Sailing at last

It was an intense last few weeks at Two Rocks (near Perth, Western Australia) getting ready for departure, but, we're finally sailing at last! Here's a shot of our new cutter rigged sails in action. We're very happy that this significant change seems to be successful.  A cutter rig has three standard sails: main, staysail (smaller inner sail) and yankee (a high-cut outer sail). When winds allow, all three sails are flown together, like in this photo. The perfect conditions shown here only lasted an hour though. The winds went south, the direction we need to go and we were soon reducing sail and motorsailing, with the main sail alone, to get some southing in.

Shortly after departing, we had a few hydraulic hiccups in our steering and a few other issues cropped up. The wind started to pick up and when a strong wind warning was announced we decided to make this first day out a mini-shakedown cruise and stop into Rottnest Island, just off Perth, to wait for a better forecast and to deal with the issues prior to heading out on our planned, longer offshore passage to Hobart, Tasmania, about 1,900 nautical miles.

We got to the anchorage at Thomson Bay in late afternoon on a Sunday. It was packed with boats, mostly daytrippers from Perth, we were the only cruising boat there. Unfortunately, the first spot we picked to drop anchor was next to somebody who didn't want neighbours, insisting that we were 'on his anchor'. We weren't, but, he was standing on his foredeck gesticulating and as we didn't want him glaring at us the whole time, we picked up and moved, three times, before we got our anchor to stick. There's one in every anchorage, it seems. The worst part is he picked up to go home an hour later. We stayed two nights. It didn't spoil our stay though, we enjoyed a beautiful day at anchor. Here's the view from the port side of the boat.

In front of the boat...

and beside the boat...beautiful! G spotted a large manta ray on the bottom.

We would have liked to have gone ashore, but, we had many jobs to do and our dinghy was all packed up and lashed down on the foredeck for our offshore passage. The island looks lovely, has trails, accommodation and no traffic, only local service vehicles allowed. They also have 'quokkas' another of Australia's unique animals.

www.marinetraffic.com has picked up our AIS (automatic identification system) already and will be showing our current position as we go along (assuming we're near a shore station, don't worry if we don't show up on there). You can access this site from the 'Find Gjoa' page tab on the menu above.

We won't have internet at sea, but, will be able to receive emails (no attachments). We can also post to the blog with one photo, will try and post something along the way.