June 24-26
Hi All,
We arrived safely at the Two Island anchorage on Marchinbar Island in the Wessel Island Group around 9am Sunday am. It was a 43 hour, 2 night, 336nm passage. It was probably our roughest passage this season, but having said that it was an overall ok passage.
We left Horn Island after getting 185 gal of fuel and headed out the Hammond Passage between Horn and Thursday Islands. Kathy had done her homework and we knew we would have an outgoing current….oh yeah……we went the fastest Mystic has ever gone…..13.9 kts…..”she’s going to break up Captain” was our first thought:))))) We had a 6 kt favorable current and Mystic did great. In fact we had the current for about 20nm as it gradually subsided!!!!
After about 6 hours with very nice conditions….winds and seas pretty calm…..the wind started to build and eventually was 20-25G29kts……and the seas built to 6-8′ with maybe an occasional 10′ in there…..whoa…..all was behind us but the waves had a very short period so those big 10′ ones definitely had Mystic doing the corkscrew motion…..not too comfortable…..had many 20 deg rolls and a few 30 deg rolls……we could move around but you needed to hold onto to something.
After about 15 hours the wind and seas started to calm over the next 8 hours and then the remaining 14 hours the conditions were 12-18kts and seas back to the 2-5′ level so a nice ride indeed!!!
It is nice to have that passage behind us. We got a taste of the nasties in the Gulf of Carpentaria and that is all we wanted. We’ve had friends caught in 30+ kts and 30+ deg rolls were the norm…..yikes!!!
We were the only boat in the anchorage…..which was nice protected spot….sort of like a big sand dune covered with scrub brush. The anchorage was protected from the ocean but not the wind so we had 15-20 kts blowing on us most of the time…..there was a slight chop but no motion on Mystic……yeah. Kathy was looking forward to some beachcombing the next day but as you will read below Mr Weather had different plans.
After our celebratory Blood Mary’s and a nap we cleaned the watermaker membranes…..joy…..not. We cleaned with the alkaline solution thinking the membranes were fouled with some biological growth. This is a laborious process as you need to heat the solution to 120 deg F. Of course, 4 gallons is in the system so you have to cycle the unit and heat up the solution one pan at a time…..it takes a good 2-3 hours of filling a 1 quart pan periodically and heating the solution.
We let the system soak overnight and started up this morning. Good news, the ppm came down from 325 ppm to 215 ppm so the membranes were a little dirty, but bad news, the pressure stayed the same and the capacity is down from 28.5 to 26.5 gph…..arghhhhhh. So, it helped but not the issue. We will probably clean the membranes again but with the acid solution and go from there.
We thought we were going to stay in the Wessel Islands for several days to wait out the big blow but looking at the new weather data it seemed today, Monday, June 27 was still a decent window and then from Tuesday-Friday the big blow of 20-30kts with big seas. That 15 hour period we had of the same conditions in the Carpentaria Gulf was pretty rolly for us and not something we wanted to repeat. So we decided to do another overnighter to Malay Bay which is on the Coburg Peninsula. It is a run of 235nm and will take us about 29 hours. We will stay 2 nights in Malay Bay then go up the Bowen Strait (between Coker and Coburg) to Port Essington on Thursday (about a 60nm run) and stay 2 nights. We hope all that will be somewhat wind protected.
We then will leave Saturday afternoon for the 140nm run to Darwin getting in Sunday am, July 3rd. I wrote the marina to see if the lockmaster, fuel station and pest clearance guys work on Sunday……I haven’t heard back from them yet. If they are not open we will not leave until Sunday pm. We are still trying to figure out all the tides/currents around Cape Don and Van Dieman as we have read where they can be up to 6 kts….yikes!!!
The tides at Darwin are in the 20-30′ range…..yes, 30 feet. Consequently, you have to go through a lock to get to the marina. They’ve had issues with some foreign parasites so you have to get a pest clearance in order to enter. For us, divers will inspect our bottom and then put in a soapy solution in our “pipes”……our engine thru hull hoses and let sit over night. We will also get fuel at the same time……getting fuel now allows us to submit documents to get the tax refunded……which in our case is worth some bucks!!!!
So you there you go……our plan written in sand at low tide:))))
Hope all is well!!
John
Mystic Moon
GO MYSTIC GO!!!