epic adventure

Tina had two weeks holiday booked a week and a half for our epic boat trip !and as it was our 25 Th wedding anniversary, so we spent the night in a city hotel and went out for a meal and went and had a play at the Adelaide casino. We came home the next day and whilst Tina went shopping i started packing up all the extra gear and rigging fishing rods, we decided to stay one more night at home before going to the boat .The next morning with Tina ticking off the gear from our extensive list as i loaded it into my car we were soon ready to head off on our trip, we said our good byes to our two children who were looking forward to having the house to themselves (i did say no parties please !!!)we arrived at the boat club around lunchtime and while Tina went into Port Adelaide for some more last minute supplies i finished packing our tri and filled up our 450 litre water tanks +2x 20Lr Jerry cans of water as well ,i also loaded 100 litres of petrol for our outboard which is a 40 hp four stroke mercury big foot and a 4hp Suzuki for the dingy, by the time we were ready it was late in the day so we decided on a early start tomorrow as the tide would be in our favour.Our alarm woke us at 7am and after listening to the weather forecast which wasn't the best, 12-15kts s-SW with an afternoon breeze 18 -20 kts sw we cast off our lines at 8.00 am and caught the out going tide.We motored thru barker inlet and off St kilda i raised our main and unfurled our head sail in these sheltered waters, we were sailing at 6 kts but once we rounded the black pole and hardened up onto our new course to stansbury some 40 odd nautical miles across Gulf St Vincent the breeze was 15kts gusting to 18 kts and we were hard on the wind and with the sea state of 1.0 m waves with a secondary wave pattern as well of .5 of a metre it made for a rough ride and to keep us going i elected to have the motor ticking over to help us maintain 6kts, but the motion was terrible and with frequent wave crests washing our deck and hitting our windscreen it wasn't the most pleasant trip in fact its the first time i felt queasy and i did wonder about turning back as my back was taking a pounding and beginning to ache Tina kept me supplied with cups of tea and she too felt a bit crook .It took 9 hours to cover 44 nm and we were both exhausted when we finally picked up a mooring at Stansbury we had an early tea and watched a DVD and before going to bed i put on our anchor light and set the anchor drag alarm on the chart plotter.Next morning we woke to the wind whistling in our rigging and the whurr of our newly installed air x wind generator which is brilliant since it was over cast our solar panels 2x40 watt were not producing squat but the wind Genny was keeping our 200 amp house bank fully charged even though we were running a 12v freezer ,12v frig ,12v water pressure system a 12v toilet plus all the other systems auto pilot ,chart plotters ,depth sounder lights etc to say that iam proud of that wind genny is an understatement we spent the day recovering, it felt good knowing that we had a week + ahead of us and it did us good to veg out and relax ,after tea we watched a DVD and had an early night next morning there was a north easterly blowing about 7-10 kts so we took advantage of this wind direction and we motored to the south spit light ,which marks the end of a sand spit that even at high tide i wouldn't cross due to the large number of oyster leases along it .We motored out to the beacon which is about 3n/m from Stansbury and we hoisted all sail and changed course to head to Edithburgh some 15 n/m away and straight away on the horizon you can make out lots of wind generators which appear to be out in the water .While sailing along we ticked off the little settlements that dot the shore line and as this was our first time along this part of the coast we both found it very interesting to tick off the towns on our chart as we drifted by on the now dying breeze which had dropped off to 4kts so the iron sail was cranked up so we could maintain 5 kts ,after 4 hours we took all sail in and motored into Edithburgh and as our cruising guide warned us of shoaling sand areas and areas of foul ground we made our way in slowly and pretty soon we picked a rsays mooring and with a sigh of relief we were here i always love the feeling of sailing somewhere new it gives me a real buzz i often think how Matthew flinders felt when he did the same -not that i am putting myself in his class they did it the hard way ,no charts no chart-plotters just a lead line and a sextant now they were sailors ! but neverlese i still felt like i had accomplished something .Edithburgh was to be a stepping stone on our way to kangaroo island but after lowering the dingy into the water from our davits i bring the dinghy along side the lee of our vessel and always fit the 4hp outboard but while placing said outboard into position ,i don't know if it was wake from another vessel or just me but the dingy rocked i almost dropped the motor in the drink and i didn't want that so i yanked it back i fell over backwards the outboard fell on me, my leg went under the dingy seat and i wrenched my knee quite badly i yelled out to Tina who helped me up and together we put the motor on the back of the dingy -what a drama !!half an hour later we motored over to the dingy wharf with our Jerry cans and we filled them up at the local servo and the owner was kind enough for us to look after them while we explored Edithburgh as neither Tina or myself had ever been here before .It took us about an hour to wander around and we bought some supplies and returned to the servo and wandered back to the dingy wharf as by now my knee was swollen and giving me a bit of grief .On arrival at the wharf we had to laugh as the tide was low and even though the dingy wasn't high and dry ,still we weren't going anywhere in a hurry and it was about an hour later that we managed to get her into deeper water where i did my impression of a cross country skier with the dingy oars as ski poles we both had a good laugh ! the rest of the day was spent relaxing, reading ,watching a DVD or two ,playing cards where Tina retained her coverted grand champion title and fishing -i had better mention this Tina asked about fishing for whiting here and i said,'' nah you wont catch them here its too shallow'' famous last words Tina caught two very nice legal whiting of 34cm and then we were plagued by trumpeters or as they are known locally ''shitties'' we gave up after these fish moved in and went back to some serious relaxing .At about 10o;clock that night i went on deck and it was a balmy still night, the night sky was cloud free not a breath of wind and the stars were so bright ,i was captivated the milky way was just there, i felt like i could put my hand up and grab a star it was hypnotic and i just couldn't tear my eyes from it ,i called out to Tina to come and have a look at this and it took her breath away as well after a half an hour of star gazing we went to bed feeling quite relaxed and content.The next few days were spent just relaxing and fishing we went ashore one more time for a garbage run and to pick up some more supplies we planned to head out to Troubridge Island and we left about 8 am the following day and as the island is only 3 or so n/m offshore it didn't take long to get there ,we fished a deep hole 13m deep and didn't even get a nibble we moved over next to the island in 2.5m of water and we caught 1/2 dozen plump whiting yum and in the afternoon when the sea breeze kicked in we motored back to the mooring in the blind channel,where we spent the remainder of the day reading .The next morning we cast of our mooring and sailed back to Stansbury as we had been away for a week now and i wanted Tina to have a few days at home before she had to go back to work ,as we left the edithburgh mooring there was a 10-12 kt northerly blowing which as we were heading north was to be a head wind with 1-1.5m seas which made for a bumpy ride but i have learnt from experience that if we motor at 3200 rpm instead of my usual 1900 rpm the ride is much better the downside is that we use double the fuel but i know which i prefer,it took us 5 hours to motor back to Stansbury and once we rounded that spit we were almost running with the waves which felt great compared with the previous 5 hours ! we tried fishing from our mooring but caught nothing and decided that an afternoon cat nap might be in order !,we both woke up around 4pm and i went on deck for a stroll to stretch my back and when i got to where we were fishing i looked over the side and around our berley bucket there were a school of tommies and they were big ,i called Tina and we both started fishing we ended up with 13 fish Tina caught 8 and i caught 5 what a way to finish the day and trip as we were heading home the next day- in fact after tea that night we had an early night and crashed.The next morning we set off early about 8.00am the winds were still northerly but there was a predicted s-SW wind change due this morning and one look at the sky and it was very evident that this was happening as we looked ,i raised all sail and the change hit us as we rounded the southern spit light beacon and the wind did a 180 and blew from the south at 14kts the waves quickly built but as we were on a broad reach the ride wasn't to bad,the trip home took 7 hours and our best top speed was 8 kts sailing the wind in the afternoon picked up even further and we got bounced around a bit but not as bad as the trip over when we got back to our mooring we flushed the outboard and washed all the salt off our boat and cleaned her up for next time ; foot note a few days later i went down to the boat and while checking our rudder i found that the bottom pivot of our stern hung rudder was broken, how lucky were we that it didn't break right off ! until next time