Setting out across the Coral Sea
| Date: | June 9, 2016, 4 a.m. |
| Position: | 17 44.47 S, 168 17.75 E |
Hello all! We have set sail from Port Vila, Vanuatu, today for the 1,585 NM crossing of the Coral Sea. We are gliding along on a beam reach in 10 knots of light breeze…very nice. We’ve got a great forecast with lots of tail winds, and we’re hoping for a fast 11-13 day passage. Privateer is in top form and all buckled down for offshore. Our destination is Thursday Island, Australia, so it’s fitting that we leave on a Thursday for this voyage.
Many of you have wondered where our journals are & if we’d set out from NZ yet… I’ve fixed a few things on-line so the journals should start coming in regularly to your e-mails now. In the meantime, we’ve posted the log from NZ to Vanuatu which you can see on the svlogbook site. We’ve had an incredible & busy month in Vanuatu and will post those logs soon. We visited the amazing island of Tanna & have posted a few pics, with more stories to come…
We are in the process now of settling into the offshore routine. It always takes a few days to establish a day/night pattern of sleep, sailing, and play. Taz had one puke today as we rounded the Devil’s Point under engine power, but now that we’ve got the sails set & drawing he’s back to his regular self. He sucked down about 1/2 a pineapple and some coconut water and promptly began “pee-peeing” all over the cockpit. He’s really proud of his new ability to pee on command and really strains into it.
We met another boat leaving with us today, sailing to South Africa on our route! They’re just a few miles away from us now & we’ve set up a “sked” in which we communicate with them at a set time & frequency each day on the SSB radio. It’s always nice to know we’re not the only ones out here, and have a chat about the weather & sail trim.
The island of Efate quickly disappeared as we sailed away and we have a waxing moon overhead tonight. As we approach the Great Barrier reef, we should have an almost-full moon, which makes for a friendly companion on the night watch. For now, we are silently clicking away the miles on our magic carpet, taking us to a new horizon, across the Coral Sea, and onward toward the Indian Ocean!
