South Goulburn Island to Valentia Island

Saturday - 27/10/2012

(One of the Sealink Barges delivering goods to South Goulburn Island)

 

Yesterday was a well earned rest day and after a nice fish dinner last night we had a good night's sleep but as always was up very early this morning and was up and away by first light. We did not expect any wind today going on the forecast in fact there is little wind for the next week so it looks like motoring or motor sailing if we are lucky.

Today's run is only about 40NMS and by leaving early we catch the tide. We motored out of the anchorage and the sea was like glass not a ripple and no wind we started seeing a lot of algae floating passed and at one time I saw a sea snake cream colour with bands a brown colour, it was swimming towards the back of the boat but did not make it thank heavens.

(Chart showing tack from South Goulburn to Valentia Island)

After a while a little breeze arrived so I put the headsail out to see if we could gain something out of it and we picked up near half a knot. Sailing in these waters one has to keep an eye on things continually as these water are not properly surveyed and depths on paper and electronic charts are a little different at times with the depths on the depth sounder  and at times disagree with each other. This also goes for the different electronic charts. I have found that my Garmin chart plotter shows more detail than the Raymarine chart plotter.

One of the sad things of this voyage is not being able to visit some of the islands due to the fact that we have not received permits from the Northern Lands Council, this makes it difficult to write about the island because we cannot go ashore and talk to anyone so we have to just copy what we find on the internet when we look up things for our own interest. A lot of these island have thriving communities that do and sell their art works through agents in Darwin, it would have been good to meet these people and see their work.

We went past De Courey Head and Cape Cockburn and changed course for Valentia Island where we anchored on the southern side, it is a well protected anchorage and has deep water nearly up to the beach we anchored a little off shore to keep away from the insects if we are lucky. We sailed 48 NMS with one engine one sail with an average speed of 6.1 knots. We tried to fish along the way and had one strike but as I was pulling it in the line went loose but the lure was still attached so I left it out without any luck until we were going in to anchor. When I finally pulled the line in I noticed that the lure had been badly and severely attacked, so I don't know what hit it and maybe I don't want to know.

(Anchorages at Valentea Island, we anchored at the SW anchorage and found it very good holding)

The days are certainly warmer now with around 35⁰C and about 82% humidity so we are staying in the shade quite a lot.

(Valencia Island  sunset)

We will leave again early in the morning for Port Essington where we hope to stay for a couple of days, we may as well as there is no wind for some time.