Wednesday, 18th August 2010
03.00hrs The moon had vanished again over the tops of the mountains to the west. The skies began to clear, and our next waypoint is Bushy Island. We say bushy Island as if it was an island, but in fact it is just a wee little rock about 5 miles off shore, but an important little rock on our journey and from there we passed Turtle Island on our way to Albany Pass.
09.00hrs We passed through Albany pass. Albany pass, is a narrow passage between Albany Island and the mainland of Australia, namely " Queensland". Its interesting to note that the government of Queensland once considered building a " Singapore of the South " on Albany island. This idea got demolished very quickly when a politician got gobbled up by a crocodile on a visit to the area.
Cripes, this area is a total minefield when it comes to reefs. The place is so covered with them, its like a bad rash on your skin. In fact, one of the World ARC boats was lost on a reef around here on the last passage two years ago, and a lone sailor recently lost his boat when he fell asleep and only woke up when he heard the reef crunching his boat to pulp. He lived permanently on his boat, so all his belongings and his house were gone to " Davy Jones Locker " (We have our religious affairs Ambassador praying daily to the man above in an effort to avoid meeting the man below. - Davy jones)
10.00hrs When we cleared the Pass, we headed NW to Tuesday Island and then turned west past Wednesday Island and arrived at Thursday Island at 14.00hrs. The wind was still honking at 30 + knots as we nibbled our way through the reefs and anchored in the lee of Horn Island about 2 miles south of T.I. but very sheltered... most of the fleet of WARC boats were anchored here.
15.30hrs We went ashore to Horn island and did some exploring and checking the ferries to Thursday Island (T.I.). But the last ferry from T.I back to H.I. was at 18.00hrs, we were not going to make it to the Happy Hour at the hotel on T.I. and make the last ferry... and we were looking forward so much to meeting the other sailors. Ahhhhhhhhhhh well, we can't get everything right.... But (that lovely BUT ) we have some great Gin & tonic's on the boat, so off with us back to A Lady and a couple of G & T's later we were flying.
The one noticable thing about this place, are the CROC signs, they are everywhere, warning of the dangers and impending doom if you don't take care, as I'm sure the Crocs are as well, all ready and willing to have us as a tasty little meal.
Actually I'm thinking to myself that there are some real narrow minded people in our Yacht Club back home who put pressure on the club to remove our blog from the R.C.Y.C website. Can you imagine that! No doubt we will find out eventually who they are, and wouldn't it be great to send them out here for some swimming practice with the crocs?
That would give them something more interesting to think about!
19.00hrs We had a mixed bag of food for dinner, no one really hungry, so no big meal. But, yes, but we did watch a DVD bought ashore a short while ago, called - Company Business - starring Gene Hackman & Mikhail Baryshnikov. It was all over the shop, and only so.so. We had a late night before going to the scratchers Zzzzzzzzzzzzzzz
That's it for today.
Signed :- Stephen Hyde (Skipper)