Leave on Friday 13th - Are you kidding!

The weather panel convened last night and decided that weather gods looked better for a Sat am departure than a Friday 13th departure. This pleased us all because the day had been spent rather too energetically cleaning, stashing, stowing and generally getting prepared - we were all quite weary really after all the flurry so the 1600 discussion over tea and pikelets quickly dissolved into drinkies and pikelets since we had effectively bought ourselves some extra time.
The Bloke had prepared printouts from predictwind, our satellite weather routing system and added in the pertinent waypoints where off-shore weather is predicted with available information  e.g. Margaret River, Leeuwin, Broken Inlet (Walpole) and Albany. Did the predictions line up? What about wave heights and swell.... We wanted some intersecting lines. In the end it all looked more reasonable for Sat which meant that Black Friday could be as black as it liked - we were not taking it on. And for everyone, the bonus was a day of rest since all was pretty much ready.
Easy Tiger had even moved themselves to an outer mooring to make navigation out of the anchorage at night a little easier. This maneuver was noted by the race panel and may constitute 'Breaking the start'. They immediately offered up a defence suggesting they should be given points for initiative. As it turns out we have done the same today. We were using our own mooring lines on the Sally Jane mooring (thanks once more Peter, for the kind use of your fabulous mooring) so it was necessary to fiddle about with the leads anyway. So now we too are a little closer to the start line and think we will collude with Easy Tiger and deduct points from Urchin for being lazy and not following suit.
We've logged in with Richard at ACRM base and can log off after 0700 on Monday. Rae is sadly in hospital at the moment with ongoing health problems. Richard is soldiering on and manning the radios with his usual dedication and good humour. Encouragingly, Richard is of the view that this appears to be a reasonable weather window although there is no accounting for that man Murphy!
FYI we are call sign Mandurah 303, DPI rego number DN060 with 2 POB, approx 170l fuel on board. We will be departing Quindalup anchorage at 0200 14/12/2013 and our ETA in Albany is Mon 16/12/2013 around 0300 after traveling approx 480 nautical miles.
We'll of course update you on Leg 4 -The Capes Adventure after our arrival in Albany.
This is Mandurah 303, over and out.