In April 2001 we left Cairns in Sokari for Darwin where we would catch up with family before heading back into Indonesia. for an extended trip. Thailand was our final destination. We arrived back in Cairns late December 2002 after a wonderful trip. On the following pages are the cruising notes we put up on our original website to help those coming behind us.
Weather permitting, we will leave this weekend -– Easter. We will be in phone range until we leave Cooktown where we will do a bit more work in peace and quiet! Anyone who needs to contact us can do it through the usual channels – Telstra Seaphone or Radphone (Call-sign VZQ 4939) or send an email, which we will collect whenever we are in a town that has it. Peter will check our emails and will handle anything urgent. For other boats, we will try to monitor HF 6516 between 7 & 7.30 (local time for the boat) every morning. Note that N.T. time is ½ hour behind Qld.
Don’t forget that our travels will be updated on this site.
April 22, 2001 – Lizard Island
We had one final hiccup while in Cairns. One boat’s papers did not get through to Bali. Whether it was the unusual format he had used when emailing the info. to us or whether it was just a gremlin in the system at the time of transmission we don’t know but it had us in a bit of a quandary until John redid all the information and we resent it to Bali and also to Peter. We can only assume that it did get through okay, as we have heard no more.
We finally left Cairns just on the break of dawn on Tuesday 17th April. The weather was not the brightest with showery squalls all morning. We anchored at Low Isles mid-morning. Magic Carpet arrived some time later. Some parts of our hulls were covered in a thick coating of barnacles – despite applying fresh antifoul six weeks ago – however our speeds weren’t too bad considering. Jotan had given us another two cans of antifoul but we just didn’t have the time or the weather to go back up onto the beach to redo it. John had planned to scrape the bottom at Low but we decided that as we were keeping around 7 knots we would continue on to Cooktown and dry her out on a sandbar.
Low to Hope was another squally run with rain, especially as we approached Hope Is. Just what you want when you’re approaching coral and have to negotiate between two reefs. We know the area quite well but there are a number of bommies to be negotiated which always keeps you on your toes. We entered from the west with Magic Carpet following our lead. As usual it was lovely to be back at this pretty little island and we went ashore, taking Rob from MC with us, for a walk. I (being Rosemary) didn’t get very far as I had stubbed a toe badly during the day and thought it may have been broken due to the pain involved. Whinge, whinge!
The next morning dawned dull and overcast but we left the anchorage with MC right behind us. We headed for Cooktown while Rob and Jenny (on MC) set a course for Cape Bedford. Rain and squalls again. Cooktown has always been a favourite spot of ours; however there were no other cruising boats in and few of our friends were in town. We pushed Sokari in until she touched bottom on the sandbar near the creek - not our usual spot – but it turned out to be soft mud. Wanting to take advantage of the winds before they eased too much we decided not to stay an extra day so John scraped a foot down both hulls from the dinghy. We were amazed to see that there were areas on the hull that were virtually clean of barnacles but other places were thick. Each area was clearly defined as if following the roller line down the hull. When John rubbed the hull no residue came off in the water or on his hand. It was obviously a bad batch. Friends who are working in Cooktown at the moment popped over for a cup of coffee later in the afternoon. We hadn’t seen them for some time so it was good to catch up.
We had a good night’s sleep despite the blustery conditions in the harbour and we left around 7 a.m. the following morning (Friday) for the short run to Cape Bedford where we sat and relaxed for the first time in weeks.
CAIRNS – April 11, 2001
The date for our departure is drawing very close now. It seemed to take so long getting here but the last few weeks just rushed by. This was mainly due to our decision to organise a group of boats’ CAITs (cruising permits/security clearances). 5 or more boats and we all qualified for a 15% reduction in price. The other benefit was that the telegraphic transfer fee remained at $25 no matter how much was sent so it could be divided between all the boats. This all constituted a saving of over $60 per boat depending on the exchange rate on the day.
Scanning passports and ships’ papers for the three other boats in Cairns was easy. But doing the four southern boats that had to email scanned copies of everything was more difficult – for them as well as for us. We’re not that computer literate so obscure formats caused a headache and some poor quality reproductions had to be redone and resent to us, losing precious time. We spent many hours at the Internet centre then many more hours running the engine for the computer, organising all the data.
However, Monday (last) finally dawned and we only had to collect one late-comers’ photos at the Internet centre, run around to all the banks (which are spread out all over town, of course) to get the best exchange rate – then back to the boat to redo the photos and burn all eight boats’ data onto a CD. Sounded time-consuming but not too hard. Ha! We didn’t count on the banks deciding not to deal with Indonesia, did we? Talk about frustrating! The NAB finally came to our rescue and agreed to transfer US$$ into a $US account in Bali. This was what the marina wanted us to do anyway, but the problem facing us was that the bank couldn’t give us an exchange rate for $A to IDR (rupeah) or $US to IDR, so we had no idea how much each boat had to pay. One boat in Brisbane and one in Ballina were waiting to hear from us before depositing money into our account. Our only option was to phone Dick McCune at Bali International Marina, get the day’s $US-IDR rate and add a bit more in case our dollar dropped overnight. Which it did!
Yesterday morning (Tuesday), four crew from the three other boats already in Cairns joined us at the bank bright and early for the long drawn-out process of buying and transferring the funds. When it was all done six weary souls happily sat down at a café for a cuppa together. The worst was over. But John and I hadn’t finished yet. We still had to email all the information to Bali and confirmation of payment to the southern boats, which took almost 1½ hours. Still not over - to safeguard against any problems with the transmission of the data, we express-bagged the CD containing all the data to my son, Peter, in Darwin.
any problems occur Peter, who is a bit of a whiz at these things, will sort them out for us. Once we had express bagged info. to two of the southern boats it was finally over for us. We now will just hold our breath until we receive confirmation from Dick McCune that everything arrived safe and sound. Now, we have two days to try to complete jobs on Sokari that we’ve had to put aside while we organised the CAITs. We have to fuel, do a final shop and try to remember what we’ve forgotten to do!!
With the weather over the Northern Territory and in the Gulf still a little suspect, we aren’t in a great rush to get up there. We had recalibrated the log in Cooktown after finding it was running about 1/3rd slower than the correct speed. Boy, didn’t that make a difference to our outlook. Instead of seeing 3’s or 5’s we were starting to see 6’s and 7’s, and occasional 8’s with a dirty hull still. The wind was blowing around 15 knots from the SE but was still easing.
The run from Cape Bedford to Lizard Island yesterday began slowly with the wind swinging from the SE around to ENE. It was again blowing around the 15 knots. We persevered until we had passed Low Wooded Island. Running as usual just under headsail we were down to 1-2 knots so finally decided we had better run up the main. We are basically lazy sailors and love just cruising along under the headsail. There is no stress and we don’t need to tweak too much. However, it was worth it as our speed jumped up into the 8’s. The run from then on was wonderful and we did it in 4½ hours. When we entered Watson’s Bay we saw Magic Carpet was there, along with Topaz, Bacchanalia and Doreen II. Not quite the empty bay we had expected. We took Sokari in close to the beach and after letting lunch digest (a few fillets off a nice Spanish Mackerel caught close to Lizard) we both jumped in to start cleaning the hulls. It was nice to see clean water again after so long in Cairns’ dirty inlet.
Today, we will push Sokari in even closer to the beach so that we can finish cleaning her bottom and do a bit more relaxing. Oh, what a life!
Lizard northwards
We spent a few lovely relaxing days on Lizard. We met Laraine & Bruce on “Topaz”, a lovely 35’ cat that Bruce designed and built. One day I was moaning about being the worst breadmaker on the face of the earth, when Bruce offered to give me a lesson. Turns out he is a baker! Oh, joy! He returned later in the day with some more yeast and two willing hands. I watched him carefully as he gently kneaded the dough and I have to say that I baked the best loaf of bread that has ever gone into my oven. Notice I say “baked” not “made” because the only thing that I actually did was place it in the oven.
We left Lizard Is. on Tuesday morning (April 24) at 0615 about ¾ hour behind Magic Carpet. Topaz left some time later. The autopilot always plays up when running downwind and had us wandering 20 either side of our course all the way. A real pain in the butt. We caught up with Magic Carpet just north of Ninian Bay and were on anchor and sipping a coffee by 1535. We guided Laraine and Bruce to the monument commemorating the men who died during cyclone Mahina in 1899. Three pearling ships went down with the loss of many lives. Along with the owners and crew of the ships, some local aborigines who rushed to help also perished.
We arrived at Owen Channel, Flinders Island the next morning where we all took on water at the ranger’s station. After moving to the spit to anchor all but Jenny on Magic Carpet got together for a BBQ on the beach. This area is very pretty rugged – and we certainly wouldn’t swim here, although we’ve never seen a croc. There are many things to see – walks to see the cave paintings, other burial caves and also a short walk to where crew from the HMS Dart carved the name of their ship into a rock over 100 years ago. –
The wind died out the following morning (Thurs. 24th April) so it was a slow sail early in the day. We kept changing sail configurations, even pulling up the main for a while, and then dropping it again. Eventually we realised that drastic measures had to be taken. Out came our ancient spinnaker. It must be around 20 years old, at least, is worn out, we’ve blown it out once years ago and John painstakingly over the next 12 months, glued and sewed it back together. It started life as a spinnaker but according to a sailmaker friend it has been altered at some stage to some sort of reacher. All these light air sails are a mystery to us so we just take his word for it. Anyway, since the repair job we have used it in very light winds only. Thursday was certainly the day for it. I get a little twitchy the first time each season that it is dragged out. No sock means that it takes both of us to get it down however over the years we seem to have got the routine right. Anyway, our speed picked up dramatically once it was up and we caught Magic Carpet and began pulling away from her. Topaz had also caught up with MC but their spinnaker isn’t as big as ours (although ours is far too small for Sokari) and we even, for once, began pulling away from them. Sokari was in her element and we were having a wonderful time. Magic Carpet was running a reacher and an MPS but had some trouble when they tangled. As the day wore on, the wind began to east a bit and every now and then a slightly stronger puff would hit us. We discussed whether the wind was going to increase much but Morris Island was only 10 miles away and we were by now reaching nicely under main and kite. Bruce later told us that the wind was up to 17 knots (much too windy for our poor old bit of rag) and the inevitable happened. Suddenly the sail disintegrated and it was all hands on deck to drag the remnants in. Not much was said. We both knew that we had left it up far too long. The poor old thing. Once we were back to a reduced headsail and main our speed dropped slightly. Shortly afterwards Topaz also dropped their kite and under reefed main and genoa, as usual, began creeping up on us. If they hadn’t detoured to Fife Island for a bit of exploration on the island, they would have either been neck and neck with us or maybe overtaken us.
Morris Island is a favourite of ours. We like to visit the grave and see what the yachties and fishermen have done to decorate it since our last visit. There’s not much beachcombing there but it’s a nice walk around the island. We arrived at low tide so the extensive sandbars were exposed. Bruce, Laraine, Rob, John and I sat on the beach for ages just admiring the view and chatting.
The run to Portland Roads (Fri. 27th April) was showery and squally all day. Seas were moderate, wind around 20 knots – maybe 25. As usual we only ran under reefed headsail and peaked at 10.9 knots with an average for the day around 6.9 knots. John went to shore to do some phone banking at the public phones (nothing else there but a few houses) and we had a rare good night’s sleep there. We have usually found that the anchorage is rolly and uncomfortable but this time we didn’t think it was quite so bad. Maybe we’re just getting used to it!
We left the Roads after the morning weather sked at around 0615 and headed straight out to the shipping channel. “Morning Light” a 1350 Simpson skippered by Peter Mountsey from Mooloolaba that had arrived at the Roads behind us the previous night left behind us and headed east before turning for Haggerstone Island. Magic Carpet left not long after him but Topaz wanted to make some calls and was not to leave until around 0830. We had a terrific sail. Once again, with only a reefed headsail we were powering along. With up to 27 knots of wind (from Topaz’ wind instruments) and a decent sized swell we were surfing the waves. Most of the runs were smooth and comfortable. Our top speed for the day was 13.7 knots and we averaged 7.6 from anchor up to anchor down. The wind was steady all day. We dropped about four fish during the day. We usually noticed them as we came down a big swell but as we started to haul them in and we’d reach the bottom Sokari would slow and the fish were able to swim up the line and get off. It was most frustrating. However, we did catch a decent sized Queenie as we entered Paluma Pass later.
