MV Dirona travel digest for Melbourne to Whitsundays 2015

Position: -37°49.16'S, 144°55.32'E

We left at 5am this morning, a good hour before sunrise. We could see up ahead on AIS that two tugs were turning the ship FMPC 22 in the the Swansea Swinging Basin, partially blocking the channel.

Position: -37°49.43'S, 144°54.32'E

By the time we arrived, we had plenty of room to pass south of the FPMC 22 as the tugs had almost completed turning the ship for departure. We were expecting the ship might eventually overtake us farther down-river, but it never did.

Position: -38°6.49'S, 144°48.47'E

We're underway on a five-day passage from Melbourne to the Gold Coast, just south of Brisbane. A front passed through yesterday, and a brief high-pressure system is now over the Bass Strait with 15-knot westerly winds at our currently location in Port Phillip. We should arrive at the Rip about halfway between max flood and high-water slack on a relatively small 0.6m exchange, so conditions should be good to exit Port Phillips. From there we expect to have at a maximum of 15-20-knot westerly winds behind us most of the way along the southern Victoria coast. A 968-mb low-pressure system approaching south of Tasmania from the west is predicted to pass through Bass Strait late Thursday, and by that time we should be around the corner near Eden and get 20-25kt southerly winds behind us for a day or so as the system passes. Then we should have reasonably light winds all the way to the Gold Coast. This far south weather can change rapidly, so we'll keep an eye on the forecast and stop to let the system pass if necessary. (Click image for a larger view.)

Position: -38°17.70'S, 144°38.12'E

The incoming current at the Rip slowed us down from 8 to less than 5 knots and the current moved us around a bit, but we had no problem exiting Port Phillip into Bass Strait.

Position: -38°30.53'S, 144°52.43'E

Conditions have been excellent so far. Winds are less than 15 from the west and we've got a low swell mostly behind us as well. But even in these calm conditions, Cape Schanck looked a little bleak, particularly this detached rock.

Position: -38°48.50'S, 145°29.63'E

Conditions are still looking reasonably good for our run along the Victoria and New South Wales coasts. We're making good time and should stay ahead of the low-pressure system coming in from the west. This is the wave height forecast for Friday morning, two days from now. We should be around the corner and heading north along the New South Wales coast by then, with southerly winds behind us. That purple section south of Tasmania is 10-20 meter seas--there's something we hope never to see.

Position: -38°56.40'S, 145°46.07'E

The Wonthaggi wind farm to our north on Cape Patterson generates wind power 80% of the time--a testament to how much wind the area gets. Winds fortunately are light right now--less than 15 knots with a low southwesterly swell.

Position: -39°5.77'S, 146°33.18'E

We plotted a course to run just north of the busy traffic lanes as we rounded Wilsons Prominatory, known locally as "The Prom". This routing was a little closer to shore that we might normally run, but kept us out of the way of the many ships that passed us in the constricted area. The blue triangles are AIS (Automtic Identification System) targets. Dirona is the red boat-shaped target about center of the screen just east of the Prom. (Click image for a larger view.)

Position: -38°51.70'S, 147°6.78'E

It felt a bit like old times to be running a coastal night passage with a cruise ship passing us. This often happened on our passages between Alaska and Seattle. (Click image for a larger view.)

Position: -38°31.95'S, 147°53.61'E

The first of perhaps a dozen oil rigs that we'll see today as we pass through Gippsland Basin. Major oil and gas fields were discovered in the area starting in the 1960s and 21 oil and gas platforms operated here as of 2012.

Position: -38°22.09'S, 148°15.17'E

The last rigs as we pass through the field.

Position: -37°41.52'S, 149°44.36'E

Winds have been light most of the run, but picked up to 20 from the northeast late this afternoon. Not a big deal, but it did generate a fair bit of pitching motion into head seas. The winds dropped back down below 15 for a few hours and backed to the north, then backed farther to the WSW and shot up to a steady 30 in the last couple of hours. The waves are about 6-8' behind us and closely packed. We expect winds to lessen a bit as we round Cape Howe and head north up the New South Wales coast.

Position: -37°24.56'S, 150°2.20'E

Air-popped popcorn makes an excellent midnight on-watch snack. Conditions have improved as we rounded the corner and turned north. Winds now are in 15-kt range from the south, with reasonably gentle seas.

Position: -34°55.94'S, 150°48.89'E

As predicted, the winds picked up to a steady 25-30 knots from the south this afternoon, producing 10-12' closely-spaced seas. They are mostly behind us, but are rolling the boat quite a bit when they catch the stern--we've seen rolls beyond 26 degrees. Conditions are rough enough that we were sldiing around on the bed too much so are both sleeping on the floor during our off-watches to limit motion--Jennifer wedged in the narrow gap to the port of the master berth and James on the opposite side. At one point we took a rool big enough to knock over Spitfire's non-skid-based food and water dishes, something that hae never happened before. At the same time, our thermos carafe that was standing in the galley sink was flipped on its side so violently that the interior glass shattered. We're now in the protection of Beecroft Peninsula to our south, and waves have lessened considerably. We've been running a course close to shore to keep out of the several-knot southbound offshore current that would both slow us down and generate big waves against the strong southerly winds. Winds still are steady 20-25 from the south, and we expect them to slowly lessen over the next 24 hours.

Position: -34°15.99'S, 151°0.56'E

The Sea Cliff Bridge is a balanced cantiliver bridge strung along the cliffs between the coastal towns of Coalcliff and Clifton. The bridge is a popular setting for car commercials, such as this Shell/Ferrari ad.

Position: -34°10.74'S, 151°5.54'E

The coastline here is dramatic, with little shelter.

Position: -34°0.91'S, 151°15.18'E

Cranes in the shipping terminal of Botany Bay--the major shipping harbour for Sydney. The airport also is nearyby--you can anchor here for that "end-of-the-runway" experience.

Position: -33°57.08'S, 151°16.62'E

The Syndey to Wollongong race fleet passed us just south of Syndey Harbour, with several Sydney-Hobart boats amongst them. The race runs to Wollongong, about 45 miles south of Sydney and back. Conditions had improved over the course of the day, but you can see in the video some big waves still are rolling through. (Click the image to view the video).

Position: -33°56.09'S, 151°16.88'E

We were right in the middle of the Sydney to Wollongong race fleet and had to adjust course several times to get out of the way.

Position: -33°6.93'S, 151°42.22'E

Making spaghetti with meatsauce for dinner. Unless conditions are extremely rough, we cook and eat dinners at sea the same as when moored, although we tend to favour less spciy food at sea. Seas are rough enough now that we've mounted potholders to the stovetop sea rails to prevent the pots from sliding around.

Position: -33°5.52'S, 151°43.05'E

Perhaps 20 ships were anchored off in a row, waiting to pickup coal at the Port of Newcastle, out of the screen shot to the north. The ships were anchored as far as 20 miles south of the port.

Position: -32°15.44'S, 152°36.84'E

Winds were mostly below 20 today, but picked up again to a steady 30 kts from the southeast as we passed Seal Rocks. Boat motion from the large seas was again severe enough that we slept on the stateroom floor, wedged between the master berth and the wall, to limit our motion as we'd slide around on the berth too much. And for added excitement, we passed through a several-hour electrical storm with lightning illuminiting the area for miles every couple of minutes. At 6am, the winds suddently dropped to below 10 from the north, so conditions are starting to improve.

Position: -31°35.02'S, 152°54.03'E

Shrimp salad pita pockets for lunch. Conditions have been calm most of the day, with winds below 15 kts, and we expect that to last most of the way to the Gold Coast. We're making good time now--we've continued to tuck in close to shore to avoid the several-knot southbound current. This has been remarkably effective, and we sometimes get a push from a northbound backeddy.

Position: -28°37.97'S, 153°39.09'E

Conditions remained calm overnight and we're now off the floor and back to sleeping on that soft, raised platform in the master stateroom. We could imagine everyone using these. :) We're just passing Cape Byron, the most easterly point on the Australia mainland and a popular tourist attraction. Many people were high on the cliff taking in the view on this beautiful sunny day. If we continue west as planned, the next time we'd be farther east is if we crossed the International Date Line again.

Position: -28°9.96'S, 153°34.18'E

We continue to near to the coast to avoid the strong counter-current. Here we're running even closer than on the rest of the trip to pickup every minute we can get in order to make the Gold Coast Seaway before sunset.

Position: -27°57.58'S, 153°27.78'E

The iconic Surfers Paradise skyline is a welcome sight.

Position: -27°56.05'S, 153°25.82'E

Fishers and spectators on the tip of the south Gold Coast Seaway wall.

Position: -27°56.12'S, 153°25.53'E

Even in relatively calm water the shallows in front of the seaway entrance build up a good-sized swell. You can see Kimberly Rose II just beginning to exit the channel. We bet it will get interesting in rough water.

Position: -27°58.32'S, 153°25.44'E

We've posted the rest of our photos from Melbourne and the Formula 1 race here.

Position: -27°58.32'S, 153°25.44'E

After a five-day run with a couple of rough nights at sea, it's wonderful to be back in sheltered waters again. We had a great meal over a bottle of wine on deck and then slept very well. The weather is much warmer than the last time we were here. That and our position on the end of the dock in the Southport Yacht Club reminds us of our stay in Waikiki--we're going to enjoy our time back here.

Position: -27°58.32'S, 153°25.44'E

We wax Dirona every six months, but we haven't been in the same place long enough, or people haven't been available, so this one's stretched out to eleven. At this point, we need a good cut and polish. We'd heard good things about Harbour Force Marine Detailing, and they had a four-person crew on the boat within thirteen hours of our landing. They did a top-quality job and it's great to see Dirona shining again.

Position: -27°58.32'S, 153°25.55'E

Southport Yacht Club is the home port for Nordhavn 76 Voyager III.

Position: -27°58.39'S, 153°25.57'E

We had a good lunch on the deck at the Southport Yacht Club. They're building a floating bar on the right of the photo that should be done in a few days--we're looking forward to testing it out.

Position: -27°58.12'S, 153°25.51'E

Despite the fact we live on the water, we rarely get far from it. We had a great meal overlooking the water at Glass restaurant in the nearby Marina Mirage complex.

Position: -27°58.32'S, 153°25.44'E

We're really liking our spot at the end of the docks where we can watch all the boat traffic going by.

Position: -27°58.32'S, 153°25.44'E

Drymaster Carpet Cleaning steam-cleaned the carpets today. They look and feel so much better now.

Position: -27°58.32'S, 153°25.44'E

Bob McCallum of Gateway Hydraulics came out on a Saturday to drop off the parts needed to install a fuel cooler. Fuel coolers are rarely needed in modern marine applications and many recommend against their use. The downsides are certainly worth considering but, on Dirona, the upsides eventually won out. Modern diesel engines recirculate large amounts of fuel and, since some of the fuel passages are in the cylinder head, the fuel returning from the engine is nearly at engine operating temperature. 180F fuel is quite hot but with large fuel loads, it's diluted by the rest of the fuel in the system and the heating of the fuel load is negligible. But on multi-day runs, the fuel tanks start to get quite warm. The main tanks have 86F water on one side and 110F engine room on the other so, over time, the full fuel load gets hot and the day tank can get as high as 170F. A 70-gallon space heater in the engine room is hard on the people and the machinery, so we have decide to cool the fuel and enjoy lower engine room temperatures.

Position: -27°58.32'S, 153°25.44'E

Here Cookie of S & H Spars is splicing a shackle onto the end of our spare anchor rode. Originally we had the chain portion of the spare rode permanently spliced to the 500' of line, but to improve boat trim, we moved the chain portion from the forward anchor locker to the after part of the boat.

Position: -27°58.32'S, 153°25.44'E

We like to have a spare snubber on board, and have had two part since leaving Seattle. After our snubber parted last year, we switched to the spare and purchased two new chain claws, but hadn't yet spliced them onto lines. These RWB chain claws, recommended by David Fincham of Speedbird, are high quality and half the price of what we were using previously. S & H Spars spliced them onto lines for us, so now we have two backup snubbers.

Position: -27°58.32'S, 153°25.44'E

Our new Hydac S610-10-INC625-NI/G1 fuel cooler in place. The cooler is a brazed plate heat exchanger made from nickel brazed Inconel (Austenite nickle-chromium-based superalloy) designed for highly corrosive environments like warm salt water.

Position: -27°58.32'S, 153°25.44'E

240-volt automatic load-shedding was just installed on Dirona. This system first turns off the hot water heater, and then the HVAC system, prior to exceeding power-source capacity.

Position: -27°58.32'S, 153°25.44'E

Dave the Diver setting up to clean the bottom. (If you are in the Gold Coast area and need a dive, call David at 0416891132). The zincs remain in good condition, so we won't have to change them for at least another 3-6 months. We track that in our maintenance log.

Position: -27°58.32'S, 153°25.44'E

Woolworths dropped off a relatively small load of groceries today, mostly items that were out-of-stock in Melbourne and some produce. Spitfire apparently can smell the kibbles in those purplish-silver bags at the back on the right--but he's not much of a bloodhound for actually locating them.

Position: -27°58.32'S, 153°25.44'E

Many Australians celebrate "Christmas in July" as that is winter here. We got our Christmas today, when the 2.6 cubic meter pallet we'd shipped from Seattle finally arrived. We'd scheduled it to ship to Melbourne early March before we arrived there, but the longshoreman's strike delayed the shipment in Los Angeles for over a month. The pallet arrived into Melbourne last week and was delivered to the Gold Coast today.

Position: -27°58.32'S, 153°25.44'E

One of the items in our pallet was new Prostock Marine inflatable fenders--6 of the 18x42 and 2 of the 24x42 sizes. We'd been fighting seam leaks in our Aere inflatable fenders since they were new. Several other boat owners who had similar poor experience with Aere recommended ProStock. Prostock seams are welded rather than glued and consequently don't have the persistent seam leaks that the Aeres often suffer from. It's wonderful having big fenders that actually hold air again.

Position: -27°58.42'S, 153°25.46'E

Our micro-tender is invaluable. We've used it throughout the South Pacific for surf landings or carrying it across the reefs. And we've used it extensively in New Zealand and Australia--for both surf landings and long shallow beaches where we'd not be able to land the large tender ashore. We can deploy and stow it quickly, and we can easily carry the dinghy and the motor between us, and then tie it ashore out of the tide's reach. As an experiment, we'd gone with as small as possible when we bought it: a Mercury 6 ft 7 in. It was a little on the small side, a bit of a wet ride, and wasn't very stable, both initially and directionally. So when Defender put the next larger size on sale for $695 we couldn't say no. We already were in the final stages of planning a large sea freight shipment to get our fenders and other assorted parts and supplies, so shipping the dinghy was effectively for free. The new dinghy is 7 ft 10 in, stows in the same place in our lazarette, has much more interior space, is a dryer ride and is more stable in both dimensions. We love it.

Position: -27°58.42'S, 153°25.46'E

Palm Cat barely squeezed past us on the way to the Southport Yacht Club fuel dock. We'd originally planned to leave April 2nd, but Southport was able to find another slip where we could stay into the busy Easter Holiday weekend. So Dirona now is on the end of the superyacht dock.

Position: -27°58.42'S, 153°25.46'E

Our new Prostock Marine inflatable fenders in action. They don't look nearly as large when deployed as when piled in the cockpit.

Position: -27°57.11'S, 153°25.33'E

Jean and Matt Findlay on Superted V arrived into Marine Stadium last night and we stopped by for a visit before they continued north the following day. We've not seen them since January at Kettering in southern Tasmania--it was great to see them again and catch up.

Position: -27°58.42'S, 153°25.60'E

Greg Turner of Maritime Safety Queensland dropped by to tour the boat last week. Before leaving, he invited us to "Thirsty Thursday" at the Southport Yacht Club. It sounded like fun, so here we are. Jennifer is on Greg's right and his partner Cyndy is on his left.

Position: -27°58.45'S, 153°25.48'E

To stay a little longer at the Southport Yacht Club, we moved to another berth. So we get all new scenery.

Position: -27°58.41'S, 153°25.46'E

Jennifer biked over to the Australia Fair Woolworths, on the other side of the waterway, to stock up on fresh produce for the trip north.

Position: -27°58.22'S, 153°25.46'E

We stopped off at Mariners Cove fuel station to top off our diesel and gas tanks for the trip up to the Great Barrier Reef. We carry 48 gallons of gasoline in two tanks mounted on the boat deck.

Position: -27°57.23'S, 153°25.24'E

A last look back at the Surfers Paradise skyline. The weather looks excellent for a 3-day run to the Whitsunday Islands to pick up where we left off. We're expecting winds no more than 10-15 knots and swell less than a meter the whole way there.

Position: -27°56.16'S, 153°25.55'E

On calm days, the Gold Coast Seaway is very busy. In the picture you can see two surfers swimming across and the wake of a passing boat between us and them. We're amazed surfers are willing to take on the the heavy and often fast-moving boat traffic through the seaway.

Position: -25°18.25'S, 153°25.99'E

As we continue our run north to the Great Barrier Reef, conditions have been good so far with light wind and swell. At times, a 1-2-knot counter-current has slowed us down a bit, but in these conditions who can complain? The Fraser Island area was unusually busy with a mix of recreational and commercial fishers. The icons on the radar display are ARPA (Automatic Radar Plotting Aid) targets that represent other boats in the area.

Position: -24°34.71'S, 153°18.87'E

Making "Stir-Fried Chicken with Dried Red Peppers" for dinner from Chinese Cuisine (Wei-Chuans Cookbook). We've had many good meals over the years from our 1974 edition of this cookbook, purchased in Toronto in the 1980s.

Position: -24°31.87'S, 153°17.35'E

Conditions have remained calm, with winds mostly below 10 and seas under a meter. We're still seeing 1-2 knots of counter-current, but expect that to start dissipating soon.

Position: -22°49.39'S, 151°48.82'E

Sliced turkey wraps for lunch.

Position: -22°37.06'S, 151°36.64'E

The container ship Jules Verne running south for Brisbane.

Position: -22°19.47'S, 151°17.08'E

We're back in the Great Barrier Reef. In the six months since we last were here, we've completed our southeast Australia cruise of the Hawksebury River, Sydney Harbour, Tasmania and Melbourne

Position: -20°57.93'S, 149°37.57'E

Boating makes available some of the most amazing experiences from all over the world. One of the least amazing ones occurred this morning where Jennifer woke up to a wet bed and carpet, with water running in from above. Fortunately it was fresh water. Not enough water was missing from the freshwater tank for that to be the problem and it wasn't raining, so that wasn't the problem either. It was fairly easy to isolate the leak to the pilot house air conditioning system condensate drain. Easy ended about there. Unplugging the drain, getting it flowing better, and cleaning up the mess took a bit more time. In the bottom of the photo, we've opened the master stateroom floor to expose the manifold where all the A/C hoses drain into the grey water tank, and are clearing the hoses with compressed air.

Position: -20°43.03'S, 149°16.64'E

The water temperature has been increasing steadily as we work north and is now at 90.1 degrees. That's the warmest sea water we've operated in.

Position: -20°36.21'S, 149°6.80'E

Navigation light and helicopter service platform atop tiny Coppersmith Rock.