sailing

 2023, fishing, Lumiel, Sailing, us  5 Responses »
Jun 202023
 

dolphins playing!

Mid June has not typically been a time of the year we do much boating, the SE trades are generally well set by then and the sea conditions will generally be less than pleasant. One of the advantages of now owning Lumiel, our 14.2m sailing catamaran, is its now viable to use a boat much more at this time of year and travel further afield. As Dave works shift work, 4 on, 4 off, his break between night shifts and dayshifts is effectively 5 days, so we planned a trip where his 5 days off lined up with the 5 days I dont do any NBN work, and last Thursday morning Dave came straight out to the yacht after he finished work and we set sail.

Conditions were better than we expected with a lighter 12-15k breeze, perfect for sailing North, so we set off and decided to just keep sailing and go all the way to Guruliya bay on the North side of Raragala Island in the Wessels group. It is about 72nm so we expected to get to the anchorage about 9pm. Although it was a moonless night we were not concerned as we have been into the bay previously so we have tracks to the anchorage and the actual anchorage saved as a waypoint.

sailing down Malay Roads

We sailed up and around Point William into Malay Roads, riding the flooding tide which helped carry us, then past Astell Island and across Donington Strait with the sails wing and wing, (headsail on one side and main on the other side with the wind directly behind us). We then went thru the pass between Bumaga and Jirrgari Islands, which we have named Stella Pass in honour of the beer we cracked at the time! Its quite a tricky passage, but with light winds, on neapy tides and near slack water its safe enough. We dropped the pick in Guruliya at 9:05pm so pretty well spot on when we had planned. It had been 13 hours of fantastic flat water sailing in perfect conditions, one of our nicer sails in Lumiel!

 

our anchorage at Guruliya

As you can see its a pretty pleasant scene to wake up to in the morning! We ended up spending 3 days anchored in Guruliya bay, we did plenty of exploring, a bit of unsuccessful fishing an plenty of relaxing and soaking up the beautiful splendour of this part of the world. I took less photos than I should have so this post is a bit light on in that regard! We of course enjoyed some lovely meals and tasty wines to help pass the time. Thanks to Starlink we were also able to watch the Super Rugby Semi Finals and the first Ashes test from Edgbaston!

We did find some stunning fresh water streams, they must be permanent spring fed creeks because the wet season runoff creeks have all dried up already. Very refreshing to bathe in on the nice warm sunny days!

Sunday morning we set off to sail back to Elizabeth bay with the plan being to spend the night there and then do the run home Monday morning to get back about lunchtime. Once again conditions were exceptional for mid-June, about 12k of SE breeze, mostly flat seas and blue skies! We had another spectacular sail down the back of the Wessels, a bit of a bumpy ride back thru Stella Pass and then a cracking sail across to the Western end of Inglis Island, and a bit of motor sailing along Inglis, into Malay Roads and across to Elizabeth Bay where we dropped the pick at about 5:15pm ready for a nice bottle of rose and some local pearl meat as an entree!

Monday morning was once again a beautiful calm start to the day, very light breeze, under 10k. We got under way after a couple of coffees and made our way round Point William and pointed Lumiel towards her home port and mooring, to our total surprise we were nearly able to lay Gove direct, had we wanted to we could have easily sailed the whole way home, with only a couple of small tacks, but Dave was keen to get back by lunchtime so he had a bit of time to organise stuff to start his day shifts the next day, so we decided to motor sail so we could get in a bit quicker.It was still extremely pleasant as the breeze stayed under 10k all morning and the sea was basically flat once we were clear of Cape Wilberforce. We picked up the mooring at 11:15am and so ended up what was certainly the best trip we have done on Lumiel since bringing her home in terms of amount of sailing and perfection of conditions! Absolutely terrific dry season cruising at its best, and a trip I am sure both Dave & I will not forget anytime soon.

Early morning light on cliffs of Point William

 

 Posted by at 7:54 pm



Pearl Farm

 2023, Cruise April '23, Lumiel, Sailing  3 Responses »
Apr 302023
 

Pearl Farm Jetty

After finally leaving Guruliya Bay we sailed down to Firefly Pass between Warnawi and Alger Island, went through the pass and then across Donington Sound to the West end of Inglis Island, along Inglis Island, thru Malay roads and back into Elizabeth Bay. I called up the Pearl Farm on the radio to let them know we were going to stay a few days and also asked if would be able to come over and have a look at the operations, as we have never gone ashore to have a look in all the years we have been coming past!

 

The darker colour is our track from Guruliya Bay to Elizabeth Bay and the red track is from Elizabeth Bay to home. We spent 3 days in Elizabeth Bay waiting for what we knew would be the best day for sailing back to Gove. On the second day we went over and had a grand tour of the Pearl Farm, its a fascinating business, firstly there is just the absolute remoteness of the location, only 25nm from Gove, but only accessible by boat or helicopter. At the height of their season there are about 40 workers on the farm and Diana, the manager, explained the whole process from spawning their own oysters, right through pearl seeding and harvesting. Since taking over the pearl farm from the previous owners, Clipper Pearls have spent a lot on new buildings and upgrading old ones.

They have quite a large Indonesian workforce as they also own pearl farms in Indo and so its a good source of experienced workers for them and a great opportunity for their workers to come to Australia, and earn extra money for their families. We were also able to buy a couple of kilos of pearl meat from them, which is very hard to get normally.

Cleaning the nets that protect the growing baby pearls on their frames.

We finally left Lizzy bay, yesterday, Saturday, and had a superb sail all the way home, I had not expected to be able to sail it in one tack, but the wind was more Easterly than predicted and we were able to lay Gove Harbour after coming out thru Malay Road and round Breakfast Island. We picked up the mooring in the late afternoon after nearly 3 weeks cruising the Arnhem Land coast, after tidying up a bit we headed into the boat club for a nice long hot shower and a nice scotch fillet for dinner! Its been an incredible trip, we battled a but with the wet weather in the middle but it was super fun and Sal has grown so much in her confidence and ability with all the systems on Lumiel. We are already looking forward to the next extended trip in the future!

 

 Posted by at 12:36 pm



wet

 2023, Cruise April '23, Lumiel, Sailing, us  1 Response »
Apr 252023
 

We have now been at Guruliya Bay for 6 days, this was never our plan – to spend nearly a week in one spot at the Wessel Islands, but the enormous surge in the wet season this year has put paid to the best laid plans of Rick & Sal! We had already had the wettest wet season on record by the middle of April, and now the last week has just been unrelenting.

We had some sun the first day we got here, since then it has just been wave after wave of storm fronts, typically with strong gusts in front of them (41 knots or 80kmh the strongest), and then driving rain. Every time we think it has cleared we get smashed an hour or so later!

The waterfalls in the picture above only flow when its raining heavily, its purely runoff from the large rocky ‘plain’ on the shoreline closest to us – we are only anchored about 150m off there and the roar when its full flow is incredible! Within 20 minutes of so of it stopping raining there is barely any water flow left! Anyway, that’s what it looks like most times I look out!

We decided to stay put here because its a superb anchorage, 360° protection from the wind and swell and fantastic holding, it also has some good fishing in the mangrove creeks at the head of the bay. The holding was definitely tested the night we had over 40k of wind, but she didn’t drag an inch. Also were we to move we would just be in a different spot in shit weather, with very little ability to do anything outside of the boat anyway.

So there is not a lot of interest to talk to you about! The fishing has been next to non existent due to the weather, the couple of chances we have had we had no success anyway. So there is a lot of Netflix & chill, reading, cooking, eating, and needless to say drinking! Thank god for Starlink!

 

 

Our anchorage (red curser is boat)

Here a few pics from the moments the sun was out!

One interesting find while the weather was good enough to do some exploring was some graves that a friend had told me about, they are just above the high tide mark and have been damaged by king tides to the extent that some of the bones are exposed. They are clearly human remains. It is not at all the way Yolngu treat their dead so I am pretty sure they are not Yolngu graves. The possible alternatives are probably, Macassan sailors shipwrecked, Japanese airforce crash victims from WW2, more survivors of the Patricia Cam sinking in WW2, Indonesian fishermen shipwrecked, white Australian victims of some sea/air tragedy.

The presence of a few middens of Dhumpala (mud mussels) suggests there were survivors, presumably who then buried the dead, the middens are scattered amongst the 6 or so graves which are marked by small collections of rocks and stones that have clearly been carried to the site as they are not present in the immediate area. Permanent fresh water for the dry season was not obvious to me, plenty of sources at the moment but I doubt any of it is spring fed and persisting into the dry so that would have been a serious issue for them. The creek in the bay would have provided the Dhumpa

la and other seafood. Nearly every bay up here has a little creek in it that could provide food to anyone with a bit of knowledge.

Anyway, for the time being the mystery remains, there are no obvious candidates in terms of missing people, shipwrecks or plane crashes and no evidence other than the graves and middens that I can find.

I am not going to post any photos as it feels a little….disrespectful in the circumstances.

So here are some more photos, of the moments when we felt inspired enough to take any!

Our plans our now to spend another day sitting here in the rain, and then tomorrow we will make our way back down to Elizabeth Bay and hang there for a couple of days waiting for a window of weather to go from there to home. Its looking like that will eventuate Friday or Saturday. This will probably end up being a week less than we thought we might be away, but the persistent poor weather and the likelihood of favourable conditions later this week to sail home have somewhat forced our hands. Also not sure I have enough coffee on board to last another week without rationing!

I will close with a video of the waterfall, you can see this is at a lower tide than the photo at the start of this post, the tide here is about 3.5m range so it makes a big difference.

 

 

 Posted by at 10:22 am



Slipperys

 2023, Cruise April '23, fishing, Lumiel, Sailing, us  4 Responses »
Apr 192023
 

We left Astell Island and motored across the top of Inglis Island and then down Pera Channel into the top of Arnhem bay and an area called Yalakun Sound. It has a river called Slippery’s that is a renowned barra fishing creek and our intention was to spend a couple of days here working it out and hopefully catch a barra or 2!

No wind again so it was an afternoon of pleasant motoring in light conditions and the flooding tide carrying us down into the bay.

 

Astell to Slippery’s

It was a wild and stormy night the first night, we had massive lightening & thunder storms all around us, but luckily not over us and only light rain. We woke to the realisation that there was a massive weather event over Gove and it was being absolutely pounded – while we had clear weather here. It didn’t rain again here and Nhulunbuy ended up with over 300mm for the 36hrs or so it lasted! We were so lucky to avoid it all by being far enough west.

I went for a flick along the rockbars near the entrance to Yalakun Sound in the morning and was amazed to come around the point and find another tinny sitting there flicking lures! I was a friend from home, Morgs and he had come around from Nhulunbuy early in the morning. He was equally surprised to see me! Anyway it turned out to be a blessing, he is a really good fisherman and knows the area very well, so he basically coached Sal & I into exactly the right spots at the right time to catch some barra and without his help I am not sure I wold have worked the system out and caught fish.

Morgs ended up joining us for dinner and sleeping on the boat with us, I think not having to sleep in his tinny in the creek and the offer of a coffee in the morning sold him!

Sal with the first barra of the day. (& biggest)

Exploring Slippery’s

Morgs trying for a barra on saltwater fly gear, an art way beyond my skill level!

There were plenty of crocs in the system, including this cheeky little guy in one of the gutters we were fishing!

For dinner we had crispy skin barra with rice, i forgot to take any pics so you will just have to imagine how good it looked!

The entree was some trevally I had caught earlier in the day, dry cured served in coconut cream with curry leaf oil and finger lime. It was inspired by a similar dish we had at Ellas by Manoli in Darwin recently, a Sri Lankan restaurant.

entree

Morgan spent another night on Lumiel with us and then headed off back towards Nhulunbuy, we pulled anchor and headed North to the Wessel Islands where we will spend most of the rest of our time away.

 

 Posted by at 11:07 am



away2

 2023, Cruise April '23, fishing, Lumiel, Sailing, us  5 Responses »
Apr 152023
 

Motoring past Cotton Island

After a couple of days in Elizabeth Bay we motored around to the western side of Astell Island, we have never explored this island and it has a couple of nice anchorages on the western side that offer a good haven in the dry season. The more southern bay in particular is good as it has a lovely gently shoaling beach that can be used to beach catamarans on to clean hulls etc. So we decided to go across and spend a couple of days checking the area out.

Just before we pulled anchor in Elizabeth Bay, the resident Lemon Shark, Bruce, turned up, so he got a feed of freshly caught whiting I had got in the cast net, for breakfast!

Sal got some video footage,

The run across to Astell Island we were once again without wind, but the current through Malay roads is pretty impressive, these were by no means spring tides but we were doing up to 10.1 knots over the ground at only 5.4 knots thru the water – so over 4.5 knots current with us!

A little video of us motoring down Malay Roads

We have had a very pleasant and relaxing couple of days here, I found a lovely little spring fed creek on the beach that has a shaded pool to bathe in and its a very pretty anchorage.

Yesterday we explored the other bays and found this little guy!

I went and spent a bit of time in a small mangrove creek this afternoon and while i didnt catch any fish, I did get a nice muddie, so that is dinner sorted!

Mr Pinchy!

Tomorrow we will head down to Arnhem Bay for the next episode in our trip!

 Posted by at 4:44 pm



Away!

 2023, Cruise April '23, fishing, Lumiel, Sailing, us  5 Responses »
Apr 122023
 

the view on the mooring!

So Sal has a months long service leave and I have taken about 6 weeks off too, today we have headed out on the yacht, not sure where we are going, not sure for how long, let the journey begin!

It was a bit of a dramatic day in the end, Sal & I loaded up the tinny with supplies for a month and headed out to the boat club, we could see a decent strom coming, but realised we had time to launch the tinny, get to Lumiel, unload all the provisions and organise stuff before the storm hit. 

storm incoming!

This proved to be correct and we sat out an hour or so of rain with some decent lightning & thunder passing just to the south of us. Once it cleared we dropped the mooring and headed north, there was basically no wind so it was to be an afternoon of motoring. Given that we only got underway about 11:30 I decided just to run up to Elizabeth Bay for our first night, a run of about 25nm into the anchorage.

Everything went perfectly well until we got past Cape Wilberforce, and were rounding Point William in the narrow channel between it and the un-named island. The ebb tide was running pretty hard by now as it was about half tide and we were pushing about 2-3k of tide, suddenly the port engine changed exhaust note, I looked over the side and there was no raw cooling water coming out of the exhaust.

I quickly shut down the engine before it overheated and we had to push on thru the rest of the channel on just one engine, but while it was slower, it was not an issue, we just made our way slowly into the anchorage and dropped the pick.

Elizabeth Bay

Once the engine cooled down I went to see if I could work out what had happened, I found the raw water discharge hose blown off the fitting on the head of the heat exchanger! Inside the manifold I could see pieces of rubber from the raw water impeller.

I realised I had to remove the head to clean all the rubber out properly, it must have back pressured the pump and that caused the hose to eventually blow off. I did all of that and refitted the hex head, its not hard, all easily accessible at the top of the engine. 

end of the hex with manifold removed, bit of scaling but thats where all the rubber was sitting.

The next step was to replace the raw water pump impeller, that is a shit of job, I had to take the alternator off first and its all tucked away low on the outside of the engine and difficult to see and access, but to my amazement when I finally got to the impeller, having removed the cover on the pump, it was in perfect condition!

raw water pump impeller

We got the old impeller replaced when we had the engine out of the boat last November, so I was a bit surprised it should have failed, what actually appears to have happened is that at some time in the past the impeller failed, and someone has just replaced it without removing the hex head and finding all the little bits of the old impeller! 

All the rubber and scale i removed.

Anyway, much better news than it might have been, and I just put the cover back on the pump and put everything back together, just have to put the alternator back on tomorrow morning.

Now I am just sitting in the dark, having a cup of tea, while a few dolphins swim around the boat – i cant see them but I can hear them exhaling when they surface! 

 Posted by at 9:04 pm



Miller Island

 2023, fishing, us  6 Responses »
Mar 132023
 

After nearly 1 month of rain and cloudy weather, we finally had a fine, clear, blue sky day. It was basically calm all day so sailing was out of the list of things to do, so it was hook up Dave’s boat and head out for a bottom fish. We ran up to Miller Island on the end of the English Company Islands and fished some marks we have up there, we cleaned up and stopped fishing by about 11am!

A nice swim on the beach at Miller Island and some lunch before heading home. Sal killed it, she got two stonking Golden Snapper and a big Red Emperor. I got 4 pan sized Nannagai.

Definitely one of our better days fishing! We then had crispy skin Golden Snapper for dinner and our friend Cheryl who is up for a visit to Gove, joined us for the feast!

 Posted by at 10:03 am