by Judy Handley | Jul 13, 2008 | Australia Darwin and Area, Sailing Logs Year 3 |
Day 65, Year 3: Darwin’s Beer Can Regatta
Date: Sunday, July 13, 2008
Weather: Beautiful Northern Territory Winter Day; Temps in the Upper 70’s
Location: Fannie Bay, Darwin, Northern Territory, Australia
Our day started at the Skycity Casino for breakfast. This is a small casino and is just down the beach from the Sailing Club. So we, along with Donna and Gerry of Scot Free II, piled into Tim of Rendezvous Cay’s rental car and headed there for the all-you-can eat Aussie Breakfast. We then drove about a half mile back toward the Sailing Club to Mindil Beach. This is where we went to the Sunday night markets last week, but today there were all day markets and a beach full of activity. The boats made of beer cans were most ingenious. We toured the beach examining each of the boats and then waited for the races to begin. The boats were made of beer cans. For some of the boats the cans were filled with spray-in foam and sealed with glue, but on others the cans were not filled. There were boats in the shape of Egyptian river boats, outriggers, sailboats, dinghies, and catamarans. Some boats were very tiny and built and propelled by young children wearing flippers in the water while others were much larger and paddles were used to propel them. On the beach there were also sandcastle building contests, tug of war contests, and just about every craziness you can think. These Top Enders really take their fun seriously.
Mark and I had fully planned to be back on Windbird by noon to get some work done, but instead we enjoyed an afternoon at the Sailing Club and at the Ski Club just down the beach. We talked with fellow cruisers and ended up having dinner at the Sailing Club. Tomorrow morning it is up early to go and get fueled up and then we will spend the afternoon downtown making arrangements for our inland trip. We are struggling with the decision of just what we want to do. We could spend lots of money and do everything or be frugal and pick and choose what we want to do. The real decision is whether or not we want to do the Yellow River Cruise in the Kakadu. This is an early morning trip down the Alligator River where you have close encounters crocodiles and with birds of all sorts. We have seen lots of birds and have spent the last two months trying to avoid crocodiles, so it seems a bit strange to now spend hundreds of dollars to go see them in their natural environment. One way or the other, the decisions will be made tomorrow.
by Judy Handley | Jul 12, 2008 | Australia Darwin and Area, Sailing Logs Year 3 |
Day 64, Year 3: A Planning Day
Date: Saturday, July 12, 2008
Weather: Beautiful Northern Territory Winter Day; Temps in the Upper 70’s
Location: Fannie Bay, Darwin, Northern Territory, Australia
Our first adventure today was walking up the hill to the Parap Shopping Center for the Saturday morning markets. This shopping center has a laundromat, a butcher shop, a cheesecake shop, a tiny Crate and Barrel type store, a small gourmet grocery store, a Chinese restaurant, and on and on. And on Saturday mornings, vendors set up their stalls all around and sell everything from veggies and flowers to earrings and clothing. We have not seen such beautiful flowers since the market in Papeete in
Tahiti. And of course, there were the food vendors selling everything from wonderful crepes to chicken satay and tropical fruit smoothies. Many of the same vendors that we saw at the Mindil Beach Sunday night markets last week were at Parap today. I fell in love with a pair of earrings last week at Mindil Beach and when I saw the exact same pair today, Mark bought them for me. They are cut from something called zebra rock and according to the little description you get with the purchase, this
stone is a geologic anomaly found only beneath the waters of Lake Argyle in the Kimberley Region of Western Australia. The rock is banded with colors ranging from dark red to brown to grey to tan and white and I fell in love with it. So I now have my little piece of the rock.
On our way back to the Sailing Club, our daughter-in-law Jo’s friend, Jane, drove by us and stopped to say hello. She had not met Mark the other day, so he got to meet her and her son Tarick. When we got back to the Club, we thought we would quickly get some internet work done. But once again, we could not get connected to the wireless. Although it said there was a strong signal, no other cruisers were able to connect and there is no one to talk with about the problem until Monday morning. We
had wanted to research some of the various tourist attractions in this part of the world and check out accommodations. We ended up doing this by looking at the few pamphlets we have collected and calling a few places on the phone. All camper vans in Darwin are booked until August and most of the accommodations are also booked. We have decided to rent a car with Donna and Gerry on Scot Free II and do a couple of day trips next week. If we find somewhere to stay, fine, but if not, we will just
drive back here each night. We are hoping to visit Kakadu National Park to see the Aboriginal art sites at Ubirr and Nourlangie and then go to Litchfield National Park to see some of the fantastic waterfalls and the giant termite mounds. If time and money allow, we might go further south to see the Katherine Gorge. We will check on renting a car on Monday and hope to do our sight seeing on Wednesday through Friday.
Planning all of this took much longer than anticipated and we didn’t get back to Windbird until mid-afternoon. I worked on naming photos the rest of the day while Mark changed the engine oil, transmission fluid, and all of the fuel and oil filters. Tomorrow is taken up with the Beer Can Regatta and then Monday morning we pull up anchor to go to the fuel dock to fill-up with diesel. I just can’t believe we have been here for a full week and I can already tell that this next week will be gone before
we know it. I’m still looking for that day of rest, but not sure it is in the cards.
by Judy Handley | Jul 11, 2008 | Australia Darwin and Area, Sailing Logs Year 3 |
Day 63, Year 3: Busy Day in Darwin
Date: Friday, July 11, 2008
Weather: Another Beautiful Northern Territory Winter Day
Location: Fannie Bay, Darwin, Northern Territory, Australia
It was one of those days. Up at 7 am, quickly review information on what we would like to accomplish while here in Darwin, inshore by 10 am and on the phone to Bank of America (not a happy call), into downtown Darwin by 11 am, and then a full afternoon of shopping. The ‘shopping’ was not your normal list. We were looking for Yanmar fan belts and light bulbs, flags for our trip into Indonesia, a copy shop to print out the Southeast Asia guides that we have collected, and on and on. We accomplished everything that we had hoped plus we had a great lunch at a Vietnamese restaurant, the Saigon Star. We both had the seafood soup with rice noodles and it was wonderful. The fish, squid, prawns, and scallops were so good, so we felt it was a wise choice for a place to have lunch. We spent the afternoon riding on buses to find the supplies we needed. We rode out of own toward the airport for some things, while we found others closer in to town.
We picked up our Indonesian visas and then spent some time at an internet caf�. There are only two major internet cafes in downtown Darwin and they always have a long waiting line. By the time we got on a computer, I felt it was too late to call my sister to wish her a happy birthday. So Patsy, here’s hoping you had a great day. I will call you sometime in the next couple of days.
We will start our Saturday morning by going to the Parap market which is not far from here. After that we will spend our day working on Windbird and getting ready for a fun Sunday in Darwin–the Beer Can Regatta . The boats are all made of beer cans and we can’t wait to see this.
by Judy Handley | Jul 10, 2008 | Australia Darwin and Area, Sailing Logs Year 3 |
Day 62, Year 3: Communication Issues
Date: Thursday, July 10, 2008
Weather: Back to Beautiful Weather
Location: Fannie Bay, Darwin, Northern Territory, Australia
We have been well prepared for sloooooow internet connections in Indonesia, but that is not what we expected here. The Sailing Club wireless connection is very slow and it just can’t handle Skype calls with the web cam. Even without the web cam, the connection comes and goes, so tomorrow we go to town and try a hard-wired connection at an internet café. We have some business calls to the US that we have to make and at some point, we have loads of photos to upload, so we really hope to find a faster
connection. But regardless, we were so glad to be able to talk with both of our kids. Of course, grand baby Sam was the star of the day. As soon as he saw us on the screen, he started blowing. We thought that was a little strange, but he was blowing kisses. He loves to blow kisses and kiss the computer screen. It was bath time for Sam, so we got to watch him playing in the bathtub. His little head would disappear for a minute and he would come up smiling. He was blowing bubbles in the water.
So now Granddad, who had already been blowing kisses back to Sam and kissing our computer screen, started making sounds like he was blowing bubbles in a bathtub. The other people in the Sailing Club turned and stared at us at this point. They all had a big laugh when we told them we were talking to our grand child and imitating his actions. I’m sure they were relieved that we were not crazy!
After talking with Heather, Jed, and Sam, we called Jo and Justin. We skipped the web cam and just called their home phone. Again, we could hear only about half of what was being said, but it was good to hear their voices regardless. I thanked Jo for connecting us with her friend Jane in Darwin. Jane sent us a very long email this morning outlining all of the free things to do here. We also wished Jo a very belated birthday. It was on June 21st, but we didn’t have that written down and just
didn’t remember. So happy belated birthday to Jo and happy birthday to my sister Patsy. Her birthday is July 10th, so I’m on time for that one.
After finishing up our phone calls we spent two very frustrating hours trying to get some other internet work done. We finally gave up and hopped on a bus to the huge shopping center east of here. The Casuarina Center is a huge mall. We really went just for the ride to see the countryside and to buy a few food supplies. I figure if we bring four bags of food back with us every time we go out, we’ll have our provisioning done without having to make one big run. I heard another cruiser talking
about shopping by locker, meaning that you look in one cabinet or locker and go shopping just for the things you need to replenish that locker. Then on another day, you open another cabinet and go shopping for those things. I think I like this approach. Once back on Windbird, I worked on labeling photos and Mark did a number of small chores and made a new snubber. The snubber is a piece of heavy rope that serves as a sort of shock absorber when the anchor chain pulls tight and it prevents the
chain from rubbing on the bow roller making a terrible noise. Our current snubber is really shabby looking and the line is almost worn through. That is because the leather sleeves where the line goes through the chocks are in shreds. I think this piece of boat gear gets more of a workout than many other things on Windbird. This is the third time we have had to replace it. But now we have a new one that should get us through this season.
We have been here five full days and we haven’t made a dent in the work list or the shopping list. And we haven’t even thought about going out and about in the Northern Territory sight seeing. So tomorrow morning we will make our lists and get into a higher gear. After a couple of hours of planning we will head to town to pick up our Indonesian visas, go to the internet café, and if time permits, we will do a little downtown sightseeing before returning to the Sailing Club for Friday night Happy
Hour. We haven’t been in for a few nights and lots of boats have come in this week. We need to say hello to friends who have arrived.
by Judy Handley | Jul 9, 2008 | Australia Darwin and Area, Sailing Logs Year 3 |
Day 61, Year 3: Work Day on Windbird
Date: Wednesday, July 9, 2008
Weather: Windy, Windy, Windy
Location: Fannie Bay, Darwin, Northern Territory, Australia
All work and no play for Mark and Judy today. Mark started out early by going to town with Tim on Rendezvous Cay to get LP gas for our cook stove and gasoline for our dinghy. The ride from our boat to the Sailing Club is a good mile or more and just going in once a day is using up the fuel fast. It was really windy all day and there was quite a chop in the anchorage, so Mark’s ride in and back out was quite rough. I wrote a couple of emails and then spent a frustrating time not being able to
send them. We are having a lot of trouble getting our emails sent from here. We can send early in the morning, before 7:30, and from sunset to about 7:30 and that is it. Twice we have had to wait to send our log early in the morning as we could not get it out of here at night. The wireless internet at the Sailing Club was also not working today, so not much of anything was sent out of Fannie Bay today. I did laundry and started polishing stainless. It was long past due, but we just haven’t
had calm sailing days when I could get out on deck and do while underway, and we haven’t stopped long enough anywhere to get work done. I got the whole starboard side done today, plus the bow pulpit. So I am more than halfway done. Mark spent the early afternoon drilling holes in our dinghy to attach the new dinghy wheels. We only have battery-powered drill and of course, the batteries weren’t fully charged. So he had a bit of a frustrating time with that, but he did get the job done. He then
went to work installing our new printer. I didn’t finish my stainless work until after 5 pm and when I got downstairs in the main cabin, I found a very frustrated Mark. He had spent all afternoon trying to get our new printer to “talk” to our wireless print server. But they don’t seem to like each other. If they did, we could keep the new printer on a shelf in the aft cabin where a printer has been since we started living aboard. But since this new printer is not cooperating, we have had to
move it into the main cabin closer to the computer so they can be hard-wired together. This is not a perfect solution, so Mark might spend another day working on this. If that doesn’t work, we will just live with it as is.
We will head to shore early in the AM and try to make a Skype call to our daughter Heather before Sam’s bedtime. Our 8 am is Sam’s 6:30 pm. He’s pretty tired by that time of day, but otherwise we have to stay in at the Sailing Club until 9 or 10 pm to call him in his early morning. We will definitely do that, but for tomorrow we just want to make contact and see what kind of connection we really have from here. So Sam, get ready for a call from Grammy and Grandad.
by Judy Handley | Jul 8, 2008 | Australia Darwin and Area, Sailing Logs Year 3 |
Day 60, Year 3: Meeting a Born and Bred Darwinian
Date: Tuesday, July 8, 2008
Weather: Back to Beautiful Weather; No Clouds, but Windy
Location: Fannie Bay, Darwin, Northern Territory, Australia
Today I met Jane and her 21-month old son Tarick (Tarky). Jane was born in Darwin and evidently it is a bit of a rarity to meet someone here who was born here as Darwin is a melting pot of nationalities with people moving in and out all the time. Jane is a good friend of our daughter-in-law Jo, and Jo made arrangements for us to meet. Jane’s mother came to Darwin from East Timor in 1975 and subsequently married Jane’s father who is from England. After graduating from college, Jane went to England to spend some time with her father’s family there and got a teaching job in the same school as Jo. Jane eventually returned to her beloved Darwin and is living here happily ever after. She and Jo keep in contact via email and that is how we came to meet Jane. Jane was so helpful in directing me to the best shopping areas and took me for a short ride to acquaint me with the different shopping centers and nature reserves within walking distance of the Sailing Club. Some places seemed so far away, but she was able to show me the shortcuts and that will be most helpful as we provision for the next three months. She also gave me some excellent pointers on which places we should visit in the Northern Territory and she hopes to arrange for us to visit the bush camp where her father is currently prospecting for gold. That would be a truly unique experience. So thank you to Jo for getting us together and thanks to Jane for all of her help.
While I was spending time with Jane, Mark went with Rendezvous Cay to buy engine oil and transmission fluid. He had hoped to find fan belts, but there were none of the size we need. We can’t leave here without extra fan belts for the alternator, so we will have to continue that search. I stayed at the Sailing Club working on my computer while waiting for Mark to return. I wrote emails and named photos and when Mark returned, he got on the internet. We stayed through Happy Hour and then returned to Windbird. The number of boats in the anchorage is growing daily, probably now at least 70 boats, but Fannie Bay is large enough to accommodate us all. As the sun is going down, I am sitting here in the cockpit writing this log and watching a harbor cruise boat going by seeing how the boat people live. It’s a great life.
