We have been in Darwin for nearly a month and you’d think that was plenty time, but as usual the last week is crunch time and we’ve had delays with spare parts being flown in and just the frustration of everything taking longer than planned. Of course the usual 2:1 rule applies... knock 2 things off the list, add 1 new one.
But the list is very short now and in a couple of days we should be on our way. We sold the dinghy we found and salvaged in the Coral Sea off the Queensland coast. The buyer really needed it and got a real bargain, and we got about as much as we could hope for, for a second hand dinghy. I got the motor checked over and serviced by the local agent. The carbie needed replacing but my continual efforts with WD40 did in fact save the engine. So we have an almost new Honda 5hp 4 stroke outboard motor sitting on the aft rail as a back up should our faithful old Tohatsu 9.8 hp die. Not bad for an afternoon’s work.
The dinghy money disappeared into Woolworths coffers in 3 days! Sandy has just done a massive reprovisioning and apart from fresh fruit and vegies along the way we won’t be spending anything on groceries until we get to South Africa, and some of the stuff for 6 months. The dinghy loads we ferried out to Wind Wanderer convinced us we could never have kept the smaller dinghy.
The sense of leaving the security of Australia is something we never really thought about. Since December we have been anchored in Lake Macquarie or coast hopping, which is great. Even the 8 day passage from Thursday Island to here was with the mainland seldom more than 30 miles away.
I’ve been trying to put my finger on this strange mix of feelings. We’re itching to get going again and excited that it is so close, but very conscious of the fact that we’re leaving family and friends again. Somehow there is a difference when we’re doing long passages to get home, and heading away from home on a new adventure. It’s all mind games and from past experience everything settles into perspective as soon as the sails are up and the course is set.
We’ve had a convoluted trail with Customs. We are so used to checking in and out of countries by just showing up, filling in the papers, showing our passports and boat registration and going, that Aussie officialdom seems over complicated. We have a considerable security bond to recover which we had to lodge for our temporary importation of Wind Wanderer, so I made contact well ahead of time, and just as well. The details aren’t exactly riveting reading, but at least everyone we dealt with was pleasant and helpful and with a bit of luck Joe Hockey will have to find someone else to help balance his budget.
It’s been a few days since I wrote the above and it’s now the morning of our departure. We cleared out with Customs yesterday and have to be on our way within 24 hours. All went well but when my sailing days are over I’m going to set up a red tape factory in Australia. We’ll make a fortune and mostly government contracts. But we’ve survived and are actually more in pain from a few shark wounds, and not the ones in Fannie Bay either, even though I did have to go over the side one more time to clean the sensors for the depth sounder. Our consolation is always “we needed it done, and they still have to turn up for work tomorrow...”
We have some good memories of this place. On Sunday and Thursday evenings there are huge flea markets in a park that spills down to the beach. We decided to do a museum visit and then the markets and it was a great day. Supper on the beach with crowds of folk spread out so not a bother, watching the sunset and a few Abos dancing on the sand to the amplified didgeridoos being played by a white guy at the markets just behind. He had 5 of them on a stand, each with their own microphone looking like huge pan pipes. He droned away with rythms and tones that would need lungs the size of the Goodyear blimp. We motored back across the bay in the twilight feeling the world is a pretty special place.
Last weekend must have been the end of the Darwin Festival because we had a spectacular fireworks display straight across the water from here. Many of them were effects we hadn’t seen before.
But now I have to cut this short. We have some final tying down to do, dinghy up on the davits, a stop off to load up with duty free diesel and we’ll catch the last of the falling tide out into the Timor Sea.
Until next time...