Karl & Kara Go Sailing

Sunday 16 th June. Fannie Bay, Darwin. So last Sunday we left the Torres Strait, weighed anchor, it worked, no problems, no panic. Left Horn Island, sailed through the last of the Torres Strait and set course westward. Had a lovely week sailing across the Gulf of Carpentaria and Arafura Sea, arrived in Darwin overnight last night and anchored without hitting coral or anything else. And now we're enjoying a lovely, warm, breezy Northern Territory winter afternoon (only 30 degrees) watching the local sailing club race go past. No cyclones, no drama (well, only a little), no near death experiences. “How dull” you say. Though the trip has aged me and I now probably have to admit to being in my mid (as opposed to early) 40s. Leaving Horn Island was incredibly civilised – the currents suited a midday departure so we had a leisurely breakfast, listened to the ABC Classic Top 100 Composer Countdown (only got as far as Vivaldi at number 6, guessing the top 5 included Beethoven, Bach...

Thursday Island (Waiben) Time to round Cape York! Arrrrr. Ok, so not exactly Cape Horn but good enough for me. We set off early one morning to pop across from Mt. Adolphus Island to Thursday Island. And of course there was a drama – the windlass was stuck again (it had brought the anchor up, just wasn't going to let it back down when we got to the other side), I was instructed to potter around the anchorage again while Karl tried to fix it again. He said he was going to have to take the anchor off to fix it, I warned him very sternly not to drop the anchor overboard (that would most definitely be a two splash anchor, even in these croc-infested waters), lots of stress and panic and then it all worked out. Sigh. My nerves can't handle this! We had a gorgeous sail across though. The sea here is very shallow so it's a beautiful dull green/turqoise colour, it was windy enough to have decent waves with some pretty white breakers and spray, there was enough sun to ...

Sunday 2nd June, Mt. Adolphus Island (off Cape York). Safely at anchor now here at (pretty much) the very tippy top of Queensland (and Australia) but I'm afraid I have to report that we were again driven to check the level in the rum bottle after a scare coming in. If this keeps going we may have a rum drought. I also think we broke the previous record for early morning drinking. The scare was that the anchor windlass (the thing that drops and raises the anchor) didn't seem to want to work. Karl asked me to buy him some time circling the anchorage while he tried to problem-solve (we both independently had thoughts of having to set off to Darwin for the closest Marina!), a couple of things didn't work, then the windlass just started working and all was good. (Karl would like me to point out that “it didn't just start working, I trouble-shooted it and problem-solved it”. Including deciding the problem was with some bits he had previously meddled with, so he got his s...