Cairns, The Windy City

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. 

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…

but as I looked closer over the bow, I discovered what looked like the anchor off a destroyer tangled in our anchor chain. 

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.