Greetings from Thursday Island

Dear Cracklin Rosie fans


We (being Jim, friend and experienced long-distance sailor Wayne Fletcher and Don) have had a good trip from Cairns to Thursday Island over 10 days (I think), calling in at Cooktown and Lizard Island and sundry bays and coral cays along the way.  We have been favoured with moderate to strong trade winds coming over the stern, which when combined with goose-winged headsail and main have pushed us along at between 6.5 and 8 knots.


Cooktown has an excellent museum dealing with its Indigenous, mining and wartime history, and of course Cook also features - the Endeavour's anchor and one of the cannon are there.  Lizard Island had excellent snorkelling over beautiful coral and untold giant clams.  We had just come back onto the boat when two little reef sharks and a giant cod turned up to say hello.  The other interesting place we called into was Portland Road (or Roads) which consists of about 10 houses and a café that has an excellent reputation, which was unfortunately closed for the day ....  just our luck.


We arrived here yesterday and have spent today reprovisioning (food, fuel and water, plus lemon juice to keep scurvy at bay) for the next leg, being 727 nm across to Darwin, which we hope to achieve in 5 days.  Thursday Island is a pleasant, very tidy and laid-back town of about 4,000 people located across two islands (connected by ferry) and the local people are attractive and friendly.  It would be nice to have spent more time here.


But back to our trip from Cairns.  Having Wayne on board has been great and we have learnt a lot about long-distance sailing from him.  He has also fixed some of our dodgier sheeves and blocks and even climbed the mast to inspect the mysteries that happen up there!  Wayne's other major contribution has been in augmenting our food supply, and after careful choosing of a squid lure, we have caught two mackerel and have enjoyed several great fish meals.  One of them came in at about 8 kg and has so far fed us for three meals, with at least one more to go.  We are getting more confident and have made minimal meat purchases here, with an expectation of at least one more mackerel (or perhaps a dolphinfish) to get us through to Darwin.


We continue to have Adventures.  We had a battle getting to an anchorage in the Hope Islets located amongst coral reefs, but after getting the anchor secured (which we checked by diving on it), Wayne and Don swam ashore and walked around a little well vegetated coral island, looking for stranded sailors.  Getting out the next morning was also rather stressful, but we managed to get out without incident.  We were not so lucky when we anchored north of Lizard Island at a large bay called Bathurst Bay.  We had howling winds of - we think - up to 40 kts, and at about midnight we realised that the anchor was dragging.  After three men in their underwear peered at the GPS, and blundered around in the dark on the deck, we managed to get the boat to hold by letting out the remainder of the anchor chain.  We had a similar experience at the Piper Reef, where after going ashore for some snorkelling off Farmer Island, we noticed that the island seemed to be moving away from the boat.  Panic!  It was back to the boat via dinghy and re-anchoring in better, shallower ground. 


We have done our first overnight sail, which each crew member doing a three hour shift through the night.  It all went very well, with the plotter and chart providing assurance that we knew where on the planet we were, and also where all the bits we could bump into were - definitely important info.  We wore harnesses attached to the boat throughout, which is essential safety behaviour!


What else?  Yesterday, we had a great sail yesterday between Escape River (just south of Cape York) via the Albany Passage to Cape York and then here to Thursday Island.  We went through the Albany passage (between Albany Island and the mainland) on the flood tide in light winds at up to 9 kts, and admired the great scenery.  We then went ashore at Cape York to join untold grey nomads in walking to the furthest point north - again great views over islands and nearby beaches - with our boat looking very smart anchored safely below the Cape over a white sandy beach.  We have seen quite a lot of turtles, one dugong, one crocodile, lots of dolphins playing under our bow, and some high-leaping fish giving the bait fish a hard time. 


Alright, that is probably enough for now - we will report in again from Darwin.


regards


Don, Jim and Wayne.