Seisia to Darwin- Nicole’s Version, Finally!

We departed Seisia for our 2nd attempt to cross the Gulf of Carpenteria on Wed June 13th at around 6:15am, just as the sun and tide were rising. Unfortunately there wasn’t a breath of wind, which summed up the next 40 –odd hours of motoring, despite the hopeful 10-15 knot wind forecast.
Things were fairly uneventful because it was so flat. I was able to comfortably take the girls onto the foredeck for our daily sing song time and to blow some bubbles, which killed about and hour or so. Otherwise, we spent our time reading, doing arts and craft, dancing, exercising and if Ameliana was lucky, watching a half hour of one of her kids DVDs.
Grant and Kelly kept to their 4 hourly watches and I tried to keep the girls out of their way – although they were available to do some reading / entertaining if I needed a hand.
Late on the 2nd day, we caught a breeze and the Spinnaker was hoisted. We pretty much sailed the last 38 hours of our 78.5nm/345nm journey.
Land Ho! We saw the Wessel Islands early in the morning on Saturday June 16, our first sight of land in almost 3 days! I know this wasn’t a big crossing for many cruisers, but it was the furthest I had ever been from land on a boat!
Grant was on his watch as we approached the anchorage at Cape Wessel and he seemed a bit on edge. I went to see if he needed some help. It seemed that our depth sounder decided to go berserk about 1 nm from the anchorage. It was jumping from 20 metres to 10m, to 1.4 m and back up, needless to say, with our recent history of running aground, we were nervous. Grant brought out our “manual” depth sounder, which proved useless while moving. Finally he put in the 5.5m spinnaker pole and couldn’t touch bottom. We kept turning the sounder on and off, but it didn’t read correct depths until we turned further south into the wind and waves, so who knows!
We safely anchored in about 10m off a very pretty, remote and barren landscape. Grant and Kelly happily toasted our arrival with a cold beer.
We had no plan besides resting for a couple of days. We were very pleased with our crossing despite discovering a small leak in the water pump, grrrr- always something! At least we had a spare that Grant could replace in Darwin.
We relaxed until Tuesday, just chilling on the boat because it was too choppy and windy (and we were too lazy) to put the dinghy in for a soaking wet trip to shore through croc-infested waters!
We made the decision, based on weather forecasts to do 200nm to Goulburn Island. We got ready and left on Tuesday evening around 5:30pm. I would say that I considered that night to be the most rolly we had ever experienced.. Based on how many things went flying, the amount of waves landing in the cockpit and the fact that I had to brace myself in bed so I wouldn’t roll out (we don’t have the lee cloth set up yet). No one got a proper rest between cleaning up the projectiles and the girls were up often as well. Finally the rolling and wind eased off in the early hours to something more comfortable. We sailed easily until 2pm, when the wind died ands we had to motor until 10pm.
The wind was variable all night and poor Grant had to get up a few times to change sails. The girls and I had a much better rest though. On Wednesday, we made the decision, also based on the forecast, to continue sailing to the more sheltered Trepang Bay. This would mean sailing until Friday. Also, Grant discovered a small leak from the gearbox AND some slow leaking coolant on the motor, so we needed to find a mechanic ASAP in Darwin.
Thursday was very much like Wednesday and the wind dropped off at 2pm. The weird thing was we would randomly go through areas that I would all of a sudden have 1 bar of reception on my phone! I was able to send off a few texts to reassure our nearest and dearest.
Grant’s anxiety levels were increasing, mainly due to lack of sleep, but also the engine issues AND we found a tear in the Genoa sail that we always use!
Kelly was also feeling the fatigue, but she kept soldiering on. I think that first night really took it out of everyone. I hope that Trepang Bay was going to be a good anchorage, because we all needed a good rest. It was only a 2 day sail to Darwin from there, but I wanted to be anchored somewhere to relax and enjoy our 12 year anniversary. We arrived in Trepang Bay in late morning, very happy, but tired. We put the tarp up, Kelly and I blew up the girl’s pool and Grant did the laundry while we all sipped on cold beers.
We spontaneously got two bars of internet reception that night and I quickly sent out emails, texts, got the weather report and checked out face book. We talked about leaving on Saturday morning because the weather was supposed to blow up on Sunday or Monday. Kelly and I didn’t want to leave that soon cause we really needed a rest, but we also had tides and currents to consider for the next leg. We decided to delay our departure and on our anniversary morning, I let grant sleep in a bit and we all enjoyed bacon and eggs for breakfast. We had a leisurely morning, but decided to try to catch the tides in the early afternoon to go the 78nm through the strait to Cape Hotham.
We left around 2pm and the conditions were VERY sloppy! In addition, we were punching into the wind. Unfortunately, we discovered that we didn’t leave quite early enough to make it the distance we hoped. So, once the tide changed that night, we were against the tide, current and wind for 6 hours, we had to keep tacking and were actually going backwards! Those conditions were even worse than our last experience! Kelly and Grant decided to stay awake together to do the watches and engine checks, and amazingly enough; even MORE items went flying around in the main cabin. The girls were up from time to time and Elora was rolling around so much in her bunk that I brought her into bed with me while I braced myself on the bunk bed all night so we wouldn’t get thrown out!
Once the tide changed again, we were able to make up more ground but we were still heading in to the wind. At 1:30pm, we pulled in to the anchorage at Cape Hotham, 23hours after we left on a trip that should have only taken 14 hours! Once again we were very thankful to have a rest and relax. We decided to leave at 1am on Tuesday morning to do the last 40nm, which left enough time to negotiate the rest of the strait and arrive in Darwin at high tide. That journey went much smoother and we could see the welcoming Darwin skyline in the early morning. There was a bit of panic that we wouldn’t make it to the anchorage before the tide turned cause we were motor tacking the last 3 nm-sooo close yet so far! Fortunately we dropped anchor with 30 minutes to spare! We toasted our morning arrival with a cold beer- WE MADE IT!! Now to sort out the engine issues….