The colorful rocks in the Cape Wilberforce passage were beautiful.
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Approaching Cape Wilberforce. The tides here are an hour off the tides at Gove--and they flow the opposite direction from the Hole in the Wall. We were so greatful for the advice we had received from the members of the Gove Boat Club. Local knowledge is much better than book guides--by the way, Knight's guide for the Northern Terrritories is not very good, twenty years old, and is one of the only ones around for this area.
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June 16, 2012..... We left Gove Harbor in the company of Sea Eagle II (Ian and Angela) and Windancer (Fabio).. We all motored to Cape Wilberforce (wind 5 knots) and passed through the passages at Wilberforce (cool name, eh?) and Cotton/Wigram Islands. We had been contacted by the commodore at the Gove Boat Club yesterday asking if we had met a boat named Roxane during our travels at the top end. We had not met that boat before. The authorities had found the boat up on the rocks at Cape Wilberforce with nobody on board. Appearently, Roxane was being singlehanded by an Aussie who may have gone overboard while crossing the Gulf of Carpenteria. We made it safely through the passages as we had timed our transits for slack water. You really need to know your tides here in Oz. We turned left after the Cotton/Wigram passage and anchored in the third bay down on Cotton Island. We spent a great night in this protected little bay, getting up early (5am) to catch slack water (high tide) at the Hole in the Wall. The photo is of a ore carrier coming into the dock at the bauxite refinery at Gove Harbor-- we let him have plenty of room as we passed.
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June 16, 2012 Yesterday, our flash card came for our chartplotter. We took the bus into town and went to the Post office. When I asked for our package, the desk clerk looked it up on her computer and said that the package had already been ' picked up' by someone. As I was sputtering, clutching my chest, and turning blue--Sherry calmly asked who had picked up our package? The other desk clerk said that it had been picked up by mistake, but the person had returned the package--"...here it is." How close can you come to having a heart attack and not have one? We went back to the boat the long way around as the bus goes on a set route and stops at the outlaying Aboriginal areas. I spent all afternoon doing our navigation to Darwin and after a last night in Gove we left this morning at 7am.
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06/14/2012 Gove Harbor is relly not a bad place to be 'stuck' for awhile. It is cool with a nice breeze which dies down for a calm night. Even the hundreds of lights at the bauxite refinery shining on the bay at night were pretty. Now that we had ordered the flash card we turned to our fuel. We carry 265 gallons, over a thousand liters, of diesel - enough for us to motor the entire way from Cairns to Darwin. But, we do not like to take a risk of running out of fuel. So we asked Brad at the Boating Club about getting fuel. Our options were to fuel at the commercial dock or to jerry jug fuel from the BP station in town- ten miles each way. Chris from S/V Rumrunner II and I were thinking of renting a car and borrowing jerry jugs from other boats - a messy solution. Then a member of the boating club offered his pick-up truck and fourteen jerry cans he had - he even stopped at the BP for us and filled the jerry cans. We have been very impressed by the friendliness of the Australians and particularily those in Gove, that we have met in our Oz travels. When we first came ashore at Gove last Monday everything was closed - even the Boat Club (the Queen's Birthday). We had to dump our trash and found some bins behind the Boat Club. The trash truck was picking up the trash and we asked the trash man how we could get into town. He said there was no bus service due to the holiday, and he would take us except he only had one extra seat. But he offered to call a cab for us and we were soon on our way to Nhulunby. The only store that was open was a small grocery store (IGA) where we bought a few things. We were standing outside the store wondering how we were going to get back to our boat when a man stopped next to us and asked if we wanted a ride back to the boat club. Glen had a boat at the club and he gave us a ride back. He was another Aussie who has gone out of his way to be friendly and nice. Our only question was how did Glen know we were boaties? I think we must have that 'mildew aura' about us.
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Sherry got permission from the mother of this beautiful young 'Goveite' to take her picture--love the boots.
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