It was a
brisk sail up the coast with few protected anchorages. We made a brief stop in Hinchingbrook Channel to fish for Barramundi..the prize Australia fish...but no joy! We reunited with Wes and Stine and went ashore in Cardwell...got stuck in the mud, cut our feet on clam shells, mailed our Indonesian Visa applications to Sydney and lost Murray's wallet overboard...but quick thinking and quicker hands retreived it... so we sailed on and made good time,
found safe harbours and a couple of days later in 40 knots of breeze we blew
into the inner channel of the Cairns inlet.
This was a final stop in Australia in a community of any size and time
to stock up.
We had a few
days to enjoy the city, rent a car and drive up the coast to Cape
Tribulation. Here we were reminded of
just how far we had sailed as we observed a rosewheel showing 11848 km to
Vancouver…as the crow flies…and we have done some dippin and doggin along the
way. A couple days later we received our
passports and tourist visas for Indonesia and it was time to ready ourselves
for the first ocean passage longer than an overnighter which would take us from
Thursday Island to Tual Indonesia.
Typically the wind blows quite briskly in the Cairns River Inlet and being one of the busiest port stops in Australia the boat traffic behooves you to keep an eye out, especially since the channel moorings are very congested.
Aside from the regular ship traffic and numerous tourist boats you will most often see the local
racing catamarans out doing their daily runs with hulls a flying.
Typically the wind blows quite briskly in the Cairns River Inlet and being one of the busiest port stops in Australia the boat traffic behooves you to keep an eye out, especially since the channel moorings are very congested.
It was also
our last opportunity to visit the big Red Rock of Uluru. This was yet another of Kaija’s bucket list
(she does have quite the list) items and
she was determined we would make this trip before leaving.
With Uluru tickets booked we needed to move
KaijaSong into the marina. One fear
that most cruisers have, is fouling your hook on some unforeseen conflagration
on the bottom. As luck would have it, it was blowing smartly and so motoring up on the
hook was the normal procedure. Kaija had
only started to retrieved the anchor when she called out saying “we have a
problem”…which are not the words any captain wants to hear, but no worries, we
will deal with it. I went forward and
found to my chagrin, that the windlass simply could not retrieve the
chain. Now the pulling power of our
windlass is rated in thousands of pound…so this is quite unusual…
PIC
Well, what
to do..??..this is when paying it forward comes in real big…thankfully, the
crew Mark & Mate of the boat behind us (Sv Seawolf) saw our dilemma, but even with their assistance we
knew this was more than a 4 person job
…we quickly hailed our good friend Murray
who showed up with his trusty cordless grinder
and with
three guys in the dinghy, me on the helm and Kaija on the windlass…we started
untangling ourselves and cutting away this massive anchor and attached chain
that had been left behind and just waiting to foul the first unlucky sailor who
happened by…that just happened to be us…Wes and Stine were soon on hand and
with 4 good sailors in the water and dinghy they managed after some
considerable effort to get this tangled mess separated from our ground tackle
and free us. I’m not too proud to
admit…that if it wasn’t for the help of good friends and other cruisers, there
are days when this lifestyle can demand more that you are capable on your own
of fixing. Thank you doesn’t always say
enough but to say the least, we were more than grateful for the friendship and
fellowship of our cruising buddies. Free at Last...Free At Last we tied up in the very nice Cairns Marina and packed for our trip to Uluru.
