2010 Sokari on the move

A couple of weeks ago Cyclone Olga fizzled over the coast with little effect on us as we sat in our favourite cyclone hole but when we returned to our mooring the strong northerly winds gave us a bit of curry for a couple of days. Olga wandered west then reformed heading SE and sent heavy rain and galeforce winds over Cairns. We were able to check out the boats on Cairns webcam and from our home on the Tablelands it appeared really horrendous. Phone calls and text messages were flooding into us from friends on their boats, and John considered racing down to be onboard in case of problems. But when he rang Cairns Met. he was told that they didn't expect anything higher than 20-25 knots. They were wrong and reports of 38 knots were reported from boats on the piles and other very experienced yachties anchored near our mooring said they experienced up to 50 knots. Many boats dragged damaging many more but Sokari's mooring held fast. Thank goodness. But perhaps that is due to the fact that John has the mooring serviced at least twice a year. It had only just be redone a few weeks prior. John drove down the next day and found no damage except the winds had done a job on her side covers so I guess I have another job, making new ones. John had wrapped line around the main and boom cover before the cyclone and left it there for security. He had also removed the wind generator to give it a service.

We recently purchased a new Netbook, loaded a navigation program on it and with one of the USB GPS dongles that we import plugged in, he headed off a couple of days later, taking Sokari south to haul out. He enjoyed the sail, with northerlies the first day but the second day they dropped out to absolute calms with light headwinds coming in a little later. He dropped the pick on the southern side of Dunk Island where he spent the afternoon and night and pulled into Hinchinbrook Marina the following day. For the moment, there she sits. I drove down by car to spend a few days onboard but the heat was so unbearable that we decided to return to the more civilised climate on the Tablelands until it is time to pull her out of the water.