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American Spirit II - Day 212; Last Full Day in Hamilton Island; Tuesday, August 5, 2014



Up at 8:30 AM. Coffee and tea.

Breakfast at 9:30 AM. A surprise breakfast today for the crew: Bacon (Australian ham), scrambled eggs, chilled apples and raisin bread.

Showered in the marina; paid marina bill (expensive; slip $110 per night); visited one retail store to pick something up; dropped off cards at Post Office (postage to the US for a post card $3.00 per card) and bakery (1 loaf of raisin bread). At least the slip rental included electricity and water. Some marinas charge extra for that.

Joel called Ray Marine Australia trying to find where we (I) could get a spare auto pilot. He found a Ray Marine dealer in Cairns that could update our E-80 Chart Plotter software, which might 'cure' a couple of problems we have: GPS antennae jumping between UTC time and local time; and the auto pilot turning itself off once a week or month.

A late lunch, Mince Meat and Italian pasta soup; at 1:45 PM.

From 2:30 PM to 4:30 PM we walked around the streets and stores surrounding the marina complex. Got back to the boat at 4:30 PM. Raining.

I finally rectified boat expenses so that everyone knew who owed what to whom. Complicated. Took hours to figure out. Joel updated his computer with all the pictures and started doing the same with my #2 computer; sent pictures to his blog; and sent pictures to the WCC web site. I also called Amazon and got my one Kindle that I had loaded two new books on to also loaded up onto the back up Kindle. Yeah!

A late dinner at 8:45 PM since we had a late lunch. Tuna sandwiches on wheat bread made by Jeanine; and 3 different pastries for dessert: strawberry; kiwi; and pecan pie. We each got 1/3 of each type. With 'Brian Ramsey' sized pieces. Small.

Jeanine and Joel went to bed at 11:00 PM; and I followed at 2:00 AM.

I stayed up late because as the boat's 'tour director' I was going over charts to figure out where we were stopping along the coast inside the Great Barrier Reef as we headed up to Cape York. We'll have to do a few single over nights, which are very tiring. It takes you a day or two to get into the boat routine when we do a 5-7 day leg. You never get into that routine with one over nighter. Our proposed route will be an overnight to Magnetic Island Thursday (Florida Wednesday); at marina Cairns; Port Douglas; Lizard Island; Flinders Island; Cape Direction area; Cape Grenville area; and then an island just short of the quarantine zone at the top of Australia. Once we're at Cape York, we'll rest up; provision; wait for a weather window; and sail 5 days and 730 miles to Darwin thru the Torres Strait. The Cape York to Darwin leg could be fraught with high winds; and will have swift currents and high 7 meter (21 foot) tides.

Brian Fox


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