Oz Circumnavigation
Arrival in Darwin
After an easy 36 hrs trip from the mouth of King George River we arrived in Darwin around midday to claim Bayview Marina where we would park for a couple of weeks whilst we went back home to Melbourne.
Margaret was anxious to be with a close friend whose husband was dying, and the night before we left he sadly passed away, so timing was fortuitous as we had been in the wilderness and out of touch for so long.
Bayview Marina was one of those special experiences that I am thrilled to have under my belt as it is locked, like the other three marinas in Darwin.
However to get to Bayview we had to travel up this rapidly narrowing creek with very little water under the keel. The creek has a lot of boats moored down the middle, and we soon cottoned on to zigzagging between them to find the deepest water.
Finding the entrance to the lock amongst the mangrove-lined creek revealed that we had to manoeuvre our big 60 tons into the lock with an area hardly much bigger than the boat.
Fenders alongside and the use and sheer necessity of our bow and stern thrusters to keep us aligned without scraping the hull up against steel and concrete.
We tied up inside whilst the river gate was closed, and 3 metres of water was pumped in to raise us to the level inside the marina. Then the other gate was opened, so we could get into the marina finally and fix our lines.
I had done this before in the ICW on the E coast of the US, but never at the con, so very grateful for another experience finding Darwin being unique in Australia for their locked marinas.
Loch at Darwin, Northern Territory, Australia
Little time to see much of Darwin, but could see such change when I was there 20 years ago, and pleased it had become a very modern well laid out city, and the wide dual roads lined in Frangapani trees, reminded me of Singapore a bit.
We left the boat very quickly to get home to Melbourne with a 6 hour plane trip, and early in the morning to boot, I wasn't overly happy as I usually like a whole day to shut down the boat, and double check everything.
Problem one was we didn't arrange to have anyone checking on her, and just hope the power isn't lost to destroy our freezer full of fish.
This happened back in Hobart and I vowed and declared I would vacuum seal all fish and meat from then on. When fish in particular goes off and is not vacuum sealed, it leaves a solid sludge of foul smelling juice in the bottom of the freezer which is terrible. Well it was bad for Dave and Phil who did the clean up job coming across Bass Strait.
We now put a container of ice cubes in both freezers, and if this is a flat block when we return it means we have had a power outage, so everything in the freezers is thrown out. Ah well - more fish to catch.
Enjoying a last supper at Darwin before everyone flew home.
Rick and his mate John are joining me for the 1350 nm trip to Cairns on Thursday 9th Sept, and Marg is off to Europe, and both our sons are going overseas as well. Our watches will be 3 hours on, 6 off, which is comfortable, but as usual for the owner/captains they always sleep with one foot still on the floor.
This is mainly a non-stop delivery trip with hopefully one day spent at famous Lizard Island inside the Barrier Reef, thus taking 7 days.
Expectations are that this trip will be straight forward navigation wise, as we will be mostly in shipping channels which are well buoyed and lit, contrasting the past the 4 months.
Our AIS (Automatic Identification System) will obviously get a big workout identifying everything we need to know about keeping safe when tracking ships in our midst.
The boat has been travelling without any dramas, again a testament to the boatbuiders PAE. Only problem to deal with is high pressure alerts on the air con units, but guess we may have sucked some mud into the sea chest as we had so little water under us at the marina (0.6 m).
Two years ago I set up a website "The N55 Heads Up Report" which is for the owners of the same boat, and we have contributed to over 3400 postings on any issues encountered. This has been a godsend for me for gaining support from my peers, because when anyone has a problem or a discovery, we share the information to get the best fix.
Boats are never without problems because they are so complex, and SKIE is a very complex boat because of all of the added options available.