Albany to Tasmania - Day 2 Friday, April 10th 2026

After spending the morning in the bilge working on the engine in light winds and confused swell, I was again feeling green in the hills and spent some time in the cockpit watching the swells roll through. We had a quiet afternoon mostly catching up on sleep.

The sky was full of heavy cloud and had been since we left Albany. This was not doing my small lithium battery bank any favours despite having upgrading my solar array from 100 to 350w.

Who knew solar panels didn’t work when the sun doesn’t shine?? Did I mention I like internal combustion for energy generation?? Enough about that.

At 16:45hrs I briefly switched on the Barrett 2050 HF radio and called into the Austravel HF Safety Net Sked. Roy took my call and gave me a 59 signal report into the Busselton base. It sure is nice to hear familiar voices when out at sea, hundreds of miles from other humans.

James put a lasagne that has dad had made and vacuum packed into a pot of boiling water and heated it up to our dinner. Having delicious meals frozen and vacuum packed sure does make it easy and save a lot of washing up.

The night was quiet and slow. The wind vane kept steering us back to Albany or on to Tasmania. Secretly it knows I don’t really like Esperance.

With regular course adjustments, we managed to keep it steering broadly in the right direction.

James took the second watch, attending to the wind vane in the fickle conditions whilst I got some sleep.

At about 0300, I thought I would enjoy a can of Pepsi whilst sitting in my bunk. I quickly fell asleep and woke up to find my bunk and sleeping bag covered in drink. Yuck.

The wind stayed soft for most of the morning with heavy cloud killing our batteries. We did several tacks, slowing working our way into the light

northeasterly breeze.