catchup!

 2026, Butjikit, fishing, foodie stuff, friends, Sailing, us  4 Responses »
Feb 022026
 

Sal, Kai & Danni fishing the Hole in the Wall

Well its hard to believe, but the last post was on our final days in France, so basically early October, and here we are in the first week of February! I really dont have a lot to write about! We have slipped back into our lives fairly seamlessly, time away on the yacht followed by time back at home! Kai & Danni have also returned from OS and back working and living with us at this stage, (although expecting to get a houses through work.)

So I think I am just going to post a series of photo galleries to bring us up to date!

First trip back after France, we sailed up thru the Gugari Rip (Hole in the Wall) and round into a bay on the North side of Rarakala Island to join friends from Darwin who were up there on their yacht, Nebula. After they left we spent time in Guruliya bay before coming back thru the Gugari Rip and home.

When we got home we met a very interesting couple on a very cleverly designed cat, Alan & June have lived in Thailand for 10 years and started a company building performance cats up there, this was their own boat they were sailing back to Brisbane.

Next up was a trip up to an old favourite, Australian’s Bay, I managed to catch a massive mackie trolling behind the tender and as I lifted the monster into the tender its teeth brushed across the top of my foot and bottom of my leg, slicing me open like a razor, deep, and blood gushing everywhere! Our friends Annie & Jayden came up in their Stabicraft and so we spent a week with them and fished out of their boat while living on the yacht. The highlight was Annie catching an extremely rare fish in Australia, the Pinjalo Lewesi!

Back home for a bit and then Sal and I spent a week around Cotton and Astell Island exploring and fishing.

A few jobs to do when we got back, the strapping on the head of the mainsail needed attention and I ended up making a head board out of nylon cutting boards and bolting it together. Will probably outlast me! Trampoline need re stringing too so I got some new dyneema and re-rigged it.

So the festive season passed with everyone else at home and me staying on the boat in my best Mr Grinch style, then when the weather cleared we set off with Kai & Danni and headed to a stunning new location on Guluwuru Island that was surrounded by cliffs, had a beautiful sand beach, and wonderful waterfalls and fresh water swimming holes.

We also caught some good fish in the Gugari Rip (see photo at top of blog), and on the reefs to the south, at night the squid were on and so we caught a couple each night before having a big cook up! There were a family of sea eagles (Dhamala) in the bay and one of the juveniles kept landing in the rigging, so thats what we named the bay!

Home for the January birthdays, Kai on the 8th, me on the 11th and Danni on the 13th, Sal made a huge choccy cake which lasted over the 3 b’days!

Nearly there! Dave had 5 days off and wanted to head out, it was too windy to head North so we slipped south around Cape Arnhem and headed down to Buymarr. Had a few days anchored in the bay to the east of the community and fished the creek as well as exploring the beautiful coastline and islands.

When we got home I realised the old trailer we use to take the tender from the boat club yard to the boat ramp (100m) had rusted out completely and was broken in half, so I spent a few days cutting it up to salvage the wheels, axle and drawbar and then took it to the hobby shed, bought a length of steel channel and one of the other yachties, Harold, who is 90 years old, offered to weld it up for me! He is an amazing guy, his last big trip, in his 80’s was sailing single handed up to Japan, on to Russia, across to Alaska, back down to Japan and home again!! He is more sprightly and agile than me and still welds as well as anyone I have ever seen!

Ok, I will try and make it a bit shorter between updates rather than a marathon like this! Happy New Year to anyone I havent caught up with this year yet!

 

 

 

 

 Posted by at 5:28 pm



crazy

 2025, Butjikit, fishing, Sailing, us  3 Responses »
Jul 122025
 

Ngyaku Head, Rarrakala Island

Totally crazy! My last update of the blog was at the end of February, and now its mid-July. I literally have no idea what has happened to this year, we head off to Darwin in 2 weeks for our mate, Lance Thomas’ 70th b’day party and then fly to France for 2 months, so it will be October before we are home and heading out in Butjikit again. Given that I had planned to spend most of the dry season exploring the Western side of the Wessel Islands, its somewhat disappointing that we will not have a single trip away on the yacht this dry season!

Anyway, lots has happened, Kai returned from 8 months overseas with Danni, his Canadian girlfriend and they are working here for a few months before heading off overseas again, we hauled the yacht out at Drimmie Head late May and did the anti-fouling as well as replacing the rudder bearings. We had a couple more trips to the islands on the yacht after February and some day sails along the way.

So the last post was us scraping her bum at Australian’s Bay, we then sailed down to Rarrakala Bay, one of our favourite bays on the Wessels and spent a week or so exploring the nearby bays, beaches, reefs etc.

I saw a small pod of pygmy whales while I was exploring in the tender.

After a short interlude back in Nhulunbuy we headed back up to Rarrakala with good friends, Andy & Sophie for the Easter break. We had a lovely few days, the only drama was Sal got a hook from a treble through her finger! Luckily Wildcard was on the way up for a charter and Bruce is the expert in treble removal so we stayed up until midnight when they got in and then went over so Bruce could work his magic. The next day I harvested about 10 dozen oysters and we all went over to Wildcard for dinner.

Then it was back home again, a lovely day sail with my old mate VJ and his family, visiting from Darwin and then the reunion with the prodigal son on his return from overseas.

We then found ourselves house bound for the wettest April ever, in fact the wettest month ever in Gove, with over 1100mm of rain for the month, in May we got a little window of nice weather to have a quick sail out to Truant island with Kai & Danni, we had a great sail up there and although we did manage to sail all the way home it was a very dynamic sail with steady winds over 25k with more in the gusts. We sailed home at night, so everyone was able to get some sleep and I just stayed up and took one for the team in the conditions to bring Butjikit back to her mooring!

Then it was time to give the old girl a quick scrape before slipping and anti-fouling, as well as replacing the rudder bearings.

So back in the water, but for various reasons the only sail since has been a fantastic day sail that Dave & I had one weekend, clean hull, 15k breeze, flat seas and we just had a great sail, hit 9.3k at one point! Sailed down thru the channel between Bremmer Island and the mainland, then out and around the North end of Bremmer before running home and catching a nice mackerel as we came back into the harbour!

Other than that, Kai & Danni came for a day fish on a mate’s new boat, Jayden & Annie have just bought it and although Annie was away in Darwin, Jayden was keen to get out for a fish to we headed up to Miller Island and then down the back of Wigram.

Thats boatlife up to date! We also met a lovely couple thru twitter, staying at the Boaty Campground, Gus & Kelly and had a fun few days with them, Carl visited on his regular trip from Frankfurt, the James family sailed in on their yacht, and spent a couple of days with us,                            ( https://www.youtube.com/@sailingwiththejameses ). We have had a visit from friends of my brother, Matt, Cath & their 2 boys. Sal & I just had a couple of days in Darwin, Sal had a mammogram & ultrasound and once again got the all clear so that was a great relief. We also squeezed in a dinner with our dear friends Chris & Bridget to celebrate the good news. Now its just all hands to the pumps to get ready for France, which is hugely exciting for us

(dont forget to click on the ‘i‘ above the gallery if you want to see the image captions.)

 Posted by at 2:35 pm



bum scraping

 2025, Butjikit, fishing, foodie stuff, us  2 Responses »
Mar 012025
 

Sailing past the shiploader

Before I get to the title of this post, a little background. We sailed out of Gove Harbour 10 days ago with a beautiful NW breeze, a friend Ross, was working on the ship loader as we sailed past and sent us this photo of Butjikit gliding past. Once again we caught a nice mackerel as we sailed out so dinner for the first night was sorted.

We headed North and for the first time passed through Shark Alley in the Brombie Islands, its a narrow passage but in certain conditions its very advantageous to be able to take this route. We have done it in power boats but never in the yacht. All went very smoothly and we now have a track thru there on the plotter for future use. 

We ended up heading back to Australian’s Bay on Marchinbar Island as it was the best angle for sailing to, we had a great sail up there, only having to motor sail with one engine for small parts of the trip when the breeze dropped, and the last hour into the anchorage motoring as the wind ended up on the nose.

We spent a pleasant few days there, I caught quite a lot of squid that were hanging round the boat so that was a bonus, we also got 1 nice little tuna out in the bay from the tender and a couple of reef fish for another meal. Lots of waterfalls and wet season streams running so plenty of trips in the tender for showers and swims!

Next we moved north to Cray Bay which is a stunning anchorage, it has steep cliffs, 2 waterfalls tumbling off them, a small sandy beach, a rocky beach with a great waterfall for a shower and tub and presumably crays in the coral! It also allowed us to explore the beautiful bays either side, Whale Bay to the South & Hand Spear Bay to the North. We spent a couple of days here before the building Easterly swell made it a bit uncomfortable, we tried moving to Hand Spear Bay, but it was little better, so we sailed back down to Australian’s Bay and anchored in the Eastern arm of it which is the only bay other than Raragala that offers protection from the Easterlies. (generated by the effects of Cyclone Alfred off Queensland.)

Part of our plans for this trip was to explore these bays between Australian’s Bay & Burston Bay because really no one ever goes to them, but they looked interesting and in fact turned out to be incredible, we shall certainly be back again. They were all nice, but Hand Spear bay was truly stunning with more fresh water than any other bay we have found at the Wessel’s previously.

 

 

The persistent Easterlies will probably prevent us revisiting them this trip, but thats ok, plenty of other opportunities! Here are some of the fresh water spots we found.

So we found ourselves back in the Eastern arm of Australian’s Bay, which brings us to the title of the post, “Bum Scraping”! We realised the beach here at low tide was perfect for beaching Butjikit and giving her hulls a much needed scrape to get the barnacles and weed off, its over 2 years since we anti fouled her and its actually amazing how good the hulls are once we scrape them. I think using the boat a lot and scraping the hulls every 3 months or so has been the reason for this.

We did lots of exploring and calculating the day before to try to work out exactly when to drive onto the beach as the tide dropped and have enough water to float off again on the high tide that night. This was mainly done in the tender and its little sounder came in very handy for the calculations!

So at 10:45am we went aground and then as the tide went out we scraped her clean, it went really well and we had her all done in a couple of hours, which is the quickest ever. The fact that the beach was very flat meant she sat more flat and we were able to work quicker. Anyway it was very pleasing that it all went so well. We had also chosen the specific part of the beach because a small freshwater creek comes out at that point so it gave us a spot to go and have a swim and wash after scraping the hull because you end up with lots of oceanic micro fauna and flora all over you!

So she is all nice and clean for the next leg of this trip, hopefully she will slip along a knot or two faster! We are probably going to head down towards Raragala Bay at some point, but while these Easterlies keep blowing we will happily stay in our very comfortable anchorage!

(dont forget to click on the ‘i‘ above the gallery if you want to see the image captions.)

 Posted by at 11:32 am