by Judy Handley | Jul 21, 2008 | Australia Darwin and Area, Sailing Logs Year 3 |
Day 73, Year 3: Happy Half-Birthday to Sam
Date: Monday, July 21, 2008
Weather: More of the Same Beautiful, Sunny Weather
Location: Fannie Bay, Darwin, Northern Territory, Australia
That GRAND baby of ours is eighteen months old today. So Happy Half-birthday to Sam! When we arrived here in Darwin, there were some updated photos of Sam waiting for us to download from Picasa, so I have posted those with today’s log so you can see how much he has grown. What a beautiful little boy. I saw the Norwegian twins, Hedda and Marita, on my way into the Darwin Sailing Club this afternoon and made the mistake of saying, “Hello beautiful girls.” Obviously nine-year olds don’t want to
be called beautiful and the looks I got were not those of pleased little girls, but here in my log I can call my grandson beautiful, and Hedda and Marita as well. I still miss Sam so very much and would love nothing more than to be with him for his half-birthday, but maybe I can fly home for his second birthday in January. Or better yet, maybe he can fly to Thailand.
We started our day by having breakfast at the Skycity Casino with Donna, Gerry, and Klinton of Scot Free II. Klinton is Donna and Gerry’s son, mid-thirties, and flew in this week to crew with them through Indonesia. Mark did some sewing on Scot Free’s headsail day before yesterday, so they insisted on taking us out to breakfast. It was a nice break and got us halfway to town early in the morning. We took the bus the rest of the way to town after breakfast and did some more food shopping and picked
up the charts we had ordered. Then it was back to Windbird with heavily laden packs to put things away. We also made one other purchase today. David and Judy on Freebird had a Tahatsu 9-horsepower dinghy motor for sale. They really wanted a 15-horse motor as they are avid divers and find hauling the heavy tanks challenging with the smaller motor. We have been having a bit of trouble with our motor and had thought about buying a new one. Dave thought he was going to get $500 for the motor in
trade and that was more than we were willing to pay, but when we got back from town, David and Judy came through the Sailing Club with the new motor and the old one. They got a good deal on the new motor without a trade, and then we were able to buy their old motor at a price we could afford. Now we will have a back-up if our very old faithful conks out. You really can’t be out here with a dependable dinghy. It’s your only transportation to and from shore unless you want to row and with the
winds and currents we have been encountering, that is just not an option.
Tomorrow we spend five hours at a Rally briefing, so that just about takes care of Tuesday. Hopefully by the end of Wednesday, we will be ready to go. Ready or not, it is out of here on Saturday morning at 11 am.
by Judy Handley | Jul 20, 2008 | Australia Darwin and Area, Sailing Logs Year 3 |
Day 72, Year 3: It’s A Water Sport
Date: Sunday, July 20, 2008
Weather: Beautiful, Sunny Weather
Location: Fannie Bay, Darwin, Northern Territory, Australia
Tom and Harriet Linskey sailed around the world in a 27-foot boat not too many years ago. As we were preparing for our circumnavigation, we had dinner with the Linskeys and I had a so many questions for them. One of my questions was about the necessity of having a hard-bottomed dinghy with big pontoons so we wouldn’t get wet when going to and from shore. I was sure we needed that, but Tom just laughed and said, “Judy, didn’t anyone tell you that sailing is a water sport.” Well, today, in our hard-bottomed dinghy with big pontoons we got soaked coming back to the boat from shore. This is the second time this has happened in the last few days. The first time I had laundry fresh out of the dryer with me and no plastic bag. Well, so much for that laundry. I had to soak it all in fresh water when I got back to the boat and hang it out to dry. Today I went in to use the water at the Sailing Club to rinse my laundry, but I was smart enough to take a plastic bag to put the wet clothes. I didn’t want to have to rinse them again on the boat. The plastic bag saved the day. So yes, Tom, it is a water sport, but I still don’t like getting soaked when going to and from shore. That’s not my idea of fun.
We stayed on Windbird again all morning working away, but when we went in do the laundry rinse we decided to take a little side trip. We walked down the beach to the Northern Territory Museum and had a delightful quick trip through it. It’s a great little museum featuring some of the best Aboriginal art we have seen. It also has a nice natural history section and a Cyclone Tracy exhibition showing the devastation of Darwin in 1974. I hope to go back again and meander more slowly through the displays before we leave. But at the rate I’m going, I’m not going to have time to do much of anything fun between now and Saturday. “The hurrieder I go the behinder I get.” This sign hung in my mother’s kitchen and it certainly describes how I feel right now. But tomorrow is another day and maybe a miracle will happen and we’ll get everything done. Dream on.
by Judy Handley | Jul 19, 2008 | Australia Darwin and Area, Sailing Logs Year 3 |
Day 71, Year 3: Super Work Day
Date: Saturday, July 19, 2008
Weather: Beautiful, Sunny Weather
Location: Fannie Bay, Darwin, Northern Territory, Australia
Yesterday’s panic resulted in a frantic work day today. We certainly didn’t get it all done, but we made great progress. Mark got the sewing done on both the headsail and the bimini; we did the best we could on scraping the “green grass” growing along our waterline; and I finally got all of the food lockers cleaned out and the remainder of the food we bought on Thursday stowed away. There is still much to do, but we feel good about today. Tomorrow we will chip away at the list again. I will
do cooking and canning in the morning and am hoping to have the time to go to the Northern Territory Museum tomorrow afternoon. Mark has to go up the mast to put in another LED anchor light and hope that this one works. He also has more sewing jobs that would be nice to get done but are not necessary. So tomorrow’s agenda is set.
Tonight we went to the Sail Indonesia Welcome Barbeque. It was held here at the Darwin Sailing Club. There were also two wedding receptions happening at the same time, so we had wedding parties being led in by bagpipers and Indonesians entertaining us with gamelan music (something like xylophones). Tonight we sat with Judy and Howard of Laelia (Santa Cruz, California) and Ken and Jean of Renaissance 2000 (Canada). Howard is a retired marine biologist from the University of California Santa Cruz,
did post-doctoral work in Boston, and then did a couple of research stints at the Marine Biological Lab in Woods Hole. It was fun to talk with a couple who are familiar with a part of the world that we know well. Judy and Howard have also lived in Indonesia, Malaysia, and Thailand and they are a wealth of information on this part of the world. Another interesting thing tonight was watching all of the Rally children at play. I don’t know how many boats have young children, but I do know that there
are a number of children ranging from ages nine months to the teen years-more children than we have seen gathered in one place during our voyage. Traveling with more than a hundred other boats is going to be an interesting experience. Once we all reach Kupang, our first destination, I know we will split apart, but there are events in tiny little places in Indonesia where we all come back together again. People who have done the Rally in the past have wonderful things to say about it, so I guess
we will all get used to each other and enjoy the experience together.
by Judy Handley | Jul 18, 2008 | Australia Darwin and Area, Sailing Logs Year 3 |
Day 70, Year 3: Panic Time
Date: Friday, July 18, 2008
Weather: Beautiful, Sunny Weather
Location: Fannie Bay, Darwin, Northern Territory, Australia
The time has come to panic. We still have to upload photos for the last fifty days of travel and only half of those are named. Internet in Indonesia is slow and found only in major cities, so we need to do our internet research while we are here. We are leaving here in one week and we haven’t a clue what we need to do to get a Malaysia or Thailand visa. We don’t know what anchorages we plan to visit while in Indonesia. And we don’t even know where we are going after Thailand and this is the last place to purchase inexpensively copied charts. We are still torn between going through the Red Sea to Turkey in the Mediterranean or going around South Africa. So today we ordered charts for the South Africa alternative “just in case” and we will just have to sell them in Thailand to another cruiser if we decide on going to the Mediterranean. We were given a CD by the Sail Indonesia crew that has SO MUCH information on it and we are just now getting time to look at it. It seems we have been busy every minute since we arrived here, but we are going to have to get even busier if we are really going to be ready to leave next Saturday. We have a five-hour information meeting on Tuesday and we need to go to that with any questions we have. So in addition to doing the required reading before Tuesday’s meeting, we have sails and a bimini that need to be repaired. I had hoped to can spaghetti sauce before leaving here and it is time to make granola again. I can do that in Indonesia if I just make sure I have the ingredients I need, but I need to borrow someone’s canner and that would be much easier to do here. But one way or another, we will get things done.
I walked to the Fannie Bay Shopping Center this morning to place our meat order. The butcher there will freeze and vacuum pack the meat for us and although it costs to get this done, it is much safer. You can’t bring a lot of meat to our freezer at one time and expect it to freeze quickly and buying a little bit each day is just too time consuming. So I decided to pay the price and placed the order. On the way to the butcher I had a most pleasant surprise. I took a shortcut instead of staying on the sidewalk and walked right into six red-tailed cockatoos that were on the ground feeding. I almost stepped on one, but by the time I got my camera out, they were long gone. I think I scared them as much as they startled me. But it was really neat to see them up so close. They are much larger than I imagined from seeing them at a distance and they have such huge heads. Their heads are just a little bigger than my fist and their beaks are big and strong. I wouldn’t want to tangle with one of them.
When I returned to the Sailing Club after my jaunt to the butcher shop, Mark was using the very slow wireless internet connection at the club and had just gotten an email from our daughter Heather. She is only working part-time these days so she can be with Sam and has taken a leave from science research. She is currently working for the Cape and Islands public radio station, WCAI, doing a series of weekly reports on science and scientists in Woods Hole. Her first story just aired and we were able to go to the WCAI website and hear it. It was about ocean sounds that are heard under the water. So congratulations, Heather! Well done. We know getting the first report of a series aired is always the hardest and the most exciting. I guess those public radio genes must have passed from father to daughter. It was a great report and we look forward to hearing others as we can along the way. Our son Justin is currently working on a “virtual world” website that went public during the first week of July. After only two days, it was doing great, but we are anxious to hear an update from him. I’ll report on that when we hear.
Sunset tonight was spectacular. As the sun went down in the west, the full moon rose to the east over the Darwin Sailing Club. Acres and acres of land in the Northern Territory are control burned every day in order to try and prevent wild fires. Evidently the burning was just east of Fannie Bay today and the gray smoke added an interesting touch to the red sunset. It was a dusky sky that looked like it was on fire.
Tomorrow is an at home sewing and cooking day and then we attend the Sail Indonesia “official” barbecue tomorrow night at the Sailing Club. That should be a fun evening and it will give us a chance to meet a few more of the 250+ cruisers participating in this rally.
by Judy Handley | Jul 17, 2008 | Australia Darwin and Area, Sailing Logs Year 3 |
Day 69, Year 3: A Day of Provisioning
Date: Thursday, July 17, 2008
Weather: No Change, Beautiful, Sunny Weather
Location: Fannie Bay, Darwin, Northern Territory, Australia
Shop, shop, and then shop some more. That was the story for today. We had the rental car for the day so we took advantage and did the grocery shopping for the next three months. There will be supermarkets in Kupang and on one other island before we reach Bali, but basically we need to stock up for the next two months. We will be in Singapore in three months and will be able to buy whatever we need there. But still shopping for the two months until we reach Bali was a bit of a challenge. It is mostly done now, but there are a few things remaining on the list. Meat must be ordered from the butcher. There are certain items that were sold out today and we will have to go back and get those, but for the most part, we have most of the food we need. What we need now is a few quiet days when we can get the little jobs on Windbird done and can do the reading necessary to prepare us for the next leg of our journey. Not sure what tomorrow will bring, but we are certain that is will include shopping. Tonight we attended a gathering of many of the boats that will be participating in the rally. We traded books and just spent time getting to know each other.
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Thanks to our daughter Heather for getting a mail packet off to us. We received that mail today only a week after it was sent. She included a painting by Sam which will grace the walls in our cabin. Sam, you make your grandparents infinitely happy with your artwork. Keep it coming.
