Do you think they eat in Indonesia?!!

Tuesday 22nd July

It's a natural instinct to be prepared and to want have as much food as possible around for those 'just in case' situations. With cruisers, however, it's addictive and even though we promised our selves we wouldn't do Panama all over again....we have. It starts with a rumour that toilet paper and peanut butter cannot be found and then we decide that everything we like, we have to get here......and we like a lot!!

We've already made over eight trips on the bus with huge backpacks filled box milk, cereal, pasta, canned vegies and a whole lot more. People are amazed that we have room on the boat for so much and quite honestly so are we. The fun starts when we have to mark all the tops of tins with whats inside just incase labels get torn off and try and make packages smaller by removing boxes and putting in zip lock bags. It's a long and expensive process but how will do we know if in a couple of months time we're going to feel like eating baked beans on toast instead of fried rice?!

DARWIN!

Monday 21st July

Darwin is the Northern territory's only city and arriving here as our last stop in Australia has been a great experience. We've been here over two weeks now and even though there's been a constant stream of work on the boat we've still had time to explore and enjoy the endless perfect sunny days. With Backpacker bars and cafes everywhere it's been possible to get cheap meals out and Jimmy's favourite $10 pitchers of beer!

The anchorage here in Fannie Bay is huge but with 20ft tides we have to anchor a LONG way from shore. Heading to the beach in our dingy is a voyage of its own and if you time the tides wrong it's an even bigger task to drag the dingy up the beach to the high tide mark. Luckily the yacht club provides dinghy trolly's we can use which have given us a great source of entertainment when heading home in the dark after a few drinks and trying to find the water with dinghy in tow!!

Joining the Rally from Darwin to Kupang in Eastern Timor is probably one of the best decisions we've made. Even though we were pretty skeptical about travelling with over 100 other boats the organisation has made things really easy. On arriving we had to start the check out process with customs and apply for our Indonesian visa ourselves but all else is done for us and these were really easy to do. We've already had our welcome BBQ with free food and drinks and live Indonesian music which gave us a chance to get to know some of the other cruisers.

Every Thursday and Sunday night there's a huge market on mindil beach which is a short walk from the yacht club. It's a great place to buy food and crafts from all over the world and sit and watch the famous sunset while listening to the live music. July and August are the busiest times in Darwin and it's a hive of tourists and young travellers looking to have a fun time. Unfortunately we still have to finish our varnishing, cleaning, stocking etc but I'm sure we'll have time to squeeze in a few more fun things before we leave on the 26th.

Our New Cruising Log

Monday 14th July

Check out our new cruising log by clicking on the Daily Log link on the right hand side of this page. We will be emailing updates via the boats SSB radio so that we can give you more frequent info on where we are and what we're up to!!

Australia's Far North!

17th June 2008

After a really great sail up behind the Great Barrier Reef we have made it safe and sound around the most Northern tip of Australia, Cape York. We've been moving everyday getting up just before sunrise and sailing with over 30 knots of wind but flat calm seas due to the protection of the reef. It's a sailors dream which has allowed us to make day hops of over 60nm! That may not sound too impressive to you land dwellers who can get that far in your car in less than an hour but to us moving on average at 5 nautical miles an hour it's fantastic.
One of my favourite stops so far has to be the bush town of 'Cooktown', this is where Captain Cook took his ship after hitting the Endevour reef to make repairs and thus became Australia's first official european settlement. Cooktown is way up in far north queensland surrounded by rainforest and very isolated from the rest of the country. The Endevour River where we anchored is supposedly infested with Crocodiles and they've even been seen walking down the mainstreet not so long before we arrived. Jimmy had a great idea that we should go for a cruise up the river in the dinghy to see if we could spot one......male logic! Luckily we had no such luck as i'm pretty sure they find you and only when they fancy a snack.

Here we got a great feel for Aussie bush life with a constant influx of four wheel drive vehicles coming into town to stock up. Australians don't do camping half heartedly, not only do they take their huge aluminium boats with them but just about anything you could possibly think of gets stacked and packed on top of and behind their trucks. They spend months in the outback and here 4x4's are used in the way their meant to not just to drive the kids to school but go 'Off Road' and quite literally 'under water'....now we know what the snorkel is for! The great thing is the people have been really friendly and after a drink at the RSL club we now know the history of the whole area.

From Cooktown we made a day sail to Lizard island another favourite spot with cruiser Pot luck dinners everynight and most importantly crystal clear water for swimming and snorkelling. We jumped overboard to scrape all the funky growth off the hull thats grown in all the rivers only to find ourselves covered in millions of tiny shrimp that managed to find every spot on our bodies. Jimmy was sure he could feel them wriggling in his ears a week later!!The water was still a little cold for my liking so I'm looking forward to getting back closer to the equator again. The hikes were fantastic here and a short walk over to the Blue Lagoon to watch the Kite surfer competitions made a nice break from work on the boat. We found out the cheapest room at the resort here is $1,2oo a night so we're all pretty happy that we had the best view on the island and it cost us nothing!!