Albany to Tasmania - Day 10 ‘Sailing to Windward In Heavy Weather’

Tuesday, April 28th 2026.

I woke to the of gently flogging sails. Our speed had dropped to around two knots overnight. The wind can’t have been above force three.  We probably should have started the motor during the night but both Kevin and I were catching up on good sleep and neither of us felt like listening to the racket made by the engine.

I had arranged to operate morse code with some friends this morning so I got up, put the kettle on, started the motor and turned on the HF.

Kevin and sat in the cockpit under overcast skies and enjoyed a morning cuppa. I checked the forecast which had hardly changed and we decided to keep heading North East in the light Easterly breeze with the expectation of the wind backing to the North tomorrow. We wanted to make as much North East progress as possible to give ourselves a good run between Kangaroo Island and main land Australia.

The seas remained relatively smooth with the primary swell from the South West and the secondary swell from the South East.

Before lunch I decided to do some stainless steel polishing in the cockpit to make the most of the nice weather.

I cut up some spuds and threw them in the oven for an afternoon snack.

I took it easy most of the afternoon, catching up on a couple of phone calls, and watching movies while Kevin caught up on sleep and an article about the downfalls of electronic navigation. Something I assured him I wouldn’t be reading at sea.

I reassured myself by counting the twelve devices aboard Emigre that have GPS receivers. It’s all well and good until we get hit by lightning I suppose.

At 1630 we crossed the continental shelf, a mere ninety nautical miles from Coffin Bay. We tracked inshore heading almost due North. We tacked shortly before midnight, about 30 miles South West of Greenly Island. We struggled to point more than about 50 degrees to the apparent wind into the building short steep waves. The Aries wind vane steered well, maximising our progress to windward. Unfortunately that progress was in a South South Westerly direction.

About 0315hrs I noticed cargo ship on AIS with a converging course. I lay in my bunk monitoring its closest point of approach (CPA) and time to closet point of approach (TTCPA). We were sailing fast, around 7 k perpendicular to the ship’s course.

I weighed up my options and chose to hold course as our AIS predicted the ship would pass over two nautical miles astern of us. To be sure that they had seen Emigre on their AIS, I called the ship on VHF channel 16.  The watch keeper confirmed that they could see us visually and on AIS and told us to maintain course and speed where possible. At 0345hrs the vessel passed safely astern of us at a range of about 1.5 nautical miles.

I ran the ‘Predict Wind’ model that cleverly forecast  our current 25 knots wind speed  as closer to 15. I was more concerned with the direction which was forecast to swing from East to North.

As the night went on, the wind did back slightly to the North and gave as a course over ground of approximately 120 degrees. The waves punished us one after another. The bow fell off the steep crests, plummeting into the hole right behind it. The mast shuddered and the hull reverberated like a hollow drum with each wave.

Despite the less than ideal sea state, Emigre was slipping along at 5-7 knots and continuing to make somewhat Easterly progress. This progress had now become important with a low pressure system expected to hit on Saturday.