Waiting for the Storm

For the past couple of days, all the weather services in Western Australia have joined forces and held their breath, waiting for the storm—a double cyclone coming down from the north. It looked quite spectacular on the forecast: two spinning balls with black centres were coiling into one. In Perth, people were even advised to stay at home (they promptly carried on planning their Sunday activities). Sailors in the marinas checked their mooring lines, while our captain, a hundred miles farther south, immersed himself in the weather forecast. After that, an order was issued aboard the yacht: we were heading out into the ocean, rounding the third great cape of our route— Cape Leeuwin . Beyond Leeuwin, the Indian Ocean officially ends and the Southern Ocean begins. Lady Mary at anchor off Busselton Photo by Yulia Galushina “Tomorrow we’re heading for Albany. We’ll stand farther offshore, and on the edge of the cyclone, just the way we like it, we’ll fly to Albany in a couple of days.” The girls and I sighed and carried on seeing off our friends—the beloved Galushin family. With their departure, after a week and a half of sailing together, our year in Perth finally came to an end. The thought that we were alone again, left to our own devices as in the previous years of the expedition, was unbearable. Everything inside me is weeping. Photo from Rottnest Island So we simply don’t think about it. We stocked up on treats for the storm, loaded up on films, and put together a jigsaw map of Australia with our young sailor. In the evening, it turned out that the engine wouldn’t start. Either the battery is dying, or it’s just run down, or the starter has packed up. The adventures continue. And so do the restrictions on charging our computers and even the phone. Meanwhile, the forecast has changed, and the wind has shifted to an unfavourable direction for the passage to Albany. About the cyclone The captain decided to ride out the storm at anchor. As a last resort, we’ll head out into the open ocean to weather it there, then return to the coast. ...Or perhaps it will miss us altogether. We shouldn’t catch the worst of it. Yesterday morning, the cyclone was here, moving down, to the south: The cyclone on the map. Beautiful, isn’t it? The cyclone is creeping up very delicately. It has been raining since last night, and we’ve started sleeping in pyjamas. Winter is coming. Work on every front is planned for this dreary, wet day. But how are we supposed to do it without a laptop? It looks as though we’ll have to sort through the lockers and make notes in a notebook. Our friends will be passing by today: the heroic Kovalishen family and their friend Kostya. For several days, they trekked about 15 kilometres a day with children aged from 2 to 7. But how are we going to hug them when it’s raining and windy, and the dinghy has no engine? Rowing out to the yacht. We don’t have an engine now )) To be continued. Tomorrow we’ll tell you how we weathered the storm, and about the historic and symbolic place where we are anchored—Cape Naturaliste and Geographe Bay. Fingers crossed that the engine gets fixed. We’re having breakfast and climbing down into the hold. Rottnest Island. Photos from Busselton will come later. The phone is dead.