Day 56, Year 3: Port Essington to Alcaro Bay
Date: Friday, July 4, 2008
Weather: Another Beautiful Day; Winds 15-20 ESE
Latitude: 11 degrees 17.37 minutes S
Longitude: 131 degrees 47.80 minutes E
Location: Alcaro Bay, Cape Don, Northern Territory, Australia

What a lot of fun we have had today. We left the anchorage at Black Point, Port Essington at 7:30 am and we arrived here in Alcaro Bay just after three in the afternoon. We sailed and motor sailed and made great time getting here. Once here, Mark went to shore with Scot Free II and I stayed on Windbird preparing dinner for Scot Free II, Rendezvous Cay, and ourselves. Rendezvous Cay is a US boat, although it is documented in Road Harbor in the British Virgin Isles. But we both proudly flew our American flags today and enjoyed a great July 4th dinner on Windbird. Tim is the captain on Rendezvous Cay, and his 25 year-old son Joe and Olivia from Sydney are his crew. Joe and Olivia met in Sydney and have been a twosome ever since. We had a great time sharing war stories of our sailing adventures across the Pacific. Once of the best stories was told by Joe. Evidently they had a damaged spinnaker in French Polynesia and had to have another one made. Once the new one rrived, Joe wanted to cut the clue and tack ends of the old one to use as a decoration. What he didn’t know is that his dad had stored the new sail with the old one, and he ended up cutting out two tacks and two clues. This meant that he had cut up the brand new sail. Yikes! This was an expensive mistake, but it makes a great story. Obviously father and son had some words over this one!

Tomorrow morning at 3 am we are leaving here and making our passage to Darwin. By this time tomorrow night, we hope to be anchored in Darwin. That is our hope, so we shall see what the winds and tides allow us to do. If we don’t arrive by sunset, we will come into Darwin at night. This should be fine as it is well lighted and our destination of Fannie Bay should have lots of sailboats on call on the radio to give us advice upon entry. It will be great to arrive and begin our plans for our sail through Indonesia. We also hope to have some time to explore the Northern Territory. But for now, we will be very happy to just arrive safely in Darwin.

080704 Day 56 Port Essington to Alcaro Bay