Cooktown

[Kyle]Once Begonia was all repaired and weighed down with full food, fuel and water, we left Townsville for the sail north to Cooktown. It was one of those rainy, gusty mornings that kept all of the local sailors tucked into their beds at home while their boats rode it out in the marinas alone. An ex-tropical storm was passing down the coast about a hundred miles to the east. As the cold water sapped its strength, its dying gasp was to unload the last of its wind and rain on the southern Queensland coast.

The passage was a bit gloomy, but that meant we'd have good weather once we arrived in Cooktown

We felt a bit silly being out there ourselves, but behind the big winds was forecast to be a big few days of calms before the trade winds fell back into their normal pattern. Leaving too late would either make for a long sail or a whole lot of motoring.

At least the winds were from astern. As rain ran in sheets off of the foot of each sail, we had a fast reach past Magnetic Island, which we could only see between showers. The distant outer Great Barrier Reef reduced the swell to where it wasn’t awful. It wasn’t great, but it wasn’t awful.

When Maryanne woke me at midnight for my night watch, I was surprised to find us heading due east in a light north wind. She had just spent the last hour heading due west after the twenty-five knot tailwinds quit and swung around. She had just tacked to avoid getting too close to the coast. We were now retracing our steps and were right back to where we were halfway through her watch. That was disappointing.

Before I decided to give up and start an engine, I had another look at three different forecast models. None of them predicted anything other than twenty to twenty-five knot south-easterlies. So much for that! These models use supercomputers to predict the behavior of each square kilometer through several iterations, taking into account the effect of the adjacent boxes each time until the result stabilizes. Such computations are too coarse to take into account any of the smaller effects of terrain or individual thunderstorms.

There was lightning both far ahead and close behind and the cool air had a hint of the smell of earth in it. We seemed to be in a zone where all of the vectors between the background south-easterlies and the two convective cells were almost cancelling each other out, leaving us with just a residue of a breeze from the north. The cells would eventually either move on or dissipate, so I decided to ignore my irritation at our lack of progress and just be patient until it all passed.

The wind then died completely. I went on deck to see if I could make out anything in the moonless sky. It was like being in the water park in Townsville. I looked up and got a giant bucket of water on my head. By the time I made the three steps back under the bimini, I was soaked through. I decided to go back out into it and throw in a couple of reefs just in case it started gusting.

It never did. As the rain decreased, the wind gradually filled in in its place. By the time it was down to a light drizzle, we were romping along like we had been the day before, except that the waves had had six hours of calms to dissipate. When I woke Maryanne in the morning, we were on a broad reach in twenty-knot south-easterlies again and I had been completely blow-dried.

Since we were sailing through the night on this trip, we were sticking close to the deepwater shipping channels. Maybe once or twice per watch, we would have to ease out on one side or the other to let ships pass. Other than that, consistent conditions left us with nothing much to do but watch the passing of each of the reefs and islets along the way.

During my third night watch, we were passed from astern by two big ships, each going more than twenty knots. Halfway through, a third target appeared going only nine-and-a-half knots. It was a tug pulling a barge. Their lights appeared over the horizon and gradually closed on us. As the sun came up, we were both just past Hope Islands, where the shipping channels make several turns to avoid the shallows. A southbound ship appeared and it looked like we would all arrive at a bend right at the narrowest point and all at the same time.

AIS intercept predictions are based on current heading and speed, so it was harder to tell how everything was going to play out once we all started turning at the bend. The assumption is that the commercial shipping would pass each other port-to-port on their respective sides of the channel. Our target was the big wild card since our speed and direction were both constantly changing due to the wind.

We had the spinnaker flying then. Sailing as close to the wind as we could, without going to the trouble to bring it down and switch to the white sails, we were still slowly edging into the channel ahead of the tug. Turning downwind until we were right on the edge of gybing, we made the mad dash to the other side by passing just ahead of both. I fully expected one or the other of them to start yelling at us on the radio about our timing for the maneuver, but they never did.

The big ship threaded the needle between us and the tug, leaving just the two of us abeam each other. Just after they passed us, we sailed past a gap in the mountains and the wind picked up. Then we passed them. Then it died again and they passed us. Then we passed them again. I suspected the tug was wanting to be clear of us since before the three-way crossing they had been favoring the west side of the channel. We thought they might even want to eventually turn ahead of us into Cooktown. In the end, we got there just before they did and were surprised to see them continuing on.

The bar into the Endeavor River was a little choppy, but the flood had us through it in no time. We threaded our way into the shallows just outside the channel and dropped anchor off of the main fuel dock. More rain was coming, so we had plenty of excuse to stay aboard, reset our sleep clocks and see how Begonia swings through a few wind and tide cycles.

In the morning, we went ashore to have a look around. Cooktown is a small, practically a one-street town and the last civilization for those heading north by road. Every other settlement on the east coast of Australia also wanted to be called Cooktown. For those that have been to the eastern U.S., where “George Washington Slept Here” signs are common, Australia’s versions are the ubiquitous James Cook Slept/Camped/Sat/Walked/Stood/Had a Wee Here” signs. This one beat them to the Cooktown name on account of this place being the first that Capt. James Cook spent any time.

After wrecking the Endeavour on the reef that now bears its name. Cook’s crew refloated the ship and headed for the Hope Islands on the hope that they would make it there before sinking again. They did better than expected. A boat was sent ahead that returned with good news about a safe, secure harbor. They continued on to present-day Cooktown for several weeks of repairs.

We walked to the top of Grassy Hill in a cooling drizzle, and back down the other side to the beaches Meeting up with the Botanic Garden (for lunch)

Maryanne and my first order of business in the area was to climb to the top of Grassy Hill for the view of the Great Barrier Reef. There is a lot of reef out there and the area around Cooktown is where it really starts to crowd the coast going northwards. Cook’s notes of what he saw were somewhat despondent, noting no obvious exit for them from the torment of the reefs.

Maryanne and I descended down the other side of Grassy Hill to two different beaches. We were hoping to make a loop out of our walk and ascend the much higher Mt. Cook. When we got to the last beach, though, we were stopped by an overly deep and wide river crossing. Anywhere else, we might have held our packs over our heads and waded across, but this is croc country so that ain’t happening. The only way to Mt Cook was to backtrack almost all of the way into town before joining the other trail.

We stopped for tea and a snack at the Botanic Gardens. After a bit of a pokey examination, we both decided that it was too late in the day and we were too worn out from the tropical heat to be starting a second climb. I was all for calling it a day then, but Maryanne was keen to get the James Cook Museum before they closed. We made it and immediately realized we wouldn’t have nearly enough time to see it. The woman at the counter told us she was working the next day and would remember us if we wanted to finish tomorrow.

The Museum closed right at the same time as all of the kitchens in Cooktown’s few pubs. Dinner service would start around sunset. We ambled around trying to kill as much time as we could, but it had been an early morning, it was super-hot, and we didn’t want to wait that long to eat again. We decided to walk to the end of the waterfront and then head home.

Rounding the corner, we came upon a mini-version of Townsville’s water park, complete with 3/4-sized dumping bucket! Best of all, it was unoccupied. There was no water flowing, though. We had a look around and found a pole with a button. I pressed it to see if it would do anything. It didn’t. That was too bad, it was so hot!

Then the park gurgled to life. I handed Maryanne my phone and ran in fully clothed. Oh, that feels good! Then the bucket dumped its contents on me and all of the excess heat of the day was gone. After fifteen minutes or so, the park once again went dry. We pressed the button again and I had one more go at everything. Continuing our walk afterwards, with all of my clothes sticking to me and making squeak, squeak noises with my wet shoes. I remarked to Maryanne several times how thoroughly refreshed I was. I think she may have been a little annoyed by this as she had only been wearing thin, white clothes and so had not partaken.

It's a pretty town, and Kyle LOVED having the splash-zone water park to himself

We were a bit sorer than we had expected the next morning. After a brief consultation, we decided to give Mt Cook a miss and instead to expend our planned mileage on a much flatter exploration of the town, along with a trail through the nearby wetlands, and hit the museum that Maryanne wanted to visit too.

We were just striking out on the latter when a meter-and-a-half-long snake flushed out of the grass ahead of Maryanne and darted for the edge. It was moving so quickly that we couldn’t tell if it was a Taipan or an Eastern Brown. Either would be bad. We both froze, suddenly feeling like we could be in a minefield of venomous snakes. We continued on for a bit, this time more slowly and carefully. When we reached the trail’s true beginning at the edge of the wetland, we saw not an interesting variety of birds and frogs and such. Instead, the path ahead seemed to be made up of ever-thickening grass and undergrowth. Perhaps it was time to skip the wetland idea and settle for a pub crawl instead.

We soon swapped outdoor activities for indoor ones - but there was no avoiding the snakes (haha)

At the first one, the menu seemed reasonable enough, so we decided to stop in for a whole lunch. As soon as we entered, we saw our first snake. This one was a non-venomous Black-Headed Python named Wanda. Her owner assured us that she was quite docile and handed her over to Maryanne for a cuddle while we waited for our order.

We stopped by a couple of other pubs on the way home, but neither had any petting snakes, so we left after our first drink.

Today, Maryanne was prepared. She had brought her swimsuit so it was her turn to push the button at the park and have all of the fun. She was still overheated from the day before, but since we hadn’t climbed the big hill and since we had spent much of our day lounging in shaded pubs, I was okay. Unlike me, though, she had brought a towel and everything so I didn’t get any of the fun at giggling at her squelching noises afterwards.

Just as we were settling in for the night, we were visited by Rick, who had just arrived today on a bigger Fountaine-Pajot of the same general vintage as Begonia. Our visit was brief, but when we discovered we were both heading the same general direction, we agreed to meet up at a later anchorage.

Townsville

[Kyle]Usually, when we come this way, we pop into Magnetic Island because it is amazing. This time, we decided we were done with fun, so we would go to Townsville instead.

Oh, I kid Townsville! We know lots of people who have spent lots of time there. Many said it was their favorite stop in Australia.

Our sail there from Double Bay was pleasantly uneventful. Too many of our sails of late seem to have had some bit of drama or hardship thrown in just to keep us on our toes. We are of course capable of advanced sailing, but sometimes it’s good to have a nice, normal sail that doesn’t feel like preparation for a practical test that will be administered by some grumpy hardass. What we got this time were steady trade winds from far enough behind that it didn’t even make any sense to take the mainsail out of its bag.

An overnight sail - with a splendid sunset

We sailed that way from midday until my night watch. The wind decreased slightly and was almost dead astern. Our jib is touchy if the wind goes more than 170º aft. I switched to the spinnaker to keep our speed up and to avoid the constant tweaking necessary to keep the jib filled. For our ‘drama’, I got rained on for an hour or so at the end. I’ve always said that being wet isn’t really the problem, it’s getting wet. Once I accepted that the tropical rain was warm and that everything, including myself, was getting a much-needed rinse, I was able to be sanguine about it all.

Once we arrived, we pulled into the anchorage at the Duck Pond, a shallow area off of the channel protected by a breakwater. There, we could readjust our sleep schedules to normal before heading into the marina the next day. We called them the next morning. The staff were super nice and told us we were welcome to come in any time. We waited out a last rain shower and headed in.

Now we were in a marina. You know what that means – jobs! Ugh. It would be nice to be excited about our new digs, but not until business has been dealt with.

First on the list was to replace our two-and-a-half-year-old wind turbine with a new, new one (it shouldn't have needed replacing, but we think we broke it during an early minor repair attempt). The job went relatively quickly. The new one is the same model as the older one so, electrically, all that had to be done was to splice the new wires onto the old ones, matching colors. Most of the time was taken up with disassembling the tower and then taking the time to make sure the connections were bulletproof and completely sealed from the environment. Then I realized I only had one dry day left to rebed one of our hatch lenses, so I spent more time than I wanted doing that.

Next was a trip up the mast to do a closer inspection of the top half of the rigging than binoculars allow. We were concerned that Townsville may be the last place calm enough for a trip aloft before crossing the Gulf of Carpenteria. Everything looked fine. For the balance of the day, I removed our tattered sail cover for some overdue TLC while Maryanne did laundry and dealt with the backlog of internet jobs that needed doing, then I did an early oil change on one of our engines so we wouldn’t have to carry around the used oil for a month until Darwin.

Next it was Maryanne’s turn. I assumed the role of dutiful helper while she effected repairs to our mainsail cover. It always amazes me to watch her do this. The thing is twice as long as our cabin is wide. She needs a big sail loft with a machine recessed into the floor, but instead, she has just our cabin table. With me trying my best to take the weight where I can, she goes over the cover bit by bit, redoing stitching, installing patches and replacing broken hardware. When she’s done, it doesn’t look new or anything, but all of the chafed spots are fixed and all of the buckles and zippers work again. I no longer have to worry that the thing is going to split in two every time we use it.

View of Castle Hill from the Duck Pond, and finally ashore Kyle was quite jealous of the water park fun that he never had as a kid

To keep our stay from all being work, we did enjoy some long walks along Townsville’s pretty waterfront and up to the top of Castle Hill. That last trek was a lot steeper than we expected (it’s mostly stairs). The views from the top were worth it, of course. On the way down, the previously empty trail was suddenly full with people who seem to climb it as their daily afternoon workout. Oof!

And of course, we HAD to take the walk to the top of Castle Hill; it was quite a struggle in the heat (but worth it - we certainly needed the exercise).

Our favorite part of the waterfront walk was the big water park within. We’ve been in Australia a while now, but it still amazes us that they have super-cool water parks everywhere and playgrounds that are way more fun than anything we got as kids, all for free. This particular park had lots of fun features like spouting whale and dolphin statues and water cannons to shoot at your friends. The big draw was the Big Bucket. It’s such a simple thing; a giant, maybe 400-gallon bucket that slowly fills. When it gets to the top, after ten minutes or so, it tips over and gives everyone below a jolly good dousing. I was tempted to go in myself, but I was trying to stay dry for the day. Also, my brother Darren assures me that the water is almost certainly not clean. Yeah, but it looks like so much fun…

One of the things we like to do when we are in civilization of try to find a Quiz Night. It turns out that Townsville is large enough that Maryanne was able to find one within walking distance of the marina four nights in a row. Our run started respectably enough, although we were really missing Matt from our time in The Boat Works. We were able to finish the first one just above the middle of the pack. We would have done a lot better, but there were a lot of “Name this Australian State Premier?” type questions. We held up the middle by getting a few American questions like, “What’s the capitol of North Dakota?” and, “What’s the only American bank note without a US President?”

We kept ourselves occupied, with museums, markets, exploritory walks around town (lots of art and wildlife) and all the quiz nights (Trivia nights) we could manage

Things deteriorated after that. We were next tied for fourth place (out of seven), only because one of the guys at the table next to us couldn’t remember the exact song title to one Maryanne actually knew. We saw him the next day at another pub sitting alone and asked if he wanted another couple of team members. He politely declined, saying he had friends on the way. They eventually showed up and then soundly trounced the other thirteen teams. Maryanne’s and my boast was that we did not finish last. We think that team went home halfway through.

On our last night at a fourth pub, we were starting to recognize the other Quiz Night regulars. This time, we were completely hopeless. We didn’t recognize any of the faces in the picture round or know any of the artists, much less songs and release year, of the music round. To add to the insult, we kept having to trade answer sheets with the team in strong contention for first for scoring. They would miss one every now and then. We would get one right every now and then.

We thought we may be able to pull ahead, or at least keep up, by choosing a round about the periodic table of elements as our double points round. We’re not chemists, but we at least know what it is, plus a few of the main highlights (go, Oxygen!). During an intermission, our friend from two paragraphs ago recognized us and came over to say hi. By sheer coincidence, he had chosen a t-shirt for the night that had the full periodic table on it. He seemed pretty pleased with the coincidence. His team got a perfect score and double points on that.

At the end of the night, we were dead last. Not just a little. We were SO dead last by a long shot. We were so last that we won the booby prize of a jug of beer. The second to last place team, who apparently participates once a fortnight for the express purpose of winning the free jug of beer, came by to congratulate us for being so epic at tanking the quiz. Yeah, that’s what we were doing. We just really like beer. We were not prepared for this, but since we wouldn’t be coming back, we redeemed our free jug now. Maryanne managed to decant half of it to our friends the victors, which allowed us to at least walk a straight line for the walk of shame home.

Kyle' in Townsville: Mast climbing, and quirky Museum fun.

We also met some nice people at the marina and even had dinner at one other boat. Kerri and Phil had recently bought their much nicer catamaran and were also planning on going the same basic route we were through the remainder of Australia before medical concerns delayed their plans. Dinner was just lovely. They were both great fun and we managed to redeem ourselves from that dreadful quiz night showing by sounding somewhat knowledgeable and experienced in our own chosen area of expertise. Why can’t we find pub quizzes that ask questions about fixing water pumps or which foods last longest without refrigeration? We also got to meet up with Jim (a facebook sailing friend) who has given all sorts of tips as we travel around Australia, and generously topped-up our chocolate supplies.

We really enjoyed our time in Townsville