An Inland Visit

We flew to Adelaide so we could pick up the The Gahn. This famous train runs through the center of Australia between Adelaide at the south end of the continent and Darwin in the north. Named after the Afghan camel trains that were the only way to transport goods across the center of Australia in the previous centuries. It’s an up-scale sleeper train with all inclusive food and drink. In the photo above we are stopped in the middle of the desert at sunrise to get a look at the morning star, Venus (actually a planet), rising as you rub the sleep sand out of your eyes. You get a good feel for the vastness of the empty center of the outback.

There’s lots of time to sit in the lounge car with a wine or a cider and read or do some emu spotting. We got off The Ghan in Alice Springs and had a good look around the town made famous by the book/movie “A Town Called Alice”.

Gotta love the bird life in Australia. Here's he resident, noisy, Galahs on an Alice Springs street.

Next day we headed out to Uluru, aka Ayer’s Rock. On the bus ride out to catch some sunset colors on the rocks we pass this feral camel that was totally destroying this tree.

Along with tree destroying camels thy have people destroying flies. Without the fly net I would have packed it and watched CNN on the hotel TV.

These are the Kata Tjuta rocks glowing for us at sunset.

Next morning we got up before sunrise (to be precise, at some god awful time) so we could walk the 10.5kms (6.5 miles) around the base of Ayer’s Rock and catch the sun on it just as it rises. Pretty impressive. These aren’t mesas like we have in the desert Southwest of the US, these are actually huge boulders that are ‘floating’ in the desert sand, like icebergs what you see is only a small part of the entire rock.

We saw some hidden rock paintings, each still telling their own story. This is officially Aboriginal land and these are sacred sites.

After Ayer’s Rock we flew to Melbourne. What a great city. Lots of new construction along with some interesting history. The city has to have the best restaurants in Australia. We stayed in the CBD (Central Business District) and got around on the free street car trollies.

Melbourne is a nice town to walk in, but I sure wouldn’t want to drive here. I wouldn’t have a clue which of those 12 traffic lights applies to me. Then there’s the how to turn right if you are driving in Melbourne. Remember the country drives on the left. If you look at the picture above you can see the right-hand turn lane is on the left side of the on going traffic. So you are driving down the road and you want to turn right. You move over to the left lane and make a mad dash to right when you think you have some chance of living through it. The locals claim it has something to do with the trollies going down the center of the street.

Can’t stop in Melbourne without visiting the famous Victoria market.

There’s also lots of great street art in Melbourne carefully sprayed in select alleys in the CBD.

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After our inland tour of Oz we flew back to Bellingham (via Vancouver) to get our grandkid fix. It was well worth it, although I had to endure many dragon attacks.
If you are flying across the Pacific, fly Air New Zealand if you can. They are head and shoulders better than Air Canada.
Chris is back working with her consulting project in Kathmandu while I do boat projects. As usual I am adding items to the list a little faster than I am checking them off.
Next week we fly down to Sydney for the day to get our extended Indonesian visas. Then we start the 1,200 mile trip up the Queensland east coast with plans to sail to Indonesia in August.
Keeping with the apolitical nature of this blog, thought my dedicated reader might relate to this thought:

Wuerker, Politico

Paul

Back in Queensland

(A very shaky picture of the full moon rising at the start of the night watch when the seas have laid down to a comfortable roll)




  Being a less than diligent blogger, I left you poor readers in Eden on the SE corner of Australia a long time ago. To catch up: We had a rough trip from Eden up to Pittwater (just north of Sydney). We stopped for overnights at Bateman's Bay, Jervis Bay, and Port Hacking.
The run from Batemen's to Jervis was a bit on the ugly side. The winds were on the high end of the forecast at around 30kts. The real issue was the seas. Usually we can adjust our course to get at least a little bit comfortable with the wave train, but it's hard when the seas are coming from multiple directions. A typical marine forecast from the Australian Met service for the area always has more than one sea:
Seas 1 to 1.5 m increasing to 2 m in the afternoon
Swell #1  1.5 to 2m from the NE
Swell #2  1.5 to 2m from the S
Then to add a little fun the East Australian Current comes in close near shore heading southbound around Jervis Bay.  You put all these together and it is closer to a washing machine than an organized wave train.

Once in Pittwater, we hooked up with fellow Outbound owners Chris and Susann, who we'd met first in Tasmania, and had a very enjoyable visit at their beautiful Pittwater home overlooking the bay.

The trip north from Pittwater was easy. We needed this to remind us that sailing can be pleasant.  We stopped overnight in Port Stephens. Then sailed for a 2 day passage to Southport in the Gold Coast. The trip was all small seas with light winds. Nice sailing during the daytime and motoring overnight.

We headed up the Coomera River where we have a berth for 6 weeks. First week was getting the boat ready and doing a few boat projects. We got the crew from Bay Marine to start on our new dodger and bimini canvas.

Now we are doing a week of inland travel before heading back to Bellingham (Washington) to get a grandkid fix.

Paul

Bass Strait in the Rearview Mirror

Leaving Babel Island, Fuerneaux Group, NE Tasmania

We finally escaped the weather grip of SE Tasmania and got across the Bass Strait to the mainland. Crossing the Bass Strait is anxiety provoking. Maybe not for the hardy Tassie sailors who do it annually, but for us warm weather sailors it holds a certain intimidation factor. Part of this might be the many scenes from the famous, infamous actually, 1998 Sydney to Hobart Race disaster.

(Guardian News, 1998 Sydney-Hobart race)

This race takes place in the summer at the end of December. It’s still summer now.

Fortunately our crossing was not as hair raising or life threatening. I’ve decided that the trick to dealing with Tassie weather is not to look for a multi-day weather window to go somewhere, but to look for a good 12 hours and take advantage of it. Throw out the criteria that you don’t want to do any beating into the wind and want to minimize motoring. Then hunker down, wait for the next mini-window and continue on. With that in mind, we (finally) left the Freycinet Peninsula around 11am and motored overnight in light winds up the east coast of Tasmania. We arrived at the island group at the top of Tassie, the Furneauex Group, before light. We putted around a bit until we had some light and headed into Jaimieson Bay on Cape Barren Island. When the sun came up it was pretty clear why they named the place Barren Island. We tucked up on the east corner to minimize the swell getting into the anchorage. We had a hot shower and eggs and toast. Then it was off again, still motoring north in very light winds. The winds started to go NE and get stronger, so we decided to stop on the south side of Babel Island (pic at the top of page). Had a late lunch, early dinner and laid down for a rest. Kept watching (thank you Telstra cell) the weather station at Flinders Island Airport for wind readings. When the station reported NNW winds we set off, knowing that this was the leading edge of a front that should turn westerly as it passes. You can see the front edge in the picture at the top of this page.

The wind continued to turn NW and started picking up.  We had our staysail partially out and the main with a first reef in it. Seas were rough with the old seas from the NE on our bow and the new seas were building from the SW on our stern. After dark, when the winds started hitting 30+ kts, we decided to reduce sail. Instead of putting a second reef in the mainsail we decided to just take it down completely and sail on the staysail only-- to make things easier given the weather conditions and crew conditions. It was pitch black out with no moon. The mainsail got hung up while we were taking it down, and good and solidly stuck. No amount of me tugging at the mast was moving it down anymore and the halyard was not taking it up. It was cold and wet and dark so we decided the best course of action was to let the main out a bit more to depower it and leave it till first light, as I could not see what the problem was and I was not inclined to go up the mast in those conditions. We made a burnt offering to the sea goddess that the wind wouldn’t pick up any more.

I went below to stew a bit and try and get some rest. Selling the boat was more on my mind than resting at that point. Chris was in her offshore passage ‘fugue state’. She did the rest of the night watch till about 4am and dealt with the worst of it. She only got me up once to help deal with a 600 foot tanker who insisted on seeing how close he could come before taking our stern. The winds had laid down a bit and the NE seas were gone by the time a very chilled Chris handed the watch over to me later that morning.

Next day was a really nice, clear, warm downwind sail that makes you actually like passages. In the morning light I could see that the upper batten on the mainsail had gotten stuck behind a shroud and the batten had twisted, jamming the sail slide and stopping the sail going up or down. In the lighter wind it was easy to loosen everything up an get the batten to pop out.

We arrived at Eden on the SE corner of Australia (in New South Wales) at midnight and anchored in East Boyd. Hot shower time and well deserved smooth anchorage sleep. Next up is to get up the coast about 600 miles to the Gold Coast near Brisbane, again timing the weather windows.

Paul