We left Magnetic Island at about 7am in light wind from the East. Forecasts call for 15-20 from the SE/E moving into the E/NE later in the day. Our course today is ESE, almost due east, at 110M. Skies are clear with about 30% cloud cover, seas are calm with a 2ft chop. Our goal today is Cape Bowling Green about 33 miles to the ESE.

At 9am we are motor sailing upwind with an apparent wind angle of about 20-25 degrees. We have the jib out and it is mostly staying filled, though at this angle it often flaps a bit, but most of the time it is drawing and you could tell as soon as we deployed it that it helped as our speed went from 6k to 6.6k right away.

At noon we are motor sailing still but our apparent wind angle has opened up a bit and our speed is up to 7.5k even though we throttled back on the engine to about 1400rpm. The wind is still on the nose, but as I said, a bit more to the NE now. The apparent wind angle is now 30-35degrees – still not good enough to sail more then 3-4k, but much better. At about 45 degrees apparent we can sail quite well, but at 35 the boat just can’t seem to keep moving. So we continue to motor sail. The weather continues to be fine with lots of bright sunshine and cloud cover at about 15%. Seas remain very calm and the wind is about 10-12k.

We anchored at Cape Bowling Green at about 2pm, close to the beach in about 10ft of water – too shallow. If the tide were rising it would be ok, but it is high tide now and expected to go down 5 feet during the night – yikes. Move the boat further out, anchor again in 20ft. Much better.