Well
that was a bit lively! Locked out the marina at 15.00 and after a
pleasant and gentle tootle out of Darwin
harbour, the northerly wind died as the sun went down and we had to use the
iron jib for about 4 hours. Then the SE wind started to pick up as predicted
and with it, short steep seas. Fortunately I had taken a
“motion potion” so felt fine apart from the fact that every time I
went below I was thrown about. Making a cuppa was ‘British
Rail’ style with more water going down the sink rather than in the
cups! For the next 24 hours we were on a beam reach on port tack
with a well reefed main and staysail – not much cooking or eating done! We
had 25 – 30 knots of wind and steep breaking confused seas of around
3m. The grib files were forecasting a lull in the wind early afternoon
but we never got it, however it abated enough to swap staysail for heavily
reefed genoa and an extra inch of mainsail. When the sun set around 7pm, the
wind abated a little more to 15 - 20 knots and the seas started to flatten out,
so eked out a bit more sail and had a biscuit! For the last few hours we were
back with full mainsail and winds of around 10 – 15 knots but much
flatter seas and an almost full moon – lovely – another biscuit and
a bowl of special K. Arrived at the anchorage at the mouth of King George
river (the start of the Kimberley) at 1.15am CST
on Thursday (Northern Territory
time). That’s 1.5hrs earlier than WST (Western Australia time) so still Wednesday
(did you get that?) We will be in this time zone now until we
depart from Broome in a month or so. So clocks back and an extra hour and half
in bed! Our lovely clean boat is once again covered from top to bottom in
salt (and there’s now rain here to wash it down) so that’s the
first job this morning. Anyway we’ve now had a good nights sleep
and our full English…. Oh I got it wrong about the time zone in the
previous email – we’re UTC+8 hours. No sign of any wildlife at
all on the way down.
Total
miles: 237
Total
time: 34 hours
Avg
Speed: 6.98 kts