[password] Cowboys99
[status]
:position 11 02.925s 143 04.114e
We made it! Yaaayyyy!! We're here, anchored inside the Great Barrier Reef. THE GREAT BARRIER REEF!! Our experiment in extreme sleep deprivation is over and the results are in: IT SUCKS! If you're the kind of person who needs their 8 hours of regular sleep, then offshore sailing *ISN'T* for you!! Take my word for it!! Now that we've established that, let me give you a news update...

The problem was that our arrival time at Raine Island (the entrance into the GBR) was going to be around 2 or 3am. We'd tried slowing our approach so that we'd arrive later in the morning but the vigorous winds over the previous week had stirred up some pretty large seas and we needed a lot of power from the sails just to stay on course and remain in control. Plus the prospect of getting tucked-in behind a reef, anchor down, and having as much sleep as we wanted was just too good to delay! So we all agreed that we'd deal with the pass in the darkness.

This meant that we wouldn't get to see any of the comforting signs that we were in fact arriving at the hoped-for pass, and not just rushing headlong into an anonymous wall of coral reef. The big giveaway was supposed to be the tower on Raine Island (built in 1864 to help ships locate the pass) which, in the daylight, would have been obvious. But in the darkness, the best we could do was search for it on the radar. Sadly, in 1864, radar reflectiveness wasn't a high priority for even the most forward-thinking of architects. An intermittent blip in approximately the right spot on the radar-screen, together with crossed-fingers, gave us the confidence we needed to head in...

With everyone on deck watching for hazards, we made it through the outer reef without incident and turned-up into wind, dropped our sails and began to motor the 5 miles up-wind to our anticipated anchorage. With the ocean waves now being blocked by the barrier reef, suddenly the boat was no-longer rocking and rolling. It was like exiting from a 5 day roller-coaster ride. Absolutely wonderful! Unfortunately we also discovered what 30 knots of wind feels like when you're facing directly into it, rather than heading away from it. Even with the engine at full power we weren't moving anywhere. Absolutely not-wonderful!

So we abandoned Plan A, turned back down-wind, rolled out a sail and set off for the next potential anchorage, 16 miles away. In precisely the manner that sensible sailors never do, we once again rocketed through the reefs in the darkness following a well-published track laid down by previous sailors heading for Thursday Island. The sun was up by the time we arrived at our anchorage, a submerged ring of coral that just breaks the sea-surface at low tide. We anchored on the lee side of it, but the sea-floor fell away so steeply and the wind was so strong that we knew we couldn't stay. Sigh! Looked like Plan B was going to be a bust too!

The next stop being another coral island 48 miles away which, given the strength of the wind, was 6 hours away. In "Ken's Torres Strait Passage Guide" the source of all our knowledge as far as traversing the Great Barrier Reef, Ken described this next stop as "well protected". The promised land! Having had our primary anchorage denied us by the wind (should've seen that coming!) and our backup anchorage denied us by poor holding (not entirely my fault as the chart showed a gently sloping sea-floor), Plan C was born. With the GPS in Anchor-Drag mode, we all had hot showers, an hour's nap and a quick bite to eat before motoring into the wind the pull the anchor up, raise our sails and get moving again. But this time in bright sunlight!

6 uneventful hours later, with each of us getting another hour's sleep en-route, we arrived at the nameless coral island just as the sun was about to set. The anchor hit the bottom in 8m of water and a delightfully shallow slope. The wind - blowing 20-25kts all day - has built some considerable wind-waves but we're nicely protected by the island. Tomorrow the wind is forecast to return to 25-30kts so we'll just relax and let it all blow over staying here for a couple of days catching-up on sleep, doing some laundry, cleaning the boat and tease the crocodiles. (The latter is only partially a joke! Paul is, right now, trying to catch one with Harry's fishing rod!)

So we're half way through the GBR already - Thursday Island and official entry into Australia is only 60 miles away. A day trip. But we'll eat the last scraps of food we'd otherwise have to hand over to the biosecurity people before we think about moving on :-)
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