Day 46, Year 3: Still Waiting for a Weather Window
Date: Tuesday, June 24, 2008
Weather: Mostly Sunny Day; Winds SE 20 with Higher Gusts
Location: Seisia, Queensland, Australia

It’s all about the weather here. We don’t want to start across the shallow Gulf of Carpentaria until we have tolerable seas and reduced winds, but it looks like the wind is going to maintain its momentum for a few more days. Right now it is 50/50 that we will leave in the morning. We will listen to the 0730 weather report and then make our decision. What it looks like tonight is that waiting one more day would give us more tolerable conditions, but if things change overnight and the high that is moving ever so slowly across the country speeds up a bit, we might have our window tomorrow. As always we have to be flexible and follow the wind, not let it gobble us up. So I have no idea whether or not tomorrow’s log will be sent from Seisia or from out there in the Gulf of Carpentaria. We shall see.

The weather is definitely improving even though the winds remain high. We had blue skies with puffy white clouds today and no sprinkles until evening. That is an improvement. We kept busy all day although right now I’d be hard put to say just what we did. I listened to weather reports and to the net, Mark went up the mast, I cooked, Mark topped up the battery water, we talked to neighbors, Mark went to shore numerous times to bring water to the boat, we went to shore to do laundry, go to the store, and to check weather on the internet, we visited more neighbors, and the day was done. “Visiting the neighbors” mean we were talking about the weather and that consumes a lot of time when you are in these situations where the knowledge of the whole is much greater than the knowledge of one. Our friend Gerry on Scot Free II met some locals today and learned why everything is run by the Seisia Island Council. There were apparently five brothers with the first name initials making up S-E-I-S-I-A (They said that it was only five brothers even though there are six letters in Seisia??). They came from the “islands” which probably means the islands out in the Torres Strait, Thursday Island being the most well known. They settled this area and the Island Council was formed. This is an aboriginal outpost and the people here have what appears to be a very happy existence with modern conveniences in an outback environment. It’s not a bad place to be if you are stuck waiting for the weather.

080624 Day 46 Seisia