We had a long day to get to our destination and also had to time the narrows under the Oshima Bridge so left Miyajima straight after breakfast. While it was cold and a bit cloudy, it was at least sunny. The scenery was magnificent and we were pushed down the bay with a gentle breeze most of the day.
To give you an idea of what the Seto Naikai, or Sea of Japan is like here, I took this bit of video. Please excuse my poor horizon! It was calm, not many boats around, and we were surrounded by green mountains.
For much of the morning we could hear jet planes roaring overhead, either an exercise running or getting ready for the G7. Dean tells me some of them were either American or Australian, so I will have to trust him on that. They all look the same to me.
We shot down the Obatakeseto Strait and popped out on the other side of the bridge at over 10kn.
The turbulance of these narrows are always quite impressive, and a bit of fun as you get jostled around…..as long as it is in a favourable direction, and the jostling not too vigorous.
We reached Hime Shima shortly before sunset. It is a fishing port and also has two large ferries. We had seen one of the ferries entering as we approached the harbour so knew by the time we reached the entrance it would probably be close to leaving again. Sure enough as we got to the entrance we heard it beep, so we floated for a few minutes to allow it to exit.
The large concrete jetty we were allowed to tie up to was free so in we went. There is a huge tidal range here and along the concrete wall you tie up to are steps leading down, making it a bit awkward for a boat our size. Dean spent ages adjusting where we sat and it was well after dark by the time he was happy.
While he went for a walk I made dinner and we headed in for an early night. We planned to be up early to catch favourable tides the following day. Our days are starting to get long here, which is really great for sailing. We daren’t sail at night as too much fishing paraphernalia about.
We were away by 0645, just as the ferries were beginning to start up, so managed to exit the harbour ahead of them. We needed to go under the Kanmon Bridge between 1230-1300 to avoid the strong currents that occur in the narrowing of the Kanmon Kaikyo Strait. The day was clear and beautiful but unfortunately it was a motoring day without much wind. There wasn’t much shipping traffic until we reached the shipping lane. Then oh my goodness, ships everywhere. This is the busiest shipping lane in all of Japan. And that is saying something. Their merchant navy must be enourmous.
As we approached the bridge the NSU Keystone, a giant 300m ship that had been slowly catching up to us passed us on a bend in the channel. It is a little bit confronting having these massive ships pass you. At times we are being passed on both sides simultaneously. We just take a deep breath and hold a steady course! You can see Dean keeping a wary eye on it as it passed.
A large digital display indicates the speed of the current and its direction. As you can see below it was only flowing at 4knots as a Westerly flow; there is also an arrow to indicate direction of flow for those of us who are geographically challenged and don’t know which way West is.
And we were through. This is the end of our exploration of the inland sea, and it has been a great journey. We’ve loved it.
This area is very industrial. It was actually the location chosen for the second atomic bomb based on geography and military targets, however due to cloud cover on the day, the third option, Nagasaki ended up becoming the final target.
All kinds of ships buzzed past us including this weird pink thing that looked like it should have been the backdrop for some steam punk action.
This is a screen shot of one particular part of the harbour with ships going every which way. We are the black ship icon, just chugging along through the middle! Thankfully we were leaving this chaos of industry and humanity behind for the peacefulness of the Sea of Japan.
Run to Paradise 