The Groundhog Coast
Bamboozle
Jamie and Lucy Telfer
Tue 12 Jul 2016 07:16
10:35.953S 142:14.317E I realise I have said this before but Australia is big, really really big. Making our way up the coast at around 7 knots makes for many days of sailing…..flat water, sunshine and a steady trade wind blowing consistently from behind the beam. It is basically perfect but that hasn’t stopped us nicknaming it the Groundhog Coast. Every morning seems the same, the alarm goes off well before dawn, up for a cup of tea, engine checks, all stowed for sea and ready to depart at first light (or sometimes well before)….. then we set off to sail the fifty, sixty, seventy and even eighty miles to the next decent anchorage. Eat, sleep, repeat. It may be repetitive but we have loved it. My personal favourite thing about long day passages (along with the great sailing and stunning empty coastline) is that like a hobbit, I get to enjoy a second breakfast that comes half way between first breakfast and elevenses! It is also of course a coastline first explored and charted by a number of my sailing heroes. Cook, Bligh, Flinders and Fitzroy have all added to the charts we use to navigate and poor Lucy has been subjected to endless snippets of maritime history and even sometimes quite lengthy diary extracts from those in whose huge footsteps we follow. We have just completed the 1408nm (2600km) from Brisbane and arrived at Thursday Island in the Torres Strait where later this week we will clear customs and head off into the Arafura Sea towards our first stop in Indonesia. We have loved our time in Oz and enjoyed this coast so much more than we were expecting…. we have been made very welcome by the local sailing community and everyone we have come in contact with and hope our tracks will cross again.  Last minute veggie shopping in Rusty’s Market in Cairns  Bamboozle is so well set up for this sort of sailing and we have used our brilliant downwind poles day after day. Here we are goosed-winged with the genoa poled out on one side and the main boom and mizzen out on the other.  Off watch after another pre-dawn departure.  Cook’s Lookout on the peak of Lizard Island. The great man (not this one…the other one!) climbed to this spot to see if he could spy a safe way out of the reef after his disastrous grounding on Endeavour Reef. Sailing up this reef is still a reasonable test even with the benefit of all our modern navigational tools….. no wonder the Hawaiians mistook him for a god (before they killed him and ate him!)  An unexpected after dinner guest who met us at Bamboozle's stern when we returned from a BBQ on another boat.  Keeping my fingers out of the water as we lift the outboard. We later identified it as a Tawny shark, apparently they are inquisitive and harmless!  Another good reason to stay out of the water, not that we needed reminding. |