After a month of waiting and a solid week of work running new wires, nav lights, halyards and rigging, Makroro had her mast back! Everything went smoothly dropping the mast back in. David Lambourne did a great job and tuned the rig up even better than before. The next step was the 400 nautical mile trip down the coast from Moreton Bay to Newcastle.
Makroro was laden with supplies, fuel and water, and our delivery captain, Grahame Bear, arrived on short notice to help me sail her south. Within an hour we cast off and motor-sailed south, navigating through Main Channel towards the Gold Coast Seaway.
A few hours in, and the first challenge struck. Sitting in the cockpit I could hear a faint hissing sound that didn’t sound normal. I opened the cockpit floor to the engine bay and steam billowed out around us, the hissing much louder. My heart and stomach instantly sank, and I hoped the boat would not follow suit. We cut the engine and Grahame sailed on while I investigated. Turns out a rubber hose had split and was leaking coolant. The engine was now overheating and turning it to steam. Shit! A good two hours later and we were back underway after I had patched the hose with silicone emergency tape (and gained new found respect for its usefulness). Spontaneous Boat Show purchases do pay off after all!
Thunderstorms rolled around us and it was 8pm by the time we crept out of the seaway, the lights of the Gold Coast behind us. The swell of the ocean took us, quite a change from the calm channels around Stradbroke Island. Time to find out if I truly get seasick or not. Thankfully, it turns out, I don’t. A northerly developed, and stayed over the next few days and pushed us along nicely. We averaged 5.7 knots, not bad for a snail.
Just after passing Byron Bay my trusty phone gave up on life, meaning I couldn’t contact my fiancé (Kelly) or family. Kelly had just begun to plan my funeral when eventually I was able to make contact again just past Port Macquarie. We were heading for Seal Rocks and noticed a strong southerly change approaching. Grahame made the (good) call of stopping over at Seal Rocks for the night, and we dropped anchor an hour before the southerly really kicked in.
We set out the following morning before the southerly had fully died down, and progress was slow. Then the engine decided to cut out. After many attempts at bleeding the fuel system and changing filters, the engine was going again. On our approach to Newcastle, night fell and a thick fog reduced visibility to a few hundred meters. Having no radar system, tensions were raised as we tried to work out if any of the coal ships nearby were about to materialise on us in the fog. Luckily Makroro’s radio can pick up AIS info (big ship movements) and after avoiding a collision course with another sailboat that we couldn’t see in the fog, we made a safe approach. But again, the engine decided to leave us. Grahame very patiently sailed on while I climbed around the engine for what seemed like the 10th time in a day. As a last ditch attempt at fixing the troubles, we rigged the fuel system to draw straight from a jerry can. With this temporary bandage applied we slipped into an eerily quiet harbour at 3am, tied off to a wharf and got some well needed sleep.
My thanks to Grahame for remaining calm and being so patient while we had so many problems with the engine. A post-mortem revealed old fuel filters full of gunk and air bubbles that could not be bled out. Lesson learnt.
2 thoughts on “Heading South”