Anchor down in Darwin

To All

After a fun filled 6 day passage we arrived in Darwin early yesterday morning. We hope this finds you all well, happy and ready for the 4th of July weekend.

One item about cruising along the Northern Territories of Australia is both the currents and the tides. Lots of planning goes into the timing of entering and leaving ports and anchorages. At Thursday Island while the tidal ranges were not large due to the fact the wind from across the entire Pacific funnels through the reefs and islands of the Torres straits there are tremendous currents. We timed our departure from Thursday correctly and were soon being carried along by 7 knots of current making 10+ knots of boat speed. We would have probably gone backwards had we had to try to motor into it. Once clear of the surrounding islands the current dropped but the wind, 25 to 35 knots pushed us along nicely. With so much wind and the forecast for it to continue for most of the passage we did not even use our main sail and instead flew only our small staysail and were pushed anywhere from 5 to 7 kts depending on the wind for the next 5 days. We had a following sea of 6 to 10 feet that hit somewhat on the port stern quarter causing a rocky rolling motion. Perhaps imagine a mechanical bull on slow speed going from side to side and fore and aft. Then think about trying to cook meals, cruising isn't just beautiful anchorages and doing nothing but reading a book. The days and nights continued, our log entries noting "all the same" with just a new position.

The notable exceptions to the sameness were our twice a day radio talks with "Scarlet O'Hara' and "Linda", "Scarlett" ahead on the same route and "Linda' behind moving along the coast of Papua New Guinea. Australia is very protective of their coastline and we would get almost daily radio checks by their customs airplane wanting to know your last and next port of call. There are also ships to watch out for. This is a main route for traffic moving along the top of Australia. It seems most meetings are in the middle of the night so when on watch you need to be keeping your eyes open and look around fairly often. Radar would be very helpful but ours has not been working for quite awhile now. Our last few nights we were also blessed with clear skies and a full moon, we even had a partial lunar eclipse to view. Of course the big excitement was on the first afternoon catching an approx 40lb. 50 inch long wahoo. So now use your imaginations once again to visualize trying to fillet a big fish on your hands and knees on the back deck of a rolly polly sailboat. Fun!!

As we closed with Darwin we must once again try to figure both tide and current. In Darwin where the tidal range can be as much as 25 feet the current is tidal driven. The other consideration is to arrive in daylight hours. We did OK, no terribly adverse currents but did arrive in the dark. As we were not exactly sure where to go we just drifted in the quarantine anchorage area until a passing pilot boat assisted by directing us to a small yacht anchorage area. With daylight and talking to another cruising yacht we made our way to our present location in Fanny Bay where most of the fleet of cruising boat are also.

Next, the dealing with "officaldumb"! As we had cleared into the country we were just to notify customs of where we were anchored, easy. Due to the cats, we have quarantine issues and must be anchored out and they cannot go ashore, sounds easy. AQIS, quarantine, does not seem to have a radio but we finally managed to call them on a phone at the local yacht club. Their first question was if you're ashore who is supervising the cats. Now were anchored 3/4 of a mile from the closest land and though they can Blue and Hazel are not olympic swimming candidates, they prefer to sleep in the sun and eat fresh caught fish. Now the next afternoon AQIS has not come to visit to inspect the cats or contact us as they said but after several relayed messages through customs we have been advised that they will be here tomorrow at 2 pm. We've been told that AQIS wants to check on the cats every few days, you know they may go on a swim about, I guess we'll get further information] the cats] on that tomorrow.

We'll be quite busy here in Darwin the next 3 weeks getting ready to head off to Indonesia and beyond. Especially the next 4 days as our friends as our Aussie friends that we met in the Marshall Is. and are now back in Cairns come for a visit. So the rocking and rolling is done for a bit, let the fun begin again.

Once again we miss family and friends and wish you all a "safe and sane" 4th. Enjoy!! J&K