We’ve tried and tried but have not been able to leave the Mackay Marina for more than a day at a time over the last 3 weeks.
With various work being done on the boat, we were “on the hard” in the boatyard for at least 2 weeks before being able to leave. To make matters worse, the wind here has been howling at over 30 knots for all of that time, and with Vivo being as wide as she is, the fear was that she’d sway in the wind so much that we would scar her sides on the travel lift, causing a lot of damage.
On Monday the 11th we caught a break in the weather and finally got in the water. After a lot of running around provisioning, paying bills, and doing laundry, we were able to leave on Tuesday for the islands. It is always great to get under way to the next destination, but little did we know what we were about to encounter on Keswick Island, just 20 miles from the marina.
As we were sailing towards Keswick I was reminded of all of our departures throughout the ARC, and how the anticipation of a new, unknown destination always left us eagerly awaiting new people and places, with the extra bonus of a long ocean passage to set the whole experience up. What we found on Keswick however, wasn’t something that we wanted to repeat. As we pulled up to the remote anchorage, the charts read “sandy with coral”, but after dropping and getting snugged up, I dove the anchor to double-check that all was right and found massive coral heads,….with in fact, very little sand. And, sitting precariously on a huge mushroom-head was our brand new, never been used anchor, with rode heading off in a completely different direction from Vivo, then eventually heading back towards the boat. We knew we’d have trouble getting the anchor up, and, if the wind shifted, we’d be on the beach quickly with a double mess on our hands.
After a tenuous night with someone constantly on watch , we devised a plan to get the anchor into the dinghy and get at least part of the chain heading in the right direction so that we could pull everything up with our power windless. But at 80 pounds, the anchor proved too heavy to lift out of the water, so we got it secured to the bottom of the dink, and thought we had most of our problems solved. However at this point the main shaft of the windless broke, leaving us unable to pull up the anchor or the 350’ of chain.
The decision was quickly made to leave all of the chain and the new anchor on the bottom for future retrieval by divers, if no one else got there first. We headed back to Mackay with no means to continue without our ground gear. Needless to say, we were pretty bummed out.
The gear was all retrieved a few days later with help from some local dive talent, and as we were returning to the marina, we had more engine problems, this time on the dive boat. After spending time cleaning fuel filters [sound familiar?], I told Mike that it was the gods telling him that in fact, he wasn’t “the lone ranger” when it came to boat problems,…
There was a bonus in all of this as for the first time we were able to do some [very] close-up whale watching. As we drifted quietly along trying to fix the fuel problem on the dive boat, Dave spotted 2 whales a couple of hundred yards off our beam, and our local boys told us that they were a mother and her calf and if we stayed where we were, they would probably get closer and closer to us, wanting to get a look at us for themselves. For about 10 minutes all we could see was the calf, but she slowly worked her way towards us. We wondered where the mom had gone but were told that we was probably underneath us, checking us out.
Suddenly both mom and calf surfaced about 40 feet off the beam; virtually right along side of us ! They were in no hurry, and stayed next to us for a minute or so; coming up and going down in unison, blowing as they went.
With Vivo out of commission again because of the windless, Merc and I have made the decision to leave the boat, this time for good. We want to salvage some time in the Whitsundays, and have left Mackay as of the 18th. We’ve been onboard for 8 months now, and it’s certainly a bittersweet feeling to be off alone; not going forward towards the original goal, and not being onboard Vivo. We wish Mike all the best and want to thank him for a job week done, albeit unfinished.
We’re heading to Sidney after the Whitsundays and will post again.
amandla
titsay
theartofmadeline
vaporwave
gummygunk
turnnoffyourmind
romaincrisis