Day 30, Year 3: Cooktown to Cape Bedford
Date: Sunday, June 8, 2008
Weather: Partly Sunny Day; SE 25-30 Knots
Latitude: 15 degrees 13.958 minutes S
Longitude: 145 degrees 19.347 minutes E
Location: Cape Bedford, Queensland, Australia

The most important news of the day is that we made it safely out of the Endeavor River. A sailboat with a deeper keel than ours left around noon and we watched them as they successfully made it out of the shallow harbor, so we followed right behind. We did have less water under the keel than we did coming in, but we always maintained two feet of clearance. It is enough to make you hold your breath, and then celebrate once you are out. Of course, in addition to having to worry about the shallow
depths, we also had 30 knots of wind on the beam to contend with as we exited the harbor. But we made it and we had a fast trip north to our next anchorage at Cape Bedford. From here to Darwin, it is more usual than not to have 25 to 30 knot winds, so we might as well get used to it. Windbird seems to do some of her best sailing in these conditions, so once again we are so happy to be on this boat.

The re-enactment of Captain Cook’s arrival in 1770 in what is now Cooktown was fun to watch. The period costumes were great and the historical commentary was good. There is certainly lots of history in Cooktown’s past and we felt very fortunate to be there this weekend. Immediately after the re-enactment, we returned to Windbird and prepared to leave. Aqua Magic and Blue Marlin are staying in Cooktown for a few more days, but we are anxious to get to Lizard Island, so we took the mid-day high
tide opportunity to “get out of Dodge.” And actually Cooktown of today is a little like Dodge of yesteryear. I said in yesterday’s log that I would add some of the history we learned in our tours to today’s log. I’m going to put that off one more day and try to work it into tomorrow’s log.

We got a couple of delightful emails from our daughter Heather today. Her husband, Jed, is in France for a conference for nine days so she is trying her hand a being a single mom. Her first couple of days have gone great. That grand baby Sam seems to be keeping her (and us via email) fully entertained. We just hope the next seven days go as smoothly as the first two.

When we arrived in Cooktown we went to the internet caf to get a copy of the latest weather report. The young woman there said we didn’t need to download the weather. She already had the report. “Thirty knots of wind for the next six months followed by four months of rain.” We’ll keep taking advantage of the 30 knots of wind to push us further and further north. Tomorrow’s destination is the long awaited Lizard Island.

080608 Day 30 Cooktown to Cape Bedford