35 45.4E 116 54.4S
Ever since we arrived in Western Australia, Cape Leeuwin, the extreme southwestern point of Australia has loomed large in our thoughts. We knew we'd be sailing around it at one point on our planned route to Tasmania. As time passed, its reputation grew larger in our minds. Prevailing southerly winds, wide open ocean to the west, ocean currents and swell, no good anchorage or shelter, reefs, shipwrecks, the worries grew. As is often the case, but, not always, its bark was worse than its bite and our rounding turned out to be a benign experience. If I didn't want to jinx the rest of the passage, I might even say that we enjoyed it. We were certainly elated once clear.
It was a rough, early morning start leaving Rottnest Island, near Perth. Things soon calmed down though and we were sailing, in the right direction! We were able to put the boat through its paces and we were thrilled at how effortlessly, with our new cutter rig, we could cruise along at 6-8 knots in just 13-20 knots of wind. Sail handling was easier, loads were less and sheet leads were much improved. We could sail closer to the wind than on any other boat we've owned. One successful project almost completed! I say almost because there were a couple of failures as well. Both a staysail block and a running backstay tackle broke apart. We've now done the sails and standing rigging and had started a program of running rigging and hardware replacement (expensive), but, looks like we'll have to expedite that now.
As we continued south the winds tended to either SW or SE, usually 20-25 knots, none of the dreaded southerlies. We even had some hoped-for easterlies just as we started heading south from Cape Naturaliste along the last stretch towards Cape Leeuwin. For a change, even our tacking strategy worked really well. We were able to clear Leeuwin with one very long tack out to the west and then back southeast.
Once clear and into the Great Australian Bight we entered the middle of a high pressure area, little wind and flat calm, as you can see in the picture. Beautiful, but, you're not going anywhere unless you motor. There's not enough fuel for that, so, we will just have to wait the calms out, the wind will always come back sometime...
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