REPORT 30 - LIZARD TO THURSDAY

Posted at 8:10 AM, May. 27, 2007

LIZARD ISLAND TO THURSDAY ISLAND

3 May 07

Lizard Island was stunning.  Clear water, good reefs and nicely sheltered.  I hope that Carolyn found the extra distance and expense was worth the effort.  We have a continuing forecast of 15-25 for the next 4 days.  Iris is already disappearing over the horizon so I had better get moving.  Howick Island is about 30 miles away.

Well the Bureau of Meteorology were pretty well spot on.  Especially if you take into account their standard disclaimer that wind gusts may be 40% higher than the average given.  There have been several gusts over 30 knots.  Isa Lei reached a maximum speed of 8.1 knots through the water, which is a little too much for this little black duck.  I have reefed down.  No main sail and about half of the heady only still showing.  Still averaging better than 4.5 knots.

Bugger, I am about three miles short of the Howick Channel and some boat called “….. Dexter” is going to be there at the same time as me.  Anything called Dexter can’t be that big, but better safe than sorry.  I called him on the VHF and we decided that I would hang around for him to clear the area.  After pulling down the sails and waiting a while, I checked the chart.  There is actually a channel on either side of the island.  Only really big ships use the one that I had intended to use and would be likely to encounter Dexter in.  Too late, he should almost be through by now.  Half an hour later and there was no sign of him.  Maybe he did use the South Channel after all, the name is Dexter.  Just as I was about to round the first channel mark and there he is.  Really big container ships can be quite imposing, particularly when you are in a smallish yacht and are somewhere that you promised not to be.  Anyway, I had enough sea room to turn in shore as if I was just tooling around waiting for him.  He even had the grace to thank me for waiting for him.  Jeez he was BIG!

Safely anchored behind Howick, in sight of Iris.  Carolyn, you got of the boat one day to early (actually two days early, but we will get to that in time.  Carolyn is a bit of a photographer.  And apart form Cooks’ Lookout, which I did not see, the views have not been all that photogenic.  Even with the sunsets, you needed to squint to make them spectacular.  Well, tonight the sun was a fantastic fiery red/gold, with enough cloud to give some real definition.  To top it off, the moon was rising as the sun set.  Apart from the obvious directional thing, you would have been hard pressed to tell them apart.  They looked to be the same size and colour and were the same angle above the horizon.  Sheer magic.

4 May 07

Big day today!  It is 40 miles to our next stop; Cape Melville/Flinders Group.  From 8.45 on I  had two reefs in the main and still managed to hit  8.4 knots.  That was while I was trying to jibe the main around Cape Melville without hitting Pipon Islet, Boulder Rock or Channel Rock.  Twas exciting I must say.

Cape Melville is quite spectacular.  It appears to consist of massive purple boulders purportedly the detritus of an ice age glacier.  I grabbed the camera to get some photos, but the battery was dead flat.  Will have to charge it up when I get a chance.

Mick is anchoring behind Cape Melville, but I decided to go a bit further to Flinders Island.  The first reason is that Iris does not look that comfortable, being bounced a bit by the swell.  The main reason though is that Ric, skipper of the game boat that I was moored next to in Cairns, suggested that the anchorage at nearby Stanley Island was a great spot for oysters.  A two day stay was on the cards.

Now, the reason why Carolyn left two days too early!  As I was approaching the Owen Channel between Stanley and Flinders Islands, the auto helm packed it in.  The mongrel thing packed it in as we were approaching what Lucas describes as “the horror stretch”, mainly due to its long passages between poor anchorages.  Anyway, I anchored and settled down to some solid cursing of the gods of marine electro-mechanics.  Needless to say Carolyn, if you had still been here, I would have lashed you to either the helm or the galley, maybe a rope between them so that you could steer and cook.  Not looking forward to the next couple of weeks.

My stay here was a bit of a non-event.  I had purchased an oyster knife in Cooktown.  I tried it out and did manage to retrieve and eat 6 or so good oysters.  However the effort and the lacerations involved were disproportionate to the feed achieved.  I will have to get some lessons.  I decided that the move to a less comfortable anchorage at Stanley Island was not worth the effort.  As I mentioned, Cooktown was the last place to victual the boat before Thursday Island.  To save water, I have now gone 5 days without a shower and I was starting to notice.  I went ashore to have a bit of a sea bathe.  Unfortunately the beach was more mud than sand was not at all conducive to having a tub.  I tried having a swim out near the boat, but having my dangly bits hanging around in the open water was not a secure feeling either.  This was confirmed when the next day I was relieving myself over the side.  Two largish grey shapes immediately swum out from under the boat to check it out.  I am almost certain that they were not sharks, but I had no desire to confirm my theory.

6 May 07

Flinders Island to Morris Island was 57 miles as the Isa Lei sails.  That is a long way to hand steer and manage the sails.  Most of the day I had two reefs in the main and the full head sail.  It took me spot on nine hours; a tough day at the office.  Morris Island was very attractive.  It consists of a sand cay surrounded, on the windward side by a large reef that is exposed by about mid tide.  It has a palm tree that is actually noted on the official chart and some low scrub.  There is a grave of a pearl diver near the palm tree.

Bill:  Thanks again for the books.  I have just finished “Passage to Juneau”.  It was fantastic, but the part where interrupted his trip to go back to England was a bit close to the bone for me.

In the above book the author is sailing from Seattle to Juneau.  Most of that coast was named by Captain Vancouver.  He had studied under Captain Cook.  Obviously he also borrowed Cooks’ list of the British aristocracy.  All of whom had to be brown-nosed.  I started to get confused if I was reading Juneau or Cruising the Coral Coast.  Both have a Digby Island; I crossed Princess Charlotte Bay, he crossed Queen Charlotte Sound (someone got a promotion); we have Cape Grenville, they have Grenville Chasm.  There were a lot of others besides.  The end result is that both of these magnificent coasts are littered with the names of a bunch of long forgotten chinless wonders of the empire.  It is enough to make you yearn for a furtherance of the trend to using native names - even if we do have to mangle the words to make them pronounceable.

FROM/AT:		Lizard Island			TO:	Morris Island
DATES:		1 May 07				6 May 07
LAT:	130  29’.4S		LONG:	1430 42.4 E
DISTANCE THIS REPORT		134	BEARING TO HOME:		150	DEG MAG
DISTANCE TOTAL:		2623	DISTANCE TO HOME:		1252	NAUT MILES

8 May 07

Good day today.  Only 17 miles and the sailing was very serene.  Having a consistent trade wind off the quarter makes life pretty easy.  I even enjoyed the helming and have vowed not to be so reliant on the auto helm in the future.  Unfortunately by notes from Ric indicate that the anchorage at Night Island is a shark haven.  Will stick to the deck like glue.

9 May 07

Another short trip today, from Night Island to Portland Roads.  A few years ago, the Roads would have been a welcome break.  It used to service the fishing fleet, supplying fuel, food and water.  These days, that is done by mother ships out of the major ports.  All that was available ashore was a public phone, which was much appreciated.  My phone has not been in range since Cooktown, so I was able to let the folks know that I was alive.  In a small boat garbage is stored in close proximity, so the chance to dump it ashore was great.

You would think that someone whose father and grand-father were both electricians would understand what the phrase “Caution: DO NOT REVERSE POLARITY” means.  But no, I had a bit of a rush of blood and connected my inverter red to black.  A flash of light and a puff of smoke and I no longer have access to my computer, the internet and numerous other items including my digital camera.  It is getting to the point that all communication is just to myself.

10 May 07

Did 38 miles getting to Cape Grenville today.  Just had the full heady up as it makes gibing much easier.  Yahoo! 7.7 knots down wind!  A yachting dictionary would give “Oh Shit!” and “Yahoo!” the same definition.  This is based on the fact that the former very often follows immediately after the latter.  In my case, I was considering reefing down a bit, but the boat was bowling along very well.  I hit 7.7, yelled Yahoo and then immediately managed to broach the Isa Lei.  Again, managing a broach, reefing a sail and steering while single-handed certainly got the old heart rate up a bit.

After that I was keen to get the anchor down.  So instead of rounding Cape Grenville via the main shipping route, outside of the Home Islands as Lucas recommends, I decide to cut the corner on the inner passage.  Once I was committed to this action, I noted that my chart and Lucas disagreed as to the safest channel through the Islands.  I decided to compromise and used the chart for the first half and then switched to the Lucas suggestion.  Probably not the brightest bit of navigation I have ever done, but I got through unscathed, just a few extra grey hairs.

I was pretty stuffed by the time I was secured for the night.  That is my excuse for a blonde moment while cooking dinner.  I turned on the gas bottle for the stove.  Unfortunately, I turned on the spare bottle, which is on the starboard side of the boat and is not connected to any pipes.  The blast of gas certainly helped wake me up.  I’m glad that I never smoke when playing with the bottles.

Iris and Isa Lei stayed at Cape Grenville for two nights.  The next leg is to Escape River which is almost 70 miles away.  We did relocate on the second night to a different bay.  Not as comfortable, but effectively gave us a 5 mile head start.  The big problem is that there are no suitable anchorages and Lucas is emphatic that you should not enter the Escape River in the dark.

12 May 07

Not a lot of notes on the log for today.  Basically it says:

·        4.00 am – Departed for Escape River.

·        5.10 pm – Anchored in Escape River.

I juste set the sails and pointed the boat.  Not a lot of thought, just trying to keep awake.  Ate muesli bars all day.

Mick had gotten in ahead of me, which at least saved me the trouble of working out where to anchor.  The reasons that Lucas stressed not entering after dark were self-evident.  The entrance itself is very hard to define from seaward.  Even is daylight I would not have been happy without the chart-plotter.  There are no navigation aids whatsoever.  There are to rock reefs in the river, only one of which is indicated on the chart.  The river is home to a major pearl growing industry.  The oysters are grown from floating lines indicated by rows of black floats.  They have been placed all over the area, with no regard to vessels using the channel.

Mick and I had decided to stay for two nights.  This proved to be difficult for Mick as the opportunities for landing Gypsy ashore were very limited.  The majority of the banks are mangroves, with the rest being mud flats.  Mick had already seen a couple of sharks and it is definitely croc country.  Gypsy is a good ships dog, but she does prefer to carry out her business on the land.  On my advice Mick took Iris over to a creek mouth that had a drying sand bank.  Unfortunately, he ran aground on an ebb tide and was stuck for several hours.  When he was returning I warned him of a reef that had dried in our vicinity at low tide.  He was lucky, as he had been motoring over it during the high tide.  Later he did find an excellent beach further upstream.

Yet another blonde moment! Mick offered to charge my camera with his generator.  When I went to get it I discovered that I had removed the battery while it was not being used.  I had missed all those photo ops for no reason.  The good news is that next year, I can officially call them “seniors moments” instead of “blonde” ones.

14 May 07

Getting out of the Escape River was horrendous.  In order to try and get assistance of the tide through the passages to the North, we left on an ebb tide with a contrary wind.  The river mouth is quite shallow.  The result was we headed into steep breaking seas.  It took me a good hour to clear the shallows and Iris took even longer.

To compound the misery of the above, predicting tidal flows in the North is more than somewhat problematic.  It was going to be particularly difficult for us, as we wanted an ebb tide through the various channels.  As far as I could tell the flood was going to be running from about 10am to 3pm.  Needless to say, I got it wrong.  The Albany Passage, between the mainland and Albany Island was the crucial point.  It is about 2.5 miles long and can have tidal flows of 5 knots.  Not only did I get my timing wrong, just as I entered the Passage, I encountered the Trinity Bay.  She is the major transport link for freight and passengers between Thursday Island and Cairns.  For most of the Albany Passage, I was surfing down a moderate swell.  My speed through the water was regularly peaking at 8 knots.  Speed over the ground, as indicated by the GPS was only 2.5 knots.  It was the longest hour and a half that I have ever spent on a yacht.

However, there were rewards at the end of the day:

SEE SEPARATE PHOTOS

This is what the northern most part of Australia looks like when you go around is by sea.  Yep, we have made it!  No more heading North, except to get around some inconveniently placed island.

Tomorrow night, the 15^th will be the first time since I set off that I am forced to eat tinned food for an entire meal.  Pretty happy that I gone this long on fresh stuff!

Iris and Isa Lei managed to anchor quite comfortably in Cape York Bay and we were able to stretch our legs a bit.  The photo was taken from the monument at the tip of the Cape; Iris is on the left.

SEE SEPARATE PHOTOS

FROM/AT:		MORRIS ISLAND			TO:	CAPE YORK
DATES:		8 May 07				14 May 07
LAT:	100  41’.4S		LONG:	1420 31’.5E
DISTANCE THIS REPORT		185	BEARING TO HOME:		150	DEG MAG
DISTANCE TOTAL:		2808	DISTANCE TO HOME:		1434	NAUT MILES

Naturally, going ashore here was a must do.

SEE SEPARATE PHOTOS

THE WILDERNESS LODGE

Those of you who are particularly racially sensitive might like to skip the next few paragraphs.

In “Cruising the Coral Coast”, Lucas mentions the Wilderness Lodge at Cape York offers resort facilities including dining, accommodation and a kiosk.  In 1992 the local aboriginal tribe bought it from Australian Airlines for $2.2M.  I do wonder where the 500 tribal members came up with the money.

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