Welcome to the Maunie of Ardwall blog

This is the blog of Maunie of Ardwall. After a six-year adventure sailing from Dartmouth to Australia, we are now back in Britain.

Friday 23 March 2018

When the ship comes in

After the heatwave of last weekend, along came a very different patch of weather:


We had over nearly two days of solid, heavy rain and a strong SE wind. Thankfully, we'd seen it coming on the forecast and got Maunie out of her berth and turned around to face her pointy end into to the weather before the gale hit us, otherwise the driving rain would have been driving into the companionway.

Unfortunately the combination of 30+ knots of wind blowing against the south-going East Australia Current quickly piled up the seas outside the port into a very unpleasant 4-6 metre swell, so our ship has spent over 2 days waiting just outside the Newcastle entrance, presumably rolling horribly (and motoring slowly in circles as the swell would have made anchoring hazardous), whilst the port has been closed to vessel movements on safety grounds. The latest news is that the Damgracht should finally clear in to Newcastle tomorrow (Saturday) and we should see Maunie loaded on board on Sunday.. We'll see!

No comments:

Post a Comment