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Blue Pearl - Pirates?



Mike woke me up this morning to let me know that he was starting up the engine to outrun a boat following us. That seemed of interest so I did get up to witness our "escape" from a bunch of "pirates" following us. I might have chosen to fight it out..! but the man keeping watch decided to make a run for it. So, here is what I saw, a green hulled boat with a two level super structure, and about 100ft long, was indeed on our tail, black smoke billowing from her stack and a bow wave indicating her speed. There was also loud music being played, "hippies" or "pirates"...? and what was hidden in the massive super structure, guns, cocaine, refugees, alcohol, a mercenary force? No way to know except for giving our imagination a free rein. Of course the free rein quickly decided to get the H...! out of there. With the engine running we were soon up to about 9.5 knots and with our middle fingers up in the air we saluted the bad guys goodbye..! No way they could keep up and soon decided to take a turn up North. I should add that I did first try to establish a friendly contact on the VHF radio but lacking a response, I agreed it was time to move along. We also notified the authorities, the Rally organization and a Rally boat, Christine, which was sailing along close to us. They were not approached by the bad guys.

So, all this happened in the Coral Sea where it joins the Gulf of Carpentaria. The gulf is a large expanse of water between Cape York and Arnhem's land. Cape York is the most northerly point of Australia's main land. We passed the Cape yesterday morning on our way from Cairns to Darwin, a 1200nm passage of which we have completed about 700 miles as I write this. The first part of the passage going north from Cairns is all still behind the Great Barrier Reef. After a night of motoring, no wind, we were treated by 2.5 days of 25-30 knot winds pushing us along at 8-10knots sailing wing on wing , reefed jib and reefed main sail at opposite sides of the boat. A great run up to Cape York.

Now, Thursday August 23rd, we are moving along at a more modest speed with our Big Orange spinnaker as our only sail up. The winds are down and predicted to disappear overnight tonight, we'll probably have to motor the last part of this passage.

Cairns was a joy to visit, as most Australian cities and towns have been. Cairns is very close to the Great Barrier Reef so there is a great deal of tourism; boats will take you to the reef, helicopters will fly you there, dive boats offer multi-day tours to dive the reef. As has been the case for most of this rally though, there was not enough time to explore the area. The priority tends to be getting the boat ready for the next passage, provision, do some maintenance work etc, but we are having fun!
More, about Darwin, next time.

Captain Ruud

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