Amazing Louisiades Adventure

Tuesday, 16 October to Friday, 19 October, 2012 
Louisiades to Mission Bay, Cairns

We dropped the anchor at 0145 on Friday morning after covering the 503 nm from the Louisiades to here in 64 hours - an average of 7.8 knots. The rally was an amazing experience that we both thoroughly enjoyed. I will update the earlier posts with photos and more detail over the coming days (weeks??).

The trip home was a more typical Coral Sea crossing than our trip over. We left Duchateau with 6 other rally yachts (5 going to Cairns with us and 1 to Townsville).

Nestasea leaving Duchateau

The first 2 days we had winds of up to 35 knots and large, confused seas. We put in our second reef at 1500 on Tuesday, the third reef an hour later and half furled our self tacker jib another hour later as the squalls continued to roll past. We sailed like this all night and I did not enjoy the conditions at all.

Warren was left to do most of the sailing with a couple of hours sleep when I could stand a watch around midnight. Conditions improved during Wednesday and Thursday was a fantastic sail in perfect conditions. I was back on deck and enjoying some food again and we had full main and self tacker all day. We averaged 8.8 knots during the day and covered 193 nm in 24 hours. This was a great way to finish the rally.

Friday morning we moved to Marlin Marina in Cairns where we cleared customs and quarantine after getting the all clear from Wallace.

Warren loved Wallace's booties

Print this post