Lagoon Bay, Marchinbar Island

[Kyle]We left Guluwuru mid morning. Our main requirement for the short trip northeast to Lagoon Bay was to cross the Cumberland Strait close enough to slack water to avoid any drama there. The rest of the sail was fantastic. Guluwuru/Marchinbar islands blocked any hint of any swell. The wind was just slightly ahead of the beam and lighter than it had been in weeks, so the addition of our forward momentum made for a nice breeze across the deck. The whole way, we were moving at modest but respectable speeds on flat water under cloudless skies.

About a third of the way along, Maryanne asked if I was planning to anchor under sail. I hadn't really thought about it since our last dozen or so anchorages had required careful maneuvering to get the hook down on just the right spot and it has been windy as hell. Lagoon, on the other hand, was a big, wide bay with uniform depths across its whole width. We were unlikely to find the anchorage crowded with other boats and we had three hundred miles of open sea behind us in which to recover if we dragged. I knew she must have regretted suggesting it as soon as she opened her mouth, because anchoring under sail requires more work at the very end when we have to deal with furling the sails and dropping the anchor simultaneously. In the end, she let me do it, though. It was fun working as a team to short-tack our way to our chosen spot; once there I ran around furling the sails while Maryanne paid out the anchor and chain. Our night of light winds would be more comfortable without the recently shut down engine heating our bunk from below.

The forecast for the next couple of days was for winds of less than five knots. I was settling in to enjoy the calm when I had a thought, that once thought, I couldn't get myself to unthink. The foil on our roller furler (which attaches the jib to the forestay) is made up of several sections screwed together through connector pieces. With use, particularly when reefed, the cycles of torsion on the unit gradually work the joints loose. I like to go aloft every few weeks to inspect and tighten everything up as part of our maintenance routine, but I need flat conditions to keep from being whipped around up there. We haven't had perfectly calm anchorages for a while, so I've been just keeping an eye on it. Now I realized Lagoon Bay was going to be the ideal opportunity to tick the job off of the list.

That was fine. As long as nothing unexpected turns up, the job only takes fifteen minutes or so. Then I had another thought I really, really wished I hadn't thought: Over the last months, our bottom paint has taken on a thin layer of slime at the waterline. So have our propellers. We had no hard growth yet – it doesn't like our anti-fouling paint, but in time, it will be happy to grow on the increasingly thick layer of slime covering the outer layer of paint. The solution is usually pretty easy – go for a swim with a rag and re-expose the paint's biocide by wiping the slime off.

The problem of course, is that we are in waters inhabited by crocodiles. Swimmers are sitting ducks for crocs. The advice generally given for those who must swim is to find a big, shallow sandy spot over clear sand, so a lookout on deck can see them coming in time to warn the swimmer.

Our water was nice and blue, but we can only see down two or three meters, not all of the way to the seabed, so there was still ample opportunity for an ambush from down there. Swimming was still definitely out. That's where my unwelcome thought came in: We could careen the boat.

Between the calm weather and the three meter spring tides, I figured out we could dry out for a few hours – more than long enough to clean the paint. We just had to select a spot.

After carefully inspecting the beach at the afternoon low tide, which would be slightly higher than the one the following day, we found a nice, flat piece of sand upon which to rest. Then it was just a matter of backing up the calculations to figure out just exactly when on the falling tide to head over there. When the time came, we pulled up anchor and headed for the beach. Our engine-free streak had to be broken.

This was our first careening and I must say, it was a little disconcerting to deliberately drive the boat onto the beach. We took it very slowly until Begonia mushed to a stop as her keels hit the sand. Within minutes, the water outside was sitting three inches below its usual level and falling. Begonia's motion gradually ceased and soon we were rock steady.

Kyle cleans the boat while we both keep an eye open for crocs!

The water fell until the tops of the rudders and props were out of the water and then it seemed to stabilize, even though the tide should still have been falling. We were between tide stations. Perhaps I had interpolated incorrectly.

When I had decided I could wait no longer to start the job (Maryanne was staying on deck to act as Croc Watch), I jumped off of the bows into the ankle-deep water. That's when I figured out our depth problem. The sand was soft. Begonia's keels had sunk half a meter into it.

Our spot didn't dry out completely. I was left with just a few inches of water, which I could use to rinse my just-cleaned patches. It was less than a croc could hide in by staying completely submerged. The visibility of the water under the boat was pretty terrible because of all of the churned-up sand in the breaking wavelets, but the water behind was clear to the seabed for a good hundred meters or so.

I had this fantasy that I would be able to stay mostly dry during the procedure. That was quickly dispelled when I had to get on by hands and knees to get between the hulls. When I got to the props and rudders, I realized it was easiest to just sit or lie down in the water while the occasional wave doused me on its way to the shore at the bows.

I was two-thirds of the way through my last prop when Maryanne spotted a croc. She tried to get a photo of it, but realized the batteries were charging, so she would have to figure out which one was most charged and put it in the camera. She decided to skip the photo and tell me about it.

I'm kidding about this part. As soon as she saw a suspicious shape, she was singing like a canary. The picture thing didn't even occur to either of us until the whole thing had been over for a while.

”Kyle, crocodile!”

I hate it when Maryanne calls me Kyle. She usually calls me “Darling” or, “Honey” or some such thing. “Kyle” seems to be reserved for emergencies. By the time the second word came out, I was already halfway up. Most people don't know this, but every single muscle in the body can get involved in standing up. Even my wiggle-the-ears muscles helped out by doing a little jump to assist the team. I was back on board in one, maybe one and a half seconds. She later shared that it was just a small little thing – maybe a 4' long – the kind you could scare away by yelling, “Scoot, you big brute!” Still, better safe than sorry.

After ten minutes, we were comfortable that it had moved on and was not stalking me, so I went back in to finish the job. I still had enough adrenaline going through me to get done in less than two minutes.

Now that the bottom was clean, we had an hour or so before we really needed to be back aboard for the rising tide. I helped Maryanne down and we had a little walk on the beach. Begonia looked great because she was all slime-free, but also looked very much like she had been wrecked instead of purposely careened. Even though we knew that was not the case, it was hard to shake the subconscious feeling that something was very wrong every time we looked at her from afar.

Walking around the exposed rocks and beach while waiting for the tide to come up

Well, there was nothing we could do anyway until the tide came back up, so we might as well put it out of our minds and enjoy ourselves.

The beach was incredible. Like at Guluwuru, we found loads of rock, which was sculpted by erosion into the most magnificently picturesque shapes. We also saw glimpses a few of what Maryanne dubbed, “Hoppy Things”. She later determined that these were Rock-Wallabies, but the original moniker stuck. Rock-wallabies are adorable, but also extremely skittish. As soon as they saw us, they invariably took off at full speed away from us. I was finally able to get one close enough to her for her to photograph by flanking it and driving it towards her. They must be hunted by Aboriginals. {Maryanne: I'm pretty certain we also saw a quokka (a dark red-brown, rabbit-size marsupial - another "hoppy thing"), but the critters move fast and hide readily, so no photos to prove it! Update: Our wonderful sailing friend Justine told us that it's "Likely your other critter was a northern quoll, they were threatened on mainland and an extensive programme was done on Wessels to help them breed back up - it was very successful."}

Once we made it back aboard, we had another hour or so before the tide lifted Begonia out of the sand. We started the engines and put them in reverse. Nothing happened until the water came up another ten centimeters or so. Then we started slowly backing away from the beach. That was a huge relief to both of us. Neither one of us fancied the idea of being marooned way out here. We headed to our old spot and dropped the anchor just as the sun set.

We are getting quite used to the lovely sunsets from the boat

In the morning, I finally climbed the mast to service the furler. Then we headed ashore again for a long walk the other direction. We went for miles, past dry rivers, billabongs and lots of rock sculptures. We also found a few hoppy things, who looked surprised by our approach.

Sail and rigging checks involve climbing the mast

We got to enjoy some lovely walks ashore, including a rather large river crossing

I finally managed to photograph one of the very skittish rock-wallabies

Guluwuru Island (Wessel Island Chain)

[Kyle]Guluwuru is Aboriginal land. It is not permitted to go ashore without obtaining a permit first. We tried this, but the link on their website seems to be broken, so we never managed it. Fortunately, the prohibition only applies to the land above the highest tide line. The land and the water between the lowest tide line and the highest tide line also belongs to the Aboriginals, but through an agreement between the Aboriginal Land Council and the Australian government, all of this coastal band of Guluwuru and neighboring Marchinbar Islands (Marchinbar is the island north of Cumberland Strait) have been given a waiver from the permit requirement (at least through to December 2020). Thus, it was acceptable for us to go ashore as long as we kept below the highest tide line. Fortunately, the tidal range here is almost four meters. That exposes a pretty big swath of land at low tide. In reality, most of the land above the high tide line where we were anchored was thick with brambly undergrowth and wouldn't have been very explorer-friendly anyway. We were happy to stick to the beach.

just before the next day's low tide, we rowed ashore to the middle of the big beach. It was nice. It was a beach. The sand was nice and hard and ours were the only human footprints. (Guluwuru has no permanent inhabitants, although there may be seasonal camps). We started off by walking south to the gap between the beach and the breakwater island. At low tide, it was connected by a sand-spit, so we wanted to get across and back before the tide came back up.

The rocks exposed at low tide were so much fun to adventure among - so many stunning views

As we neared the end of the beach, the sand gradually gave way to rock and things got way more interesting. The rock was mostly big slabs made of innumerable thin layers. Erosion had undercut them, turning them into overhangs and precariously balanced table tops. Weaker cracks had also worn into chasms and grottoes. Some of the slabs had then fallen over, making windows and passages at crazy angles. In between were seams of bauxite, which had formed into dark red bubbles when it cooled. There were also plates of white sandstone, which had seams of pink and purple pastels, left either by minerals or possibly algae. We poked around for over an hour, marveling at the amazing sculpture garden around us. It's funny how entertaining looking at a bunch of rocks can be.

A lot of those slabs would have made a perfect place for a crocodile to warm up in the sun. We were keeping our eyes peeled and were each carrying a big stick just in case. We never found any, but we did find some tracks from a smaller one. The tracks were heading into the water. That was a reminder to keep back from the edge. We followed the tracks backwards and found that they terminated in a little sandy spot under a ledge, as if the creature was trying to hide from the sun. The hidey-hole and the tracks were oriented in such a way that if we had been going the other way, we wouldn't have seen them before we were right on top of them. Good thing the crocodile was gone. Now we not only had to worry about sun lounges, but also every private, shady nook, too.

After having our fill of natural rock sculptures, we returned with relief to the wide open expanse of the beach, where we could see 'em coming. At the other end, we found more beautiful rock of a slightly different sort with fewer places for a crocodile to lie in ambush. We followed that around the corner to a second long beach, which was really only the very bottom of some pretty impressive dunes of blinding white sand.

The tide was coming up by then and we wanted to get back to our dinghy before the water did. We had set an anchor, but neither one of us liked the idea of having to swim, or even wade, out to it. We had been ashore for over four hours, while we'd just set out for a quick walk on the beach.

Truant Island and on to the Cumberland Strait

[Kyle]A red sunrise dawned over the red landscape as we made our way out of Gove harbor. We had barely enough wind to keep us moving until we passed the big Japanese ship filling with ore on the pier. Once we were clear of them and their wind shadow, the breeze picked up and we had a fast sail north on a close reach to Truant Island.

Truant Island

Truant has a lighthouse, but otherwise no human infrastructure. The seas were getting pretty big by the time we got there and we were happy to duck behind the island for protection from them. As we made our way to the beach at the far, northern end, we saw several sea turtles. Two of them were engaged in starting up the next generation.

We found a spot in seven meters depth over sand and dropped the anchor there. There was still a little swell making its way around the island, which varied between pleasant and annoying, depending on where we swung and the height of the tide. The beach was beautiful, clean, white sand, but the swell was making a big surf we knew we'd never be able to successfully negotiate in the dinghy, so we had to content ourselves with looking at it from the boat. We did notice several big tracks going between the grass line and the water. One of them was obviously a croc, but the rest seemed to be from turtles climbing up to lay their eggs. We scanned the shore periodically with binoculars, but never saw any of them. We know they prefer the cover of darkness, but we were hoping to catch an early bird.

After our second night at anchor at Truant Island, we had become pretty tired of the constant swell, which we now decided was 100% annoying. We waited until about an hour after dawn and headed out.

Our sail was almost dead downwind to a gap in the long string of the Wessel Islands called Cumberland Strait. The current goes ripping through there four times a day at speeds of up to twelve knots. That can turn the whole area into a real nightmare of whirlpools and big standing waves. There is a much more "famous" gap further south along the chain – the Gugari Rip, otherwise known as the 'Hole in the Wall' which is a much narrower pass, but our route and plans meant we were better off using the more northerly pass.

Our plan was to arrive at the end of the northwest-bound ebb, just before slack water. That would give us a little push through, with wind and water both going the same direction. My intent was to leave early enough that we could use as much jib as we needed to make our arrival work out correctly. Once we were underway, however, it was clear that we were not going fast enough to make it, even with full jib. We rolled it up and replaced it with the spinnaker. That took care of things nicely. Now we were going to be an hour early, which will be easy to fix on the other end.

When we got to Cumberland Strait, we found it a little choppy as water from both sides was rushing to the gap, making for confused seas. Closer in, things smoothed out considerably. As we entered the narrowest part, the depth went from 115 meters to 25 meters to 75 and then down to eight. That's where the current really picked up, flushing us through with a five knot push. The seas were flat, although there were eddies everywhere. They weren't strong enough to overwhelm our rudders and make it hard to steer a straight line through. We had doused our spinnaker five miles back. We were worried that if there were big waves or strong eddies, we could get turned sideways enough to collapse it or get it wrapped into an hourglass, which would make a bad situation even worse. In truth, we probably could have left it up and delayed starting the engines, but we would rather be safe than sorry.

Timing makes for an easy passage through the Cumberland Strait

Once through Cumberland Strait, we made a turn to the south and anchored at the nearest bay on the northwestern tip of Guluwuru Island. We anchored in four meters over a flat sand bottom. Cradling us was a mile-long semicircle of smooth sand, made pristine by the previous night's high tide. There was a small gap and then another long island to the south acting as a breakwater. Ahhh, there was no swell here. We were going to really enjoy that.

Gove/Nhulunbuy - Arriving in Northern Territory

[Kyle]The winds and currents for the sail across the Gulf of Carpenteria were such that if we left in the day, we would arrive at night. To get there in daytime, we would have to depart at night. Neither Gove nor Thursday Island are places you want to enter or exit at night, so the best we could do was leave near the end of the day, try not to go too fast and arrive at first light.

It started out great. There was plenty of wind and a fast (in this case, the flood) current, both from behind, which shot us through the channels between the Torres Strait islands. The islands blocked any swell, so we were left with flat, fast sailing on a beautiful sunny day.

The passage across the Gulf of Carpinteria presented some mixed sky views

We passed the last shipping channel buoy about an hour before the flood switched to ebb. That put us off of the shallow (10-15m) shelf and into the wider and deeper (50m) Gulf. That turned our five-knot flood into only about a 0.3 knot ebb. From there, the plan was to sail fast until about the halfway point while pointing a few degrees upwind of our destination. Both things would act as a hedge against the wind shifting unfavorably or unexpectedly dying during the crossing.

We had no problem going fast. The wind was right on the beam in the mid-twenties. Even with a superfluous reef in each sail, we were still streaking along quickly enough to get across just after dark on the second day if our speed held. Just after dark is still dark, so we had no plans of trying that.

As our course was almost perpendicular to the Queensland west coast, it didn't take us long at all before we had over a hundred miles of sea to windward in which the waves could build. After a few hours Begonia was rolling and lurching like we were on an actual ocean passage. That made moving about and sleeping difficult, which left us both looking forward to the far side of the Gulf.

By Day two, the winds were consistently ten knots above the forecasts, which meant our reefs were no longer superfluous, so we had to put in a couple more so as not to disrupt our theme. The winds heaped up the waves from uncomfortable to annoying. At one point or another, everything we hadn't bothered to stow properly found itself on the floor. The decks were constantly being covered with spray and, worst of all, the helm seat was getting regular splashes.

We were still going way too fast, so we rolled up the jib entirely. This does more than just reduce our total sail area by a certain amount, since the airflow coming off of the jib is directed into the mainsail, thus increasing its power. That slowed us down by a couple of knots, but we needed it to be more like five. With about forty miles to go, we decided we needed to heave-to for a few hours.

This unfortunately gave Maryanne a really boring night watch because she had nothing to do other than keep an eye out for other boats and make sure we didn't drift into anything. It was like being Captain of a parked car.

At midnight, when it was my turn, we still had a couple more hours left of being hove-to. I used the time to make some strong coffee and to review anything I needed to know about Gove. I had initially planned the super-safe arrival route in from the north around Bremer Island via the channel for big ships. It looked instead like the passage through the gap between the mainland and Bremer would be fine if the currents weren't too strong.

We were seeing AIS targets again for the first time since leaving the Torres Strait. There were three big ships and a small catamaran, all at anchor in or near the harbor. Then from about ten miles behind, a tug and barge popped up on the display. The guy seemed to be heading for the gap as well. I had just got us moving again and was about to call him on the radio when he called me. He confirmed that he was heading that way and asked for as much room as I felt safe to give. He also said, “If you're going that way, you'd better get moving. It's pretty tidal.” I figured he knew what he was talking about, so out came the full jib. We were now going to get there about the same time.

Almost. He passed us just before the narrowest/shallowest point. After the tug went by, with about a mile to go, the current was sweeping us toward the gap through flat but swirly water. Then the current slackened. Then it started going the other way. Standing waves formed behind us to each side and then across the whole gap. Then they started a slow march westward as they built. I was able to keep Begonia ahead of them, but just. The moon had set by then, so I could only see them by their bio-luminescent crests and of course, the sound. The current increased to around five knots. The adjacent land was starting to block the wind, so it got to where the only time we were making forward progress was when surfing down the face of the wave behind us. That wave was getting bigger and closer by the minute. I spent two hours with gritted teeth watching our four-steps-forward, three-steps-backward progress. My worry was that the increasing current would sweep us back into the breakers behind and we would either have to ride them out for hours, or risk turning sideways to them to escape the area.

One long and productive surf got us across the shallowest point into the deeper water beyond. The current slowed considerably there, disintegrating the waves into so many whirlpools. Our speed doubled and then tripled and before you know it, we were back to fighting a piddly little 0.5 knot current. The good news was that the transit had taken so much time that we wouldn't need to heave-to again.

Maryanne had slept through all of my drama and woke to us sailing smoothly over flat water. We did a couple of tacks past the anchored ships as the sun brought definition to the land around us, then we dropped sail and motored the rest of the way into Gove Harbour.

The bauxite factory and dock dominates Gove Harbour

We found space in a big bay filled with widely spaced boats on moorings. Gove has no marina. Surrounding the bay is a thin strip of low land, which is dominated by a big processing plant to the west. Everything in the whole area, including all of the other boats in the harbor, is covered in red dust. It gave the place a bleak feel that was also quintessential Outback Australian. The Northern Territory is the least densely populated district in the third least densely populated country in the world (only Mongolia and Namibia beat it! - Thanks for the fact checking to Julie S). The population is just under 250,000, which is about the same as Wyoming, the least densely populated state in the U.S. The Northern Territory, however, is the size of Wyoming, Colorado, New Mexico and Montana combined. {Maryanne: For my British Friends, the NT has a population just a bit more than Peterborough, yet the size of the state is almost 6 times the area of the UK}. This nets a population density of just under one person per five square kilometers or one person per two square miles, one fiftieth that of New South Wales.

Gove is not a town per se, but a peninsula in Arnhem Land on which the Aboriginal town of Nhulunbuy resides. Nhulumbuy is NT's fifth largest settlement at just under 4,000 people (Behind Darwin, pop. 142,300, Alice Springs, pop. 27.900, Palmerston, pop. 27,600 – a Darwin satellite, and Katherine, pop. 6,100. Just behind Nhulunbuy is Tennant Creek, pop. 3,100). The Northern Territory has a total of only seventy-three pubs. Twenty-eight are in Darwin. Gove has five.

Also on the Gove Peninsula, and taking up most of its real estate, is a giant bauxite mine. The mine has a system of conveyor belts, which run for miles across the landscape to the single ship berth at the harbor. There, the ore is poured off of the end into giant freighters while others anchored nearby wait their turn.

Once our boat was secured at anchor and checklists complete, we went ashore to the Gove Boat Club to clear in officially. We had needed to sail to Gove as our first Northern Territory port in order to check in with the police for our Queensland/Northern Territory border crossing for Covid19. The officer who met us was completely unconcerned about our virulence, considering our route. We were worried they would be a little edgier as it was just two days after two men were caught arriving here from a Covid hotspot. He explained that their situation was different. They had arrived by plane from Canberra after driving from Sydney, then they lied on their forms about it. They are now quarantining at their own expense at a mining camp outside of Darwin, plus the cost of getting them there.

We asked the officer if there were any crocs around. “No, not here.”, he said, “There's one that lives on the beach over there, but not around here.”

The “beach over there” was not on the other side of the bay or anything. The beach he pointed to was on the other side of the breakwater protecting the dinghy dock. He might as well have said, “Don't mind that croc by the mailbox, he never comes onto the driveway.” Maybe we should start planning the Gove Triathalon, then.

When we were done with the police, we went to the office at the Boat Club. There, we met Sarah, the manager. There was something off about her. Then I felt an uncontrollable urge to get defensive. Wait a minute... I'm the only American in this village! Nope. It turns out I'm not, so is she. She grew up in Baltimore, Maryland. She met a nice Australian bloke while working in Las Vegas and, yadda yadda yadda, after a big fishing trip, she lives here now with him and their giant dog. From her, we learned what all of those people we see along the coast are called. In America, we call them fishermen or fisherwomen. We would have guessed Australians would call them fishies, in the tradition of truckees and bikies. Nope, I guess that could be confused with fishy, so it turns out they are called fishoes (the plural of fisho). All of those mobs of mates in the tinnies are fishoes.

Sarah was so nice it made us almost uncomfortable. She gave us two cards for only one deposit and then practically helped us carry our laundry to the machines. When we were trying to figure out our options for getting to Nhulunbuy to provision (cab, bus, rent a car), she eventually decided it would be quicker and easier for everybody if she took us in her ute (the Aussie abbreviation for Utility vehicle, i.e. truck, SUV) We made plans for a ride the next morning.

We piled into the truck and on the ten-mile, dusty ride in to town, she gave us the whole skinny on where we would find everything and where was a good place to have lunch. After a bit of shopping, we tried finding the cafe Sarah had recommended, but it was not on the list of the five the town offered. Perhaps I remembered the name wrong. We called her and she explained that our outdated map had called it what they used to call it, not what it's called now. Then she offered to take us there, so we didn't have to walk the mile in the heat. Well, how nice!

Nhulunby Town went mostly unphotographed

Then she said she meet us in ten minutes. She had just finished hanging laundry. That's right, she came all of the way back from home into town just to show us to the restaurant (The Refinery Cafe, run by New Zealanders served some delicious lunches!). Treating her to lunch was the least we could do. After returning us to the stores to do more provisioning, she did a third round trip to pick us and our groceries up, all while insisting she had nothing better to do with her day, which she surely must have.

The Gove Boat Club does dinner on Thursday to Sunday nights. We were planning to leave early Friday, but there was no way we were passing that up. That would be one pub down, only seventy-two to go. Sarah was there, serving beers to the widely spaced clientele with a smile. Her husband, Hayden was also there, finally finished fixing things for the day. It seemed most of the rest of the people within five miles were also there as their chef had a bit of a reputation. It was well deserved. The food was very good and clearly portioned for hard-working miners, not powder-puff boat types.

Hanging out around the boat club

After our meal, we spotted Rachel and went over to chat for a bit. We had met her on laundry day when we tried to nick her pillowcases. We were taking ours off of the line when we noticed we had too many. Rachel was sitting at her ute in the adjoining campsite, so Maryanne walked over to see if our extras could be hers. She came over and after much head-scratching from all three of us, we couldn't agree on which were whose. We eventually took five random ones and gave her the other three.

Rachel was with her husband, Mick, a commercial fisherman. They were on an extended holiday all of the way up from the South Coast. Mick could have been in a movie playing a character called “Mr. Australia”. He was built like he had spent a lifetime lifting hundred-pound things, was so tanned that he was half red and spoke quickly in an accent that Maryanne and I both had to concentrate on to follow. He and Rachel were also super-enthusiastic about everything. He loves his job. She loves her job (teacher). They love their house, their town, their neighbors, traveling and most especially, all of the interesting people they meet along the way, including (or especially – we couldn't tell) us! They made us promise we would look them up when we sail by sometime next summer. How could we not?