Lifestyle Sailing Blog

We were well settled into marina life at Half Moon Bay Marina (about 15 miles north of Cairns by sea) then we sailed back to Cairns to haul out. However complications with the haul at Norship, and we didn’t like the low tide booking at Crusing Yacht Squadron with the pilings threatening to make shreds of Crusoe’s nice topside paint, we canceled. Before we canceled Raewyn and I had gone back to Half Moon Bay to retrieve the car by bus so that we would be mobile during the haul out. We spent a night at the lower end of Admiralty Island, at the entrance to Smith Creek.  The next day Raewyn drove the car back to the marina while I sailed Crusoe back alone.

On the way back I was welcomed with a couple of intense rain squalls with 30+ kt winds, I reduced sail to about a small handkerchief and was doing 7-8 kts, however I only wanted to make 4-5 kts as I was on low tide -rising and needed a mid tide + to enter the marina.  I got there on the second hour of the rise and had to enter with the now familiar wind on the beam, only this time with the centerboard progressivly coming up as I was seeing the bottom getting closer, I was about half the keel up rounding the corner into the marina and could see Raewyn waiting at the fuel dock for me. She was able to snap this picture of me entering, it calms down about 100% just as you clear the breakwall seen on the right.

The next day we drove to Port Douglas to meet up with an old friend I went to Maritime College (TAFE) with here in Cairns, Jon Burnett, his partner Iris and their pet “goose” Scuppers, (they go nowhere without Scuppers).

The way home we blew the engine on the rental car but Jon, Iris and Scuppers came to the rescue, the rental car agent was there in 15min and Raewyn returned with him for a replacement car. We all ended up at Crusoe about the same time and now we have an upgraded car! We had fun catching up after 22 years since we last saw each other, Scuppers settled into the center cockpit with ocassional honks when she heard us laugh loudly, quite a character.

This is most likley the last post until mid July when I return from work, and we will make the passage from Cairns to the top of Australia in Gove, where we plan to clear customs, and head to Indonesia-Malaysia. We decided to move a little quicker than originally planned and haul Crusoe in Kudat on the way to KK Malaysia.