Dear cyber sailors,
Last night on passage I had the midnight-red-eye watch. In my delirium, this phrase came to mind,
" Nautical miles are rolling off our bow like drops of water off a duck's back. "
We were greeted with the sight of land early this morning, I think we were all relieved after hearing Ian’s tales of ships disappearing into the night. A very happy pod of dolphins rode our bow as we motored into Moreton Bay. A few of them were spinning so quickly I worried they might get dizzy and lose control. The Australian coastal current slowed us down a bit and we arrived later than expected, but that hasn’t stopped us from getting a mountain of work done.
Customs and immigration met us at the Quarantine dock and cleared us into Australia. We were prepared for them to confiscate our veggies, dairy products and garbage but did not expect them to reject all of our New Zealand meat. Australia has very strict immigration rules, understandably, as they have a unique ecosystem to protect. Instead of paying immigration to incinerate the meat, we have opted to designate one of the freezers to the foreign products. Immigration locked the freezer with an official seal. Officials will board at every major harbour to make sure it has not been tampered with.
Ian and Matthew, our traveling companions depart the
boat in Brisbane.
[ photo James Frankham ]
Ian and Matt treated the STARSHIP crew to lunch and thanked us for taking them on the passage. I asked Matt if he preferred the 2 hour flight or the 2 day sail and he seemed to think that it was nice to try the trip by boat at least once. It was a pleasure to have them along and our visit to Lord Howe would not have been the same without them.
The ever-vigilant Anne-Lise writes today's journal
while on 'nozzle watch'.
How many thousand litres?
[ photo James Frankham ]
Soon we are heading back out to sea. We need to start making our way toward the Great Barrier Reef. Enrico and Caroline have provisioned for the next week and our cupboards and refrigerator are handsomely filled once again. We have also taken on nearly 8000 litres of diesel fuel. The one pump in the marina dispenses fuel at 1 litre per 5 seconds. So the entire exchange has taken over 5 hours.
STARSHIP signing off,
Anne-Lise
P.S. Word from Michael and DJ. Michael flew to San Francisco to surprise DJ and his family who are in California for a reunion. They were all flabbergasted when he arrived on the scene.