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