SV SEAKA: CRUISING AUSTRALIA IN 2019.

Today has been a disaster, triumph, a drama, a steep learning curve and I got bloody sun burnt!

This morning the Camden Haven was blanketed by fog and it looked like there would be no wind, hence no test sail for today. But by 10 am the fog was gone and a southerly wind of less than 10 knots was blowing. So hanked on the Yankee and set off for the 25 minute trip to the bar. Well that was a non-event as the bar was dead flat. I motored out clear of the bar and raised the Yankee then the mainsail. The mainsail was a bit of a drama as I had neglected several things, like releasing the downhaul, the getting part of the boom bag sucked into a reefing block, not releasing the main sheet so I could get the mainsail all the way up. To add to that the reefing sheets were pulled in too far, so had to release them as well. Then I had all these extra sheets hanging around on the cockpit floor with no apparent home, what a mess.

T'was easy to see I hadn't raised a sail for some time.

Oh well. The dramas continued as we motor sailed to the east when I realised I'd blown the fuse on the auto helm. Disconnecting the autohelm and turning the engine off I discovered we were sailing in a straight line!!!!!

Yippeee the wind vane, it works!!

Now that was on a broad reach so I adjusted the vane head and low and behold we turned through 45 degrees to the north. With a little bit more fiddling I had us [that's the royal 'us', in other words Seaka and I] sailing downwind without any yawing at all and I didn't even touch the tiller!

That's a $200 successful wind vane. The fact that I had to spend another $100 on cleats and blocks, won't be counted.

Ok, so with that success I headed back in with more drama of course as I was still remembering the sequences of sailing, like drop that sail, bugger forgot to do that first, and so on it went, not helped of course by the autohelm being out of action. Yep, I know, excuses excuses, but I'll remember next time!

With the tide flooding it was a quick trip back to my mooring. After all that it was a real mess in the cockpit. Lunch first, funny thing was I could smell diesel but onto cleaning up on deck first and stowing away sails and sheets.

Now, to check out that diesel smell. First the bilge, yep that's diesel down there but where the hell is it coming from? First I checked the fuel filter as I had just replaced two washers there to stop a persistent leak I had had for some time, but it was dry. So around the engine I went feeling under all the fuel pipes until bingo, I found it. The pipe from the fuel pump to the fuel filter has given up the ghost. A quick call to Nanni in Sydney meant I wasn't going to give them any more money at this stage, but that I should get it fixed locally. So a call to a local Hydraulics outfit means I will be getting up real early tomorrow to get down to Seaka remove BOTH fuel lines and dashing up to Port Macquarie to get them replaced.

So I did a bit of a clean-up and started the removal of the windvane [WV] to alter part of the bracket so I can raise the blade clear or the water when motoring or using the autohelm. Well that was it, before I knew it I had made my first sacrifice to King Neptune for this voyage as a block slipped overboard and sunk out of sight.

Now I usually don't give up easily so grabbing a mask and fins, bugger no togs, boxers will have to do and it was into the dingy and into the water. Now I've never got back into this dingy from the water before so this was a bit of a gamble, I did untie the dinghy though in case I had to swim it ashore to get back into it. So up and down I snorkeled looking for this block which the tide had claimed. Well King Neptune won this time but bloody hell I didn't realise how shallow it was only sum 20 meters from my mooring!

So that was my day, disastrous, triumphant, dramatic and bloody sun burnt!

See video at www.youtube.com/watch?v=zYzS97Fg5mc
and www.youtube.com/watch?v=H3HVpyG__ZQ