It's Now or Never. 28 Hours Sailing to Weather - Free Range Sailing

Well, I've had a look out there. It looks like the swell's dropping. The winds have eased quite a bit, so we're gonna try and make it out through the gap. We've been sort of trapped in the anchorage, trapped in the anchorage, so to speak, because the swells have been up quite a few meters. So they're dropping down to around about two today, so it should be a few whoop-de-do's to get out of there, but I'm just about to have the obligatory coffee. We'll tip Pascy out of bed, and then we'll make a start on this thing. Are you ready for adventures, Pascal? Are you nervous about today, Pascy? A little bit. You look nervous. You need to relax. Okay. Welcome to Free Range Sailing. For those of you that are new here, I'm Pascale, and this is Troy. For the last four years and 180 episodes, we've circumnavigated Australia, culminating with a very demanding year, refitting our 1969 Australian-built Clansman 30 sloop-rigged yacht, and sailing her across the Great Australian Bight. Now we've returned to our home state, we're taking the time to explore some of the places we didn't get the chance to see as much of before. Join us each week for more great sailing, fishing, and adventure as we cruise the West Australian coast. All right, gang, we're about to get out of here. Pascy's out there just having a chat to our friends. We're actually sailing in convoy at the moment. I'm just looking at the weather here, and we can see that there's a bit of a low coming in, and like any weather, it keeps changing day by day, but the bottom line is that we're gonna cop it. We're gonna cop it from the west and maybe the northwest, probably about 30 knots or something like that. The WA coast is a bit of a challenge, because anytime you have any weather coming from the north, there's very limited places to hide from it. The WA coast is actually pretty challenging in a lot of ways, and hiding from the weather is a big part of it. So we're just gonna use the next couple of days to get down. We'd need to do a bit of motor sailing. There's no wind to help us at the moment. We're expecting a little bit later on in the day, but we really need to get down. We've earmarked a little spot that's gonna give us quite a bit of protection, so we need to go ahead and do that. I was reading the comments on one of our video a little while ago, and someone was like, Troy can't just seem to enjoy himself where he is. And I was like, that's a little bit of an unusual comment, given that we're out here just swimming and diving, having a good time. But it highlights one of the things, though, that when you're yacht skippering, you do need to have an idea of what's a week to come, because you really have to plan to be somewhere safe. You can't just run away from whatever you want at any given time. There's not a safe refuge, necessarily, within 150 miles, and that's what we're seeing at the moment, where we wanna get to, where we consider safe refuge from what we're coming, what we see coming, is about 100 miles. So over the next few days, we'll enjoy ourselves, but there'll always be that undercurrent of planning, and I think that's something that can't be stated enough. If new people are getting out there sailing, there's always, you gotta be seeing what's coming down the pipe to you. So enjoy where you are, but always have an eye to the future. Just like life in general, hey, Pascy? With that in mind, what sort of tea are we gonna have? English breakfast tea with cream. So if that didn't show forward planning, I don't know what does. Woo! We're keeping up, we're keeping up. Oh, we're cranking. We're cranking. We're doing, I think we're doing six knots, and the breeze is probably about 10 to 12. What do you think, Pascy? There's not many white caps. 10 knots, probably. I need to sort out this foredeck. It's a bit ropey. Really ropey. How about doing blues ukulele while we're doing six knots? What's wrong with that? I don't know. It seems like you want something a bit more upbeat. Hard at work. Had to put the ukulele away. Starting to get some calluses. Back to sailing. Pretty lazy spinnaker run at the moment. We've decided not to put the main up so we can have the shade awning. Pretty slack. Sacrificing speed for comfort. Yeah, we've only, we've still got about 20 miles to go, I think. We'll get there in another three hours. Four hours. Oh, I feel like we're picking up speed now. Yeah, well as the wind picks up, I reckon we'll get six knots pretty consistently. At the moment, we're only doing five. When the swells are under three meters, the entry through the reef passes isn't that challenging, but it still demands a good lookout. The hunter is back. I was thinking about you and your love of pickled fish and Thai green curries. Yes. I'll grab this travale. Golden travale. Golden travale that you like so much. A little spangled emperor. They're notoriously cagey, Snapper. They were, too. The really big guys are super cagey. All the little ones are your dive friends. They just hang with you. Yeah. But as soon as they get to legal size, they just become quite a bit more cautious. I sort of turned around and saw him following me and as he changed direction, I just got a shot off just right at the edge of the spear range, which is a common story for anyone who tries to get a snapper, I guess. Well, you've done well because coral trout is off the menu here. They're protected here by gun. You can only catch them with bait. I didn't see a lot of coral trout here. Just out in the wave wash where I was swimming at, there were a couple out there. Just grabbing things that were washed in over the edge of the reef. Yep. In general, I didn't see many at all. I didn't see all that many cod and I didn't see many trout. But there's a lot, like an awful lot, of these snappers in about that size out there. Oh, yeah. It's a real nursery out there in the surf zone for them. Well, it's been a very lovely day. The weather's starting to deteriorate. The ham has had to come inside. The sky's starting to deteriorate. Starting to see some swell out there. The wind generator's starting to pick up. Well, what do you think, Pascy? We've secured the boat pretty well. Dinner's done. Yep. Well, I'm eating still. I'm always still eating after you. But yeah, we're expecting at least 30 knots tonight, so we'll see how we go. It has definitely, the forecast has gone down to what we were originally expecting like at the start of the week, so. Yeah, I reckon gusts of 40. Anyway, I've had plenty of practice, so here we go. All right, it's the morning after the night before. It was sort of, it was definitely blowy. The weatherman was right. It came out of the north, was howling, and now this morning it's settled right down. But we are expecting that the winds are gonna continue to sort of boost up at night, but luckily give us some nice days. So we packed in here behind quite a thick chunk of reef here and I can see a lot happening out there at the moment. You know, there's some waves crashing in. And as the system passes, the bigger and bigger swells will actually be coming, irrespective of the wind. So we're really happy that we got in here. We came in, it looked like a swimming pool, you know, as we were cruising in, as you can see here. So we're in here now and we're just gonna pass a week as well as we can. Today that means just relaxing. We've had a really hectic week. So with stronger winds and as the tide rises potentially, you know, things getting a bit lumpy in here, we're just gonna have a look at the anchor road. So you can see here that it's leading off at a fairly shallow angle and that's the reason being is we only carry 30 meters of chain and we back the rest up with 14 mil nylon. 30 meters of chain is plenty to give us any sort of catenary curve that you might want and gives us a decent scope in most of the times that we anchor, you know, in most of the places that we anchor, it's depths of about three meters and less. So 30 meters is actually plenty and then we back it up with as much rope as we need to have an elastic band effect. Nylon's very stretchy, you know, it can stretch to, I don't know, one third of its length before it breaks. So it gives you a really big rubber band and you can see here, we've got about 10, 11 meters of line out, of road out. That's way more than we actually need but it gives us a nice big stretchy three meters of bounce, you know, like we can absorb a lot of shocks with that and we don't feel it really on Mirrool. Each time we, you know, get a bit of a jolt or whatever, it never comes taut with a bang. Some people have used all chain roads. What happens is you're relying on the curve of the chain moving through the water to give you your shock absorber, that's the catenary effect. What happens is if you're in petitions that are mean enough that they can straighten out that chain, once all that catenary's gone, you know, you'll get a pretty hard shock loading on your gear. Some people back that up with a nylon rope snubber or rubber. We just bypass that just by having nylon rope spliced directly onto the chain and then we can let out as much rubber band, as much snubber, if you like, as we deem necessary. So if we had to drop the anchor somewhere in an emergency and there was like one and two meter waves coming through and we've had that up in the Torres Straits, we can just let out just a mile of rope and we get a nice big rubber band and it increases our safety margin. That's why we have 30 meters of chain going to our Rockner anchor and then backed up with 100 meters of nylon rope. So I saw Pascale rummaging around in my whiskey supply just recently and there's been a bit of bad weather so she's been keeping herself occupied. Look how happy she is. You think it's gonna be any good? It smells good. The fruit's in the pudding? Fruit's in the pudding, we'll see. Womp womp womp womp. Pascale, explain yourself. Oh. I made a fruit cake. How'd you make it? With the shuttle chef, which is my thermal cooker. It was actually quite a long process because you do overnight soaking of the fruit in booze. So we chose whiskey but you can use brandy or rum. And then the following day, mixed all the ingredients together and then you've got to simmer it for an hour and a half on the stove and then put it into the thermal cooker overnight. So it took two days to make. And we're gonna be enjoying it with our friend shortly. They're coming round for tea. So I had to give up a bit of my whiskey but this is the result. One of the really great things about Ningaloo Reef is that the reef comes right to the shore, it's unusual. It just means that we can walk straight off the beach now, no fins or anything and just go for a nice swim and have a look at some of this coral. Normally you'd have to go miles off shore to see it. It's a bit shallow at the moment but we're gonna try and have a snorkeling amongst it and just see what else is underneath all those plates. There's a lot of plate coral here and stuff like that. Really cool spot. ♪ There is a life I lead in this city ♪ ♪ Hurrying to cut my teeth ♪ ♪ I can take what I need to get by ♪ ♪ Doesn't make it easy ♪ ♪ The other piece of my heart moves slow ♪ ♪ Somewhere in the great unknown ♪ ♪ When I return from the afterglow ♪ ♪ Will you carry me like I am whole again ♪ ♪ Wait, put me together, take me back where I belong ♪ ♪ I want it all, I had a feeling but the feeling is all gone ♪ ♪ Wait, put me together, take me back where I belong ♪ ♪ I want it all, the feeling is all gone ♪ ♪ The feeling is all gone ♪ ♪ If I could take you back to my youth ♪ ♪ And show you what I wish I knew ♪ ♪ My will is strong with a place to leave ♪ ♪ In the moment I hung desperately ♪ ♪ The other ring on my wrist is gold ♪ ♪ Pairing with the light it holds ♪ ♪ When I return from my spinning ball ♪ ♪ I'm remembering what you told me ♪ ♪ Wait, put me together, take me back where I belong ♪ ♪ I want it all, had a feeling but the feeling is all gone ♪ ♪ Wait, put me together, take me back where I belong ♪ Watermaker's being a little bit noisy and that is because it's our last day on Ningaloo. So we're just doing a few chores, cleaning up the boat, stashing away a little bit of water and we're gonna split. This evening, we're gonna just, while there's just enough light, we're gonna slip out past the reef and we're gonna make our way south. At the moment, it's hard to get a good sailing window to go down south. The best that we can hope for is the winds from the southeast. So we're gonna get about 24 hours of everything under 15 knots, so we're gonna go for it. So this evening, we should be probably doing a bit of motor sailing, to be honest. I'd be surprised if we were able to sail and make good ground this evening because it's gonna be fairly calm. We're gonna get out away from the coast a bit and then as daylight comes, it's usually been switching to the southwest. Then hopefully we can use that to bend back in towards Shark Bay and see how we go because coming down the WA coast at this time of year, there's no more easterlies and there's no more westerlies, it's just southerlies. And we're going south. But yeah, I think we had a really, really nice last day here on Ningaloo with that snorkel. Husky? Yeah, it was incredible, really beautiful. Yeah, it's a pretty strong agree. We knew we were gonna be sailing close to the wind, so I stuffed the spiraling pipe with some plasticine before closing up and attaching our custom sunbrella cover to the windlass to minimize the amount of seawater entering the anchor well. Well, it's a bit wet and woolly out here this morning, but the winds aren't too strong and we got the southeasterlies that we were hoping for, which is fantastic because we're heading straight 180 degrees south. I wouldn't have thought it possible, lately looking at the weather patterns, just consistent southeasterlies, but we've noticed that in the morning we've been southeasterlies coming through, like a local thing, and that's what we've gotten this morning, which is so great. So we're going straight 180, and then when the wind shifts a bit more southeasterly, we'll be able to start going a bit more east in towards Shark Bay. Yeah, we're close hauled at the moment, it's not very profitable, we're taking a lot of water out the bow, but really happy that we are motoring and that we can sail 180 degrees. Yeah, probably skip the fishing rod, we're both very exhausted from sailing last night. We managed to make our way out west, and now we're just, so we're clawing our way back in towards Shark Bay. Not very chatty this morning, a bit tired, but happy that we're continuing further south. Started filming now, well the action's over. Oh really? Well we're only in one. I passed out. We're only one meter slop now. I passed out. So we're on the last tack now of this pretty epic 28 hour leg, the mega tack, from where we were in Ningala Reef all the way into Shark Bay. I meant to chat to the camera earlier, but I was so exhausted I passed out. Feeling a bit sunburned and a bit salty, landing on a very comfy settee. It's the best spot to be on this tack, and we're going hard. I think we're on a bit of a reach now, but we were close hauled, but yeah, we're going hard into Carnarvon. Looking forward to a proper sleep tonight, not moving around. Yeah. But yeah, we've pretty much been, apart from now, we've pretty much been close hauled the whole way, so haven't been able to really do much filming. It's been pretty hard work. Be happy to see the end of this. So it's a little bit of a rough anchorage here at the moment, but we're glad that we got in. Yeah, definitely glad we got in. So we did sail the plan. We did a really broad tack. About 220 degrees we went out away from the coast. We nearly got out to the 100 meter contour, actually. And then we had a bit of a delayed change in the wind. It was supposed to go southwesterly close to midday, and it didn't really until about three o'clock, so. So to make our turn back in, it delayed us, and then instead of staying southwest, it turned southeast, and we had to claw our way in, didn't we? Yeah, we had southwesterly for a few golden hours at sunset, and then we ate it until about 10 p.m. So we had that nice footage, you know, where we're getting that really nice reach. Nice reach, yeah. But then as night fell and darkness descended upon us, we clawed our way in. Unfortunately, we couldn't film me just getting loads and loads of spray right in the teeth and the eyes. So yeah, if you have a look around, we're in Teg's channel at the moment, so this is what passes for shelter at the moment. But we are, what we, we were sort of, our hand was forced a little bit, like at the moment it's just southerlies on the WA coast. It's quite an inhospitable coast. The summer comes along, so we picked a window. We went for it. We got what southeasterlies we could, we got what southwesterlies we could, but we're also, most importantly here, at neat tides. Right. Because in spring tides, the water rushes in and it rushes out, and if we just look at this now, we'll just spin the camera around for you, you can see that this is no place that if you have wind on tide in here, you get held sideways, you get rocked around. It's really uncomfortable. We really didn't want that. Major hassle. So we're in here now, fueling up supplies, all of that's gonna happen. Someone here at Carnarvon, they've generously reached out to us and they're gonna help us with our washing. Yep, thank you. We don't name names, but Pascale's gonna sort that out. Yep. And then we're only gonna be here in civilization for the bare minimum, and then we're gonna get back out there. Yeah, we're actually trapped here. We can only really get things done in the morning when the wind's under 20 knots, because that's the only time we can go ashore, so. Yeah, the weather man predicted, as well as Westerlies, he said it was gonna be under 20 knots, but it was 30, like 30 knots when we got in. Oh, when we came in last night, yeah. And it's gearing up to probably about 20-something knots pretty soon as well. Yeah. So, not that the airport, where they measure the wind, will have that. No. They're like three and a half Ks inland. Inland, yeah. But anyway. WA, it's a windy place. Windy always, WA. All right, let's get on to a cup of tea, Pascale. We need to catch up on some sleep. That's the truth. Thanks everyone for watching this week. 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