Archive for May, 2009

Thank You!

Reading about the next leg in Paul Caffyn’s book…

Sunset over the Gulf of Carpentaria

 

 Carpentaria Seafaris

————————————-

Halfway trip holiday

 

I’ll be back in Darwin on Saturday night, 30th.

After another day, Sunday, of getting my gear organized and having done some food shopping, I’ll be back on the water for the beautiful and challenging Kimberley’s leg to Broome on Monday, 1st of June! 

::eMDee:: alias Mark Hoffmann and drummer Lukas Bendel, in action

 

I finished my blogging work and gear checks at 3.30pm, ready to be taken to town by Greg for the last three chores – post office, Telstra shop, Camera shop…thanks for your patience for taking me around!

He took me on a short touristic drive as well, until we hooked up at 6ish with Bob and Helen at the Mindil Beach Sunset Market.

Helen, Greg, Bob and Mike greeting me at 7.30am with a late birthday present

 

I was easily landing on a shallow, flat sandy beach. It was about two hours after high tide, and about 70 m of beach exposed already! This is a tidal range of 8 m…well, it will be 12 meters at some point in the Kimberleys…

not too much of a flattering self portrait at 3am…

 

(continued from the previous entry…)

The uninviting beach made me checking the tide situation again. At 5pm it was less than three hours ebb tide left for Clarence Strait, but the Vernon Islands were only 20 km away.

A water buffalo, grazing peacefully in the forest close to the beach

 

I was waking at 4am that morning, thinking about daring to leave this wild animal’s campsite already at a higher tide than it would be later, going more with the ebb. I would have to drag my boat quite a bit to the water 3 hrs later, but I rather grabbed my laptop and pre-wrote my blog entries, until the memory is tsill fresh.

 

 

For the crossing of Dundas Strait I was very much tempted to „take it as it comes“ – means not to care about the tides and launching simply on first daylight as usual. I’m not too good on shifting my biorhythm, rather push a bit well rested against tide or wind than getting not enough sleep.

 

 

This was supposed to be a short paddle heading to Cape Don from Smith Point (picture), only 50 km planned.

 

I was crossing from point to point, floating over the beautiful big surrounding reefs of Araru Point and Lingi Point.

I left the friendly, very civilized pearl farm early morning 7am.

 

Thanks to Bear and crew for hosting me!!!

 

The guys went out on a boat to do the pearling job, and I took some pictures.

 

 

Plenty of lines with the shell cages hanging down were visible in the whole bay – what a job to pull them all up one after another either to harvest the pearls or to insert a new core or just to check on them…