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Saturday 10th July.

Once again during the night the wind changed and the bay we were in (White’s Bay on Middle Percy) became rougher and rougher so we decided we would head off to Curlew Island. Casana and Serenade decided they would like to try to go to West Bay on Middle Percy before heading off to Curlew so they set off but soon found that it was going to be too much swell in there for it to be comfortable so they continued on to Curlew.
We decided to have breakfast before setting sail, then put the sails up reefing the main as the winds were getting up to about 20 to 25 knots. We had the main, the staysail and the mizzen up and were travelling well getting up to about 8 knots speed. The seas were messy with two opposing swells and with the high winds it wasn’t the best on Lydia’s stomach.
We were catching up to Serenade (not that we were racing!) but watching them bounce around in the messy seas with only their head sail out. We radioed them and found that something was wrong with their gearbox. They were unable to motor and with two of three on board quite seasick, they couldn’t put up their main.
We decided to drop most of our sails and shadow Serenade just in case they had more trouble. It was a slow trip with us hoving to to slow our boat down and doing donuts when we were pulling away from Serenade, but we both sailed into the bay on Curlew.
Andrew has offered to have a look at the gearbox tomorrow.