Lake Indian Ocean

OK, so sorry for not blogging but there has been a lot to do the past few days. Being incredibly hot and sweaty makes it hard to get going. My email is backed up from the time after PNG when I wasn't able to receive them. I can only pick up so many per week and right now I have a backlog of over 200 emails! Right now it is about 8:000pm and there is about 3 knots of wind which is barely enough to keep the boat moving in the right direction. There is no swell so the sea looks like a calm lake. Not much happened today. I passed some oil platforms and a couple of ships, one of which came within a half of a mile of me. I contacted him on the radio and he already knew where I was so it was safe. Later in the afternoon I was doing something on deck and I saw a big white shape under the water. As I looked closer I saw that it was a shark. Not just one shark, I was in a school/pod of them! They weren't like the friendly Pacific dolphins that play around the boat. They were off after a couple of minutes. I guess I'll add that to my list of reasons not to swim at sea. I had been actually contemplating swimming because of how hot it is though I probably would not have done it.
So I guess everyone wants to hear about the Torres Strait. Here you go...I had just gotten off the phone with Mike Smith (Team Zac electrician extraordinaire). We were trouble shooting my AIS radar that for some reason wasn't working right. I set my phone down on the top companionway step and opened the Pelican case where I always keep it. Before I put it in, the drag on my fishing pole started screaming. I ran up top to real in the fish. The fish ended up snapping the line and when I went down below I saw the sat phone had fallen into the galley sink into a bowl of oil. Why was there a bowl of oil in my galley sink? The mechanics from Papua New Guinea were supposed to dispose of it but were not able to. I was to get offshore and dump it. Only 1/4" of the upper corner of the phone had touched the oil. I wiped it off with a paper towel and called Mike back to tell him that I had to deal with some issues on the boat and that I would call him back in the morning. Then I took the phone apart and saw that a fair bit of oil had gotten inside. I wiped it off the best I could and put the phone in rice over night to draw out the moisture. In the morning I put the phone back together and turned it on. It went okay and I entered the pass code. It came up with a message that said 'Phone Failure See Supplier'. That was really helpful since the nearest supplier was the best part of 10,000 miles away. I tried for awhile to get the phone working again but it was no use. I think I probably made it worse. The slapping against hand technique etc... Then I fired up the computer but for some reason it wasn't working either. I did manage to get an email out to mom and dad after a hundred attempts just to let them know that all was well with me and the boat.
The next day I got on the Rag on the Air Net and make contact with the people out of Majuro. They were able to relay with my parents back home. I had no idea what my parents had been through and that they were about to call on Australian Search and Rescue.
As I was getting closer to the Torres Strait, I managed to get a few way points that had been stuck on the computer before the screen died. Not sure how but the back light of the computer screen had stopped working. I went to use the other computer but water had dripped on the keyboard and I couldn't type in my password. With no comms except the SSB, I kept in touch with everyone through the guys from Moana and Majuro. I spent the few days before the Torres Strait with light winds and was able to study the passage guide again. The night before I got to the entrance at Bramble Cay, the wind picked up to about 20-25 knots so I reefed down and entered the Strait under sail. I arrived at Bramble Cay, the entrance to the Torres Strait, at about 4:00am. I never did see the light and there was a lot of fog. That was the first of many surprises in he Torres Strait. Stay tuned for part 2 of Zac sails the Torres Strait!
Cheers,
Zac