Thursday 26 Oct around 0800 we dropped off the swing mooring and headed to Port Lincoln to catch a good wind window before a big blow was due late Friday and all day Saturday and Sunday. This leg was was really un-eventfull with light and variable winds and no swell. At 0330 Friday morning, after zooming in on the chart plotter to 500 metres, we discovered that our rumb line put us right through the tuna holding pens at Port Lincoln. These did not show up at the 2 nautical zoom setting, so is a bit of a trap. We deviated to access Port Lincoln via the south channel Enterance, with tuna pens either side of this channel. We motored into the porter bay marina and found a spot on a finger behind 2 shark cage dive boats.
With everthing lined up nicely we we were about 2 metres from the finger when a gust of wind blew the strbd stern into the rear platform off the shark boat and we kissed it above the water line. Well….it wasn’t really a kiss…..it was a full on tonguey…resulting in a tennis ball sized dent. This then caused the strbd bow to peck the finger as well. Both were not structural and I had them filled with filler to prevent any water ingress. In the next few days also arranged repair of the split hot water holding tank, as it was also now leaking along one seam. This took several attempts but to no avail. Will look at procuring a commercial unit to replace it.
My plans have now changed. Boomaroo is at the Porter Bay marina, where I will leave it until March. I will slip the boat in February to have the reverse pitch on both props adjusted, as they are too coarse and cause the motors to labour in reverse. I will also remove the retaining bolts and have then lock-tighted, to prevent any further problems with them working loose. Will also have the port head skin fittting replaced and a new skin fitting for a deck wash installed. I will round up another crew and do the GAB in March/April 2018. All the cray boat skippers and locals reckon this is also the best time to do the GAB East to West
Dodging the tuna pens
It was a tight fit getting tied up on the finger
It’s been a bit of a setback, but the final goal will be achieved.
Boomaroo 