07/19/2012, Fanny Bay, Darwin, AU
The hard work that we did today on the boat was rewarded with a wonderful evening with Brian, Gayle, and their 18 old daughter, Alicia. They had invited us to join them for dinner at the Mindil Beach Market that is held every Thursday night.
It was awesome! Not only do you have hundreds of stalls with all kinds of knickknacks and artist booths but you also have scores of food stalls selling all kinds of food from a variety of different nations. It was like a United Nations of food! It appeared to be quite a social event also since a lot of locals come each week and pitch their table and chairs to make an evening of it. Since it is right along the beach, at sunset many people line up and take photos as the sun slowly sinks into the ocean.
We enjoyed talking with Brian, Gayle and Alicia and getting to know them better. They also have a Lagoon 440 and it comes out of the charter fleet in the Whitsundays in a few months. At that time, it will be available to them to go cruising anytime they wish. Ahhhh, the good life is just around the corner.
Mary Margaret and Gayle got along famously and they shared their stories of sailing with their respective spouses, who as it turns out, apparently are very similar when it comes to sailing. Need I say more...?
Gayle, Brian and Alicia have just returned from 6 or so weeks of traveling around Europe which included two weeks of sailing in Turkey. We are so envious. We have been to Turkey once just for 6 days and can hardly wait to return, this time with our sailboat.
We had a great time at the evening market and can hardly wait until Sunday, when Gayle and Brian come to Leu Cat for dinner. Poor Alicia returns to University on Sunday morning so she will miss out on a great BBQ pork ribs dinner with all of the fixings. Next Wednesday, Gayle and Brian will be hosting us for a roast dinner with all the fixings. Man, all of the weight that I have taken off will just be put back on while we are eating our way through Darwin!!!
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07/18/2012, Fanny Bay, Darwin
Because we were delayed in Seisia, waiting for the winds to abate before crossing the Gulf of Carpentaria, we arrived in Darwin almost a week later than we had planned. Thus, the time we have to complete the various boat projects and other items on our "To Do" list before we sail off for Indonesia is rather compressed. Add to that the time we wish to spend with our Darwin Friend, Brian and his wife Gayle and things get a little hectic.
The morning was spent running around in the car doing a variety of errands. The big ticket item for today was getting the riggers to the boat and replacing the two cap shrouds. We had been told by three different riggers that the useful life of shrouds on blue water cruising catamarans is about seven years. Cats are more flexible than monohulls and this flexibility puts more strain on the shrouds as one bounces across the oceans. The rigger in Port Douglas, Peter, had noticed some spiral rust stains on the port cap shroud and said that this could represent a broken inner strand in this shroud. Since the shrouds are 6 years old, we have opted to replace them now instead of chancing a shroud failure and the loss of our mast.
I picked Paul and Matt of Nautilus Supplies up at the beach in front of the Darwin Sailing Club. We loaded up the dinghy with the two coiled shrouds, their gear and a 20 foot batten. I need to replace the batten from the stack pack that I used to replace the two broken battens we had in Lizard Island. I have also ordered three more 20 foot battens as spares and will store them in the bottom of the stack pack just in case we have any future broken battens.
Paul and Matt went right to work once we arrived at Leu Cat. I helped a bit by manning the winch and halyard hauling Paul up and down the mast as well as using the spinnaker halyard to raise the cap shrouds up to the top of the mast.
As we were working, Matt spotted a dugong along side of Leu Cat's port side. Dugong's are related to the manatees that we have in Florida, back in the States. Unfortunately, by the time Mary Margaret and I were able to get to the port side, the dugong has slipped under Leu Cat and we never got a look of it. Darn!!!
Tomorrow, it will be more of the same with the big ticket item being the installation of our new AIS transceiver that just arrived from the US.
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As we crossed the Gulf of Van Damien, on our way to Darwin, we had to motor since there was no wind. This photo shows us passing a monohull and you can see how glass-like the water is.
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I had promised you that I would show you a picture of our chartplotter that captured what looked to me to be a sea serpent getting ready to devour Leu Cat as we made our way through the sand bars in our effort to enter the Gulf Of Carpentaria. Well, here it is. It does not show Leu Cat since I took this picture after we cleared the area but you certainly can see the sea serpent.
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Here is a view of Darwin from our anchorage.
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