Our trip from The Low Isles to Cooktown was the best we've had under our Spinnaker so far. We travelled 60 nautical miles in about 7 1/2 hours, Jay was very happy.

Cooktown is Australia's first non-indigenous settlement, discovered and settled by Captain Cook and his crew in 1770. It was also here that Kangaroos were first discovered and named. There are a number of monuments and lookouts to see. We took a walk to the Botanical Gardens, to the lighthouse (another hill) and to the cemetery. The walks were signposted as historical walks and they were quite easy.

The locals were really friendly too, after undertaking our walk to the cemetery we decided we deserved a beer so we ventured into the local RSL for a frosty. We had soon made friends and were invited along to barefoot bowls that night. We went along and under the threat of a downpour from the dark and cloudy sky we played the worst game of bowls we have ever played in our lives. I don't even know the end score but know that it was enough that we didn't have to climb the flagpole with our pants down! It was all good fun though.

We've had to stay here for a few days due to a strong wind warning that we decided to sit out. We've seen people from the rally come through and some have moved on but Jay made an executive decision and we've all been able to relax for a while. We head off to Lizard Island tomorrow morning early and may be out of range for a while if anyone needs to contact us.

We now have a satellite phone up and running. For those interested the number is 8816 414 04141. To call us this number must be prefaced with 0011 and standard international call rates apply. It is also very expensive for us to ring out so don't expect any phone calls from us! The alternative is to send us a text message which you must do from a computer. Go to www.iridium.com, you will see on the right hand side at the top of the home page it says Send a Satellite Message, click on that, type in our phone number above, enter your email address and then type your message and then hit Send Message. This will send a text message to our phone AT NO COST to you. We can also respond to your email address. This will be the easiest way to contact us if you can't get through to our phones. We will have this phone number until we reach Darwin, at that time we will put the new number up on the blog site.

Take care everyone and we'll be in touch when we can. Bring on Lizard Island!