Sailing around the World ( presently in Thursday Island, The Torres Straights, Northern Australia )
A Lady
Stephen Hyde
Thu 19 Aug 2010 05:39
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WEDNESDAY 18th
August 2010
03.00hrs,, The moon had vanished again over the
tops of the mountains to the west,
The skies began to clear, and our next waypoint is
" Bushy Island " we say bushy Island as if it was an island, but in
fact it is just a wee
little rock about 5 miles off shore, but an
important little rock on our journey and from there we passed Turtle Island on
our way to " Albany Pass".
Albany pass, is a narrow passage between
Albany Island and the mainland of Australia, namely " Queensland"
09.00 we passed through Albany pass,,
Its interesting to note that the government of
Queensland once considered building a " Singapore of the South " on Albany
island,
This idea got demolished very quickley when a
politician got gobbled up by a crockadile on a visit the the area.
Cripes , this area is a total minefield when it
comes to reefs, The place is so covered with them, its like a bad rash on your
skin,
In fract, one of the World ARC boats was lost on a
reef around here on the last passage two years ago, and a lone
sailor
recently lost his boat when he fell asleep
and only woke up when he heard the reef crunching his boat to pulp. He lived
permenantly on
his boat, so all his belongings and his house were
gone to " Davy Jones Locker " ( We have our religious affairs Ambassidor
praying
daily to the man above in an effort to avoid
meeting the man below. - Davy jones - )
10.00hrs, when we cleared the Pass, we headed NW to
" Tuesday Island" and then turned west past " Wednasday island" and arrived
at Thursday Island at 14.00hrs. The
wind was still honking at 30 + knots as we nibbled our way through the reefs and
anchored in the lee of
" Horn Island " about 2 miles south of T.I.
but very sheltered... most of the fleet of WARC boats were anchored
here.
15.30 hrs, We went ashore to Horn island and
did some exploring and checking the ferries to Thursday Island ( T.I.
) Shite ! the last ferry from T.I
back to H.I. was at 18.00hrs,, we were not going to
make it to the Happy Hour at the hotel on T.I.and make the last
ferry... and we were
looking forward so much to meeting the other
sailors,,, Ahhhhhhhhhhh well, we cant get everything right....
But ( that lovely BUT ) we
have some great Gin & tonic's on the boat,
so off with us back to " A Lady " and a couple of G & T's later we were
flying,
The one noticable thing about this place, are
the CROC signs, they are everywhere, warning of the dangers and impending
doom if you dont take care, as I'm sure the Crocs are as well, all ready
and willing to have us as a tasty
little meal.
Actually I'm thinking to myself that there are some
real narrow minded people in our Yach Club back home who put pressure on the
club to remove our blog from the R.C.Y.C website. can you imagine that !
No doubt we will find out eventually who they are, and wouldent it be
great to send them out here for some
swimming practice with the crocs,,,
That would give them something more interesting to think
about...................the little ******'s
19 hrs We had
a mixed bag of food for dinner, no one really hungry , so no big meal,
But, yes, but we did watch a DVD bought ashore a
short while ago, called - Company Buisness - starring Gene Hackman
& Mikhail Baryshnikov,
It was all over the shop, and only
so.so.
We had a late night before going to the
scratchers.zzzzzzzzzzzzzz
Thats it for today,
Signed :- Stephen Hyde ( Skipper
)
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