June 17, 2012 Up in the dark and weigh anchor--our fellow boats were already gone. We motorsailed the fifteen miles to the Hole in the Wall-- a narrow passage from east to west in the Wessel Island chain. The Wessels make a great sea wall running from south to north. And one of the few 'holes' in this wall is the 64 meter wide and 9 meter deep Gugari Rip or the Hole in the Wall. As the tidal currents can reach 9 knots in the channel--it is important to transit the channel at slack water--which is exactly at high or low tides. We timed our arrival for exactly high tide--and after a really bumpy ride we were right on! Passing through the narrow channel was a 'life experience'--very cool. We had to hand steer due to the eddies and Sherry did her turn as I took some photos--she had a ball. We followed Sea Eagle in and Windancer followed us. Once through the Hole in the Wall we were going to spend the night in an anchorage on the other side--but, the water was calm and the wind was right. We said goodbye to our friends and set our course for N. Goulborn Island-- a twenty-five hour overnight trip. This turned out to be a rough overnighter as the waves and wind increased overnight. And to make the crossing worse-- we had no moon. It is hard to describe the feelings we have when the boat is being rocked by these large waves that are crashing and hissing at the sides of the boat and we cannot see them. We arrived at N. Goulborn Island at 9am, tucked into Mullet Bay, and though we still had 20 knots of wind--we were anchored and asleep by 9:30am--sweet naptime.
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At anchor in our snug little bay on Cotton Island. It was a nice and calm night, but we did have smoke from the fires on the mainland and Islands. We found ashes all over our decks in the morning.
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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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