Oh My God! This night time cruising is not for the faint hearted!,
The evening started beautifully watching the sun go down as we motored past the Twelve Apostles.
Not long after Craig and I had gone to bed for an hour or two of sleep before our watches, I heard an almighty thumping noise coming from the boat. Phil, who was on watch at the time, quickly put the motor into neutral and we all got up on deck. We had picked up a cray pot line and the noise we heard was the float bumping on the side of the boat. We were about 1 1/4 mile from the coast, with an on shore breeze and tide. Very luckily Craig was able to hook the line with a boat hook and we managed to set it loose....phew
But that's not all. After motoring for 5 minutes or so the engine stopped! We run dual fuel tanks and each tank has a 'fuel return line' this allows the unused fuel that passes the engine to be returned to the tank. It appears when we switched to the port tank at Wilsons Promontory the port tank started returning its unused fuel in the line to the starboard tank, effectively prematurely emptying the port tank - the engine was running from the port tank only and eventually the port tank became empty and the starboard full - we ran out of fuel ! Fortunately we were able to restart the engine without having to bleed the diesel once we switched to the now full starboard tank. All of this happening at 10 o'clock at night, in pitch black dark in the Southern Ocean - I am not sure I am cut out for this!!!

We are now safely tied up at the Portland Marina (which, by the way, is a very nice facility) having arrived around 8 am this morning and we plan to stay here until Tuesday when hopefully we will have some favourable wind to set off in. And although last night I did wonder if there would be a bus I could catch from here to Adelaide, then fly home, in the light of day I have decided to stay for a bit longer. Off to the Pub this afternoon!