Oz Circumnavigation
Royal Australian Navy coastal patrol boat entering Darwin.
Darwin to Cairns 11th - 19th Sept 09
We departed Bayview Marina Darwin at first light on Friday 11th Sept for a very long haul of 1338 nm (2700 kms) to Cairns FN Queensland.
As we didn’t bunker at Broome two months ago because of the high tidal range to be expected at the fuel pier, we took on 7249 litres at Darwin which will get us comfortably across the top and south around to Cairns. If you work this out at $1.39 a litre it is reasonable to assume that this is less dosh the kids are going to get one day. Thanks kiddo's.
On board is Rick McClure who has now put a lot of miles on SKIE (4,618 nm), and his friend John Saviene who recently retired as a Qantas 747 flight engineer officer.
Always good to have an engineer on board who can intuitively wade through any manuals explaining in simple language to an old shoe saleman what needs to be done to fix anything that may crop up.
First thing he worked on was my HF radio that has never worked properly, then proceeded to tell me Qantas threw them out years ago and rely on Sat phones, which was relieving because that is all we have used.
Although it is rare to see another recreation boat going across the top we have passed at least 10 ships, and are being buzzed each day by the Coast Watch plane which gives us a little comfort as we head across the wide boring paddock north of the Gulf of Carpentaria.
If we needed to get to a port it would be much closer to go north a few miles to PNG.
We are also shadowed by Navy Patrol boats that cover this area being so close to Papua New Guinea. They don’t show up on AIS, or radar for that matter, so must be using some new radar avoidance stealth system.
First two days out in the Arafura Sea showed us what we were to expect for the whole four to five days duration when we pass adjacent to Thursday Island in the Prince of Wales Channel. Wind on the nose, current on the nose, and plenty of isometric exercises on the old bod from just trying to get around.
The Torres Strait/Arafura Sea is reputed to have the strongest and most consistent Trade Winds in the world, marginally more than the Windward Islands in the West Indies, and parts of the Southern Indian Ocean.
When we get around Cape York, the most northern landmark in Australia, to head south we will still get them, but will be behind the Great Barrier Reef which should offer some respite, and maybe some south setting current which runs down the eastern seaboard of Australia.
We have put our rods away as having to stop to pull fish in would be too uncomfortable, but the freezer is still stocked to the gunwhales through previous successful encounters.
Our routine of 3 hours on watch, and six off, is working well, and we have a stack of DVD’s to keep us company.
Rick brought on board the completed DVD that he produced of our Kimberley Adventure, and I’m blown away of how professionally it was done.
However there will be very little to shoot on this trip, with maybe some footage of Lizard Island where we plan to stop over one night once around the corner if we can pick up some speed to meet our planned average of 7.3 kts
Long distance passagemaking is like everything in life I suppose as you have to take the good with the bad, but in our case so far with 14,640 nm on the log to this point in just a touch over 2 years, this is the only one of a handful of tough passages we have seen so far, and our cooking has been somewhat less creative than we would normally have. We toast Tony Peach’s culinary skills each night in absentia.
John not having been to sea like this before, when relieving me on watch at 0300 hrs, always asks whether we can see Tahiti yet, which is the significant landfall when crossing the Pacific at 40,000 ft in his 747, so I bet this has been uttered 1000’s of times by him and the flight crew.
Arrival in Cairns occured at 0500 on Sat 19th after 19 hours from Lizard Island, where we stopped for a couple of hours to have breakfast and check our oil, with the main taking 3 litres which we expected. The trip from Darwin has taken 8 days, travelling 1338 nm and consumed 8489 lts of fuel.
From Lizard Is at last we found a virtual rhumbline to our waypoint at Cairns with the wind, finally for the first time since leaving Darwin, off our nose. We still had consistent 20 to 30 knots across the deck (sometime got 40 kts) as so far for the whole trip, but this time the severe pitching had stopped and we got a lean on the boat for the first time with the wind 60 deg off our port bow.
To celebrate, John had a brainwave that the skipper should miss an overnight watch so he would be fresh to bring us in. This was most appreciated by me, but as said before, skippers never sleep soundly until tied up at a marina, which I did last night in my Ekornes chair to awaken at first light, with my Billie Connelly DVD still on and my nice glass of red drying on my lap and the carpet. Sorry Margaret.
Rick and John caught a plane later in the day back to the Gold Coast after a flurry of cleaning activity.
Cleaning the boat is a big job after a trip such as this. First job is to blast off the salt build up with a high pressure unit, then start all over again with the detergent and brushes.
Next leg will be from Cairns to the Whitsunday Islands, and I have good friend David Reid (the fisherman who reeled in the boats biggest fish so far crossing Bass Strait) and his partner Theresa on board.
Marg is still away in the UK but may be able to make it up here on her return hopefully.
We plan to depart on the 28th of Sept stopping off each night for the 3 day trip and see some local scenery. Can't wait to get down there to catch up with some buddies and drink some nice red wine in one of the most beautiful spots in the world.
