First blog from onboard Perie Banou II

by Jon Sanders on 21 Oct 2016 I managed to begin the 10th circumnavigation of the world on the due date and to schedule. Yet if it were not for every one else, I would not have left when I did. Beautiful people.

400 years ago a bloke, (I mean a brave Dutch ship’s Captain) steered his ship to the lower north coast of Western Australia, thus discovering it. They were on their way to Batavia in the Dutch Spice Islands, which are now known as Indonesia.

No accurate timepieces were made back then, so they could not accurately determine longitude. Anyway they discovered Dirk Hartog Island, Shark Bay, Western Australia, which is nearly 500 nautical miles North of the State’s capital, Perth, which has a population of 1.3m.

To celebrate this achievement there is a yacht race to Dirk Hartog Island, which actually finishes at Denham, Shark Bay. The race is in two legs. The first leg is from Fremantle (the port of Perth) to Geraldton, a town in the middle of the WA coast. The second is from Geraldton to Denham in Shark Bay, which is an isolated region.

Normally it’s a downwind race and often it is windy. Well very windy. This is a windy coast and it is not totally ideal for those who need to hurry back. The wind and waves are against the Leeuwin Current. ‘Slog it out’ is the term that comes to mind, to say the least, and you get splashed too! It happens.

Who wants to do that? I am not that stupid. So I will just go West with the Trade Winds to Africa, specifically, South Africa via Reunion Island, which is French. Reunion has a population of 800,000.

Cyclone season starts in November in the Indian Ocean, especially Mauritius and Reunion way. I guess I will see how things are going and may have to dodge Reunion, instead heading directly for Cape Town. Cyclones are called Cyclones, because they are circular. In other parts of the world they’re called hurricanes or typhoons. All of them are a bit too breezy for me, so that might be a little reason why I was keen to get going.

Perie Banou II has four crew for this race. Vera Walby, a company secretary, Gareth Owen-Conway, a top IT specialist for Chevron Australia, and Robin Morritt retired mining owner and chief executive and then me. After Denham I will be on my own.

Now a downwind slide does not exactly suit my yacht. It is better bashing into it. Built for it too, but who the heck wants to bash into it? Not me or my crew, unless we have to! So we did OK in the race. Got a good start and enjoyed it all, even collected a minor trophy.

Tomorrow is a downwind slide with a strong wind warning. My crew and I will probably not bother with a spinnaker, just reefed main and polled out furling jib. I have a long, long way to go. We will not thrash the yacht, as we simply are not racing for sheep stations.

It was a mild to moderate spinnaker run to begin and then freshened. We arrived in Geraldton with strong wind warning, and the boat performed as expected, which is good. This is the first time ever I have sailed to Geraldton. It took 33hours overnight and we have not started the engine to charge the batteries.

On a nice stainless steel support at the stern of the yacht is bolted a most beautiful whispering quiet Superwind wind-generator, all the way from Germany. Its performance has been amazing. For the first time ever, Perie Banou II has gone through a day-night-day without having to fire-up the engine to recharge the batteries.

Robin was nominated navigator, but he did not get much chance to do any at all, because Gareth spotted the brand new, absolute latest B&G navigation electronics. He dived head long into it. It was like some people driving their first Maserati.
Good too, because his enthusiasm includes instructing me - continuously if I let him! The whole display, including the outside displays, is unbelievable and incredible. Clear to read. Beautiful settings. Simple for this here sailor to navigate. Truly wonderful.

So I typed the above yesterday and now is today and it is really windy. Not the best start this time. We tacked for the start line and the jib lead escaped and caused a windy flutter. Not that it mattered. Now on the downwind slide for Dirk Hartog Island, which we must round, and it is more than 200 nautical miles to the North.

We have a truly sparkling sea, with white caps. It has an incredible turquoise colour, which also has an azure hue in places. We are sailing with a reef in the mainsail, and the No.1 Genoa polled out. Good, safe and brisk progress. The crew like the brisk windy conditions, when we are rigged safely. There is also a big swell.

Kindest regards to all.
Jon