20090617 – 20090621 (Gulf of Carpentaria, Wessel Islands)

Originally we where to leave and head towards Gove, but after restocking with supplies and diesel in Seisia it was straight across to top we go. Here are the most interesting parts summarised for you reading pleasure.

50 hours, 330 nautical miles, ginger pills, kwells (sea sickness pills), stomach bile and a bucket and bugger all sleep. Yea ha, was the first part of exposed water as everything else we had been sailing on was guarded by the reef.

In Paihia you can get “Paihia bombs” made up by a chemist to help combat sea sickness. They are one pill of a drowsy anti inflammatory followed half an hour later by a caffeine pill and are supposed to more confuse the hell out of your body by trying to sleep and being made to be awake so that it forgets sea sickness. Will see what I can find in Darwin.

Was perhaps not the favourite person on the boat after having a chunder on watch and only half cleaning up as far as I could without getting out of the cockpit (as it was my watch and I was the only one at 2am in the morning) and not wanting to use any fresh water. Next morning was out with the brush and the deck wash.

It made me think about man over board scenarios, why don’t boats have a proximity type device which can be used at night and alert the other boat members when they get more that 100m away from the boat?

You don’t need to worry though mum, the cockpit is closed and sheltered, we don’t leave it at night when we are alone, if we do with another person in watch a harness is worn while up on deck and we also leave GPS on all night so we can track back in the unlikely event should something happen our course can be followed back.

After the crossing we went to have a look at the hole in the rock, it’s hardly a bay of islands type hole in the rock more of a mile long crack in the earth which boats can pass through when the tide is slack, or else up to 9 knots can run if you get it wrong. We only had a look at the entrance as the tide was not in our favour.

We had another visit by the Coastguard via helicopter, came down and swooped by us and the next boat across to get the name and status check, they have some pretty good camera equipment on board to capture boat people, they should sell images on the side. Mind you this all happened while I was asleep after my chunder clean up sessions.

On ward and across to Wessel Islands, pronounced like the Russian says nuclear in the early Star Trek with Captain Kirk where they have to go back in time and pick up the hump back whales to stop impending doom and save to world. Was a really nice anchorage, we were not allowed to go onto the land because it’s all tribal there and we needed to ask permission.

At that point in time I think id contemplate loosing an appendage for a swim, hot and no wind.

We had some sun downers with 3 old fellas who were just going for a sail from Cairns to Darwin, they are all mates the two crew members are getting off in Darwin and the owner is heading on to the rally the same as us. He said he is really just to make it easy to enter Indonesia from the red tape point of view, once there will go to the surf spots. He used to own the surf shop at Kiribilli, but was bought out by billabong and has now just been sailing around surfing, not a bad life for an old codger.