Year 2 – 30th April 2025 - Scawfell Island-Goldsmith Island

It is my son’s birthday today so Happy Birthday Alex!.

It was a very pleasant day and we had had a very still night. We had a morning tea and hen breakfast and enjoyed the start of the day. We then decided to get the dinghy down and to go and have a swim and a snorkel. Paul and I showed how to get the dinghy down and we got our costumes on etc and our Stinger suits and headed ashore. We anchored off the beach and we had a good swim and a snorkel although the coral and sea floor were not that great. We then moved out further along the shore and the coral was much healthier and more interesting. Even though it was not the best of snorkelling everyone enjoyed the experience and swim. Luckily there were no Nobby Clarks around.

We upped the dinghy on the davits and prepared Stormbird to leave. Once ready we slipped the buoy and headed out of the bay. The wind was from the Southeast and before long we put up the sails and we were sailing on an angle of about 130 degrees. The wind was light but we were moving. Paul put out the rods and we hoped to catch some fish. The cloud cover over the morning gradually built up and the wind began to increase over time and the wind went up to 15-16 kts. This meant we stared to make some reasonable speed and were into the 7 plus kt mark. It was lovely sailing with the sun out and it was a relatively flat sea.

Peter, Angus and John did the daily checks which took some time but enabled them to learn more about the boat. I had three options as to where we may go depending on how fast we could sail. Due to the extra wind, we made good speed and were able to go beyond Keswick and  St Bees and then we went beyond Brampton and Carlisle. We had a bacon roll for lunch and sailed on well. Unfortunately, we did not catch any fish.

We sailed on and approached Goldsmith Island at about 3.00pm and it seemed a good place to stop and it had two bays which were sheltered from the Southeast. The wind is expected to rise to 20 kts from tomorrow morning and we are then likely to have 4-5 days of winds up to 30 plus kts. We will therefore need to ensure that we have some sheltered anchorages during this period and I had planned for this.

We approached Goldsmith and took down the sails and motored round the Northeast corner and into Raylen Bay which had a nice beach. There was one catamaran on a buoy and there was one buoy left. We motored forward and slowly went up to the buoy and managed to pick it up. I think if there is a decent buoy I will use it instead of anchoring which may limit the damage to coral etc. We were therefore settled quite quickly and had some tea in the sun and chatted away. It was a lovely evening and this is probably the last day of calm weather. We enjoyed a sundowner and watched the sun go down – see the picture of the day.

We enjoyed a good supper of steak, sweet potato mash and broccoli. It was good to have moved on and be somewhere new. We will see what the weather does tomorrow.

Need/Opportunity Year Two

I am in need of more crew from late June to Mid-July. In addition, there is one space from Cairns to Indonesia from mid-July - so if of interest do email me at  hine.nick9@gmail.com  

In year two I will be going from New Zealand to Sydney and hen up the Eastern Australian Coast, Indonesia and then through Bali, Singapore and on to Thailand to end year two about the end of November 2025.

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