Darwin

[Kyle]So we made it to Darwin again; we were last here in September of 2020. Our sail there from Marchinbar Island wasn’t too bad. It started and ended with light wind spinnaker sailing. In the middle, the wind was strong enough for us to switch to jib for a day.

Another beautiful passage - AND I caught a fish (count now 11 fish total we think in 20 years).

We anchored in Fannie Bay and immediately went to work using the last of the cellular data we may see in Australia. Thus, Maryanne spent the bulk of her time obtaining permits and filling out applications for everywhere we were expecting to be in the next six months. I spent most of my internet time caching as many charts and satellite photos as we could fit in our various devices.

Irritatingly, as I was doing our post-sail rig check with the binoculars, I thought the swage at the top of our port shroud looked funny. This happens all of the time. Usually, it turns out to be a streak caused by rain falling on accumulated dust or a funny shadow. I couldn’t tell from down there, even with 40x magnification, so I had no choice but to go up there in the blazing sun to put my mind at ease.

Everything did indeed look fine when I got up there. Still suspicious, I started pressing hard on all of the strands with my thumbnail. One of them, the one I originally thought looked funny, had a little give. That strand had broken just inside the swage. Damn! Now we need to replace the shroud.

I recalled having the conversation with Brent about swages when he installed that shroud less than a year and a half earlier in Exmouth. I initially wanted Sta-lok mechanical terminals, like we have at the bottom, but he talked me out of it, saying he had never heard of a swaged fitting failing at the top (since water will not collect inside). Our failed forestay was a Sta-lok, albeit one that had survived tens of thousands of sea miles, so after much back and forth, he was able to barely convince me that swages were at least as safe. Now we have had three strands fail on two different swages that he installed, both of which are pretty new. In our subsequent communication with him, mostly so that he can now know that upper swages can in fact fail if not done perfectly. He has responded by saying that we are not experienced riggers and so we don’t know what we are talking about. O-kay, that may be true, but I’m having a hard time understanding how the stainless steel moleculesknew I was an idiot and so decided to let go of each other in response. With that reasoning, wouldn’t it be just as likely the strands failed because he’s a schmuck? To think, he was supposed to be the best of our two rigging options in Perth. While I was up the mast, I spent a good hour obsessively studying the swage and wire entry to for our third (fore)stay and try as I might, I could not find any evidence that it wasn’t just fine. {Maryanne: You may be able to sense Kyle’s frustration. The reality is most likely that the Tweed Heads incident put a lot of strain on those stays. We did pay for a formal rig check right afterwards and were told all was well, so we’ll never really know what caused the failure for sure. Anyway, now boat are replaced so we can sleep well. And as always, we’ve reminded ourselves that the ‘experts’ don’t necessarily know best when it comes to the boating world.}

I forgot to mention that on our passage Maryanne caught our 11th fish, a long-fin tuna and not too long after she put in the line (Score!).

We spent some time catching up with 'real life' at peaceful Fannie Bay (where the tour boats offer sunset cruises)

After Fannie Bay we went to Bayview Marina, by far the cheaper of the two marinas in Darwin that allow for our boat beam. Unfortunately, Bayview is quite out of town, and in an area full of mangroves and bugs.

First order of business once we were there was for me to ascend the mast and disconnect the broken stay. We took that, along with our mainsail, to Nautical Supplies for replacement/repair. While I was up the mast, I determined that Darwin is the hottest place in the world. I don’t care what the so-called scientists say with their quote-unquote datums. Take that Death Valley.

We had harboured thoughts of taking a quick trip to Uluru (once known as Ayres Rock). Our time in Australia has apparently missed the middle of the big country. But we’d left our planning too late, planes were booked, car rental was impossible (we later found that a music concert in Darwin was probably the cause). So we resigned ourselves to hanging out in Darwin while waiting for our repairs, and switched our immediate focus to provisioning for the next six months. To help with this our wonderful friend Justine connected us with her friend Troy and miraculously a car was available for us to use for the duration of our stay in Darwin. It would be too cheeky to drive to Uluru with it, but it was a lifesaver for our provisioning errands and allowed us some extracurricular fun about town too.

We found some time to be tourists in Darwin

Whilst in Darwin we visited some old favourites (restaurants, etc), and visited some of the tourist options that had been closed last time we were here (due to COVID regulations): The Flying Doctor museum, Parliament, and the sunset markets (food trucks and a beach at sunset – perfect), along with some general strolling around. Maryanne somehow got us into a NASA lecture that was fully booked, at the library; NASA was in the Northern Territory to observe a rare stella occultation of Pluto and a distant star later in the week. We visited a vaccination clinic and had ourselves pumped with a host of concoctions in preparation for our Africa visit. These wiped-out Maryanne, leaving her exhausted for a few days, but I was fine. But mostly we did run after run to the grocery store, loading up Troy’s car every time, and checking the waterline of the boat after every new load. Begonia is now more heavily laden than she has ever been. We have a full six months (plus) worth of food aboard, some of which is serving as an extra layer of flooring in our bedroom until we manage to eat through it. We also have extra fuel aboard (for the Kimberley) and water too – more than we’ve ever taken to date. Begonia is sitting right at her painted waterline (just), and we are looking forward to losing weight and freeing up space over the next few months (before our next major ocean passage).

We spent one evening at Mindil Sunset Market (filled with choice food trucks, and plenty of tourist goods). We even found some spicy biltong to keep us going!

Darwin was nice and all, but we did so much work there we were both looking forward to our departure and returning to our more leisurely cruising lifestyle. That departure was delayed by an extra day due to mail delivery failures (again).

Bayview Marina and getting help from some Kimberley experts

The extra time we had at the marina was spent well, we got to meet some of the local residents and many seemed to be planning trips to the Kimberley too so we may see them again. We were especially lucky to meet Ron and Barbara of Opal Shell; they had spent decades touring and running charters from their boat based in the Kimberley (well before GPS and satellite imagery) and were a fount of great stories and information.

Troy (who generously loaned us a car) is amazingly good-natured and one of those people so busy, it seems we are doing nothing with our lives by comparison. He was kind enough to squeeze in a couple of hours for us on the evening we returned the car, we’d have loved to have spent more time with him and his family, but the morning had him headed off on a nine-hour drive to the outback for one of his many good causes.

After leaving the marina, contrary winds had us spending one more night in Fannie Bay (for that beautiful sunset) before we were to head off to the Kimberley. We did one more backup of data, and a last update of everything digital we could think of while we still had internet.

In Fannie Bay our 12th fish arrived at 3am. You might ask what were we doing fishing at 3am? We weren’t, we were sleeping, but the fishing is that easy. Fish #12, another tuna, was apparently fleeing from something bigger and flung itself out of the water accidentally knocking itself out on our boat. Maryanne heard the noise and assumed something had fallen from the rigging, she searched the boat but could find nothing, when I joined in the search, I spotted the fish on the cockpit bench. We initially figured we could throw the thing back in and it might be OK, but it was clearly dead – so we put it in the fridge to deal with the following day.

It was from Darwin we waited and waited back in 2020 for permission to enter Western Australia and explore the Kimberley, but it never came. This time, COVID regulations are all removed and we are free to FINALLY head off to the remote and beautiful Kimberley region.

Wessel Islands

[Kyle]Our passage from Cape York to Darwin looked like it would only have wind for about the first two-thirds of the journey. Then we would have to bob around for a few days before it came back. Rather than do that, we decided to make an intermediate stop in the Wessel Islands, the narrow string that runs north on the west side of the Gulf of Carpenteria (and that we had enjoyed so much the last time we were here back in August of 2020).

We left Cape York late in the afternoon. The flood flushed us past Thursday Island into the gulf. There, all of the protection of land fell away and we were soon rolling around in short chop. Since we were timing our arrival at the Gugari Rip to also be on the daylight ebb tide, we had no need to go terribly fast. I was aiming for about five and a half knots. The wind was just under twenty knots, so we reefed as if it were thirty. That eliminated any worry about being over canvassed in gusts, but we were still going too fast. On the last night, I rolled the jib up completely and then gradually rounded up into the wind a few degrees at a time. Once the sail started to luff and Begonia was down to a knot or so, I dropped the main, unrolled a scrap of jib, and then slowly started bearing off towards the rip. We arrived with the sunrise.

The Gugari Rip (also known as 'the hole in the wall') is a long narrow passage (barely a crevice) between two of the islands of the Wessel Group, specifically Raragala Island and Guluwuru Island. Currents can run through at up to twelve knots, so it is important to get the timing right for a mild transit with current in your favor. Last time we were here we passed through an alternative gap (the Cumberland Strait) a bit further to the north.

Up close through the Rip (satellite imagery from Zulu Waterways)

We entered an hour and a half before low tide and still shot through with a six-knot boost. The whole mile-long transit was over in five minutes. Once we were through, we turned left and followed the Raragala coast to Guruliya Bay, where we dropped anchor as the only boat.

The last time we were in the Wessels in 2020, which are Aboriginal land (part of the lands of the Yolngu people), it was permissible to go ashore, provided one stays below the high tide line. That agreement has since expired, so we were not permitted to touch the land without permission. It rained heavily the day we arrived, but the next day we took a tour of the bay with the dinghy. Guruliya Bay is fed by a few creeks through rock canyons and mangroves, so it was a surprisingly interesting place to explore from the water. The small creeks are loaded with Barramundi, who have the habit of startling en masse at our approach by jumping out of the water all at once. The sound and subsequent ripples frequently tricked us into thinking it was not a school of fish but a hungry crocodile coming to investigate the big orange serving bowl full of meat. {Maryanne: It turned out that through our amazing sailor friend Justine and her contacts we had indeed been granted permission to go ashore, but our own incompetence meant that we didn't get the news in time to explore at Guruliya}

Exploring Guruliya Bay, Raragala Island by dinghy

We kept an eye out but never did find any crocs or evidence of them, even though they have been seen here. I remember from our Daintree River tour that our guide, Sauce, said crocs don’t like cloudy, rainy weather and so tend to 'hibernate' by holding their breaths for hours at a time and resting on the bottom. We did disturb plenty of fish though which gave us a scare everytime they jumped out of our way with a big splash!

The next morning, we upped anchor just before sunrise and headed up to Two Island Bay on Marchinbar Island at the northern end of the chain. The wind was slightly ahead of the beam, which increased the cooling breezes somewhat. The Wessels acted like a giant breakwater, so the seas were nice and flat. Oh, if all of our sailing could be like this.

At Two Island Bay we discovered the message from our friend saying that she had contacted the Aboriginal owners of the land on our behalf and we now had permission to go ashore. We had been here before, limited to the intertidal zone. Now we could even walk inland a bit if we wished. {Maryanne: this access was a huge privilege, and we remain forever grateful.}

We arrived in Two Island Bay just before sunset, and got a brief glimps of this large Black-necked Stork (they stand over 1m tall and with a 2m wing span

Marchinbar is not permanently populated. There are no trails into the interior, per se, but there were a few bare patches of rock or sand where we were able to go inland a bit to get a view of the place from a little altitude. That was nice. This place really is amazing and remote and beautiful and harsh all at the same time. We saw the backsides of a few skittish wallabies fleeing from us in the distance. We also saw three slides made by small to medium-sized crocs, but none of the animals themselves. There were sure a lot of funny splashing noises going on around the boat all night, though.

We spent a couple of days exploring ashore at Two Island Bay, Marchinbar Island. It's all so beautiful, and we are so lucky to be here!