Saturday 20th October

At Sea

21 12.903 S
150 12.491 E (at Midnight)

As the night continued it became increasingly colder – what’s going on here? This is supposed to be sunny Queensland guys; we resorted to wearing tee shirts, sweat suits, fleecy tops and our wet weather gear all at once to keep warm and dry, and for the first time we even got the beanies out to keep the wind out of our ears! Dawn brought little relief, it was cloudy and we had rain for about an hour soaking everything. With the wind still coming from behind at 12 -15 knots we were rolling (literally) along at 5 knots, the good news was that the swell was beginning to drop. At 10.30hrs we reached a point where we had to change tack in order to maintain our course,throwing the main across went very smoothly BUT as we were now heeled over on the opposite side a whole lot of books and drawers fell out down below and scattered across the cabin floor. Gerry lost it, he began throwing things around down below instead of leaving it for me to pick up as is the norm. I got him to calm down and then went below to pick up and tidy away the flying debris – it didn’t take long but it’s not easy chasing stuff around the floor when you are being thrown from side to side. I cooled off by having a shower before going back out on deck, where Gerry was now quite calm and civil again. We began to see the small islands that dot the Queensland coast as we headed further north. The swell was all over the place and the wind kept gusting at odd times; our speed was anything from 4.5 knots to 10 knots, we even saw it reach 12.5 on 2 occasions - it’s not good sailing like this as it is so inconsistent; however we are at least heading in the right direction. We had the jib out for a while in the afternoon but soon put it away again as it didn’t have a great deal of effect on our progress. The sun set behind islands, yet again we were cheated out of seeing a green flash! We were now well and truly in the shipping lane for the Queensland coast and at 22.00hrs we saw the first of a series of container ships coming at us from the north – it wasn’t going to be a night when we could take our eyes off of the horizon for long.