We left Portland roads at about 5:45am on Tuesday morn. We motor sailed for about a hour until the wind picked up. We were ticking along nicely and at midday we made the decision to sail through the night to cape York. It worked out with the tides to go through Albany passage in the morning. There is very strong currents running through there so it's strongly advisable to go with the tide.
We came in sight of the passage entrance about 1 hour after the tide turned. It is quite the pretty channel , although we second guessed our tide reading cause we were only going about 3-3.5 knots WITH the tide! We made it through fine and came into sight of mainland Australia's most northerly point, cape York.
We planned to anchor on the west side of the cape so we could go ashore and do the walk to the tip.
We came around York island slowly and we could see the anchorage. The depth was getting shallower, but as it was just after tide change , we only needed 2m to get through. Kelly was at the helm and I was beside her while grant prepared the anchor. The depth then dropped below 2m and quickly descended. Too late to do anything and we hit mud/ sand bottom. Thank goodness we were not gong fast. But nevertheless , for the better part of the next hour we desperately tried to get our 27 tonne boat into deeper water as the strong current and tide was pushing us toward the island
Finally grant lowered the dinghy , put the 9.5hp outboard on and we tried to pushing the nose around. It took a while but we finally made it.
But wait there's more....
We started heading back toward the anchorage at the mouth of Albany passage , but the current was too strong so we decided to head to possession island. We approached the anchorage slowly trying to get out of the current but a safe depth, grant started to drop the anchor in 10 m when he called to me to turn on the anchor winch do we could pull it back up. Seems we were still in current heading for the rocks . We got out of there and finally anchored further around the corner on possession island. Needless to say that after 31 hours of sailing and 145 nm coupled with coming down from the adrenaline surge of the anchoring escapades , we had had it !
On the bright side , the sail up was great , the girls behaved exceptionally well through the grounding and thankfully it was a rising tide. Not sure of next move, but going into seisia doesn't look good cause there are sand bars like the ones we experienced today all around ... And we are. It willing to press our luck. Possibly goto Thursday island on a ferry or go 100 nm to weipa to provision a bit more cheaply.
Time for a drink and relax