Cooktown to Gove

After leaving Cooktown we headed out to Lizard island and it turned out to be the same as the promotional brouchers, the water was pure aqua with an abundance of wildlife and huge colourfull clams, we stayed for 3 days and enjoyed being tourists.
When we left Lizard we decided to make some serious miles and after a few nights anchoring in diffent bays we came into Portland Roads, this place has the first bit of civilisation for hundreds of miles, the houses here have to generate there own power and they have at least 1 boat per family the other thing they have is a common gene all the fellows we came across had teeth that a Hippo would be proud of..
Our next destination was the Escape River and one thing not shown on any chart is the pearl bouys, these prop stopping things are everywhere luckily we came in when it was light to do this anchorage at night would be a disaster, once at anchor Tess spotted 3 crocs on the bank just in front of us, after a while the bloke who owned the pearl buoys came along and introduced hjimself and asked that we not touch his gear and to stay out of the water, needless to say there was no way anyone would get in the water with the crocs laying on the bank waiting to chew on a homosapien leg.
Tess refused to stay out on the deck as she reckoned the crocs would jump up in the middle of the night and try to eat her.... crikey she has a vivid imagination.
The next morning we set off for the pointy end (Cape York) by this time we had the company of Cognac and Golden Legend, as we approached the Cape I decided to take the short cut past the Cape and we passed by some 30 metres it was very exciting to say the least. Cognac followed us and made it as well.
We anchored up and dingyed back to stand on the tip as 6 billion others have done we took some photo's and went back to continue on to Seisia which is a very remote small town on the northwest of the Cape. We stayed here for a few days to fuel up and get water plus groceries, the cost of fuel here was ridiculous $1.95 a litre and that was at a service station half a K from the shore, the good old bike and trailer was deployed for the task and after 6 trips to the servo then back to the shore then out to the boat in the dingy we had full tanks.
The next thing to do was to go across the Gulf of Carpenteria to Gove this was 348 miles from Seisia, needless to say we were watching the weather along with Cognac and Golden Legend, we decided to leave on Saturday 29th May as the weather was looking good at 10 to 15 knots for the next 3 days, we all motorsailed most of the day as the breeze was light, of course when we were all out some 60 miles the weather report changed to a strong wind warning for the south Gulf waters not expected to affect the northern waters. that turned out to be bullshit, at 2 am. Sunday morning a shower front came across and the fun started, Tess was ok for about 3 hours then the storm in her midrift erupted into the bucket, I tried to keep Nightmoves on the gentlest track as Tessies face colour was vanishing fast from pink to grey, this was to be the start of things to come for the next 36 hours, the sea was unreadable with no set direction, we would be surfing along a wave and then get slammed by a rouge wave head on dropping our speed by 3-4 knots. Some of the waves were 4 metres and very steep so much so that the starboard hull would drop into thin air until reaching the trough of the wave, and this is in the pitch blackness of the night, we all became seperated during the night and we stayed that way untill we reached Gove, Tess did very well not to jump overboard she was so crook I was sure she wanted to get off.
Gove is a great place and we have been partying with Cognac and Golden Legend for the last few days, we are all leaving Sat 5th June for Darwin which is 450 odd miles away. We will be doing day trips all the way and it will be a lot of fun, we think it may take 12 days to get there weather dependant of course, again we will not have any internet untill we get to Darwin so it will be a few weeks until the next blog.
One thing that has become invaluable is the Satalite Phone I ring my son Harding for weather reports when in the middle of nowhere and he relays the report to me and I pass it on to the other boats it works well, ok all for now,
Cheers R&T.

Darwin, Australia