12:25.76S 130:49.09E

A 5.30am start enabled us to hit the two main tidal gates in this heavily shoaled area.

With tides north of Cape Don less than two metres and south of the Cape up to eight metres

there are very strong tidal streams throughout the are but particularly in the Dundas Strait and around the Vernon shoals.

To enable us to maximise both we had to arrive at Cape don at the strongest streams and with 20 knots of wind we were

sailing at over 8 knots through the water and 13.6 knots over the ground. When we arrived at the Vernon shoals four hours

later the tide was just turning and we had the assisatnce of 2.5 knots of current almost the whole way into Darwin, enabling us to cover the 96nm in just over 11 hours.

So since leaving Brisbane on the 9^th June we have covered 2,090 nm and the last 1100nm from Cairns in 11 days in a series of multi day passages and single day hops.

We have not been off the boat since Cairns so we are both looking forward to some time ashore and after the local fisheries department have checked out the boat tomorrow we will move from this bay into a marina where we can safely leave the boat and spend some time inland.