SUNDOWNER Y86 north coast

by **rob.lovelace** » Tue Jul 15, 2014 6:40 pm

Greetings from NT folks, well I'm glad to be out of that GB lagoon it seemed to go on forever. It was great to round Cape York and go ashore to place a rock on the top of the carne. Cape Grenville was a hi light with great oysters and a walk across the cape to Indian bay which was interesting. I uploaded a series of clips to you tube of the walk titled The Blue Trail.
Anyway, over the top past possession island and down to Seisia which is the the coastal town of Bamaga indiginous town for supplies and water, while there I cheated and took the ferry up to Thursday Is. for a day visit and bus tour. The Torres Straits have heaps of islands and I feel they need a season just exploring them alone.

Over the Gulf took 4 days. I'm still in company of Cynicia who is a single handed tracker 26 bilge keeler. We did 2hr watches while the other boat slept I would watch for both of us and vise versa. We had a full (super) moon and only one ship on the ais all the way across it was the only other vessel sighted. These watch times worked well and when we arrived at Gove I was not totally exhausted like I was returning from Tassie on my own, although I slept like a log the first night.

Gove boat club is great, $10a week for shower toilet and washing machine access.There are careening posts free to use with good water available. Bus to town is $5 each way and very interesting local culture.

Thursday I'm heading out to the Wessel Islands and am going through the hole in the wall where the tide rips through at 8kts reportedly (google it) I'll spend a day or so looking around before heading to crocodile island or resolution island (I think) I try not to get to far ahead of myself and just focus on the imeadiate tasks.

The winds have been great so far with 15-25kt sou' easters all the way so far. I'm only using the genoa poled out most of the time and making an average of 5kts. I love the Fleming vane gear and couldn't do without it.

Sundowner has performed exceptionally, I couldn't ask for more. She has used about 20L of fuel since I left Bundaberg only having to motor into some anchorages and rivers, I've been able to sail most everywhere, and the money I had put away for fitting a diesel enging I'm now using to cruise all the way back to Victoria keeping Australia on the left.

by **Miker** » Wed Jul 16, 2014 7:52 am

A great adventure Rob, I'm enjoying evry minute of it, although there is a distinct flow of green emanating from my visage...... :mrgreen:

by **Ianb** » Wed Jul 16, 2014 9:53 am

Rob,
How do you keep in close contact with another boat for two hours with no-one at the helm? Is the performance of the boats a close match?

by **rob.lovelace** » Wed Jul 16, 2014 12:31 pm

some days the Tracker is faster some days the top hat is faster but on average much the same and in two hours not much distance has changed we would only divert about a mile from the nhumb line at most. Then when we wake we adjust course back to where we want to be on our two hours on. At night it's pretty easy to see the other boats light up to about three miles before it gets a bit hard. If the other boat wanders of out of sight then we would call on radio, but that's unlikely in two hours. Some single handlers play the odds and just set sails and sleep two or three hours at a time with no watch.