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American Spirit II - Day 216; Arrived in Cairns After a Windy Finish & Saphir Has 2 Cool Humpback Whale Encounters; Saturday, August 9, 2014



During Joel's 12:00 AM to 3:00 AM watch the large boobie or tern flew away from the boat 2 or 3 times only to return to the same landing spot.

Between 12:00 AM and 6:00 AM 9 ships passed us either going in our direction or the other direction. Every one of these ships must be closely tracked as we're in the shipping channel with them. This is why we have AIS (Automatic Identification System). Not only can we see the ships coming at us, they can see us and that we're a sail boat.

Up at 6:00 AM. Got 5 1/2 hours of continuous sleep. A rarity with being off watch 6 hours.

At 6:09 AM as it was getting light out, the large bird perched on our dodger flew away for the last time. The wind was a steady 25 knots and our boat speed 5.5 knots. There were few clouds. Maybe a sunny day?

At 6:33 AM shook out 2nd reef to 1 reef in mainsail. Wind going behind us more, and increasing. Picked up 1 knot with more sail out. Will roll jib up if wind continues to back. It did. Rolled jib up at 6:36 AM.

The sun rose above the clouds at 6:55 AM. Beautiful. Took a bunch of pictures. You never know when one will be a Pulitzer prize quality. First time I've seen the sun in over 24 hours.

At 7:36 AM the wind is a steady 24 to 29 knots. Boat speed 7.2 knots.

At 8:45 AM I got Joel up and we jibed from starboard to port. I reefed in the main to the 2nd reef before doing so. We then put a little jib out again to keep the bow of the boat from swinging up into the wind when a large wave rushes by.

At 9:20 AM I called Cairns Port Control on channel 16 to request permission to enter the channel into the port. The reason is that if there is large ship traffic they may ask us to hold off on entering the narrow channel. Right after I had that conversation on the radio Australian Customs called the boat and asked where we had come from. I advised that we had come from Hamilton Island and had cleared into the country two weeks previously in MacKay Bay. They said OK and that was that. Wow. The Australians really take their jobs in customs, immigration and quarantine seriously. Good for them.

At 9:30 AM the wind turbine started free wheeling. It shuts down battery charging when the wind gets over 25 or 30 knots. Sounds like an airplane propeller. We have to do a better job of turning it off before the wind allows it to free wheel. It wouldn't stop, so Joel stood up on the transom rail, grabbed a string on its tail fin, turned it away from the wind. And it stopped. Finally.

At 10:20 AM I turned the engine on as we turned into the wind in the channel. We rolled the jib in at the same time but kept some main out.

At approximately 11:30 AM we were in slip G34 in the Marlin Marina. Since it was quite windy when I pulled into the double wide slip, it was a crummy landing. Fortunately, there were two blokes on the dock to grab lines as we snugged up. 'Blokes' is Australian for 'men.' Gary, one of the blokes who help us dock, was invited onto the boat for a drink and a tour.

Other Rally boats were already here: NDS Darwin, Saphir and Festina Lente. Chika-lu arrived later in the day; and Ghost was also on the way and would arrive tonight.

Next came the obligatory Captain Morgan to celebrate our landfall; then breakfast of scrambled eggs, home made cut up potato cooked in spices with olive oil, pear halves and bread.

I then went to the marina office and filled out the paperwork. When they asked for a copy of the boat insurance I gave them the premium page only with no limits of general liability listed on it, and like the marina at Hamilton Island, they accepted it. Sure glad I spent all that money upping my GL limit form $1M to $5M. Actually, better safe than sorry.

After that I returned to the boat and we all grabbed our shower stuff and headed off to the marina showers. We stopped by and talked with the crew of Saphir first: Erling, Gro and Mimi. Erling said that they had also had some whale encounters, en route from MacKay Bay to Cairns, with one mother and youngster Humpback Whale swimming at their boat and then under it; and then they came across one pod of 5-8 Humpback Whales in front of them that they had to change course for in order to miss them. So it looks like our close encounter two days ago was probably an intentional 'fly by' by a large whale just to look us over. And maybe there was more than one whale involved. We only saw the one.

We then walked to a building and booked a land tour for tomorrow which will take us on a gondola ride called Skyrail over a national park and a train ride from Cairns to the park in the morning. We'll also be taking an aboriginal settlement tour. If the wind settles down we'll book a ride out to the Great Barrier Reef for Tuesday. Jeanine went to Woolworth's grocery store on the way back to the boat to buy salad material for dinner. Joel and I headed back to the boat where we both took a nap before dinner.

Dinner at 8:00 PM consisted of another Jeanine creation, Hash-Baked Shepherds's Pie. One of her mother's recipes. For dessert we had 3 types of Cheese Cake: Vanilla, Butter Scotch and Passion Fruit. Thank you Jeanine.

After dinner everyone checked up on their land based email and did other things over the internet.

It'll be an early day tomorrow with us having to be at a train station by 8:00 AM.

Brian Fox 


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