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I am writing this as we motor across from Astell Island to Elisabeth Bay where we will spend our last night before sailing down to Gove Harbour tomorrow morning. See the previous post for our dramatic night at Astell Island!

So stepping back, its a couple of days ago now that we headed out of the anchorage at South Goulburn Island, we ended up picking a really good weather window and we were able to sail with periods of motor sailing, all the way from South Goulburn, past  Maningrida, through the Crocodile islands and across to Gali’winku (Elcho Island) where we dropped the pick after sailing 146nm straight in 28 hours.

We anchored in the recommended anchorage, under the community of Gali’wiku, in  6m of water which should have been plenty of water for the round about 4m drop in tide to low tide, but something went awry. We all went and had a snooze as we were pretty tired after 28 hours passage, and when we woke it was clear that the tide was much lower than predicted, we were almost aground and more worryingly, surrounded by bommies awash in the dropping tide. We ended up touching the bottom and sat on the keels for an hour or so as the tide kept dropping and then slowly came in. Luckily I had fluked it and not anchored over any of the bommies.

It was quite surprising because the ancorage is marked on the chart and also is noted in various sources as a good anchorage and no one mentions the bommies! Perhaps its only obvious on super low springs?!

Once we were confident we were safe and sound, it became obvious it was a pretty entertaining scene! Lots of Yolngu had come down onto the super low tide beach, being a Sunday probably increased the numbers, there were people fossicking in the exposed rocks and coral, a guy with a set net down the beach, kids playing up and down, dogs running around chasing birds and various groups of people trying to get their tinnies down and into the water from where they had dried out. They seemed mostly to be trying to get back across to homelands on Howard Island.

Some of the efforts were hilarious, one bloke decided just to tie the tinny to the back of the hilux and skull drag it down into the water to float it off – which meant driving the ‘Lux into the salt water far enough to achieve floatation for the boat. Hopefully it was a work vehicle!

The entertainment stepped up a notch with the appearance of about a 4m murder log who became very interested in what appeared to be a bag of rubbish floating past the yacht on the tide, having discovered there was nothing edible in the bag he developed more than a passing interest in the kids playing 20m away from the shoreline on the beach, we yelled out to them, “Yo, nharma, batala baru!” but they seemed to be well aware of it, and later asked Sal to “Get your gun and shoot it!”.

Not long after the dogs came running along the beach in front of him and he quickly moved to the water’s edge to try for a bit of an afternoon snack of camp dog, but they were saved by some seagulls flying inland that they took after chasing up the beach!

As the sunset the beach cleared, the croc moved on and we enjoyed a lovely meal of kangaroo steak and chips, before a comfortable sleep and then up for the traversing of Cadell straits again, just eastwards instead of westerly. It was a fast passage with the tide, we averaged 7.75k for the 26nm, hitting about 11k in the Narrows which meant about 6k of current under us! We did get caught in one of the whirlpools and the auto pilot struggled to correct in time so we swung about 90º off course briefly before the pilot got her back on course! Its an amazing passage and while quite technical, there is no wind or waves and its beautiful with the coast of Elcho one side and the mainland on the other.

Coming out of Cadell we picked up a lovely breeze that lifted to the North all afternoon and so we were able to have a stunning sail all the way across Donington Sound and into our favourite anchorage on Astell Island, another 60nm down in 10 hours travelling.

 

Right now we are passing Pobassoo Island, coming up on Cotton Island where we will cut across to Elizabeth Bay, and as much fun and adventure as we have had for the last 3 months, its great to be in home waters and the coastline, beaches, hills, forests etc are still the most beautiful I know. It just reminds me we need to spend much more time cruising these waters close to home as there is just so much to see and do.

So thats about it for this trip, hope you have enjoyed the vicarious passage!