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After completing the clearance into Australia, resupplying with food and fuel and enjoying a couple of days walking around on solid ground I set off south. Just a short hop of 20nm down to Cape York, the most northern point on mainland Australia.
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Closed Captions (CC):

0:14
G'day guys, welcome to another video, Sailing Learning by Doing here in Thursday island.
0:20
iIm about to leave, i'm packed up, i've got some diesel, it rained a lot last night I filled up
0:26
the water tanks. I got some bananas, a little bit of bread and uh yeah ready to start heading south.
0:33
the winds look pretty terrible the weather looks shocking but uh yeah there's no point
0:39
staying here it's just another day that i've lost going south so i'm just gonna
0:43
crack on and see how we go i'm a bit skeptical of the weather reports i'm dubious i'm cynical
0:50
so i'm just going to pretend that they're not saying what they're saying and i'm going
0:52
to go and i'm going to see what happens i can always turn back if it's too ferocious
1:07
all right guys we're on the move we are sailing you might be able to hear the engine in the
1:11
background um it's one of the reasons i decided to leave today it's been cloudy like this for the
1:18
three days that i've been here and my batteries are getting a bit low i get a hodgepodge battery
1:23
set that a bit cobbled together with um old ones from greg and kik back in roger and
1:31
yeah they're not very good so need to run the engine unfortunately every now and again and
1:38
i would have needed today anyway so that's why i decided to go because instead of sitting at anchor
1:43
and running the engine to charge the batteries i might as well at least be going somewhere
1:47
so it's only 20 miles over to cape york and it seems like a good anchorage so i'm going to stay
1:53
there the night and then see how we go in the morning but yeah at the moment we've actually
1:58
got wind so the engine i've just got ticking over for the batteries and uh we're sailing for the
2:04
first time in a little while pretty stoked it's very different here the water's not at all clear
2:11
um helicopters and planes buzzing around that's the airport right over behind me there it's on
2:17
horne island it's the airport that services all the outer islands here in indonesia you've got
2:23
outer islands everywhere but they're all serviced by longboat and dug out canoe with an outboard
2:28
here in australia they fly it's a bit quicker and easier and safer i guess cool well i'm going to uh
2:34
settle in it's probably only about four hours we're doing five knots so it's only
2:37
four hours over to there i'll anchor on the northernmost tip of mainland australia
2:44
pretty cool a lot of people grey nomads etc drive all the way up there in their
2:49
four-wheel drives it's quite an adventure um there's no tired roads and things i i don't
2:54
know how far but the last few hundred kilometres anyway i mean i think from from cairns onwards
3:01
it starts getting a bit rougher and it's quite an adventure they've got to go through quite a few
3:06
rivers and creeks and if it rains then they can't get through and have to wait and things like that
3:10
so quite a few of the grey nomads do that come all the way up in the in the wintertime and the south
3:16
when it's cold they'll come up here and um and then apparently they leave their cars and caravans
3:22
there and get them get a boat over to thursday island for the day to hang out probably get fuel
3:27
and stuff as well and then yeah i was talking to the taxi driver in town that's why i know this
3:33
he was saying this uh in about june july august it's sort of the season up here for grey nomads
3:39
coming from great cape york so anyway we'll uh continue on it's probably going to be a a lot
3:47
of sailing and maybe swearing at the weather in the next few episodes i know you guys we'll try
3:53
well actually we give you a mixed bag you know we're not planning and obviously we can see on
3:59
youtube which videos do better and we should just be concentrating on those but we make videos about
4:07
just about what we're doing so right now i'll be sailing a lot there won't be a lot of
4:13
great underwater adventures and cultural experiences it's just me trying to get south
4:20
and yeah is what it is and then other times when marie's on board we don't have any sailing in some
4:25
of the videos at all it's just visiting towns or you know like in missoula there was no sailing
4:31
it's just zipping around the dinghy so that's what boating that's what cruising life actually is
4:38
so for those of you who really want to watch sailing well yeah i guess you know
4:46
either just skip the videos that show culture and things like that but it's what life is it's
4:51
full of full of surprises and and different stuff and it's what keeps us making the videos because
4:57
if we were just making videos that you want to watch or some of you want to watch that would be
5:01
boring for us so hope you uh understand that anyway enjoy the rest of this all right well
5:11
autopilot's on boat's doing its thing we're having it we're cruising along it over there
5:18
5.2 knots it's the right engine's just ticking over as you can hear
5:22
and yeah no one around gonna make a coffee and a sandwich it's about uh 1 30 p.m right now
5:30
another couple of hours another three hours we'll be there
5:34
getting used to it's a bit different here in uh indonesia it's all deep water or very shallow like
5:42
it's just shoaling straight up to reef and around here it's five six eight meters deep everywhere
5:49
it's crazy to get used to the anchorages are going to be much shallower around here in raja ampat
5:58
to begin with i was shocked and then after a while you're happy to find a 20 metre deep anchorage
6:03
you're happy because that's shallow whereas here and then you sort of get used to that and like
6:09
you feel nervous anchoring in seven meters because it's like whoa i don't know but uh
6:14
here you can anchor i was anchored in six meters the last two three days it feels safer you put out
6:20
40 metres of chain and you've got a massive scope um yeah yeah get a coffee going and see how we go
6:32
good tired today
6:35
it slept pretty good last night but maybe still a bit of a hangover from the last passage
6:48
nearly out of my indo coffee i got given this one by my great friends
6:58
it's good proper coffee from cuba i think yeah look at that it's even better it's
7:09
toasted roasted and packed in vernon wow this is my own coffee it's gonna taste fantastic i
7:17
think it's uh cuban beans yeah and obviously been roasted and packed in america ew but it's from my
7:24
town i've actually been to that town vernon good old milk powder i actually bought a couple of uh
7:32
a couple of liters of uht milk in the shop the other day in a splat splurge and liquid milk
7:39
so i don't have a guidebook for this coast i used to have alan lucas you know he does
7:44
the whole east coast uh of australia really good guidebooks he's done about i don't know
7:50
10 editions or more but i i gave it to someone when i left australia i need to get a new one but
7:55
so i'm just going off looking at charts and things to find anchorages for this trip down
8:00
i should be able to find one of those guide books in cairns but there wasn't any here
8:05
but it's sort of pretty pretty easy so basically it's going to be southeast wind
8:10
which is the opposite of what i want but i'm looking for anchorage on the northern north
8:17
north northwestern side of islands or reefs to rest behind if i get to those places and they
8:24
are not sheltered that means the southeast wind isn't blowing and then i'll just keep
8:29
going because it'll be wind that i can use so whenever there's wind i'm going to sail and if
8:34
if i'm tired well yeah i have to just put safety first obviously and yeah i'll show
8:40
you this coastline basically it is mainland and then reefs and then the whole rest of it is taken
8:47
up with the shipping channels and there's massive massive ships that come down here
8:52
a guy i met in ti is a pilot boat captain he was saying some days they have 15 coming just in
8:59
massive massive ships and they're doing sometimes 20 knots down there so there's hardly any room to
9:06
go off the side of the channel and get out of the way of these guys and if they're moving at
9:10
20 knots and i'm doing five or six and they're coming against me that doesn't give me much room
9:16
to see over the horizon so sleeping is going to be a bit of a mission i'll have to be awake a lot
9:22
so yeah i'm gonna have to balance tiredness and safety up with still being able to make the miles
9:40
once i get down to cairns the reef starts angling away from the mainland a little bit
9:44
and so you've got more room to maneuver there's more deep water
9:48
the shipping channel is a bit further offshore so that's a bit better but this first
9:52
600 miles nearly it's pretty pretty gnarly and i've never sailed up here but yeah i mean
10:00
whatever learning by doing we'll figure it out i better go outside and check there's no one around
10:12
check that there
10:21
nothing around but the wind's died down so let it crank the engine up a little bit
10:33
yeah 12 miles to go so it's not very far another couple hours well three probably
10:40
yep anyway sit in make it gonna go make a peanut butter sandwich in a minute and we'll have a bit
10:45
of tucker if you get back my australian lingo so we're coming up on cape york now
10:52
uh as i said northernmost tip of mainland australia
10:56
that big squall over there that sort of sucked all my wind out about 45 minutes ago so i'm just
11:02
motoring but i'm just actually going very slowly because i've it's been tracking to the east
11:08
this squall and i don't want to be just arriving the anchorage when that's there because
11:13
yeah it's just i wanted to see where i want to anchor and get blown around on that so i'm just
11:17
i've slowed down and i'm hoping that'll just ease out to sea just before i arrive
11:25
i don't care if it's raining but there's always wind first and then rain i don't
11:28
really care if it's raining when i get there i just don't want to have 30 knot gusts when
11:32
i'm trying to anchor or see where the coral is and things like that so i've just slowed up i'm
11:36
only doing three and a half knots and um we'll let that big elephant have their right of way
11:44
he's like a big ship i'll just let him go and hopefully he doesn't just sit there we'll see
11:57
well the score's coming it's starting to spit a bit rain now but i think that most of the wind's
12:01
gone but obviously here is where the rain is so it's probably going to get straight on me
12:06
i've still actually got three and a half miles to go so it might be just yeah it
12:10
might be just on me of course i don't have the camera running but a spanish macro just jumped
12:15
out about five meters in front of me huge one about two meters long it jumped about
12:20
five meters in the air just a huge arc and i saw the whole thing from start to finish normally to
12:26
see the splash at the end but i saw the whole thing and it was such a perfect glittering blue
12:31
silver amazing i've never really i've seen it a couple of times i'm not that close and such
12:37
a big spanish mackerel and i don't have my line out obviously but tomorrow i'm going to have the
12:42
fishing line out and i'll try and catch something because i didn't buy any meat or anything to
12:47
bring on this trip so it'd be good to have some fish now i'm in australia i should not catch so
12:52
much plastic as i did in indonesia yeah that was incredible i wish you guys could have seen that
13:02
alright she's raining it's now probably 15 knots of wind
13:08
but i think the wind's not going to be much of a drama it's just a rains coming up now but
13:13
yeah i've just idled right back i'm doing three knots just with the wind and
13:19
hopefully the worst it will be over by the time i get there i'll just time it right hopefully
13:22
it's quite cold i haven't been this cold in the rain normally in indonesia you sort of look
13:28
forward to the squalls because it cools you down a little bit but this is it's quite cold i've got
13:31
goosebumps quite a nice thin sensation something new i'll have to actually get a rain jacket like
13:38
we've got no weather gear on the boat because we just haven't needed it for four years now so
13:43
i've got a poncho that we bought in indo to ride a motorbike it's just basically a plastic bag that
13:48
goes over you with a hole in it so i'm gonna have to get some uh weather gear some gore-tex stuff or
13:54
or worst case just some of that yellow roadside worker stuff from the hardware store probably
14:00
gonna need that more in the future because getting cold at night while getting wet at night
14:04
is probably gonna end up getting pretty cold from now on so yeah i might need to think about that
14:13
so the most of that squall has passed now which is good the rain stopped there's still a bit of wind
14:19
from that direction i think there's probably more squalls rolling through there's definitely one up
14:24
in front but i can't imagine it's coming this way when the other one just came from this way
14:31
the reason i'll show you on the maps why i want to have a reasonably clear entrance see i've got
14:36
to uh come in between these these little um reefs here so it's not a super straightforward entrance
14:47
and it's only four meters deep so i i don't want to have you know dealing with 30 knots of wind
14:52
and and bad visibility and all that sort of stuff while i'm coming into there so that was my reason
14:58
for slowing down and it worked out quite good you just um especially because i'm by myself
15:03
normally you know if murray was here she'd be up front standing on the dinghy looking out so i'm
15:08
by myself i've got to be a bit more cautious and uh just you know play everything in the best odds
15:14
that i can get you know and if you're partially blind and getting blown around the boat's not
15:19
reacting as it should because of wind and currents i don't know what the current's going to be like
15:24
you just don't really want that so you're rather off to stay out here in deeper water
15:28
and um arrive there when it's when it's calmed down and i think that's going to work out
15:34
pretty good the visibility around here is pretty good now and i should
15:38
yeah it should be another 20 minutes and i'll be in there
16:01
time to drop the sails now before i get into the roof pull up into the wind
16:11
still looks like another score coming over there but hopefully i'll be invited
16:22
huh
16:58
see it's very black over that way i can't imagine that one's gonna come here maybe
17:04
you can see in the distance there the lighthouse it's a white speck on the top of that hill that's
17:09
not actually cape york this is a little island cape york is this knob that way
17:25
all right we're sort of in the middle of the bay we've got four and a half meters
17:29
of water as you can see it's very black very stormy looking but relatively calm
17:35
i think this looks like a pretty good place to throw the anchor down so i'm gonna do just that
17:55
uh
18:06
all right we'll ink it up pretty dark looking here pretty dismal and desolate to be honest it's um
18:15
just pull this hell in tight yeah it's funny this sort of seems to me that it's the top of
18:20
australia and all that and i can see a little can of rocks that people have piled up and i think on
18:25
the rock the very last rock there's a pole or the sign maybe i'm a bit far away so tomorrow morning
18:31
i'll um i'm going to sail through that little gap there and i'll probably see it better but uh
18:36
yeah i don't know it's just a long long way away and very uh remote i guess sort
18:41
of expecting some other stuff here like a a big tower or something but pretty cool
18:47
but uh yeah anyway thanks for watching uh yeah and obviously thanks to your patrons and paypal
18:55
the wallet's already taken a hammering here and thursday island clearing in here um i bought a new
19:01
e-perp today and some flares because everything on the boat's out of date basically and if i get
19:05
caught by the sea ocean police or whatever they're called here in australia they'll have a field
19:10
day so at least i've got a epa flares and a horn like a air powered horn so today so those things
19:16
are ticked off yeah that's 500 bucks gone so yeah anyway thanks for all the support guys you guys
19:22
make a big difference to how we can do this and it makes us feel way better about spending this
19:27
much time and effort making all these videos see you tomorrow probably anyway bye bye till then
19:41
you