Oct. 22
Wind light from the south.
Very hot! So hot that the deck would burn your feet if you stood in one
spot and the non-skid deck paint became soft and sticky! We briefly
considered using the cabin as an oven to bake bread before throwing out
the idea on the grounds that this would entail spending an hour down there
preparing it.
In the cabin!
Cooling off!
Oct. 23
Our depth sounder has been very unreliable since leaving Canada, not
working more often than working and usually conking out just at the
critical moment crossing a reef. So Cianan stood up on the bow with a lead
line calling back depths as we came onto Forbes Island.
Our boat has been slowly working its way back to the technology of the
tall ships as six out of our eight winches are beyond repair, leaving us
manually jumping the halyards to raise and lower the sails. We”re enjoying
the exercise though and it’s not seriously impacting the function of the
boat.
We dropped anchor in front of a beautiful big sandy beach, scattered with
palm trees and spent the day exploring the island and swimming.
Forbes Island and our anchorage
Forbes Island termite mounds
Cianan making the most of being in the tropics
There are quite a few graves on Forbes island including one for Fredrick
Lancaster from 1912. There are also the remnants of a house. The island
had burned over recently and we returned to the beach blackened with charcoal.
That night we used the last of our potatoes, cheese and gravy to make a
final round of Poutine. We’re out of fresh food now so we’re switching
over to our dried and canned goods.
Poutinizing the Reef!
We tried to figure out if we could make candy out of copra (coconut meat) while on board. We collected 2 L of Coconut water and saved about 1kg of copra, after eating three full coconuts raw. It would be great to be able to preserve some to carry with us, especially now that we are almost out of snacks! Most recipes sounded hard to clean up after, which can be hard enough on our small boat. We can dry and shred the coconut, but we already have a fair bit of that in our stores.
Cianan with some fresh copra
Shining the spotlight out to the beach, all you can see are glowing eyes all along it.
That night we spotted three crocodiles moving about on the beach.
Oct. 25.
We were awoken at 4am when a research boat came through the reef and anchored uncomfortably close to us. We didn’t get much sleep after that and upped anchor at 7am.
We had a nice following breeze all day. Sailing through the busy shipping lanes made for an action filled night dodging around cargo ships and tankers.
This is the best cruising conditions we’ve ever been in with a following breeze and no waves making the sailing easy.
Oct. 26
We dropped anchor around the west side of Cape York at 11am in 9 feet of water, before heading ashore in the dinghy. We spent an hour exploring around the northernmost point of mainland Australia.
Tip of Cape York with York Island on the left and Eborac Island on the right
Looking west from Cape York
End of the Road at Cape York
The anchor holding here was quite bad and we soon upped anchor and sailed 5 miles back to Albany Island. The outside of the island is a little exposed for anchoring but in the pass, it was much more comfortable with 15 feet of water and a mud bottom for good holding.
There are a lot of fires on the shore. They seem small and it’s just at the beginning of the wet season but no rain so far, so they could be wildfires, but they may be controlled burns.
Oct. 27
The anchorage off Thursday Island is on the southern side of the island, exposed to the southerly winds while the northerly anchorage on Horn Island is well protected from the southerly winds. We anchored between Thursday and Horn islands after sailing past Wednesday and Tuesday islands.
Despite today being Friday we decided to anchor at Thursday.
There is a little grocery store here and we restocked our dangerously dwindling snack rations.
Oct. 28.
Today is a video editing day. But we still got a chance to explore the two islands. Thursday Island has a fort built in the late 1800s and later used in World War II as a signal post.
Horn Island has an airport and as such was seen as a target by the Japanese during the war. There were over 500 bombs dropped on the island through the war and the area around is littered with wrecked ships and airplanes.
One of the many shipwrecks we sailed by
On to Gove next! About 350NM across the top of the Gulf of Carpentaria.