Hauled on the Johnnos starter cord, many times, and to no avail..she was not starting (for the first time) and looked like it was flooded with fuel. So sailed off and anchored in amongst the 20 or so yachts further into the fairly calm and very well sheltered anchorage area. wind gusts were still over 15 knots at times tho.
Had a go fixing the outboard, it would be nigh impossible/ very dangerous to try to get home without it going in the current weather. Removed the spark plugs, fuel soaked and dirty, and did some rudimentary plug cleaning with my leatherman (note- bring good plug cleaning gear, &/or spare plugs) . It finally fired up on one cylinder after many attempts at plug removal and cleaning.
So set sail about 10am. Attempted to go back the way I'd come in around the windward eastern side of Island. Persevered trying to tack upwind into 25 knots plus and short steep 2m plus seas upwind of a dangerous lee shore consisting of huge granite boulders..Teria was knocked over a few times to about 50 degrees heel, so the hatchboards were all put in, allot of wave leaping, crashing into troughs. and another note taken - tie the anchor down or take it below before heavy weather sailing. Almost reached Radical Bay, but it was barely sheltered from the blast and the boulders to lee had whitewater smashing all over them,, I imagined what could happen in the worst case scenario should the rig break and the engine not start again, so made the decision to give up, turn tail and run for safety.
It took about 5 minutes to run back the distance that had taken about an hour to achieve before.
Once back in Horseshoe Bays shelter, it was time to regroup , sort things out and decide on the next move. One of the things to sort was the roller furling jib somehow got tangled up on it's-self. Either look for spark plugs on the Island and probably spend another day offshore at the Island (and miss work etc) or "have a go". The new plan was to go around the sheltered North West end of the Island and try to go against the roaring wind and seas on the inshore and hopefully less rough channel near the mainland, getting to the mainland again was the aim,,even Cape Palleranda would do, preferably the Strand/duckpond and just maybe Ross River where the trailer was.
The run down the outside of Magnetic Island was fast..for an Investigator. At times Teria surfed waves and got up on the plane, the usual bubbly wake stopped and a surfboard like smooth flow raced astern. At other times Teria broached, suddenly heeled over about 50 degrees and rounded up into a startling u-turn. Luckily the jib was furled away and the main is fully battened so no terrible sail flapping happened. These broaches were cause by "bullets" of wind being speed up by the very steep hills of the Islands coast (the Townsville fairway beacon wind speed was later found to be 25-30knots on the BOM site so these could have been more)
I stayed fairly close to the uninhabited coast first on port tack running,, but round ups meant heading at the rocks-beaches there. So changed tack to starboard so round-ups headed toward safer ocean.
Finally at Rollingstone Bay side there was flat calm and peace at last in the lee of the Island. I took this opportunity to drop the mainsail and lash it to the boom. Then get the motor running again, it was on 1 cylinder so could do about 3-4 knots on flat calm.
Rounded West Point and started getting strong headwinds, but the seas were relatively slight on the inshore side, around 1-2 foot height. Wave energy must be proportional to the cube of the height or something eh? because it was allot easier to go into these waves. Even so, a good one would smash most of the forward momentum out of the hull. Some small fishing boats were anchored there sheltering, one boat set off with Teria and headed for Cape Palleranda ramp at 3-4 knots with water spraying all over them (they would normally do 20-25knots). Water was also spraying all over and into Teria and me once the shelter was past. Both boat and man were saturated in no time, my jacket a mere token object to this punishment (note- bring the old offshore oilskin next time!)
I checked below, windows were leaking, hatches were leaking, bunks were sodden, even the laminated chart was taking on water! But the motor suddenly fired on both cylinders!! We were racing - into it at 4-5knots then smash! about 2 knots again..build up..smash again. Had to throttle off quickly to get a less damaging speed of about 3 knots.
Hugged the fringing reef of the Island, fortunately it was low tide and the exposed reef flat reduced most of the wave action to about 1 ft height or less straight from ahead. Good upwind progress at 4 knots into a howling 25-30 knots on the nose. Sub-horizontal spray still driving across the decks into the cockpit area. Here's a video of Teria battling strong headwinds under power.
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| Soaked, motoring into strong headwinds |
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| Strong winds - bimini lashed down, decks drenched. With no sails up it was at last possible to take a photo. |
Got up towards Picnic Bay before having to leave the reef flats "shelter", this run had allowed most of middle reefs length to be traversed too. The course from there was to clear middle reefs eastern end and navigation pole. The waves were again 2-3 ft height and now at 45 degrees to the bow, not so good for a motor hanging off the transom on a frame. It got wet and sometimes the wind heeled the boat under bare poles so cavitation of the prop happened.. with resulting demonic revs and throttle off. The motor went back to one cylinder again,, crawling past the reef end at 1 knot barely able to steer, nearly past the windward side of the reef (it was very shallow here 2-3m so anchoring feasible a magnitude less as worrying as the lee shore on the orchid rocks/radical bay side).
Just cleared the reef when the motor died and couldn't be restarted. The strong wind quickly blew Teria down wind a few 100m before I could get the mainsail raised. She steadied up at 1-2 knots under main, then the jib rolled out and took off at 4-5 knots with rails going under, rounding up etc until i got the trim right and in the groove. Enough windward ground (many km) had been won by motoring up the channel, so could now lay the Strand beach near the rockpool. It was a struggle to sail upwind like that, less sail area would be better, but no choice in that.
As the Strand approached the wave size began to abate and sailing got easier. A great feeling of having made it to safe shores seeped in as each minute went by. I kept close inshore for tacking up wind, now having the western breakwater to windward to stop the unrelenting wave energy.
Dropped anchor in the duckpond anchorage off the Casino and Marina. Flat safe waters again! Sorted things out, especially got the motor running again and a hot drink into me. Wind chill factor with the constant drenching of the inadequate jacket was starting to take it's toll. About 9 hours of sailing.
About 5pm radioed coast guard that i was on the last leg back to Ross River. The final leg was rough too, but not too far offshore, near other vessels and civilization of the port area. Motor sailed with furled jib to clear the shipping channel. Also the most unbelievably confused set of seas happened just off the Ports breakwall. Waves were rebounding at about 50-80 degrees to the main seas to cause this. Nearly reached an anchored trawler before tacking onto port tack and sailing again (with idling motor) for the entrance.
On approach i realised that the rudders top pintle fitting was working loose, the nuts and bolts had undone about 15mm and the fitting was flogging around just about to break off - ie loose the rudder and steering on final windward approach to a leeward rockwall entrance. Not good. A quick lashing with some 8mm rope quickly fixed it, it pulled the rudder head towards the traveller and held the loose pintle against the transom and saved the steering system.
Once in and anchored it was a very very slow crawl into the cabin. Got out of the wet gear and into dry clothes plus a hot drink from the thermos allowed motor function to return. The return upriver all went well but i didn't sign off to coast guard duty until the Teria was actually back on dry land again at the Barnicle st ramp around 8pm. Their radio shift ended at about 5pm but then a phone answering service allows contact after hours to sign off the tripsheet.
