This was going to feed us more than once!

We decided that we didn’t need any more fish, so the tackle was stowed. It was pretty messy cleaning the fish, but it was done and the gutted fish was stowed in the fridge for later.

The wind had been backing to the north, so I decided at the last minute to anchor in Whites Bay (Middle Percy Island) rather than West Bay. This gave us a lovely protected anchorage and we were soon exploring the beach.