We left Friday night and had a nice north east wind to motor sail south to the Grant Islands. The Melbourne causeway was our biggest challenge, but we made it under with inches to spare at 63.5". Our mast height with the lightening rode is 63.5" the rod just missed, the wind gods were on our side. We reached the island around 7:30 and had a very peaceful dinner.
Saturday morning the boats started coming in and by early afternoon about three had shown up. We could see cloud building to the north and then the rains hit near the Melbourne causeway. Most of our fellow sailors were caught in the storm. Where we were anchored the storm just went around us. Around 4:30 the rest of the boats started getting in one by one.
The weather forecast was showing another front coming through about 6:00pm so we decided to get a fire started on the island so there would be some hot coals to be able to start the fire after the rain. The rains come on stronge and furious about 20 minutes later and lasted for about a 30 minutes then the lovely sun was shinning again. After the storm the boat next to us was almost touching so he attempted to fix his anchor which did not work. Kevin and I decided it was best to re-anchor and get clear of the other boat.
7:20pm everyone was making their way to the island and the party began. We all eat, drank, sang, danced and had a lot of fun, despite the late start. Some of us packed it in early but the rest partied hard into the night.
Sunday morning Kevin and I set for home around 10am. on our sail home we past a beautiful schooner heading south.
