ORCV Melbourne to King Island (M2KI as part of the MMOC)

First Four Chowing Down Right Now.

Magic Carpet, Jazz Player and Chikara Outlaw have all finished within about ten minutes of each other, just after 1600hrs. Ninety Seven was around half an hour after that and Geomatic Joker was yet another half hour behind them.

Well done to the Two-Handed team of Dean Coates and Steve Twentyman from Magic Carpet for their efforts. The boat looks good with it's new paint job, too.

For some of the other crews it has not all been sunnies, tans and smiles. At least three boats, Caledonia, The Secretary and Yoko watched as the others went over the horizon, while they sat and then went backwards off Naracoopa on King Island's East coast. Paul Pascoe onboard Caledonia told me they were doing 1.2 knots with just over a knot of current going the other way. Never mind - the breeze will hopefully return to you soon. At around 1530hrs the wind went to the Southwest and made a true 12-15knots before settling back to the familiar 10knots. The sea rose a little with it too, but not a lot. Interestingly, the same happened at Cape Otway, at the same time. Melbourne, however, took buckets of water and some amazingly dark skies, we understand. Just got to love Australia, eh.

By John Curnow