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06 July 2012 (Eastern Hemisphere)

Dear F&F,

Last I wrote, we\’d anchored at Yabooma Island and I\’d gone over the whole big tide math to make sure that at \”O Dark Thirty\” we didn\’t visit the muddy bottom of the Yabooma Esturary. WELL…. I got nervous after my own lecture and figured it would be too close for comfort (aka: a good nights sleep).

So, before it got dark, we picked up the anchor with our new engine impeller working great and re-anchored in deeper water at the bottom of Boojaragi Island in the estuary. The depth was good and I had to make sure we were not too close to the reef system which at low tide stuck out of the water like razor blades. A bit windy and the current was 2.5 knots during the flood, but we got a good nights sleep and moved on early the next morning.

We\’d heard that barges plied these estuary\’s as it\’s easier to supply the Aboriginal Communities by boat/ship than by truck as half the year the roads are closed anyway. As we were leaving the estuary, we passed \”M/V Victora Tujhua\” who was making his twice weekly visit to the Mlingimbi community that was several miles further up river than we went. As it was, it took us over an hour just to get out of the estuary and back on the track toward our next anchorage. Adding to the fun was the fact that many of the areas here say, \”Unsurveyd\”. This means, there is NO CHART and sailor beware. It was easy enough to skirt these areas, so no big deal, but it lets you know how far afield we truly are. Adding to the eeriness of it all is the pea soup green water that runs out of the various river estuaries along the \”NT\” coast.

The problem with this coast is that it is featureless. The land is no more than 20 feet high and it\’s that way for hundreds of miles along the coast and quite far inland. There is also no real \”welcome mat\” for the boats to visit the Aboriginal Communities (indeed it requires a permit which is a big deal to get) and, there are no facilities and nothing we can really do off boat except explore by dinghy. No swimming because of the crocodiles and the water is muddy anyway. Hence, not a lot of boats come along the \”shore route\”. There is no quality guide book materials, you are truly on your own.

The wind has been very strong offshore and because of this, the twenty of so boats behind us en-route to Darwin for the rally are stuck (99% of them are doing the offshore route to Darwin). As such, we figured we might be the only boat actually making progress toward Darwin as the winds were thirty knots offshore. They were down to a pedestrian 18-25 for us, but directly astern and small seas as we were close to land.

We still needed to find one more anchorage to avoid a night sail and we thought about several of the poor options. We opted for Rolling Bay. Yep, that\’s the name and boy did it roll! Very safe, no white caps even in 25 knots of wind, but the swell wrapped around the corner and around 11 pm we were rocked and rolled for about 2 hours. The wind dropped down and reasonable sleep was had. The next morning, the wind was up yet again. The phenomenon is that the huge high pressure systems that come up the East Coast of OZ from the Southern Ocean get accelerated due to the cooling of the continental land mass at night. This cold air \”falls\” into the Arafura Sea like a rock displacing the tropically warmed air over the water here near the equator. As the land heats during the day, the wind drops significantly as the temperature gradient disappears.

We had yet another great sail en-route to our next stop, a really comfortable anchorage, North Goulbourn Island. As the crow flies, we\’re 160 miles from Darwin and have covered over 2000 miles since we left Brisbane 7 weeks ago. We\’ve 200 sailing miles to go as we must go around the Coburg Peninsula just to the East of Darwin. The anchorages from here to there should finally all be nice ones. As we approached South Goulbourn Island, we noticed that a quarter of the island seemed to be on fire! Indeed, it was. We read that the Aboriginal communities burn the dry spinifex grass to hunt amongst other things and apparently it is good for the diversity of the plant life. They hunt a certain lizard for food, but again, we read this on the internet and are not positive. We noticed several land areas along the northern coast with fires burning including the Mlingimbi Community area at Yabooma Island Esturary. We shall investigate further…..

I hadn\’t mentioned this before, but our generator main circuit breaker went out on us several days ago. The good news was that the shore power breaker is identical to it and I just swapped them out. At first it didn\’t work. Nikki said (she\’s a certified electrician btw!) that the relay coil wasn\’t activating. I took it apart, re-assymbled and we\’re now back in the generator business.

Tomorrow, we\’ll be off to Malay Bay on the Cobourg Peninsula which has some sorted history of it\’s own…. More later, stay tuned!

KIT, Scott and Nikki

Happy Birthday Robert Sheinbein. Robert for those of you who don\’t know him, was my oldest childhood friend!

04 July 2012 (Eastern Hemisphere)

Dear F&F,

Well, the wind didn\’t look all that bad to us this morning despite the forecast for gusts up to 30 knots. As we would be very inshore next to the \”continent\” vs. small narrow islands, we thought the winds would be lighter and indeed they were!

With two reefs in the main and the staysail, off we went straight downwind to Yabooma Island Estuary. THIS IS ABOUT AS REMOTE AS YOU CAN GET. The charts have vast areas which are \”inadequately surveyed\” or worse, \”unsurveyed\”. Sort of like sailing without a chart IF we went in the unsurveyed areas which WE DID NOT. The Aussies have done a great job charting perhaps the most difficult waterway area in the world. 2000 miles of reef, reef, reef! We had an uneventful sail and were even marginally underpowered with winds at only 16-20 knots. Interestingly, a bit erie!, the water turned a pea soup green when we were 10 miles from the island and it\’s convoluted waterway. After negotiating the entrance, my first plan had to be tossed out the window as the \”anchorage\” (side of the river) was open to the prevailing wind. It wasn\’t blowing hard, but we never like the shore behind us and it was a bit lumpy. So, we headed up river!

Here\’s where the fun begins. We pass what was listed as an aboriginal community on the shore and see one shack! That\’s it! Nikki thought she might have seen some additional infrastructure behind the mangroves. I didn\’t. We did soon however find what we thought would be a nice 20 foot spot to anchor. Every time we were convinced we\’d found \”the spot\”, the water would suddenly be 70 feet deep! The current was running at a knot and a half against the wind, not uncomfortable, but it made the direction to set the anchor not as obvious.

We struggled this way for an hour and a half. The problem of course is TIDE. We had a 6 foot plus tide, but at 0233 tomorrow morning, we\’ll have a 0 foot tide. This means that wherever we anchor, we need to watch for the tide which will give us 6 feet less water in the middle of the night.

NEXT, as we were about to make our pass for \”the spot\”, I lost the starboard engine! It was overheating and I quickly diagnosed a broken impeller. We did get the anchor down on one engine (imagine that my monohull friends!) and a good thing as the river current was running at nearly 2 knots by now. After we finally got settled, I was able to quickly change the impeller and the engine is back in action, beautifully pumping water away. I have a special \”speed seal\” cover for it and it removes and replaces in about a minute.

Unbelievably, we have good internet here as the Aussie infrastructure makes sure that outlying communities have wireless phone and internet. Our phones don\’t work, but the internet does! In the time it\’s taken me to write this, the tide has risen 3 feet and will be 16 feet positive at 7:30 tonight. The excitement then is to watch our bottom and make sure we\’ve at least 3 feet below the depth sounder mounted at the bottom of the hull. I think we\’ll be in 5-6 feet of water at low tide. Currently, we\’re in 16 feet.

So with a full moon in the estuary, no sign of anyone, we hope to be off out of this jungle cruise tomorrow, heading for Junction Bay and getting closer to Darwin by the day.

KIT, more soon, Scott and Nikki

3 July 2012 (Eastern Hemisphere)

Dear F&F,

Last night, we anchored in 15 feet of water and did indeed check the tide at Refuge Bay. With the full moon, they are pretty big here. So we estimated that we\’d get down to 5 feet at around 1:30 a.m. Well, maybe my math  was off just a bit. We got down to 4.4 feet and did the mid night \”anchor drill\” with 20+ knots. Merely letting out some more chain to see if that would get us into deeper water. Well maybe it got us an additional  6 inches! So I watched to make sure we wouldn\’t touch (not good for sleep!) and we didn\’t! We did see 3.7 feet for a moment and then literally…..\”the tide turned\”. Just another sea story.

This morning, we left \”Refuge Bay\” (which was a refuge from the big winds) and headed for Howard Island where we knew from email our friends Paula and John aboard \”Mr. John VI\” would be.   As we lost our main circuit breaker on the generators electrical system yesterday, we\’ve been charging the batteries with the engines. So making water, doing the wash and charging were on the morning agenda.   We motored very close to the shore to keep away from the building seas in 25- 30 knots of wind and finally got to where the land blocked the wind better; \”setting sail\”.  I t was only blowing 20+ knots and with a double reefed main and staysail we had a nice three hour sail arriving here at Howard Bay with \”Mr. John VI\” and \”Silvergirl\” already at anchor. The tide tonight will be 16 feet! So, we had to do the calculations to make sure we don\’t find the bottom tonight (on the full moon). We should never get shallower than 7 feet tonight, it is currently 22 feet at high tide.

Despite the big wind forecast for tomorrow, (this anchorage is the calmest we\’ve seen since Gove), we\’ll most likely move on toward Darwin along the NT coast. We have also positioned ourselves nicely for the next sail to Yabooma Island which is effectively directly downwind and only 30 miles. So as \”Beach House\” loves 25+ on the stern, we\’ll most likely head off tomorrow on our planned 6-7 day tripping to Darwin. We do have some maintenance and repairs to attend to (as always!) and don\’t want > to be rushed for time when we arrive.  Stay tuned, more soon…

KIT, Scott and Nikki (Howard Island Anchorage)….nice and calm, full moon, cloudless skies.