Yacht Delivery Blog

We are done! The boat's tied up safe and sound in the marina, the crew has packed their bags and headed off, and I'm here doing the final clean-up before I leave at 6 am tomorrow morning. I have to admit, I was pretty anxious for the last 24 hours. I was on the edge of my seat, hoping those saildrives would hold out for the final stretch. I even changed the oil in both of them around 3 am, because we were going to make landfall around 5 am and its quite a way up the river, and the tide was going to be dropping as we went up, meaning they'd have a bit more work to do. And the final approach was definitely… engaging. There was a fair bit of tide coming out of the river, which dropped our boat speed down to around 4 knots. We also had the added obstacle of river traffic to contend with, and the channel margins were tight – about half a meter on either side. It was one of those situations where you're constantly running through scenarios in your head. I was thinking things ...

Well, we are almost over the line! It's taken a while to get this far, dodging cyclones, making boat repairs in remote locations, and dealing with all the hiccups and issues that inevitably pop their heads up on trips like this. It's a testament to the resilience of both the crew and the boat (and the skipper's ability to MacGyver solutions!). To give you an idea of how close we are to the end of our resources, I'm down to less than 10 cable ties and probably less than two meters of duct tape! So its pretty tight. And I've got just enough oil left for maybe one more gearbox oil change. I did the starboard one last night, and that gave me enough confidence to increase the RPMs by a few hundred. I'll do the port one shortly, top off the starboard one with the last of the heavy gear oil, and that should get us up the river. I'm no expert on emulsified oil or sail drives, but it seems like the oil still has a lot of its lubricating properties. The sail drives a...

Well, I had thought the chances of headwinds were diminishing, but it appears they actually minished (a nautical term, I'm sure). The breeze has kicked up quite a bit and is in the high 20s at the moment. The good news is that we can lay Brisbane at about 50 degrees off the wind, so at least we can still make progress and don't have to tack. I had been hoping to have a little bit more east in the breeze but it is what it is. The main has two reefs in (and the second reef is very deep!), and we've got several turns in the headsail. Every now and then, a huge wave explodes over the boat, just to keep us on our toes. Unfortunately, the inevitable has happened. I had my suspicions the day before yesterday, but it was definitely confirmed yesterday: the port saildrive now has sea water in the oil as well. It's absolutely no surprise, really, but I had been hoping it would hold out a little longer. So, we'll have to be managing the engines very carefully, as it looks lik...