Day 5 Tuesday 15th june

Had a scare last night as trawler swerved across our path and then appeared to follow us. He did not reply to my urgent request to explain his intentions and my guess is that the boat was on autopilot and the captain and crew were sorting their catch and were unaware of our presence.
We were making very good time when the self steering tiller snapped off completely. as I went below to get some parts to replace it I found a distorted main support beam. The beam is used to keep the hull level and was showing signs of perhaps failing completely. The decision was instantly made to reverse our course and head back in to safe waters. We were between the outer Barrier Reef and Saumarez Reef. A quick check of the charts gave us a course that though tight would ease the strain on the beam and get us through the outer reef and into Great Keppel Island. What followed was a tight reach trying to gain as much leeway as possible to clear shoals on the outer reef.
I had previously explained to the girls about Murphy's Law (anything that can go wrong will go wrong, and at the worst possible moment) but now think that he was an optimist. As we launched off yet another swell ( wind strengths in excess of 25knots) a back stay gave way and the entire rig became dangerously loose. We instantly reduced sail to a bare minimum to save the rig and continued to try and sneak past the edge of the shoals. I used the halyard off the inner staysail as a lightweight replacement for the backstay and even with reduced sail the top 3 metres of the mast was arched well forward.
We finally cleared the shoals and a route was charted to take us to Great Keppel with the minimum distance. This entailed sailing through an area of shoaling water with one or two cays on our course to be avoided later on. Conditions on board were fairly wet and all cabins had taken some water including mine as I had not dogged down my main hatch correctly and in the dark of night had missed this fact. Karin was unable to sail the tight course required, and was not expected to have that sort of experience, but remained on call to keep the coffee and food coming and just to sit and chat so that I stayed awake.