St. Francis Island - The Neighborhood

 

I guess it's time we told you a little bit about our neighborhood at the moment. St. Francis Island first appeared on a Dutch map in 1644 as Eyland St. François. One of the first parts of South Australia to be explored by Europeans, the Dutch navigator, François Thijssen captain of the Dutch East India Company ship “t Gulden Zeepaerdt (The Golden Seahorse) mapped the island and named it after his patron saint in 1627.

St. Francis is part of Nuyts Archipelago, a group of about 30 islands and reefs lying off Ceduna, at the eastern end of the GAB. The archipelago was explored and named by none other than Matthew Flinders during his voyage of 1802. During the 19th century, these islands were used as a base for sealing and whaling. Today they are part of the Nuyts Archipelago Conservation Park, established in 1972 “to conserve island populations and provide a habitat for endangered species.”

It's an important bird area with over 1% of the world population of muttonbirds (short-tailed shearwaters), white-faced petrels and pied oystercatchers in residence. Supposedly over 1,000 pair of little penguins (aka blue penguins) also call the archipelago home, as well as Pacific gulls, Caspian terns, crested terns, egrets, osprey and white-bellied sea eagles. The smaller islets and reefs provide breeding sites for Australian Sea Lions. Tiger snakes and southern carpet pythons also occur in the islands along with rats, bandicoots and bettongs.

At about 2,000 acres (809 ha), St. Francis is the second largest island in the archipelago. It is covered by a mix of grassland, saltbush and low shrubs, and reportedly supports a very large population of muttonbirds (estimated at 273,000 pairs .. I wondered who counted? WOW!). On its highest point, ~265' (81m), there's an automated lighthouse and radio beacon.

The island has a long history of agricultural use as well as of guano mining. From the boat, we can see the rather nondescript lighthouse, as well as two old buildings, now ramshackle and falling down. One tin roof has Scarlett Rose 1995 painted on it. Graffiti even here! Now that the wind has calmed a bit, we can hear the cacophony of what we assume is the non-melodic squawking of muttonbirds.

The beach before us looks like a good landing spot. Early this morning, dolphins were working hard as a team, corralled fish for their breakfast. At times we could see nothing but fins, then one would jump high and slap a tail and a frenzy occurred which we think was breakfast.

How plans change! A trip to the island to explore was on the agenda for the morning, but a change in the weather forecast had us scurrying to depart by Noon. Ah, a lost opportunity, but another one found. We'll miss out on 273,000 pairs of muttonbirds, remnants of the guano mining pursuit and snakes, but we'll have a good run to Eucla, our next stop. Read more about our passage to Eucla in the coming days.

A Day Aboard at St. Francis Island

 

We never woke till 0930. It seemed late even  though we hadn't slept much during the night. It was the calm followed by thunder that woke us. Thunder rumbled, roared and clashed throughout the rest of the morning and afternoon. Wind and heavy rains … big, noisy, splattering drops … followed each thunderous outburst, but we remained firmly ensconced. The anchor held. The continuous cycle of calms and squalls left us unsettled, alert and tired.

We anchored off the north side of the island in St. Francis' crescent-shaped Petrel Beach. The island, at least what we could see of it, was either shrouded in the mist or the rains, looking grey and dismal or barren in the sun. We could hear birds from the island. Silver gulls lit on the water beside the boat and eyed us nonchalantly.

We busied ourselves with chores and “what-if” conversations, usually in snippets. As a new thought or alternative occurred to one or both of us, we'd discuss it for a bit, then go back to our chores, noodling the new idea. We were hoping to come up with an alternative to returning to Streaky Bay. Not that we don't like Streaky Bay, mind you. It's just that we'd give up the 50 miles we'd gained, waste fuel by motoring back and not much more could be gained by being there.

Closer inspection of the torn out clew indicated that the stitching had indeed given way. One piece of webbing was still attached to the clew itself and several others were missing. This part of the sail is not one easily tackled by my SailRite sewing machine. It's just too thick with all the webbing and reinforcements and there's too much of it to try to repair by hand. We reckon we'll need a sailmaker's expertise and equipment to effect the repair.

The deck needed to be washed down and the grass either mowed or removed. The sail cover needed to put on. The wind had not subsided in the least which made folding the damaged jib, hoisting the old genoa or even launching the dinghy out of the question.

Lighter winds were promised in another day or so. We'll wait patiently (as if) and read and write and chat and do chores and eventually the weather will change and we'll be good as.

Clewless in St. Francis Island

“So what would you do”, we asked yesterday? Here's the situation with all the info we had at the time.  

1.  The clew of the jib has torn out (what?). Anyway … it's out of commission. We're not sure if we can repair the torn sail ourselves. We have an old 120 genoa aboard, but putting it up in 25 knot winds is probably not going to happen. So, no headsail at the moment other than the staysail.
2. The holding in the anchorage at St. Francis is poor to nil, but we do seem to be holding at the moment. In fact, after three hours, we were still holding. We're protected from the SW swells here and wind from three quarters (E/S/W), but exposed to the north.
3. The winds continue strong SE 20-25+ knots. Without a headsail, we'd have to motor against the wind in big, churned up seas to get back to Streaky Bay (54nm). Eucla to the northwest is 232 nm away. Without a jib, we'd be moving slowly and not get there in time to beat the W/SW predicted. No yacht services in Eucla.

Our decision. Wait out the night in St. Francis. We set an anchor alarm (in fact two of them). David stayed up late. Marcie went to bed, but there was little sleep to be had. After a couple more hours of staying put, David felt confident enough to crawl into bed, too. We both wore all of our clothes to bed just in case we needed to leave in a hurry. A night exit would be hairy, but doable. We could follow our track out and the charts seemed spot on. We were both up and down the rest of the night, listening to the wind howl, anticipating the anchor alarm, checking our position, imagining we heard the alarm when, in fact, we didn't.

At 0130, the rain started, then stopped and all was still … too still. At 0200, the thunder and lightning began. Big claps of thunder broke the stillness and lightning streaked a pitch black sky. Then came the gusts of wind and pelting rain. We were up and ready to move out, but the anchor held. We looked at the squall cells on the radar. There were several all around us, but the rest seemed to avoid us. At 0400, the radar looked clear. Marcie returned to bed. David, too keyed up to sleep, requested more GRIBs and weather info and started analyzing options.

At 0600, David had more information and a plan. Since we seemed to be holding, he proposed staying another day at St. Francis while the stronger SE winds blew themselves out. More thunderstorms and rain were forecast for today also … a soggy trip if we left. Tomorrow was now calling for light SE before the northerlies and strong W/SW took over. We could motorsail against lighter winds back to Streaky Bay (54nm),  work on the jib there and wait for another weather window. A reasonable plan. He left out more scope, attached the snubber and finally came to bed.

A day in St. Francis with winds too high to launch the dink, even if we did trust the holding enough to leave Cups and go ashore. Wonder what we can see from the boat?

I'm sure I left out some details and I'm already warning you that if you come up with an alternative we didn't and it's a good one, we'll be kicking ourselves. And yes, we haven't missed the fact that in addition to being sleepless in St. Francis … we're also clewless!