Just in case anyone is
keeping score we are half way round the world.
We said farewell to the Pacific when we crossed the Great Barrier Reef
at the finish line for leg 7. AURORA
took a first place on leg 6 from Fiji to Vanuatu and took another first sailing
leg 7 from Vanuatu to Australia. In the
first 7 legs AURORA has placed 5 times – not bad considering we are not racers
and are fairly non-competitive. We did
hit some great wind (19 to 26 knots continuous for 4 days in the middle of leg
7) and never went under 8 knots and spent a lot of time in the 9’s and even a
little in the 10’s and except for day 1 we were reefed down and thus not
pushing too hard. We are told that
according to the ARC site AURORA is somehow in first place in our class at the
moment – I’m not sure we believe that but it’s not as important as arriving
alive!
We entered the great barrier
reef just after sunset on July 25th, at slack low tide and about
half an hour into the Hydrographers Passage we had a 3 knot tail current on a
rising tide pushing us along so we were screaming along at 11 knots in pitch
black. The issue was a 20 to 23 knot
head wind working against the opposing and building current which kicked up 4 to
7 foot high standing waves which we could not see so we were crashing up and
down thru those, as demonstrated below
by NORTH (but without sails) in 5 foot standing waves experienced while shooting a reef in the
Society Islands - Up!:
and 3 seconds later Down!
North did that up/down thing for
about 5 minutes. AURORA did it for about
3 hours except we were in bigger waves on a heavier boat. The foredeck was awash most of the time often
burying the bow and taking waves 2 feet up the Bimini wind shield – yet our
cockpit stayed dry as the wind was right on our nose. It was like a 3 hour Disney ride in the dark. It gets your heart pumping. Luckily we were back in civilization and the
reefs are all very well marked with bright lights and yes, they matched our
chart plotter reference points exactly so all we had to do was stay awake. 3 Hours up the passage and we turned the
corner heading to the port of Mackay with 20 knots of wind on our beam. Captain
Ken went down like a ton of bricks, having not slept in 40 hours (yes had some
breaks but hard to actually sleep!), and First Mate Eilo took the helm and
screamed along for the rest of the night shift.
Captain Ken was awakened just before sunrise with Eilo banging on the
traveler with a winch handle. So Ken
shot up to the cockpit to assess the imminent danger. Eilo was minding her own business, watching a
warship on maneuvers with their latest course, on our AIS, predicting a
broadside collision in less than 5 minutes and then a humpback whale jumped
clean out of the water in front of her and came down with a monstrous
splash. She had no idea there were whales
inside the reef. The banging was to
share the excitement. We saw another
pair of humpbacks a few hours later.
Whale excitement aside captain Ken decided he better call the warship
Canterbury before rounding up, turning at her, to allow her to pass safely in
front of AURORA so he got on the VHF and hailed the ship and they very smartly
came back and indicated they saw us but they were already altering course
heading for further maneuvers. So we
survived yet again and headed for the Mackay harbor and the clearing into
Australia procedures. One issue we were
aware of, but was undersold to the whole WARC fleet, was the 2.5 liter alcohol
limit per person which the Aussies take seriously. Well, the Russian boat ARABELLA, who got in
the day before, had about 100 bottles of wine and god only knows how much vodka
in their stores and when they learned they would have to turn it over to the
authorities hosted a consume all the alcohol party on the customs dock in front
of the customs surveillance cameras.
They shared almost all that alcohol with the other 5 boats who had
arrived, but had not yet cleared in, and they went ‘til about 3 in the
morning. They could not finish it all
but gave it a good run. We saw the
carnage the next day mostly in the form of burgundy colored eyes and telltale
hangover moaning. Another great example
of ARC supporting ARC. A few days later
it was ARABELLA’s owner Andrey’s birthday and he hosted, with his skipper Sergey,
a barbeque and more vodka and cocktails on the pontoon – an excellent session –
this ARC is really gelling. Sergey is in
the Rasta hat on the left and Andrey is to his right in the same collared shirt
and the light colored hat:
A few thoughts about the
Pacific. It seems more like a big pond
than the Atlantic does in that everyone talks about the big pacific swells and
weather forecasters predict them, their direction, period and height but that
is a load of nonsense 90% of the time.
The waves are usually coming from at least 5 or 6 distinct directions
and with different heights and periods.
The result is a continuous confused sea… a real pain to sail through
comfortably unless you can steer to some sort of reach and have enough wind to keep
the boat on a heel. My gut feel is the
Pacific is so big that at any one time there can be 3 or 4 or even 5 pacific
storms and even thought they are far apart they all send their waves and then
there are the 21,000 islands which reflect those random waves as well as the
shore lines of the ringing continents which provide additional wave reflection
providing confused ramdomness. We are
happy the Pacific is done for us.
The further west you get in
the Pacific the countries, in general, seem to get poorer and poorer compared
to America or Europe. By the time we got
to Vanuatu most of the islands we visited did not have shops or stores or
markets. Luckily we knew that would be
the case so we had enough provisions on board to get us to AU. Some of the more populated islands had
markets where you could scoop fresh veg, fish and chicken. Here’s Eilo on the hunt for some veg and
fruit in Port Villa, the capital of Vanuatu:
Rather than using plastic
bags for hauling their market purchases home they weave bags from palm fronds. The rolled up banana leaves are used both as
plates (the leaves are used as liners for woven plates)
and also for rolling stuff
like fish and veg or chicken and veg in
with spices and cooking the roll ups directly on hot coals of a pit fire. The ultimate in recyclables:
The ARC hosted a tour to a
nearby beach at 5 in the morning as the small kangaroos know as wallabies go
down to check out the surf every morning (no one knows why???):
And they are fairly friendly
– Eilo made friends with this one:
That Roo thought they were
such good friends that she tried to entice Eilo to dance with her:
We rented a car to visit the
Eungella national park to do a bit of trekking in the local rain forest:
… and seek out the illusive
duck billed platypus.
Who knew they had parrots (actually
a lorikeet) down under?... as well a few
other types of birds we have not seen before.
Finally we found a decent
chandlery in Mackay and scored some bulletproof line for our lazy jack up-haul,
which blew out 3 days from AU. We managed
to install that freeing us up to go island hopping up the inside of the great
barrier reef so off we went first to Brampton Island. On the way up we encountered at least a dozen
humpback whales.
One was playing – swimming
upside down simultaneously thrashing the water with both of its huge fins (probably 15 feet long):
The bay we anchored in had a
lovely resort until last April when it got hit full force by a hurricane which
really trashed the place – they are in the process of rebuilding. We had sundowners on AURORA with Joe and
Barbara from ALTAIR and before we went to ALTAIR for dinner we heard whales
blowing very close by but it was pitch dark so we could not see them. ALTAIR heard the whales singing through the hull
of their boat that night because there was no wind and it was very quiet. Just after a brilliant sunrise (Barbara from
ALTAIR snapped this pic of AURORA)…
…we took off for Whitehaven
Beach on Whitsunday Island. Whitehaven beach is a fine white sand beach a few
miles long which was voted one of the best beaches in the South Pacific by Trip
Advisor. This time we encountered about
15 more whales - this time traveling in several small pods.
We got caught by surprise
when one large humpback surfaced and eyeballed us from about 40 feet away. He had a lot of big bumps in a uniform
pattern on his head – very strange to be looking eye to eye with a big
guy. He let us pass in peace. Whitehaven beach has some of the most
perfectly uniform fine white sand we have ever seen. It is a real playground
for those who can figure out how to get there being about 20 miles off
shore. There were about a dozen yachts,
4 charter boats, 2 sea planes and 3 helicopters spread across about 5 miles of
beach. It’s a national park so, sadly
there were no bars. Dryly we walked the
beach and hiked a trail to a lookout from which one could see many of the other
Whitsunday Islands. Our friends on Tula
Mhor caught up with us the next day and we had sundowners on their boat and
diner on AURORA. We hoisted anchor the
following morning and in 3 to 6 knots of wind sailed at a painfully slow 2
knots to Nara inlet on Hook Island. The
Nara inlet is about 2 miles deep and very narrow with 100 to 600 foot steep
hills on each side making it feel like a Norwegian Fjord… a very quiet
anchorage:
We ran into our German and
English Friends on a 56 foot elegant Swan called CESARINA at the end of the
inlet and they invited us for drinks and dinner and off we went for more
fun. The next morning we hiked up to
check out some fairly old aboriginal cave paintings – the experts think these
represent turtle shells – they look like hot air balloons to us (dating them to
about 1970 instead of 1790); who knows?
We stayed for 2 days and the
second day OWL, SANDVITA, TULLA Mhor joined us.
So we all had sundowners and diner on “The OWL” and more drinks (of
course) and stories – many of their recent whale experiences. We all decided to head to Butterfly Bay on
the north end of hook island the next day as it is reported to have excellent
snorkeling. Wind was good so we got there
in no time and went for a snork. The
coral and tropical fish were good but the water was not as crystal clear as
many places we have visited so the snorking was cut short. Are you surprised that we burned the saved
time consuming a few cocktails – so the PAW (party around the world) continued. Next day we sailed off to Gloucester Island
and we moored at their ECO Resort. The
mini fleet headed in to the resort to sample the local brew and discuss most
things sailing - solving all our problems.
But nobody was taking minutes so all that precious knowledge was
lost. Back out to our boats for a scrub
before dindin and then back to the resort for an unexpected surprise, one of
the best meals we have had yet on this ARC adventure. The next morn we took off for Magnetic
Island, so called by Captain Cook (I think there are very few places we have
sailed to this trip which we have beaten that Cook guy to) because of the huge
boulders all over the island which he mistakenly thought had high
concentrations of iron and were throwing his ship’s compass off by a few
degrees. Magnetic Island is Aussie
vacationland with lots of bars and restaurants lining the beaches so we
anchored off one of those and engaged in some R&R Aussie style for a few
days. Of course one needs to check out
the local croc farm – Eilo liked this baby salty:
But she liked this Koala
better:
And yes you can find them in
the Eucalyptus trees around the island, mostly doing what they do best –
sleeping:
We took a few buses and ferries
and visited the mainland city of Townsville.
A nice looking city/town but it was eerily devoid of people, which
seemed strange as we there on a Saturday.
We later found out that a lot of the local mining industry had shut down,
which was their major industry, and many of the inhabitants had fled to find
work elsewhere. Enough vacationing – we
needed to head back to the real world so off we went to Cairns – a small city on
the Queensland coast an overnight sail away, if you have wind – but we had none
so it was an overnight motor. We slowed
down for the last few miles to get to the marina at close to high tide as one
of the other fleet boats had radioed in that they had hit bottom on the way
in. Our autopilot hydraulic ram and the
hydraulic drive both experienced slow death while sailing up the Whitsunday
Islands so we have been hand steering AURORA since leaving Mackay. (Actually
it was a really slow death which Ken predicted and so he has been nursing it
along and we had to hand steer from time to time but then it really died!) So
we are stuck in Cairns for about a week while we get a new hydraulic pump and
get the ram rebuilt. We are kind of disappointed,
as this will put us into Darwin a few days later than we planned. Tim, who is helping us with this hydraulic
refit, knowing our disappointment, laid this bit of Aussie style philosophy on
us… “Dad comes home and asks his son
what would you prefer? Your mom to die or
your dog? His son thinks hard about that
and finally answers I would prefer my dog to die. His dad responds – Well you’re in luck.” It could always be worse. Lucky for us Cairns is a great place to be
stuck in. It is a very lively, thriving,
well looked after, well-planned and picturesque town. For instance to keep the locals and tourists
from being eaten by sharks or crocs or stung by any number of types of
poisonous jelly fish, they built a huge lagoon (a massive pool) with sand
beaches:
There are lovely parks with
gardens:
and walkways with Banyan trees which are beautifully
up-lit:
throughout the city and along the sea front
with lots of city sculptures:
botanic gardens:
and many gas fired barbeques
accompanied by large picnic
tables. They must pay huge taxes in
Aussieland to pay for all this free to the public stuff. There are hundreds of bars and restaurants
and clubs providing the
variety of foods and entertainment one could find in a town like NYC as well as
a few museums in case one needs a cultural enrichment fix. The ARC mini fleet took one of the barbeque
areas over for an evening of fun and frivolity and now we can cross “grilling
shrimp on the barbee” Aussie style off the bucket list. The local shrimp are huge and so are the
boats in their shrimping fleet – which you must keep an eye on as you sail
around here as it would be a bad thing to end up in one of their shrimping
nets. As we were walking the town, we
noticed ahead a white sidewalk around the public library. As we neared the white we heard commotion and
plentiful birdlike sounds in the trees above and we realized the white on the
sidewalk was a layer of guano. It being
close to dusk we further realized and spotted the source above – maybe 20,000
fruit bats getting ready to fly
These are big guys with 2.5 foot wingspans.
When they take flight it kind
of reminds us of a scene out of the Wizard of OZ. Hopefully our autopilot will
be fixed tomorrow and we can head off to Darwin – about 8 days sail away. Might be able to report more from there.
