Year 2 19 July 2025 –Great Barrier Reef – Indonesia – Torres Strait

Adam and I were on at 8.00pm to 11.00am and 2.00am to 5.00pm. We were nearing the end of the inner channels inside the Great Barrier reef and were less than 50nm from the Torres Strait. I had checked the tides and with a rising tide the current flows West through the Strait and it is going East when ebbing (going out). We wanted to ensure we got there for the favourable tide which was the early to mid-morning. We therefore sailed when we could and motored to keep our speed up. Unfortunately, when the channel turned in a direction we thought we could sail the wind would change making it difficult and impossible.

There was little traffic but it rained a few times with that wet drizzle type rain that soaks within minutes. All we had for company were the navigation buoys and lights which demarcated the channel and various reefs. We saw one small yacht behind us doing about 4.5 kts and it faded into the grey wetness. The moon came to say hello for a bit illuminating the disturbed water and making the wet deck look sparkly. We handed over to William and Nicola who motored us up the last channel before we entered the Strait and came to the tip of Cape York.

The Cape York Peninsula is a peninsula located in Far North Queensland, Australia. It is the largest wilderness in northern Australia. The land is mostly flat and about half of the area is used for grazing cattle. The relatively undisturbed eucalyptus-wooded savannahs, tropical rainforests and other types of habitat are now recognised and preserved for their global environmental significance. Although much of the peninsula remains pristine, with a diverse repertoire of endemic flora and fauna, some of its wildlife may be threatened by industry and overgrazing as well as introduced species and weeds. The northernmost point of the peninsula is Cape York. The land has been occupied by a number of Aboriginal Australian peoples for tens of thousands of years. In 1606, Dutch sailor Willem Janszoon on board the Duyfken was the first European to land in Australia, reaching the Cape York Peninsula.

At the tip of the peninsula lies Cape York, the northernmost point on the Australian mainland. It was named by Lieutenant James Cook on 21 August 1770 in honour of Prince Edward, Duke of York and Albany, a brother of King George III of the United Kingdom, who had died three years earlier. The backbone of Cape York Peninsula is the peninsula ridge, part of Australia's Great Dividing Range. This mountain range is made up of ancient (1.5 billion-year-old) Precambrian and Palaeozoic rocks. To the east and west of the peninsula ridge lie the Carpentaria and Laura Basins, respectively, themselves made up of ancient Mesozoic sediments There are several outstanding landforms on the peninsula: the large expanses of undisturbed dunefields at the eastern coast around Shelburne Bay and Cape Bedford-Cape Flattery, the huge piles of black granite boulders at Kalkajaka National Park and Cape Melville, and the limestone karsts around Palmerston in the peninsula's far south.

I was woken at 7.00am approximately by William and Nicola who had got to the waypoint where they thought we could sail and we were just in the Torres Strait and were following the Prince of Wales Channel.  

The Torres Strait (/ˈtɒrɪs/), also known as Zenadh Kes (pronounced [ˈzen̪ad̪ kes]), is a strait between Australia and the Melanesian island of New Guinea. It is 150 km (93 mi) wide at its narrowest extent. To the south is Cape York Peninsula, the northernmost extremity of the Australian mainland. It consists of 274 Islands. To the north is the Western Province of Papua New Guinea. It is named after the Spanish navigator Luís Vaz de Torres, who sailed through the strait in 1606. The islands of the Torres Strait have been inhabited by humans for at least 2,500 years and possibly much longer. The various Torres Strait Islander communities have a unique culture and long-standing history with the islands and nearby coastlines. Their maritime-based trade and interactions with the Papuans to the north and the Australian Aboriginal communities have maintained a steady cultural diffusion among the three societal groups, dating back thousands of years.

The first recorded European navigation of the strait was by Luís Vaz de Torres, a pilot who was second-in-command on the Spanish expedition led by navigator Pedro Fernandes de Queirós who sailed from Peru to the South Pacific in 1605. After Queirós's ship returned to Mexico, Torres resumed the intended voyage to Manila via the Maluku Islands. He sailed along the south coast of New Guinea and discovered the strait that still bears his name. This discovery recorded in Spanish maps of the Pacific would later make possible James Cook's expedition to Australia. Torres and his crew are not known to have sighted the Australian mainland visited just four months earlier by Willem Janszoon sailing Duyfken without conversely becoming aware of the strait now known as Torres Strait. No specific records exist of Torres sighting the coast of a major land mass to his south, and early Spanish maps show the coast of New Guinea correctly but omit Australia.

In 1770 Lieutenant James Cook rounded Cape York, turned south-west and landed on Possession Island. From the top of a hill, he signalled down to the ship that he could see a navigable passage through the dangerous Strait. Later in Batavia, where he learnt that the French had preceded him across the Pacific, Cook re-wrote this signalling drill as a possession ceremony, saying he had claimed Australia's east coast for the British Crown.

We upped the sails and followed the waypoints I had set to guide us through the Prince of Wales channel. We were soon doing 9.9 kts and the current was pushing us along as well as the wind in our sails. We reached 11.6 kts in a gust and mainly managed 9.5-10.4 kts. We had to zig zag a little but we had timed it right and within a couple of hours were through the worst of the channel and into the Arafura Sea.  The Arafura Sea (or Arafura Sea) lies west of the Pacific Ocean, overlying the continental shelf between Australia and Western New Guinea (also called Papua), which is the Indonesian part of the Island of New Guinea. The Arafura Sea is bordered by the Gulf of Carpentaria and the continent of Australia to the south, the Timor Sea to the west, the Banda and Seram seas to the northwest, and the Torres Strait to the east. (Just across the strait, farther to the east, lies the Coral Sea). The Arafura Sea is 1,290 kilometres (800 mi) long and 560 kilometres (350 mi) wide. The depth of the sea is 50–80 m (160–260 ft) in most places, with the depth increasing to the west.

The sea lies over the Arafura Shelf, which is a section of the Sahul Shelf. When sea levels were low during the last glacial maximum, the Arafura Shelf, the Gulf of Carpentaria and the Torres Strait formed a large, flat, land bridge that connected Australia and New Guinea and eased the migration of humans from Asia into Australia. The combined landmass formed the continent of Sahul.

Once we were out of the Torres Strait the wind seemed to die and we struggled to make a good 5kts and with an increased swell Stormbird would roll and the sails would backfill. I considered all options but decided to motor to try to get some wind. It was not likely to increase until midnight at the earliest. We therefore motored for a few hours and then due to the wind direction put up the main as well so we motor sailed. We had made 174nm for the 24-hour run to 12.00noon.

However, by about 4.00pm the wind had increased a bit so we sailed on a close to beam reach (where the wind is on the beam of the boat or just in front) which are fast points of sail for Stormbird. We were soon back up to 6-7 kts and riding the swell well. Gradually the wind increased to 13-16 kts and we were cranking along and this level remained for a few hours until supper which was the chicken curry with rice and broccoli – bulked up with mushrooms.

We put two reefs in the main for the night and continued at 7-8 kts. As I finish writing this is it nearly 11.00pm and we are doing 7.8kts in 14 kts of wind and hopefully eating up the miles. We started outside the Strait at over 280 nm to the first waypoint and it is now 205nm to go.

The picture of the day shows Stormbird sailing at 10.7 kts in 9.1 kts of wind. It just shows you how fast the current was.

Need/Opportunity Year Three

In year three I will be going from Thailand to Sri Lanka, India, Maldives and then on to Chagos, Mauritius, Reunion, Cape Town, St Helena, Azores and back to the UK.  I am looking for crew from Mauritius/ Reunion Island to Cape Town and from Cape Town to the UK. If of any interest do email me.

The blog will continue as we continue the journey. If you have any comments or suggestions about the blog then do email me on hine.nick9@gmail.com