Torres Strait Thrills | S2 Ep. 17

Hello there, welcome to Sailing NV, We’re a sailing family pursuing an unconventional dream of sailing around the world in our recently converted ex Vendée Globe Open 66.

Join us this week as finally leave the Pacific Ocean, navigating the adrenaline-fueled passage through the Torres Strait.

The Torres Strait is a narrow strip of water between Australia and Papua New Guinea, littered with reefs and with a shipping channel to navigate.

There were two options for our passage from Vanuatu to Indonesia: passing either above or below Papua New Guinea. The upper route often has light winds, and our engine is small and unreliable, so we opted for the lower route through the Torres Strait. On this lower route, there was only one potential stopover option, Port Moresby Marina in Papua New Guinea. Unfortunately, the marina couldn't accommodate our 4.5m draft and warned of a theft risk if we anchored outside. Australia was also not an option for a stopover due to the stringent and costly process of importing our dog, Solo.

This meant we had to sail straight from Vanuatu to Indonesia, a passage of around 2500nm. So we were relieved on day 7 to reach the trickiest part of the passage at the beginning of the day with good wind conditions, giving us a whole day to navigate as much of this roughly 100-mile narrow strip between reefs and shipping lanes as possible in good daylight.

Bringing Solo along also added an extra layer of stress in the event of an emergency stop, as he would either need to be immediately exported or euthanised.

A lot of this passage has a depth of around 40metres or less and there are some patches that go down to around 10m, a depth at which we’d normally be reducing our speed to the minimum. Yet we needed to keep our speed maximum for this passage to ensure we cover as much ground as possible in day light.

Needless to say there was a lot of adrenaline pumping through the veins of our crew and especially our captain on this day!

00:00 - Intro
00:29 - Passage info
01:19 - Day 7
03:19 - Fast sailing
04:50 - Spring clean
06:20 - Taking down our storm jib
07:07 - Future projects
11:22 - First ship
11:41 - Lunch
12:20 - Canne morta
13:52 - In the Arafura sea!
14:07 - Fishing net drama sneak preview

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