We arrived in Palm Bay off Croker Island at 2am on the 30th of August. This may sound horrendous to you but we were now used to being up late at night to run our watches at ridiculous times. In fact we were looking forward to the sleep in ahead of us!

Much to her horror, our farm girl Sandie has had an impressive knack of sleeping through the anchor drop even though her bunk is closest to the bow. Sandie has managed to do this a few times now, this morning was no exception as she snoozed her way through the commotion. Being a farmer, Sandie is used to getting up at stupid times in the morning, so I like to think that maybe she’s just catching up on some long lost sleep! She assures me that even if a cow moos in the wrong direction at home she’ll be straight out of bed! I’m now tempted to moo in her ear next time she needs to be up for her watch.

As we set off for Lizard Bay to spy the National Park from a distance(we were unable to get a permit to go ashore), I decided to crack the whip and give my crew some gybing practise. We started off with gybing the yankee and moving the runners working out a system where everyone knew what job they were doing it. Then naturally as everyone had come to grips with their job, I moved them around to a different job. As I said, I was cracking the whip! With talks of a race with Silver Fern happening later in the afternoon I didn’t want to leave anything to chance!

I then outsourced my job to Sally and got her to take the crew through setting up our preventer line. Sally’s a quick learner and I’m sure she’ll be running the boat in no time!

Motoring into Lizard Bay we discovered our journey would be cut a little short as we noticed a pearl farm strung across most of the entrance to the Bay. With this not shown on any of our charts we were happy that we hadn’t tried to anchor here the previous night which was our original plan.

As we motored out of the Bay we got ready for our race! With Silver Fern assuring us they were only using their staysail we decided to use our much bigger yankee, taking the advantage where we could. In the 21knot breeze we figured maybe they were wanting to play it safe. It wasn’t going to be much of a race at this rate! As we steamed ahead to our first waypoint we looked behind to see the Fern hoisting their main sail! Sneaky! We quickly got onto hoisting our mizzen to keep our own speed up. With this manoeuvre taking us slightly off course, we were now neck and neck. This is where our gybing practice from the morning came in handy. My crew were poised and ready to make it the quickest gybe you’ve ever seen. As we were the windward boat at this point we had to slow down a little to let Silver Fern in front. Now was our chance! We threw in a quick gybe leaving the Fern to try and catch up for the rest of the leg. They succeeded in making us nervous a few times but never quite managed to catch us. We deployed our staysail as we headed closer to the wind and managed to pull away a little more for a convincing lead at the finish! Woooohoooo the victory was ours! And the 3 times frozen then thawed cake that no one was brave enough to eat.

Contestant number 4 to enter into Fridge Roulette, was Karen today. As she tried to get ahead of the game by boiling the potatoes for dinner and sticking them in the fridge. The fridge had other plans for Karen. As she tried to shove the potatoes into the drinks/leftovers fridge, the fridge may have recognised that the potatoes were neither of these things, deciding to spew the potatoes back out plus a few cokes and ginger ales. This would help with drinks roulette later on. Score……Fridge 5, Karen 5.

We spent the early evening at anchor for dinner on near-glassy water with a burnt-orange sunset backdrop and near-full moon rise, and were set to leave around 9pm to make it through our first tidal gate around Cape Don. With tide ripping up to 4 knots around this area we had to time it right otherwise it would be a slow ride to Darwin!

Cape Don Lighthouse sits atop the cliffs at the western tip of Cobourg Peninsula, its bright rotating light warning seafarers of the wide-reaching reef below and wild washing-machine conditions due to converging tides and currents. Around 2am we approached the mob of purple waves on the nav chart with mild intrepedation. These purple waves symbolised potential breaking waves due to the tidal rips between Cape Don and Melville Island, however we sailed smoothly through due to the meticulous planning of Skipper Phil. Cape Don lighthouse, with its three former lighthouse keeper cottages, was the centre-piece of Cape Don Fishing Lodge which Karen informed us was at its hey-day around 20 years ago.

We continued to motor through the calm moon-lit waters, quietly enjoying the fact that the wind had dropped off and fridge-roulette was off the entertainment schedule - for the time being!

Catch you next time,

Jess :)

Cape Don info fully credited to Karen. Thanks Karen!