Single Handed Sailing from Australia to Fiji (Ep3)

in this video i sail 1 600 nautical miles from southport to fiji i encounter five days of strong trade winds over 30 knots on my longest single-handed sailing voyage firstly in the gold coast for five days sorting out covid tests and regulations to travel to fiji at the southport sailing club being checked out by border force [Music] and then it's time to leave the forecast was for northerly winds for a couple of days quite strong in the beginning and ended up around 30 knots for the first night and most of the next day that night 70 miles off the coast a ship was directly on my course it looks like a mile away in the gopro but it's actually really close its AIS was not working but did flash up for a couple of seconds long enough for me to see that it was drifting at only two knots when i got close it started flashing its cabin lights at me it kind of looked like some sort of smuggling operation i was heading across its bow and that didn't feel right so i i tacked across the stern in case it started moving also that night there was a large bang on the hull i didn't think much of it but later discovered quite a lot of water in the bilge the water could have come from the anchor locker or the leaking front hatch i bailed the water but there was too much movement to find out if the boat was leaking the autopilot also stopped working and i got the self steering going i didn't get a chance to try this out before leaving because i used some double braid for the control lines on the trip from ballina and they had too much stretch i got some spectra just before leaving haphazard is very directly stable and easy to steer the yellow wheel didn't work the lines on the wheel did with reduced sail and some adjustments it all worked the second night the wind eased and i had a beautiful sail in full moon light the wind got light enough to go forward to check on the anchor and tidy up one of the mainsail slides had come off so sorted that the next day the wind had gone and i motored slowly at five knots i went aft and found the autopilot had completely fallen off i put it back on but there was a nut missing from the quadrant end and i couldn't find it i put on a bunch of zip ties as a temporary repair it got me through the no wind motoring but failed the next day and that would be it for the autopilot until i arrived in fiji every day i called my brother toby from the sat phone he gave me weather updates and followed the ais track the forecast was for strong southeast winds enough to get me the rest of the way to fiji i sponge dried the bilge but still couldn't find any sign of a leak this is a weather map showing my plotted course all the way to fiji you can see the wind picking up from the southeast on day five to 30 knots day five the southeast came in quickly at around 30 knots with constant rain next day rain sprawls and 30 plus nights sailing on the triple reef mainsail for the rest of the trip and occasionally a handkerchief of headsail the mainsail leech was flapping and it took some time to get the courage to tighten it i would need to stand on the cabin roof to reach lesson learned don't leave it too long the sail was flapping and i ended up with a couple of small holes in the mainsail [Music] day seven and i had to hand steer for five hours till dawn the squalls coming in hitting 40 knots [Music] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Music] water was still coming in and my routine was to bail the bilge every six hours the sound of water sloshing around was something i could do without i locked the times and the number of scoops to keep a tab on the situation it was around 10 liters an hour [Music] i didn't manage to capture on the gopro some of the breaking waves that hit the boat several went over the cabin and put a lot of water in the cockpit the slidding hatch t leaked on the bed so i used the lee cloth on the windward side on this side unfortunately it's all wet toby told me on the sat phone to expect the weather to stay as is until i arrive the weather kept on coming it was wet on deck either put on the soaking wet weather gear or make a dash for it to make an adjustment hoping not to get wet [Music] [Music] [Music] i did have some periods where the weather eased to 20 knots or more and that was a relief but best of all it stayed southeast and didn't go fully east until the morning i arrived in fiji [Music] and we're still doing good [Music] [Applause] [Music] is [Music] [Music] passing the reef passage at tavarua 1600 nautical miles in just under 10 days and the log showed an average speed of 6.8 knots there was no rush to get here because i got stuck at the anchor for five days with crappy covid quarantine i found a small leak in the bow jumped in without the goggles and found a patch of antifouling missing in the place where the leak is evidence of hitting something now it's time to relax and have a beer cheers happy sailing

Channel: Captain Scarlegs

Views: 2,445,387

Keywords: single handed, hole in boat, single handed sailing, ocean voyage, rough weather, big seas, heavy weather, heavy weather sailing, big wave, radford, radford sailing, aluminum boat, aluminum sailing boat, cruising, sailing, sailing trip, fast sailing, yacht, yachting, long sailing, solo, solo sailing, solo sailing trip, fiji, sailing fiji, fiji islands, tradewinds, strong tradewinds, sailing single handed, captain, captain scarlegs, rough seas, voyage, sinking

Id: Im8QIRPYf3s

Length: 12min 25sec (745 seconds)

Published: Tue Aug 03 2021