Cruising on Mica: Stonehaven in not ideal conditions

Thursday 13^th July 2017

There was a bit of rain last night and the wind abated quite a bit making for a reasonable nights sleep.

We want to head off to Stonehaven, but the change of tide is not until 1pm, so we decide to take the pain of some uncomfortable wind against conditions to get there several hours earlier. It is still blowing at 20 knots from SSE and the tide is running South at 1.5 to 2 knots, which results in a pretty untidy sea.

Nevertheless, we decide to motor to charge the batteries, and run a trolling line in the hope we might catch something. It was a pretty uncomfortable ride up past the southern part of Hook Island, but there was a run on the trolling line, and Cody proudly landed a small mackerel.

It is his 10^th birthday today, so that was a bit of a special treat. I don’t think either he or Michelle enjoyed the washing machine type seas we were going through, but once up along the Hook Island coast, the seas flattened out a bit.

Fortunately, when we got to Stonehaven, there were several moorings available. I think a lot of people stayed tucked away in their snug anchorages for yet another day whilst this uncomfortable weather system passes.

On the way into Stonehaven, Carole raised the alarm that our dinghy had come adrift from the boat. We rarely tow a dinghy, preferring to put in on deck, but today we took the risk. Anyway, we turned around and went back to retrieve it (thankfully not too far). It must have worked loose when we were going through the very rough conditions at the southern tip of Hook Island.

After lunch, we went ashore to have a look around, and Cody had a swim and snorkel.