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 us  2 Responses »
Sep 232024
 

Pobassoo Island

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!

 

 Posted by at 2:54 pm



croc attack

 us  4 Responses »
Sep 232024
 

Last night was one of the most bizarre experiences of my life! We were all fast asleep when at about 4am there was a loud bang that woke us all up, we assumed it was the tinny drifting into the back of the yacht on the tide – something that happens occasionally when there is no wind and a tidal current running. But, when we got on deck the tinny was hanging back on its tow line, 40m from the yacht. We had a look around but couldnt see anything that might have caused such a loud noise. I was checking for something floating in the water like a log when i noticed a dark shape behind the yacht. I asked Dave to get the spotlight and have a look – it was about a 3,5m croc!

It was totally unphased by us, floating a couple of metres behind the yacht, then the damn thing started gently chewing on the tow line for the tinny! We realised he couldn’t really damage the line, but we just assumed the noise we heard was him biting the towline and pulling on it hard. So we all went back to bed after taking some video footage of him, but at about 5 there was another huge crashing, bashing noise and we rushed up on deck again. The croc was literally at the back of the boat, hanging vertically with his head out of the water, right bedside the bottom of the sugar scoop.

As he drifted back and his body floated to the surface I could see something beside his front right hand leg, slowly I realised it was our red ensign, the Australian maritime flag we fly from the side of the sugar scoop. Sure enough when I looked, not just was the flag gone, the flag pole was gone and he had also torn out the stainless steel rod holder that was fixed in the hull to hold the flagpole!

So he must have leapt vertically our of the water and torn the whole setup out of the boat! Dave promptly grabbed the Aboriginal flag from the other side and put it in the cockpit and we finally went back to bed again.

This morning I got up and was looking at the scene of the crime and I noticed the rod holder on the side where the Aboriginal flag had been was also nearly torn out of the hull, I unrolled the flag that Dave had rolled up in the dark and sure enough, about half of it was missing!

So for some reason he must have decided the flags were a food source and at least twice leapt vertically out of the water to try to eat them! No wonder the noises were so loud!!

Anyway a sobering reminder of just how agile they can be and how careful you need to be in their habitat. We also had a close experience with a big croc yesterday at Gali’winku, I will talk about that in the coming post about the final part of our trip home.

Here is the footage of him chewing on the tow rope,

www.vimeo.com/1011857086

 

 Posted by at 10:25 am



Heading home

 2024, Darwin, fishing, foodie stuff, Lumiel, Sailing, us  2 Responses »
Sep 172024
 

moored off Dinah Beach Cruising Yacht Association

After nearly 2 months in Darwin it was time to head home, Kai was on his way to Europe and Dave flew back in to join us for the trip back home. Our departure was delayed by some damage that occured to the rigging associated with the crossbeam and forestay, and we had to call in a favour from a friend of a friend who operates a fabrication business. Luckily I had bought a box of mackerel fillets to Darwin for him, from Bruce on Wildcard! Bruce had asked me to deliver the box of fish to him and mentioned he was a handy contact if we needed any fabrication work done – not something we expected to need at the time!

At least we had our shiny new front windows in, that had turned into a bit of a mission but we got there in the end. Thanks to Grant & Dave at Northern Shipwrights.

We also managed to squeeze a last supper in with Suresh & Nikki, they also invited a few friends over and we had a great night with loads of interesting conversation, great wines and delicious food. A lovely way to finish our time in Darwin.

 

 

Suresh & Nikki’s

We left Darwin about 3am in order to have the tide right for passing thru Howard Channel between the Vernon Islands and then heading down to Port Daly in the mouth of the Adelaide River. We ended up spending a couple of days there as the weather was not suitable for heading across Van Diemen Gulf and past Cape Don. Dave & I did a bit of fishing with no luck and also put the pots in for a soak, but only got one nice muddie for our trouble. It was a pretty interesting anchorage – the tide in and out of the river ran at about 3.5k and of course the wind blew from the opposite direction on one direction of the tide.

The next leg was out of Port Daly, across Van Diemen Gulf and round the notorious Cape Don into Alcaro Bay, it proved to be a slog, and a portent of things to come, winds more Easterly than we expected and stronger, so windows to move on were short and there was a lot of motoring and or motor sailing to make any progress. The trip to Alcaro Bay was not particularly pleasant, but we got there and given the reputation of these waters, especially heading East in the dry, we probably had a good run actually. Alcaro Bay was a pretty little spot to overnight, it had a creek in the corner with an old landing pontoon which I think the Cape Don Fishing lodge use to access the area and there is a walking track to the lighthouse apparently.

After a night at Acaro Bay we hauled anchor and headed round to Port Essington, site of the infamous 3rd attempt to settle the NT, called Victoria. It was a pretty grim story and 11 years later it was abandoned, like the 2 previous 2 attempts to create a settlement in the NT. There is a bit of an overview here, CLICK  and for a broader perspective on the whole of Garig Gunak Barlu/Port Essington, CLICK

We spent the first day at the entrance, at Black Point, site of the ranger station and the cultural centre, it was fascinating talking to the ranger, who was a Iwaidja man, it really gave us a sense of just how remote this part of Australia is and how sadly the Government’s abandonment of support for the homelands meant that other than the ranger station, no infrastructure remains and the people have all had to leave and move to Croker Island or Darwin.

The next day we headed 15nm in to the head of Port Essington to West bay, from here we were able to visit the ruins of the Victoria settlement and also spend some more time unsuccessfully fishing! ( a reminder of how hard it is to arrive in a new place and work out the fishing quickly.)

In the end we only walked part of the trail thru the settlement ruins, we had intended to go back and walk the whole trail but the freshening winds made it unviable to land in the tinny. Still we certainly got a sense of the immense difficulty these early settlers would have faced trying to establish an outpost in this remote wilderness.

 

We spent a couple of days in West Bay and then decided to sail back up to Black Point so we were ready to leave for the next leg when the weather allowed, it was a beautiful sail of the 15nm back up Port Essington.

We set off from Port Essington about 0400h with the intention of overnighting at Point David at the bottom of Croker Island, we had a great sail that morning down Bowen Strait, between Croker and Coburg Peninsula, and arrived at Point David in time for lunch, we had sailed down just behind another cat who just managed to stay ahead of us, and then sailed on further South in what looked quite unpleasant conditions and we were thankful for our decision to stop here overnight. It was a beautiful anchorage, a stunning beach, clear water and an old group of buildings that looked to have been damaged badly by a cyclone and abandoned.

Later that afternoon we realised the weather had been updated on Predictwind (joys of Starlink!) and there was now a good window to sail on thru the late afternoon and night towards our next destination, South Goulburn Island. We decided to change plans, not stay the night, and take advantage of the changed conditions to get to what is a very sheltered anchorage because there was some pretty nasty winds coming that would keep us holed up for a few days. We were starting to feel two pressures, progress had been slower than we expected due to the strength of the prevailing winds and their more Easterly aspect compared to our expectations, and secondly as a result of the extra motoring we were doing, we were getting low on fuel. I had realised we would have to refuel at Maningrida at the furthest, or if possible at South Goulburn Island at the community of Warruwi, which I knew had a service station, but its not somewhere you can go ashore without a permit in normal circumstances.

So we pulled anchor at about 5pm and sailed thru the night and made it into South West Bay on South Goulburn Island at about 3.30am. A bit hairy anchoring in a place you have never seen, in the middle of the night, but we managed! Its a truly stunning bay, the beaches are scattered between bauxite and gapan cliffs and we have a very comfortable anchorage. Looking at the weather we realised we would be stuck here for at least 3 or 4 days, so we decided to try our hardest to organise the refueling here. There was a barge landing where we were anchored which made getting the fuel to the boat practical, we only had 4 empty jerry cans, so it would require 3 trips to and from the boat to the barge landing and 3 trips across the island of about 4kms – so quite an exercise.

I found the phone number for the art centre, Mardbalk Arts & Culture and got hold of a very nice guy, Paddy, who ran the CDP program, his wife helps out in the Art Centre and he said the manager was away on a training course for the day, but he would speak to the council manager and see if they would let us come ashore for fuel, and to visit the Art Centre and the ALPA store. I explained that if we did get permission we would need to pay someone to help us transport the fuel from Warruwi to the barge landing. He said not to worry about that, he would be happy to help! I explained it was going to be a lengthy process as we had to not only go from the boat to shore, shore to Warruwi, fill the jerries and return them to the shore and then out to the boat, but also syphon them into the tank each time, so it was only fair if we compensated him for his time helping us, but he would have none of it.

Such generosity is one of the benefits of living and travelling in very remote locations, people generally do their best to help and that was certainly the case here. We also met a lovely young local guy fishing on the beach in front of where we were anchored, he turned out to be the sports & rec officer for Warruwi, as we found out when we bumped into him again at the servo. He had told us the night before that we should be able to get permission to get fuel given our situation and when we saw him at the servo he said he had intended to come back that afternoon and check we were ok and had got sorted!

While Dave and I did the fuel runs, Sal spent her time in Mardbalk and selected some nice artworks to add to our collection, including a lovely little painting for the boat.

So that pretty much brings us up to date, now we just have to wait for this system to move thru so we can make the next leg towards home, its looking like we will have a few very calm days in a row later in the week so we will probably be doing a fair bit of motoring as we have a fair way to go still and only 2 weeks left before Dave is meant to be back at work.

 Posted by at 1:15 pm



Darwin

 2024, Darwin, fishing, foodie stuff, friends, Lumiel, Sailing, us  9 Responses »
Aug 282024
 

Darwin sunset

So, not sure where the time has gone, but our 6 weeks in Darwin is nearly up, early next week we plan to set off for home! Today Kai left Darwin and flew to Adelaide where he will spend a week or so before departing for Greece & his european adventure! And Dave arrives on Friday to rejoin us for the trip home.

Winding back to the beginning, once we arrived in Darwin, Dave and Kai both flew back home to Gove and Sal & I settled into our Darwin adventure! One thing I added to the previous post about the trip over here, was the amazing little video Kai made of the trip over. He used a DJI gimbal and combined with his editing on Da Vinci Resolve, he has created a fantastic first effort – I am sure over the next few months he will get even better! Anyway here it is in case you dont see it on the previous post,

Our life hear revolves around the tides, they are huge, the springs are 8m down to nearly 0m and we can only access the shore when the tide is over 2.7m as the access to the dinghy pontoon at the Dinah Beach Cruising Yacht Association where we are moored, dries out below that level and in fact its mud for about 100m out at low tide! So Sal’s ventures to the various Darwin Festival events and medical appointments as required, need careful planning. In some cases she stays over at friends if its not practical to get back to the boat.

We also have had many day sails around the beautiful Darwin harbour, with various friends. We tend to head out in the afternoon, sail around for a few hours in the lovely sea breeze, before ending up under the city centre, below the Esplanade, as the sun sets and the sun sparkles on the city buildings, and I cook a BBQ for dinner and we finish off back on the mooring after dark.

Luckily Lance & Cheryl were here for the first week or so, this meant they were first to come out for a sail – and the only friends to have joined us on two trips as they joined us for a week or so on the voyage home from Brisbane when we bought Lumiel. We also enjoyed a night at the Deckchair Cinema with them and brunch at the Roma Bar.

The dinners tended to be BBQ gulf Tiger Prawns as they were so nice and easily available at Mr Barra, I just BBQ’d them with no marinade, then served with caramelised limes, dipping sauces and fresh salad or mango salsa. (once the mangoes were available at the markets!

We also got thru quite a list of jobs on the boat, I guess living on her full time there is the advantage of noticing all the little things that need doing, and having the time to actually do them. We took advantage of being in Darwin to get one major job done, which was to put new front windows in the saloon. I will post some photos of this job in the next post, as they are not due to be re-installed until later this week.

Another fun weekend was getting together with Don & Belinda, and their friend Matt. We went to an amazing party with them in a massive property on Freshwater Drive in Rapid Creek. It was like a Hollywood movie set, 2 bands playing, food catered and a margarita machine in the kitchen! The grounds were stunning with 2 huge African Mahogany trees and incredible professional lighting thru all the gardens. We also had a fantastic sail with them that weekend.

The next weekend was Putty, Sarah & Casey for a beautiful sail, perfect conditions and we went right up inside the shoals off Fanny Bay before heading over to Cox Peninsula and back to Darwin for the now famous dinner! Stir Fried Squid and Veggies was the special of the day.

We followed that up with a night at the awards for the NATSIAAs on the grounds of the Darwin Museum & Art Gallery, with Kade and Annie, and then a sail with them the next day. Once again, perfect sailing conditions and dinner with the sunset.

We also had a wonderful evening with our friends Chris & Biddy from Melbourne, we decided to go to their apartment on the Esplanade and cook, rather than going out somewhere for dinner, we had some beautiful Cape Grim Scotch Fillet that I cooked with baby potatoes and dill and a green salad that Sal prepared. Again, I was a bit slack with the pics!

Then we had a sail was with Suresh, his son Harrish and a friend of theirs, Kevin from Sweden with his daughter & son. Nikki stayed at home with Kevin’s wife & Mum and Sal was off doing something festival related! I was very slack on the photos for this sail!

I think the last weekend we got out for a sail was with Marco, Deb, Amalia & Sammy. True to his form with me, Sammy caught a nice fish! A spotted mackerel he got on the trolling line while we were sailing. It was just another magic NT dry season sail on Darwin Harbour, I keep saying it, but its truly so good and consistent.

Kai came back and joined us for a few days and it was nice to catch up given how long it will be before we see him again, he was a great help with cleaning the tinny – because its not anti fouled it pretty quickly grew a thick coating of weed and barnacles, we borrowed Putty’s water blaster and sat it on the careening poles at the Dinah Beach club. It amazing to see how quickly the tide goes out, from the first pic to the last is less than 40 minutes!

We have loved the hospitality of the Dinah Beach Cruising Yacht Association while we have been here, and the best thing about it is the restaurant, Ton’s Bistro. Ton was a chef at the Sailing Club and decided to go out on his own, he took up the lease on the kitchen at Dinah Beach and is smashing it out of the park. The best kept secret in Darwin as we keep telling everyone! The food has been outstanding, and if you are in Darwin make sure you come down and try it.

Well, thats a very rushed update on our stay in Darwin, I am sure I have missed many of our adventures, so here are a couple of foody pics from on board!

 Posted by at 5:10 pm



Arrival

 2024, Lumiel, Sailing, us  6 Responses »
Jul 172024
 

On the mooring off Dinah Beach

After coming out of Cadell Strait we set a course thru the Crocodile islands overnight and then Sunday we headed out to the north of the Goulburn Islands, originally we had planned to take the inshore route, south of South Goulburn Island to stay close to the mainland and mitigate the effect of any stronger South Easterly winds, but the wind was so light we were actually chasing more of it, and even going further offshore we spent a lot of time motor sailing with one engine on.

Sunday morning sunrise.

We did manage a sail for a few hours with the spinnaker up which was nice, and the first time since Queensland that we have had the spinnaker up.

Drifting along under the kite

We also caught 2 nice mackerel at the same time, trolling past Junction Bay, so we put the fishing lines away after that!

We also took the outer track around Croker island, again, chasing more breeze, rather than our original route  up the Bowen Channel between Croker Island and the mainland.

Mackies!

We had to slow down for the leg across the top of Coburg peninsula as we needed to be at Cape Don around 8pm to catch the complicated tidal currents in the right place at the right time to traverse Van Diemen Gulf and then along the southern shore of Melville Island before taking the North Passage over the Vernon islands and heading round into Port Darwin.

We cleared the Vernon Islands at dawn on Tuesday and then had a magnificent sail across to Darwin, arriving in very high spirits just after lunch. We were fortunate to be escorted into Darwin Harbour by HMAS Woolamai! (Not really escorted, but Dave’s son is stationed in Darwin and serves on the Woolamai and they were out doing sea trials so that was pretty special to be chatting to him on the phone and him taking photos of us!)

HMAS Woolamai

The trip was about 440 nautical miles in 3 days 9 hours, and we really had no issues at all, very pleasant conditions for the middle of the dry season and we had a lot of fun, especially nice to have Kai with us for the trip too.

Arrival Beers!

We found the mooring we have been lent for a couple of weeks, got set up on that and then cracked a celebratory beer or 3. (we didn’t drink on passage.) After that we went ashore and signed up as members of the Dinah Beach Cruising Association and then enjoyed a few more beers and a delicious meal.

We also bumped into Paul O’Hara there, a fellow yachty from Gove who was on his way home after delivering a yacht to Onslow in WA!

Dinner at Dinah Beach

After a full nights sleep and a lazy morning we went ashore and Dave’s son, Steve dropped off Dave’s car which was already here so we have transport and then we went to have brunch at the Roma Bar and promptly bumped into our dear friends Lance & Cheryl who spent some of the trip home from Queensland on board Lumiel with us. We knew they were in Darwin, but it was pure fluke we bumped into them this morning!

First sunset in Darwin!

 

The amazing video Kai made of the trip over,

 Posted by at 3:07 pm  Tagged with:



Dawn

 us  10 Responses »
Jul 142024
 

Dawn, off False Point.

We departed Gove harbour at 3am on Saturday morning, very light breeze so we had to motor up to Cape Wilberforce and into Malay Roads, we were able to motor sail part of the way across Donington Strait and into Cadell Strait, between Elcho Island and the mainland. We came out of Cadell Strait just on sunset, its quite an impressive passage, very narrow navigable channel, completely unmarked and fierce tides!

In the section known as the narrows, we had over 4kts of tide with us – and that was neap tides! There were numerous whirlpools and eddies, well worth the effort though, both for the natural beauty and the time and distance it saves compared to the alternative passages.

As we headed out across towards the Crocodile Islands we were treated to an amazing 180º sunset, with the lights of Elcho at one end and the shoreline of Howard Island at the other.

Conditions are still unseasonably light and we have made pretty slow progress overnight, but at least the engines were off!

 

 Posted by at 7:09 am



Darwin bound

 2024, Lumiel, us  4 Responses »
Jul 122024
 

on the beach to fill up with water!

Today is our final day of preparation for sailing to Darwin, we depart at about 3am tomorrow morning to catch the tide through Cadell Strait between Elcho Island and the mainland. Got the drone out to try and remember how to fly it, so here is a quick bit of footage. There will be 4 of us for the trip, Sal, I, Dave and Kai.

 

 Posted by at 4:03 pm



Long time

 us  10 Responses »
Jun 082024
 

stormy, wet season sky in the harbour.

…no see! I have been reluctant to update the blog because its all built on WordPress, which in hindsight was a big mistake because so many of the plug ins I used to built it are now broken and unsupported. This means I am running on a really old version of WordPress and an old version of PHP and sooner or later the whole site will break and no longer work!

I have been working with a friend who is a developer to try and find a solution but its taking longer than expected so I thought i would try to create a new post and at least see if it still works!

What I have also done is make a video featuring some of our photos since my last post so at least there is something to have a look at!

I dont want to add more photo galleries at this stage because thats one of the main things that cant be updated due to the plug in that creates them being out of date and unsupported.

We are off to Darwin in the yacht in mid-July, we are planning to sail direct to Darwin and then spend about 6 weeks there before having a slow cruise home, exploring more of the NT coast. Hopefully I will be able to add some posts from the trip.

 

 Posted by at 4:16 pm



alone

 us  1 Response »
Sep 262023
 

heading out on a smokey morning for a fish.

Alone – well sort of! Sal has gone down to NSW for a week or so for her Grandmother’s 90th, Kai is in Darwin for 2 weeks at trade school and Dave is over in Thailand getting some work on his teeth. I basically moved onto the boat last Wednesday, figuring I may as well be alone on the water as anywhere else! My solitude was interrupted by a surprise visit from my friend Suresh who is a ENT surgeon in Darwin and he was over in Gove doing some operations at our hospital. He ended up having a day off at the end of his week so he came out to the yacht and we spent the afternoon out in the tinny fishing, and then enjoyed sunset drinks on the boat before heading into the boat club for dinner. It was great to catch up and hopefully he will be back over before too long.

Friday I spent the day out in the tinny chasing Mackerel, went all the way out to Last Chance Shoal (about 20nm) and got nothing, cut back across to Mack Shoal…another 15nm….and got nothing, had a last troll over Bonner Shoal, only 7nm from home – and got one small mackerel! Better than nothing I guess.

Saturday I decided it was about time to see if I can sail Lumiel on my own, it’s not really set up for single handed sailing but I figure it should be possible. I managed to get off the mooring and sailing easily enough, so I thought I may as well make a weekend of it and sail up to Truant island (about 36nm North of here). It was a great day for sailing, about 15k-18k of Easterly wind so it was a broad reach all the way.

At some point I looked back to check the mackerel lines I was trolling and saw what I assumed was a massive mackerel skipping over the tops of the waves as I skull dragged it along at about 8k! By the time I got it to the. back of the boat I realised it was actually a billfish, turned out to be a small black marlin!! It’s the first one I have ever caught up here and totally unexpected on a hard bodied mackerel lure.

Anyway, it’s safely filleted and in the freezer now! I had some fresh for dinner, made marlin bites on a bed of twice cooked potato with onion & garlic all cooked in wine and butter. I mixed the chopped up marlin liver in with the potato & onion. It was very tasty!

The anchorage was a little bit rolly with the Easterly swell wrapping around the top of Truant, but not uncomfortable in the Cat, after a pleasant night I pulled anchor Sunday morning and had a fast if uneventful sail home!

This happened the weekend before, I got a text from Kai after he arrived in Darwin, said he was cooking breakfast for Ted & Mouse in Darwin, and he wanted to know how long to poach eggs for. I asked him what he was cooking and he nonchalantly told me he was knocking up Eggs Benedict for them! I gave him some quick tips for making the Hollandaise sauce, but it was by no means a recipe and it’s the first time he has made it!  To say I was impressed would be an understatement, one very proud dad.

 Posted by at 3:54 pm



catch up

 us  2 Responses »
Sep 122023
 

Mali

Picking up from the end of June – which is when I last posted on the blog! – we had a visit from friends Anna & her daughter Mali and they joined us on Lumiel for an afternoon, although we didn’t get out for a sail. I got busy in July and removed all the old anti skid that was peeling off and replaced it with nice new white anti skid. It ended up being a bit more of a mission than expected – boat work! – the gelcoat was pretty degraded under the old gel coat and I had to sand it all back then prime it with a couple of coats of epoxy before carefully cutting out new pieces from the sheets I had ordered. It did end up coming up pretty good and certainly makes the old girl look a lot better!

 

Mid July our dear friends Brian & Penny arrived for a visit, we didn’t have much boat time, but a great old catch up and lots of meals at Dave’s Beach Bar & Rick’s Bar & Grill! Brian continued the tradition of bringing an excellent bottle of rum for Mojitos on his annual visit!

The end of July, start of August led us into Garma time, and while we avoid the festival these days, its always nice to catch up with the old crew from the real Garmas in the early days. We had a lovely day sailing with the amazing Amy & her offsider, Ness, then Kade and Johhno joined us for drinks and dinner after the sail and a few days later we had a fantastic meal at the boat club with Chris & Biddy who invited some other very interesting people along. Finally we wrapped it up with a day of champagne sailing with Andrew and Di. The boat work for the month was making up new mooring bridles, a new skill learnt in splicing 8 strand plaited rope.

Mid August saw Sal & I in Darwin for a week or so, she had her annual check up with the oncologist and a few other appointments, everything went well and she got the all clear on everything. We stayed with our special friends, Putty & Sarah in their little hut in Nightcliff, looking over the Arafura sea. It was a magic time, lots of long chats, great meals and lazing around! We also caught up with Andrew & Di again on their way to Greece, at Hanumans with Putty & Sarah, Don Whyte & Belinda a couple of others as well as Kai who was in Darwin for trade school. I also picked up the VW Amarok I had bought in Melbourne earlier in the year, I dropped Sal at the airport and drove the ‘Rok home with a load of gear for various people in the tray!

So that brings us thru to September, Dave and I beached Lumiel to change out the port side sail drive prop shaft, we had developed a small water leak into the sail drive and we are hoping this will resolve it. We took the opportunity to scrape her bum and get rid of 9 months growth, very pleased with how she came up. This was promptly followed by a crabbing expedition with Scotty who is leaving town after 15 years, and Danny, a mate who manages the Boat club campground.

The last week the Blue Fin Tuna have been in the bay, Danny & Emma caught a few and gave me one which we enjoyed as sashimi, including on Saturday when we took friends of Sal’s from her work, Christian & Claudine out for a sail – it was Christian’s b’day so we had to lay it on a bit! Kai also caught a good one, so I dry cured that for gravlax.

That us pretty well up to date! I think the only other exciting news is that Sal has announced she is retiring in February next year, so the adventures should accelerate going forward!

remember to subscribe if you want email notifications of updates, and click on the ‘i‘ at the top of the galleries if you want to see the captions for the images.

 

 Posted by at 8:02 pm



sailing

 2023, fishing, Lumiel, Sailing, us  5 Responses »
Jun 202023
 

dolphins playing!

Mid June has not typically been a time of the year we do much boating, the SE trades are generally well set by then and the sea conditions will generally be less than pleasant. One of the advantages of now owning Lumiel, our 14.2m sailing catamaran, is its now viable to use a boat much more at this time of year and travel further afield. As Dave works shift work, 4 on, 4 off, his break between night shifts and dayshifts is effectively 5 days, so we planned a trip where his 5 days off lined up with the 5 days I dont do any NBN work, and last Thursday morning Dave came straight out to the yacht after he finished work and we set sail.

Conditions were better than we expected with a lighter 12-15k breeze, perfect for sailing North, so we set off and decided to just keep sailing and go all the way to Guruliya bay on the North side of Raragala Island in the Wessels group. It is about 72nm so we expected to get to the anchorage about 9pm. Although it was a moonless night we were not concerned as we have been into the bay previously so we have tracks to the anchorage and the actual anchorage saved as a waypoint.

sailing down Malay Roads

We sailed up and around Point William into Malay Roads, riding the flooding tide which helped carry us, then past Astell Island and across Donington Strait with the sails wing and wing, (headsail on one side and main on the other side with the wind directly behind us). We then went thru the pass between Bumaga and Jirrgari Islands, which we have named Stella Pass in honour of the beer we cracked at the time! Its quite a tricky passage, but with light winds, on neapy tides and near slack water its safe enough. We dropped the pick in Guruliya at 9:05pm so pretty well spot on when we had planned. It had been 13 hours of fantastic flat water sailing in perfect conditions, one of our nicer sails in Lumiel!

 

our anchorage at Guruliya

As you can see its a pretty pleasant scene to wake up to in the morning! We ended up spending 3 days anchored in Guruliya bay, we did plenty of exploring, a bit of unsuccessful fishing an plenty of relaxing and soaking up the beautiful splendour of this part of the world. I took less photos than I should have so this post is a bit light on in that regard! We of course enjoyed some lovely meals and tasty wines to help pass the time. Thanks to Starlink we were also able to watch the Super Rugby Semi Finals and the first Ashes test from Edgbaston!

We did find some stunning fresh water streams, they must be permanent spring fed creeks because the wet season runoff creeks have all dried up already. Very refreshing to bathe in on the nice warm sunny days!

Sunday morning we set off to sail back to Elizabeth bay with the plan being to spend the night there and then do the run home Monday morning to get back about lunchtime. Once again conditions were exceptional for mid-June, about 12k of SE breeze, mostly flat seas and blue skies! We had another spectacular sail down the back of the Wessels, a bit of a bumpy ride back thru Stella Pass and then a cracking sail across to the Western end of Inglis Island, and a bit of motor sailing along Inglis, into Malay Roads and across to Elizabeth Bay where we dropped the pick at about 5:15pm ready for a nice bottle of rose and some local pearl meat as an entree!

Monday morning was once again a beautiful calm start to the day, very light breeze, under 10k. We got under way after a couple of coffees and made our way round Point William and pointed Lumiel towards her home port and mooring, to our total surprise we were nearly able to lay Gove direct, had we wanted to we could have easily sailed the whole way home, with only a couple of small tacks, but Dave was keen to get back by lunchtime so he had a bit of time to organise stuff to start his day shifts the next day, so we decided to motor sail so we could get in a bit quicker.It was still extremely pleasant as the breeze stayed under 10k all morning and the sea was basically flat once we were clear of Cape Wilberforce. We picked up the mooring at 11:15am and so ended up what was certainly the best trip we have done on Lumiel since bringing her home in terms of amount of sailing and perfection of conditions! Absolutely terrific dry season cruising at its best, and a trip I am sure both Dave & I will not forget anytime soon.

Early morning light on cliffs of Point William

 

 Posted by at 7:54 pm



Pearl Farm

 2023, Cruise April '23, Lumiel, Sailing  3 Responses »
Apr 302023
 

Pearl Farm Jetty

After finally leaving Guruliya Bay we sailed down to Firefly Pass between Warnawi and Alger Island, went through the pass and then across Donington Sound to the West end of Inglis Island, along Inglis Island, thru Malay roads and back into Elizabeth Bay. I called up the Pearl Farm on the radio to let them know we were going to stay a few days and also asked if would be able to come over and have a look at the operations, as we have never gone ashore to have a look in all the years we have been coming past!

 

The darker colour is our track from Guruliya Bay to Elizabeth Bay and the red track is from Elizabeth Bay to home. We spent 3 days in Elizabeth Bay waiting for what we knew would be the best day for sailing back to Gove. On the second day we went over and had a grand tour of the Pearl Farm, its a fascinating business, firstly there is just the absolute remoteness of the location, only 25nm from Gove, but only accessible by boat or helicopter. At the height of their season there are about 40 workers on the farm and Diana, the manager, explained the whole process from spawning their own oysters, right through pearl seeding and harvesting. Since taking over the pearl farm from the previous owners, Clipper Pearls have spent a lot on new buildings and upgrading old ones.

They have quite a large Indonesian workforce as they also own pearl farms in Indo and so its a good source of experienced workers for them and a great opportunity for their workers to come to Australia, and earn extra money for their families. We were also able to buy a couple of kilos of pearl meat from them, which is very hard to get normally.

Cleaning the nets that protect the growing baby pearls on their frames.

We finally left Lizzy bay, yesterday, Saturday, and had a superb sail all the way home, I had not expected to be able to sail it in one tack, but the wind was more Easterly than predicted and we were able to lay Gove Harbour after coming out thru Malay Road and round Breakfast Island. We picked up the mooring in the late afternoon after nearly 3 weeks cruising the Arnhem Land coast, after tidying up a bit we headed into the boat club for a nice long hot shower and a nice scotch fillet for dinner! Its been an incredible trip, we battled a but with the wet weather in the middle but it was super fun and Sal has grown so much in her confidence and ability with all the systems on Lumiel. We are already looking forward to the next extended trip in the future!

 

 Posted by at 12:36 pm



wet

 2023, Cruise April '23, Lumiel, Sailing, us  1 Response »
Apr 252023
 

We have now been at Guruliya Bay for 6 days, this was never our plan – to spend nearly a week in one spot at the Wessel Islands, but the enormous surge in the wet season this year has put paid to the best laid plans of Rick & Sal! We had already had the wettest wet season on record by the middle of April, and now the last week has just been unrelenting.

We had some sun the first day we got here, since then it has just been wave after wave of storm fronts, typically with strong gusts in front of them (41 knots or 80kmh the strongest), and then driving rain. Every time we think it has cleared we get smashed an hour or so later!

The waterfalls in the picture above only flow when its raining heavily, its purely runoff from the large rocky ‘plain’ on the shoreline closest to us – we are only anchored about 150m off there and the roar when its full flow is incredible! Within 20 minutes of so of it stopping raining there is barely any water flow left! Anyway, that’s what it looks like most times I look out!

We decided to stay put here because its a superb anchorage, 360° protection from the wind and swell and fantastic holding, it also has some good fishing in the mangrove creeks at the head of the bay. The holding was definitely tested the night we had over 40k of wind, but she didn’t drag an inch. Also were we to move we would just be in a different spot in shit weather, with very little ability to do anything outside of the boat anyway.

So there is not a lot of interest to talk to you about! The fishing has been next to non existent due to the weather, the couple of chances we have had we had no success anyway. So there is a lot of Netflix & chill, reading, cooking, eating, and needless to say drinking! Thank god for Starlink!

 

 

Our anchorage (red curser is boat)

Here a few pics from the moments the sun was out!

One interesting find while the weather was good enough to do some exploring was some graves that a friend had told me about, they are just above the high tide mark and have been damaged by king tides to the extent that some of the bones are exposed. They are clearly human remains. It is not at all the way Yolngu treat their dead so I am pretty sure they are not Yolngu graves. The possible alternatives are probably, Macassan sailors shipwrecked, Japanese airforce crash victims from WW2, more survivors of the Patricia Cam sinking in WW2, Indonesian fishermen shipwrecked, white Australian victims of some sea/air tragedy.

The presence of a few middens of Dhumpala (mud mussels) suggests there were survivors, presumably who then buried the dead, the middens are scattered amongst the 6 or so graves which are marked by small collections of rocks and stones that have clearly been carried to the site as they are not present in the immediate area. Permanent fresh water for the dry season was not obvious to me, plenty of sources at the moment but I doubt any of it is spring fed and persisting into the dry so that would have been a serious issue for them. The creek in the bay would have provided the Dhumpa

la and other seafood. Nearly every bay up here has a little creek in it that could provide food to anyone with a bit of knowledge.

Anyway, for the time being the mystery remains, there are no obvious candidates in terms of missing people, shipwrecks or plane crashes and no evidence other than the graves and middens that I can find.

I am not going to post any photos as it feels a little….disrespectful in the circumstances.

So here are some more photos, of the moments when we felt inspired enough to take any!

Our plans our now to spend another day sitting here in the rain, and then tomorrow we will make our way back down to Elizabeth Bay and hang there for a couple of days waiting for a window of weather to go from there to home. Its looking like that will eventuate Friday or Saturday. This will probably end up being a week less than we thought we might be away, but the persistent poor weather and the likelihood of favourable conditions later this week to sail home have somewhat forced our hands. Also not sure I have enough coffee on board to last another week without rationing!

I will close with a video of the waterfall, you can see this is at a lower tide than the photo at the start of this post, the tide here is about 3.5m range so it makes a big difference.

 

 

 Posted by at 10:22 am



Slipperys

 2023, Cruise April '23, fishing, Lumiel, Sailing, us  4 Responses »
Apr 192023
 

We left Astell Island and motored across the top of Inglis Island and then down Pera Channel into the top of Arnhem bay and an area called Yalakun Sound. It has a river called Slippery’s that is a renowned barra fishing creek and our intention was to spend a couple of days here working it out and hopefully catch a barra or 2!

No wind again so it was an afternoon of pleasant motoring in light conditions and the flooding tide carrying us down into the bay.

 

Astell to Slippery’s

It was a wild and stormy night the first night, we had massive lightening & thunder storms all around us, but luckily not over us and only light rain. We woke to the realisation that there was a massive weather event over Gove and it was being absolutely pounded – while we had clear weather here. It didn’t rain again here and Nhulunbuy ended up with over 300mm for the 36hrs or so it lasted! We were so lucky to avoid it all by being far enough west.

I went for a flick along the rockbars near the entrance to Yalakun Sound in the morning and was amazed to come around the point and find another tinny sitting there flicking lures! I was a friend from home, Morgs and he had come around from Nhulunbuy early in the morning. He was equally surprised to see me! Anyway it turned out to be a blessing, he is a really good fisherman and knows the area very well, so he basically coached Sal & I into exactly the right spots at the right time to catch some barra and without his help I am not sure I wold have worked the system out and caught fish.

Morgs ended up joining us for dinner and sleeping on the boat with us, I think not having to sleep in his tinny in the creek and the offer of a coffee in the morning sold him!

Sal with the first barra of the day. (& biggest)

Exploring Slippery’s

Morgs trying for a barra on saltwater fly gear, an art way beyond my skill level!

There were plenty of crocs in the system, including this cheeky little guy in one of the gutters we were fishing!

For dinner we had crispy skin barra with rice, i forgot to take any pics so you will just have to imagine how good it looked!

The entree was some trevally I had caught earlier in the day, dry cured served in coconut cream with curry leaf oil and finger lime. It was inspired by a similar dish we had at Ellas by Manoli in Darwin recently, a Sri Lankan restaurant.

entree

Morgan spent another night on Lumiel with us and then headed off back towards Nhulunbuy, we pulled anchor and headed North to the Wessel Islands where we will spend most of the rest of our time away.

 

 Posted by at 11:07 am



away2

 2023, Cruise April '23, fishing, Lumiel, Sailing, us  5 Responses »
Apr 152023
 

Motoring past Cotton Island

After a couple of days in Elizabeth Bay we motored around to the western side of Astell Island, we have never explored this island and it has a couple of nice anchorages on the western side that offer a good haven in the dry season. The more southern bay in particular is good as it has a lovely gently shoaling beach that can be used to beach catamarans on to clean hulls etc. So we decided to go across and spend a couple of days checking the area out.

Just before we pulled anchor in Elizabeth Bay, the resident Lemon Shark, Bruce, turned up, so he got a feed of freshly caught whiting I had got in the cast net, for breakfast!

Sal got some video footage,

The run across to Astell Island we were once again without wind, but the current through Malay roads is pretty impressive, these were by no means spring tides but we were doing up to 10.1 knots over the ground at only 5.4 knots thru the water – so over 4.5 knots current with us!

A little video of us motoring down Malay Roads

We have had a very pleasant and relaxing couple of days here, I found a lovely little spring fed creek on the beach that has a shaded pool to bathe in and its a very pretty anchorage.

Yesterday we explored the other bays and found this little guy!

I went and spent a bit of time in a small mangrove creek this afternoon and while i didnt catch any fish, I did get a nice muddie, so that is dinner sorted!

Mr Pinchy!

Tomorrow we will head down to Arnhem Bay for the next episode in our trip!

 Posted by at 4:44 pm



Away!

 2023, Cruise April '23, fishing, Lumiel, Sailing, us  5 Responses »
Apr 122023
 

the view on the mooring!

So Sal has a months long service leave and I have taken about 6 weeks off too, today we have headed out on the yacht, not sure where we are going, not sure for how long, let the journey begin!

It was a bit of a dramatic day in the end, Sal & I loaded up the tinny with supplies for a month and headed out to the boat club, we could see a decent strom coming, but realised we had time to launch the tinny, get to Lumiel, unload all the provisions and organise stuff before the storm hit. 

storm incoming!

This proved to be correct and we sat out an hour or so of rain with some decent lightning & thunder passing just to the south of us. Once it cleared we dropped the mooring and headed north, there was basically no wind so it was to be an afternoon of motoring. Given that we only got underway about 11:30 I decided just to run up to Elizabeth Bay for our first night, a run of about 25nm into the anchorage.

Everything went perfectly well until we got past Cape Wilberforce, and were rounding Point William in the narrow channel between it and the un-named island. The ebb tide was running pretty hard by now as it was about half tide and we were pushing about 2-3k of tide, suddenly the port engine changed exhaust note, I looked over the side and there was no raw cooling water coming out of the exhaust.

I quickly shut down the engine before it overheated and we had to push on thru the rest of the channel on just one engine, but while it was slower, it was not an issue, we just made our way slowly into the anchorage and dropped the pick.

Elizabeth Bay

Once the engine cooled down I went to see if I could work out what had happened, I found the raw water discharge hose blown off the fitting on the head of the heat exchanger! Inside the manifold I could see pieces of rubber from the raw water impeller.

I realised I had to remove the head to clean all the rubber out properly, it must have back pressured the pump and that caused the hose to eventually blow off. I did all of that and refitted the hex head, its not hard, all easily accessible at the top of the engine. 

end of the hex with manifold removed, bit of scaling but thats where all the rubber was sitting.

The next step was to replace the raw water pump impeller, that is a shit of job, I had to take the alternator off first and its all tucked away low on the outside of the engine and difficult to see and access, but to my amazement when I finally got to the impeller, having removed the cover on the pump, it was in perfect condition!

raw water pump impeller

We got the old impeller replaced when we had the engine out of the boat last November, so I was a bit surprised it should have failed, what actually appears to have happened is that at some time in the past the impeller failed, and someone has just replaced it without removing the hex head and finding all the little bits of the old impeller! 

All the rubber and scale i removed.

Anyway, much better news than it might have been, and I just put the cover back on the pump and put everything back together, just have to put the alternator back on tomorrow morning.

Now I am just sitting in the dark, having a cup of tea, while a few dolphins swim around the boat – i cant see them but I can hear them exhaling when they surface! 

 Posted by at 9:04 pm



Miller Island

 2023, fishing, us  6 Responses »
Mar 132023
 

After nearly 1 month of rain and cloudy weather, we finally had a fine, clear, blue sky day. It was basically calm all day so sailing was out of the list of things to do, so it was hook up Dave’s boat and head out for a bottom fish. We ran up to Miller Island on the end of the English Company Islands and fished some marks we have up there, we cleaned up and stopped fishing by about 11am!

A nice swim on the beach at Miller Island and some lunch before heading home. Sal killed it, she got two stonking Golden Snapper and a big Red Emperor. I got 4 pan sized Nannagai.

Definitely one of our better days fishing! We then had crispy skin Golden Snapper for dinner and our friend Cheryl who is up for a visit to Gove, joined us for the feast!

 Posted by at 10:03 am



back again

 us  2 Responses »
Jan 292023
 

on our way!

Back again to Australian’s Bay in the Wessels, with the public holiday falling on a Thursday it meant Sal had a 4 day weekend so we packed up and headed off in Lumiel. The prevailing conditions suggested it would be better to head North, we started motoring as conditions were far too light to sail. In the end I only got the headsail unfurled for about 15 minutes all day – when we had a very brief puff of breeze and I was able to motorsail – for about 10 minutes!

We did catch a nice mackerel trolling on the way up, it went 1.05m!

1.05m mackerel

Based on the winds and tides we decided the best option would be just to motor to Australian’s bay and we arrived there just on sunset and dropped anchor in the northern end of the bay.

The next morning I went to the beach to chase some bait with my cast net, I didn’t have any luck, but did manage to find a luckless mud crab shuffling in the shallows, it met my spear and went in the esky! I also found a beautiful fresh water creek, I am not sure how we had missed it in our other trips to this spot, but I guess it just shows its worth going back to these anchorages in the Wessel Islands and continuing to explore!

In the middle of the day Sal and I went in the tinny to traverse Cumberland Strait thru to Hopeful Bay on the other side of Marchinbar Island. Its named for Matthew Flinder’s ship the Cumberland, the ship he spent his last night in Australia, in this bay before tackling the strait and heading to Timor. Quite appropriate exploration on our part at this time! We have been through a couple of times in our old boat, but it had the potential to push against a lot of tide which we cant do in Lumiel. So the purpose of traversing the strait in the tinny was to determine the exact time of slack water relative to Gove tide times and plot a course that would be safe.

I am also in the middle of reading Ernestine Hill’s novel, “My Love Must Wait” based on Matthew Flinders life, its quite surreal to be reading it in this very bay  where he was anchored 150 odd years ago.

An added benefit was that it was spring tides, some of the biggest of the year so the current would be as strong as we should ever encounter. Even in dead calm conditions its a scary piece of water, the current has been measured at 11 knots! there are tidal overfalls of up to 3m and whirlpools to negotiate. The start of the narrowest part of the strait is 115m deep, a bit further in its 12m!!

Cumberland strait

The two routes shown in the picture are the Southern one taken from the Australian Pilot, which I am very dubious about as we would have had to cross pretty severe tidal overfalls to follow it, and the Northern track which is the one we have used in the old boat, and is recommended by John Knight in this NT Coast cruising guide.

We ended up getting to the passage a bit early and we went from going slowly forward in the tinny at 7k, down to 0k as we approached the narrow part of the channel! We played around for about 1/2h until we were able to motor thru without much current against us, ideally in the yacht we would like the tide to have just turned and being running with us a little bit. (too much and you lose steerage).

We then spent an about 1/2h exploring Hopeful Bay and having a swim before heading back thru the strait in the other direction. It actually ended up being a bit inconclusive and I couldn’t be certain of when exactly slack water was because it seemed like the tide was running in both directions and meeting in the middle! I am comfortable that it would be safe to traverse from time of high tide at Gove and up to about 30m after.

Otherwise its been a pretty quiet time, we have had quite a few rainy periods so we have been confined to quarters, but there are always little jobs to do, books to read and now with Starlink, we have internet where ever we are and can watch stuff – today while its been raining I have been watching the Rugby 7’s in Sydney!

This morning, between showers I took Sal into to show her the spring fed I had found yesterday and we had a lovely swim. I walked upstream a bit further to see if there were more swimming holes and nearly stepped on a water monitor lying on the bottom of the creek!

We set off for home at 07:30h on Sunday morning, a beautiful morning with a cool breeze and a promise of perhaps a motor sail at least, as we cleared the bay it set at about 8k from the NE so we unfurled the code 0 and motor sailed at about 6.5k on a flat sea.

motor sailing home

We managed to keep the sail up the whole way home – but to be honest, the engines were running too! All in all a very pleasant 4 days, and a serenade of dolphins to take us home!

 Posted by at 4:58 pm



South

 2022, Lumiel, us  4 Responses »
Dec 312022
 

This year we decided to head South for our annual end of year trip away on our boat. Firstly, now that we have Lumiel it obviously opens up a much greater range of locations for us, also we had a longer break than usual because we were able to get away a few days earlier than usual and finally given the weather predictions it made more sense to head South rather than our usual end of year destination, the Wessel Islands to the north.

Our loose plan was to make our way down the coast and end up down at the northern end of Groote Island, specifically the North East Islands.

We spent the Friday night on the boat in the harbour and set off Saturday morning, we sailed down past Nhulunbuy and Yirrkala, rounded Cape Arnhem and sailed down the coast to the southern side of Port Bradshaw to a lovely little sheltered bay we have previously visited and picked as an excellent anchorage. We call it Snogga’s Bay in memory of Kai’s Rugby coach, as we spent an afternoon there on the end of season fishing trip for the team which took place just before Snogga died.

Sunday we decided to head down to 3 Hummocks and anchor for the night, this is another place we have visited on day trips, its beautiful snorkelling and has 2 of the islands joined by a sand spit. We caught a stonking mackerel on the sail over to the islands and then Kai spent a couple of hours snorkelling around the islands and picked up a nice coral trout.

It turned out to be a less than perfect anchorage, we were anchored in the channel in the middle of the islands and the current was quite strong, which made us hang stern to wind most of the night, regardless of whether the tide was ebbing or flooding! Anyway it was ok, but its certainly not the best anchorage for a good nights sleep!

Monday we pulled anchor and headed down to a spot we have never visited, but had heard good things about, 6 Islands Bay which is on the Northern side of Bukudal community where I have visited and stayed a number of times by road, but I had never been taken over to 6 Islands Bay. Its certainly a stunning landscape, there are more than 6 islands and its got a bit of everything, fresh water, sand dunes, long beaches, rocky outcrops and coral.

The absolute highlight was Tuesday morning when Kai & I jumped in the tinny to have an explore and we had barely left Lumiel when we came across a pod of pygmy killer whales, we raced back to pick up Sal & my phone to film them and then spent about 15 minutes with them as they swam thru the bay we were anchored in, around Lumiel and then out heading South along the coast. One of the females had a big mackerel in her mouth, we assume she was going to use it to play with the babies and teach them about hunting.

Unfortunately this was to be our last destination on this trip, with the benefit of our Starlink satellite internet we were able to see that there was a severe monsoon trough developing, it was being intensified by the remnants of the small cyclone from last week near Darwin – the tropicl low was moving slowly towards Katherine. Extreme rainfall and gale force winds were being predicted for later in the week, and while I was confident we would find a safe and good anchorage on Groote Island to sit it out if it were as bad as predicted, it didn’t sound like we would be able to do much if it were just raining the whole time. It would make diving untenable, which is one of the main attractions of the North East Islands. The other risk was the weather might prove to be pretty nasty towards the end of the week when we would need to head home for Sal & Kai to start work in the new year. Basically the time we would need to head home would have been when the worst weather was predicted.

So with much disappointment we decided to hoist sails and just run for home, we had about 85nm to get home which meant if we went direct we would get in on the early hours of Wednesday morning, we also gave ourselves the option of stopping overnight and breaking the trip up if we decided that was a better option.

As it turned out the decision was a good one, we had a nice fresh easterly for the first couple of hours, (totally unpredicted!), then a couple of big storms to the west of us generated a fresh westerly wind (also unpredicted!), the edge of the storm caught us and we had about 30k for 10 or 15 minutes but luckily we had already furled the screecher so we just bore off under full main and once it passed the wind dropped progressively until we were forced to motor sail.

We could see on the rain radar that the rain was thinning out ahead of us and we would likely not get anymore rain if we just kept going, and we had some breeze to motorsail so we decided to keep going for home. Again the Starlink service is invaluable in being able to see the rain radar and whats happening with the storms.

What would have been an uneventful trip home was then made a little stressful with some engine issues. It was after dark and we had already rounded Cape Arnhem and were headed along the coast towards the passage between Bremmer Island and the mainland – a narrow tidal passage that we needed both the tide with us and the engines to motor sail thru there as the wind always blows thru the passage which would create a head wind.

Firstly the Port engine started playing up, running roughly, dropping 500rpm every minute or so, then back up to running revs, then dropping again. After a while it just stalled and although I could restart it, the same problem continued. I could find nothing wrong, all the filters are brand new, no alarms, it seemed to be a fuel issue as nothing else really causes these sort of symptoms but I could find nothing. Anyway, all good, we just continued motor sailing with one engine, which we often do anyway so that was not an issue.

But just as we were getting close to the passage, the Starboard engine just stopped, no warning, no alarms, just went from 2000rpm running sweet as, to totally not running! I quickly tried restarting, but it just cranked without firing.

With no engines we could not risk trying to sail thru the passage between Bremmer & the Mainland so we changed course, pulled out the headsail and satrted sailing to go right around Bremmer, which would have added probably 4 hours to the trip.

I then tried to see what had gone wrong with the Starboard engine, but again no alarms, nothing obviously wrong, not hot, nothing to suggest a problem. So I tried to restart it again and it fired straight away and ran perfectly!! So we furled the headsail again and changed course back for the passage. A bit later whike we were in the passage I realised the tide was no longer with us and so I thought I would try the Port engine again, it fired up straight away and also ran faultlessly!

So we were back to both engines working perfectly, they continued to for the rest of the trip home and we picked up the mooring about 02:30h

Our decision to return early has been vindicated with lots of rain and wind since we got home, really we have been very lucky over all the years we have been going away for the end of year trip, and this is the first time where we have had really bad weather in that time. (excluding the storm that we lost our tinny in a few years ago, but that was a one off storm.)

 Posted by at 12:27 pm



back on the water

 2022, Lumiel, Sailing, us  8 Responses »
Dec 102022
 

sunset drinks on the foredeck

Having finished tidying up and finishing up a few jobs after our 2 weeks on the hard, Dave and I decided to head out for a few days to put Lumiel through her paces. We had light ENE winds on tuesday morning and so we decided to head north, up past the end of the Brombies, outside Miller Island and across to Australian’s Bay on Marchinbar Island in the Wessels group.

We had a slightly frustrating day of motoring, then motor sailing, motoring again and finally the last hour or so, a nice sail as the wind increased to a sailable strength. The joys of sailing in the build-up!

The sail drives performed perfectly, the new props are giving us fantastic drive, easily doing 7.5-8k at just under 2000 rpm, so its nice to have some confidence in the engines and propulsion again. We still have an annoying oil leak in the port engine, we should have done more to try to find and fix it when the engine was out but the time pressure to get the work done meant we didnt. That shortcut is something we will probably come to regret when we are bent like a contorted pretzel in the engine room trying to find and fix it!

We had a very relaxing few days in the bay, we only took the deflatable tender so we didnt do any fishing, but I had a spearfish without much luck, we got a big claw off a mudcrab that was walking in the shallows, and a squid off the back of the boat. The muddie lived to fight another day as all I had was an oar in the deflatable to hold him down with, he dropped a claw and then we lost him in the stirred up cloudy water. Still the claw was a nice entree.

We found a lovely Stimsons Python in one of the caves while looking for rock art. They are a variant of the Children’s Python.

We spent a day with a visitor in the bay, we were on the beach looking at the plaque commemorating Matthew Flinder’s visit here on his last night in Australia, and this 50m ship came around the point and into the bay, dropping anchor beside us – turned out it was the True North, the small high end cruise ship that mainly operates in the Kimberly. She was doing some Wessel trips this year on voyage between Darwin & Cairns. They were very friendly and actually asked if we minded sharing the anchorage with them. As we pointed out its not our anchorage, they also asked if we needed anything, I was too slow to suggest a scenic flight around the Wessel Islands in their chopper!

True North

We had to head home Friday morning as Dave had work starting on Saturday, we set off at 5:20 to get home early afternoon, unfortunately there was basically not a breath of wind all day so we had to motor all the way, but I guess it was a good test of the engines and drives! We averaged about 7.5 knots, got home and picked up the mooring at 12:30 so 7h 10m to cover the 54nm

All up 108nm round trip, combined engine hours of 37h, used about 75L of fuel so 2L per hour. Because some of it was motor sailing and some is just running an engine during the day to make hot water and top up batteries, its hard to work out the litres per nautical mile, but it would be around 1L/nm.

 Posted by at 12:38 pm



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