At 08:30 I was rudely woken by the True North tender racing
past at high speed. It was a nice (overdue) sleep in, but it was nearly time to
get up anyway as I calculated high tide to be around 09:30 and we wanted to
ride the ebb tide out of the river.
We packed up things, had breakfast and got ready to leave
just as the True North tender sped past again. The mother ship was anchored a
few miles upstream but it’s AIS was shielded by the canyon walls and we
couldn’t see them and didn’t know they were there.
We departed just before high tide and made our way out of
the Prince Regent river on the long journey back out into the ocean where we
plan on heading north towards Careening Bay where in 1820, Phillip Parker King
carved the name of his ship “HMC Mermaid 1820” into a boab tree while they were
repairing their leaking boat.
Today is very hot with hardly any breeze at all and I am
very concerned about our dwindling fuel supply having to motor everywhere we
go.
As we entered the narrow sections around strong tide point
and whirlpool point, we reached a maximum speed over ground of 12.3 knots, not
bad considering we would normally be traveling around 5 knots.
As we exited the Prince Regent River approach and entered
the ocean a nice fifteen knot wind sprung up and finally, I was able to raise
the sails and switch of the engine and sail for a while saving our last
precious diesel.
I managed to sail all the way to Careening bay where I
dropped anchor around 16:30 and I went ashore in the dingy to go check out the
Mermaid tree.
Careening Bay
I have always wanted to come here and see this tree as it is
so unique in Australian history, but some dickhead in the government came up
with this bloody great idea to install a steel boardwalk around it to stop all
the tourists from compacting the dirt around the roots, so now you can’t take a
photo of this iconic tree without this great steel monstrosity getting in the
photo.
Well done mate, you bloody wanker.
Everyone steps off it and walks up to touch the tree anyway,
because it’s thousands of miles in the middle of nowhere and who the hell is
going to know anyway?
Great idea mate, go to the top of the grade, you get the
gold star for stupidity.
It was pretty amazing to see just the same, two hundred
years after it was carved. The sun was just about to go down and I didn’t want
to stay in Careening Bay for the night as it is a very rolly anchorage with
little protection, so I pulled anchor and headed to Ivy Cove as fast as I
could, just five miles away.
We rolled into Ivy bay after dark using radar and there was
another catamaran already there, so we parked up next to them just out of the
strong tidal stream.
Track Sirocco’s
progress
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