7-02-00 We're in the Escape River just 20 nm south of Cape York. We almost left the day after we arrived but another American boat hit an uncharted and unmarked rockbed in the river on the way out and two of us yachties came back to lend a hand. The grounded boat spent the entire day high and dry on the top of the rocks but got off just after sunset at high tide, with only a few scratches on the fiberglass. They were very lucky. The Escape River turned out to be a great place, even though the boat that hit the rock would not agree. In the course of the rescue we met Vic and Ellen, very friendly Aussies from a catamaran named TOUCHÉ. Vic took Pat out crabbing and fishing to teach him some local methods. We ended up staying there 3 days after we had first intended to leave. We hadn't caught a crab since Hinchinbrook Channel but with Vic's help we caught three huge Muddies in one day! Pat also caught his first Barramundi. Barramundi is a local with a big reputation. It is Australia's top native sportfish and a highly esteemed food fish. High jumps, strong runs and rod bending lunges are characteristic of a barra's fight. Pat had alot of fun catching it and it was one of the best tasting fish we have ever had. Hooray for beginner's luck!
7-05-00 We rounded the top of OZ yesterday! A good way for us to celebrate our American Independence Day - 4th of July! We had a fast sail, averaging over 9 kts thanks to current and strong winds. The tidal range here is huge, so we had about 5 knots of current pushing us. SIMMER broke a speed record - we did 10.1 kts at one point. We are anchored at Possession Island (Lat 10°42'S/Lon 142°30'E) and 1,300 miles from Brisbane (Scarborough Marina) were we first started our trek up the coast. That distance is about the equivalent of sailing from Key West to Norfolk on the eastern seaboard of the U.S. The big difference though was the Great Barrier Reef. It sheltered us for 90% of our trip up the coast. We are a little sad to leave the Great Barrier Reef behind us now, there's so much there to explore. But westward ho, we must go. Our plan now is to wait for a break in the high winds so we can sail across the Gulf of Carpentaria to Gove. That's a 350 nm trip, probably 3 days to do it, nowhere to stop along the way.
7-08-00 It's 2:00 am and Colleen is on watch, we're half way across the Gulf of Carpentaria (Lat 11°57'S/Lon 139°51'E). It's a calm night, or should say morning, winds about 10 knots on our port beam. The stars are extremely bright, since there are no big city lights around and the moon is just a sliver. The Milky Way is painted across the sky above our mast and heaps of stars scattered everywhere. After a glorious tropical sunset over the Gulf, we had a freaky couple of hours, SIMMER was under siege from two birds. The seabirds, boobies, kept circling around the boat looking for a promising spot. Closest land was 150 miles away. One successfully did land - on the port side spreader. (A spreader is a horizontal aluminum tube attached about halfway up the mast. It holds the wire rigging out, away from the mast.) Anyway, it stayed on the spreader for several minutes before the motion of the boat dumped it off. He then made 7 more landings, with the same result. It was comical at first and kept us entertained between watch changes. But then we became concerned it could hurt itself on the rigging, lines, or mast hardware. It actually did a few chin-ups on the spreader, before each fall into the water. It seemed to sense our concern, and decided to search for another place to land. Meanwhile "brother booby" was having fun circling our heads and occasionally landing on the bow. By the way, these birds have a wing span of about 4 feet, so there aren't exactly sparrows! We've discovered that Colleen has a phobia: fear of large birds landing on her head. Not sure what it's called, but there's got to be a name for it. It's probably a result of one too many Alfred Hitchcock movies as a kid. Now both of the birds figured they'd sit in the cockpit with Colleen. (Exit Colleen, stage left). She dives down below into the cabin and leaves Pat to evict the birds. Poor Pat, he's supposed to be sleeping and Colleen is supposed to be on watch. Well, it was like a choreographed comedy skit. The birds kept attempting to land on anything they could - solar panel, cockpit awning, Pat's head, wind vane paddle, GPS antenna, cockpit cushions, steering wheel, wind generator, ... Pat was exhausted from chasing them. Finally one flew into the fishing pole on the stern rail and hooked itself by the wing-tip. What a fiasco. Luckily the drag was set and the booby didn't fly away with it. Pat carefully extracted the hook with a pair of pliers. But the bloody bird came right back and tried to land again! (Note: it wasn't really bloody. That's just a descriptive Aussie term that we've picked up.) Now it's dark and time for extreme measures. Pat got out the weapons - spot light, horn, boat pole. Every time one tried to land, he'd try to scare it away with bright light, noise, and prodding. Nothing worked. Finally one landed on the bow pulpit and settled in for a nap. OK, it can stay. The other one gave up after Pat delivered a nasty little shove off the stern seat with the boat pole. That was 7 hours ago, .... but we're both still looking over our shoulders in the cockpit. Hopefully one won't decide to land on this laptop while Colleen is typing. Oh, the things we sailors have to deal with out here - raging storms, squall lines, shipping traffic, huge seas, and maniac seabirds.
7-12-00 We're in Gove in Arnhem Land, Northern Territory (Lat 12°12' S/Lon 136°42' E). We left Queensland when we crossed 138 ° longitude in the Gulf of Carpentaria. We had a spectacular 3 day sail across the Gulf. Great conditions, and a pod of pilot whales that rode our bow wake one morning. We were lucky, the Gulf can get fairly nasty from what we've heard if you cross when the weather isn't quite right. The area here is known as Arnhem Land and one of the last wilderness areas on earth. Aborigines solely own the entire Arnhem Land region and have many cultural and spiritual links to the area. They've lived in the region for at least 60,000 years. We've been in Gove for 3 days now enjoying the pretty little natural harbor and friendly yacht club. Gove Yacht Club provides visiting yachties a 30 day free membership and includes showers, laundry, water, email, and bar/restaurant. Great place. Nhulunbuy is the nearest town, about 15 kilometers away. The population is predominantly Aboriginal with 4,000 non-Aboriginal who mainly work in the nearby bauxite mine/aluminum plant (bauxite is the raw material used in making aluminum). The land for the mine and plant is leased from the Aborigines. We have Aussie friends that we met sailing across the Pacific that now live here in Gove and we're happy to catch up with them again, we haven't seen them since Fiji. They are a young couple with two small boys and they completed their 10 yr. circumnavigation last year. Mark and Terri from PAQUITA had their two sons during their circumnavigation. Jack was born here in Gove and Darcy in South Africa. What a neat family. The boys had only known life on the water, they had never lived on land. They are now house-sitting and have temporarily moved ashore. The boys are quickly adjusting to shore life - TV, videos, bicycles,..... Jack is 8 yrs old and is far ahead of his fellow students now that he's into a school. While sailing, Terri was his teacher with correspondence courses. The one-on-one lessons are a definite advantage. They have been very gracious to us - taking us shopping, introducing us to locals, lending us their car, and feeding us. What great friends. It's so nice to meet up with fellow yachties after not seeing them for awhile. It's almost like a family reunion. Next update will be from Darwin, the major port in NT about 400 nm from Gove. We should be there early August.
7-16-00 We left Gove a couple days ago, after an enjoyable 6-day stay. We are sailing westward over the top of the continent through the Arafura Sea. This Northern Territory really is a wilderness. The land is so rugged and remote, now and then, we've seen small beach camps of Aborigines. There are many areas of significance to the Aborigines and Europeans in Arnhem Land. The "Dreamtime" stories of the Aborigines tells how during the Creation Era their ancestors created the alnd and all it contains. The ancestors also provided the bounty of the sea for the Aborigines. There is a large population of Aborigines in the region. Arnhem Land is named after the Dutch vessel "Arnhem" which explored the northern coast of Australia, then named New Holland in the early 1600's. The Dutch were looking for things to trade as part of the Dutch East India Company. Yesterday we sailed through "Hole in the Wall" in the Wessel Islands, about 50 nautical miles (nm) from Gove. It is a natural land cut and quite a narrow passage, only 45 meters wide and about 2 nm long. Accurate navigation is necessary to locate the entrance, as it was hidden in the island's hills and cliffs. Timing the current properly is also a big part of the navigation. We sailed through with a couple knots of current pushing us and it was a fun ride through the narrow pass. We then anchored in a lovely, small bay just south of the "Hole" and stayed the night. That was the night of the total lunar eclipse. We had a spectacular view of it here on the top of OZ. We sat in the cockpit and watched the moon from 9:30 PM to 10:45 PM. It was superb, with a crystal clear sky and a big, bright moon that illuminated the beaches making the sand look like pure white snow. Watching the eclipse in this isolated part of the world made it even more special. Wonder what the Aboriginal ancestors thought of lunar eclipses? The charts of this area are somewhat incomplete. The cautions and notes on them make us a little nervous: "As these shores are only partially examined, seamen must not trust implicitly to the chart", "Unexamined area", "Rock reported thereabouts", etc, ... There are large patches of water without any soundings, so our routes are dictated by data, or lack of data on the charts. Gives navigation a whole new meaning.
7-23-00 We're in Black Point, Port Essington on the western end of Arnhem Land, Lat 11°09'S/Lon 132°08'E. It is the site of the Gurig National Park and Cobourg Marine Park, a large peninsula separating the Arafura Sea and the Van Diemen Gulf. Pretty spot. The area has an interesting ancient and contemporary history. Archaeologists agree that the Aboriginal people have been living in this area for 40,000 years. In the early 1800's, the British settlement of Victoria was established as the crown's strategic spot in the Northern Territory. It lasted only 10 years. The parks are jointly managed by the original land owners (several Aboriginal clan groups) and the Parks-Wildlife Commission of NT. There is a small cultural center featuring a display of Aboriginal and European artifacts. There are 3 rangers and a small group of people who live here to support the park facilities - camping. If entering by road, you need a permit, but since we entered by water and are staying onboard our boat, we don't need one. We walked along a trail today and the beach, but still haven't seen any crocs. Lots of bird life here and also a wild herd of bantang - Indonesian cattle that the British introduced. They are endangered now in Indonesia, but we don't care to run across one as they have large horns and we've seen several huge dung piles and we don't care to meet the huge owners!
7-27-00 We arrived in Darwin at midnight last night and we're anchored in Fannie Bay (Lat 12°25.6'S/Lon 130°49.3'E), just off the Darwin Sailing Club. Darwin is the capital of the Northern Territory. It's great to be here, another milestone as this will be our jumping off point to Indonesia. Darwin has an interesting history. For more than a century, Darwin has been a pioneering outpost in the top end. It was named in honor of Charles Darwin, the scientist and naturalist from the BEAGLE. The traditional Aboriginal landowners have been here for thousands of years, but the first permanent European settlement was established in 1869. During WWII, the Japanese ferociously bombed Darwin 64 times., killing hundreds and sinking many ships in port. On Christmas Day in 1974, Cyclone Tracy struck Darwin. Then Darwin had a population of 43,000 and more than 30,000 were evacuated in the largest airlift in Aussie history. Darwin was decimated and had to be rebuilt from scratch, so it is the youngest and most modern capital city in OZ. There is a Royal Australian Air Force (RAAF) base close by and the fighter jets have been buzzing around Fannie Bay all day. It is the first sign of the RAAF we've seen since we've been in OZ. We hope to spend about 2 weeks here, preparing for our offshore passages. Time to check the rig, engine, sails, spares, provisions, etc.
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