Out of Torres Strait

We finally popped out of the end of the Torres Strait! I'm so pleased to have that part of the trip over – it feels like a huge milestone is behind us.

For the last week, the weather models have been showing we'll get wind "in 2 days," but then the next day the wind is still 2 days away. So I was very encouraged as we stuck our nose into the Arafura Sea and felt a tickle on my face. We got the mainsail up, and the tickle remained, but not from the same direction! We've been chasing the breeze around ever since.

We also had a lot of squalls blowing through last night, which kept us on our toes. The wind would shift and increase, then fade away, before increasing and shifting again. A bit of a wild ride!

It appears that the sunrise is bringing light headwinds, which I'm not going to complain about at this stage. The big plus is that we're able to head directly where we want to go. And the bigger plus is we aren't burning any of our precious diesel.

A New Adventure Begins

Location: Departing Denarau, Fiji And so it begins! The journey from Fiji to Southport is officially underway. I arrived in Fiji yesterday and had a fantastic handover from Karl, the boat's owner. It was a proper, detailed session, which is always a treat and makes the whole process so much smoother. It's rare to get a handover at all so that level of thoroughness was a huge help and saved a lot of time, and I'm very grateful for it—it makes a huge difference to a delivery skipper. This morning was all about final preparations. We filled the tanks with a massive 15,000 litres of duty-free fuel. By midday, customs and immigration were on board to complete the paperwork, and with their stamp of approval, we were good to go. The moment you first take the helm of a new boat is always a mix of excitement and a little bit of nerves. No matter how much you've been briefed, you're never quite sure how she'll handle. Will she respond to the helm? How will she behave in t...

Motoring

We've officially crossed the halfway point on our journey to Darwin, and things are looking good. The weather continues to cooperate, offering us smooth motoring so far. However, forecasts predict a shift in wind direction sometime tomorrow, with easterlies potentially changing our arrival time. The stronger the easterlies, the later we'll pull into Darwin. It's going to be time to transfer fuel later and the only pump available in Singapore was a rickety, hand-cranked contraption that leaked like a sieve . Transferring fuel has been a nightmare. It turned a simple task into a full-blown mission, complete with showers for everyone involved afterwards and a thorough boat cleaning session. Thankfully, things are much different now. Thanks to Rhona's keen eye, we snagged a fantastic electric transfer pump in Lombok. This beauty is a dream come true – just two hoses and a simple switch, and we can effortlessly pump 250 liters of fuel in a matter of minutes! Needless to say,...

Brisbane - Clearance Was a Nightmare

Well, we are finally tied up safely in Sanctuary Cove , concluding the Horizon PC52 delivery. But before we celebrate the completion of the voyage, let me backtrack and detail the Australian arrival experience. The final run down the Queensland coast was based on a forecast persistently showing 30 knots of North-Westerly wind . Our strategic swing worked perfectly: we kept going further east toward Bundaberg, then turned sharply south, giving us a far more comfortable angle on the waves and a safe run into the Brisbane River. We tied up to the fuel dock in the marina, as the dedicated quarantine dock (Q-dock) was occupied. And this is when the trouble started. The Australian Border Force (ABF) informed the marina that the fuel dock was now strictly out of bounds to everyone while we were tied up for quarantine. Now, that has nothing to do with me, right? Wrong. Apparently, it was entirely my fault. For the next 18 exhausting hours , we were the inadvertent roadblock. Commercial ...

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