August 19

This morning we finally splashed the Queen Jane. At 7:40am we started to lift the boat and then re-installed the centerboard. By 8:45 we were in the water. There was a brief Chinese fire drill as we ran the engine dry of fuel almost immediately just after clearing the slipway. The skipper had inadvertently left the fuel selection manifold switched to an empty tank. Kate dropped the hook immediately and we hauled up in Smith Creek just yards from a sailboat docked at the Cairns Cruising Yacht Squadron next door to Norship, the boat yard. We selected a proper tank with fuel and kate ran the started while the skipper opened the injectors to bleed the air from the system and we had the engine running within 2 minutes.

We raised the anchor and then motor or motor-sailed the 14 miles to Half Moon Bay Yacht Club at Yorkeys Knob. We had another bit of a panic entering the marina basin as the markers are very confusing and the water very shallow. At one point we were outside the channel turning to get back in position and we were reading 4ft on the depth sounder which is of course impossible since we draw 5’ 6” with the centerboard up. We knew the sounder is not calibrated properly so we didn’t panic and we never touched bottom (that we can tell).