18 August 2010
We slept like logs. It was the first time in many days that not only did we not need to set our alarm but we also do not need to move on today. Half of the rally boats are at anchor over on Thursday Island and half of us are here on the other side of the Ellis Channel at Horn Island. This is because the anchorage over on Thursday does not read well. For a start it is on a lee shore. Then the holding is reportedly not good and the shelter indifferent. Tucked in behind Horn Island at least we are in a bit of shelter, the holding is excellent and there is no swell.
A regular ferry service across to Thursday Island or T. I. as it is popularly known, meant that we could get over for our briefing notes from Suzana for the next leg to Darwin. We went ashore on Horn, a depressing, dreary place, but found the supermarket there quite adequate to reprovision for the next week. We had used up all our meat and fresh fruit and vegetables in the belief that anything left over would be confiscated by quarantine but they never came near us. However, we have been assured that this will happen when we get to Darwin. We crossed over to T. I. by local ferry. It had a little more to offer than Horn Island. A real "one horse Hicksville" town it had the widest street I have ever seen. By far the nicest building was the Customs office, followed by a very pretty church. The hotel was also attractive in an odd sort of way. We stopped for a drink in "Australia's Top Pub" as it was called and then went on to the hotel for happy hour with five other WARC boats, before heading back over to the other side on the last ferry of the day at 6pm.
It is really not a place we would choose to come to but WARC lost a boat on a reef in the Torres Strait about ten years ago so they like us all to assemble here and brief us accordingly for a safe passage through. But you can end up on a reef anywhere if you are not careful. Yesterday we listened as a Mayday relay was broadcast over the VHF radio from the rescue services. It was of a yacht high and dry on a reef a few miles north of Margaret Bay, an area we passed just a few days ago. We do not know the circumstances and it can happen to anyone. It could just be the loss of an engine just when it is needed. We think of our own misfortune when we caught that mooring line in the prop.
There is an element of luck in all this and some might say you make your own luck but we never simply rely on luck. I wondered if it is always blowing a gale here. We were told that two weeks ago there were 50knot winds in here. By late afternoon all the expected boats are in, thirteen in number, and more than we thought. Tomorrow we set off on leg 13. There is really nothing much to commend this place. We will not be sorry to leave. And the wind is still blowing.....
Susan Mackay