Cape Talbot. We’ve had to wait out a strong wind warning
here for a few days. The anchorage is
not bad…
We are tucked in really close to the beach so we only have to
deal with the wind. There’s little wave
and no swell.
The beach is good for scrounge by
the Mustang
. She’s added about another kilo or two of
collectables.
Been catching heaps of these …
… They are like blowies along the beach and have caught the odd one of these…
… trolling using a mini 2 deadly lure near the weed banks on either side
of the anchorage at dusk.
The wind has blown so hard that it
broke a blade off the wind generator…
… luckily there was a spare on
board. I only managed to drop one nut in
the water during the repair. Had a
replacement handy so back up and running that afternoon. Haven’t had to run the engine while we’ve
been here. The solar panels and wind gen
have done the job (thankfully) saving us a bit of fuel.
The wind drops off at sunset each
day for a while so we get to kick back at sundown…
… and check out the full
moonrise…
On the last morning we had a
visitor at dawn.
… About three
meters long and was having a chew on our anchor rope float. The Mustang had a bit of slingshot practice. He got tired of being shot at so he left and
went up to the beach and waited by the driftwood tree stump I had used the
previous night for filleting a fish… Hmm…
not going ashore while he’s so close.
12th August 2014 –Cape Talbot to Governor Islands
13° 56.658S 126° 42.030E
Gave up waiting for the wind
warning to clear so came over here this afternoon when the wind dropped down to
20 knots. Lots of bad British accents
and “Thanks Guv’” all the way here…
13th August 2014 –Governor Islands to Mission Bay
14° 6.426S 126° 42.852E
It was blowing 30 knots this
morning and we started dragging anchor at Gov’na Islands so we headed over
here. Of course by the time we pounded
our way here against the wind the breeze dropped, but not till we had dropped
anchor.
… This is the anchorage where we went for on shore to collect some
bait. The water is really clear here, it
makes it really easy for the sharks to see our bait …
... and they are getting smaller in these bays...
We spent the afternoon catching up
on some boat jobs…
The Mustang got rid of the salt build up and I found
I had a spare one of these…
… which has been leaking since I got the boat. Who would of guessed?
We went for a walked up Beauty
Point to where we spotted a marker. It
turned out to be an avgas drum with a cairn on top that someone had put up
there. There are about half a dozen
empty drums up there – can’t figure out why someone would go to the trouble of
dragging them up there.
Beauty Point
Not Beauty Point
Our LP gas usage has been a bit
more this year. We only have enough for
2 to 3 weeks left at the rate we have been using it. The baking is the reason…
… I hope we
can get some more at Kalumburu.
We have started trying to beach
cook a bit more …
… which suits the
Pyro but I can’t imagine not being able to boil water for our morning cuppas…
Trolled up a couple of new
species…
Stripey Seaperch and ...
PaddleTail (Red) Snapper. Both a bit small but of interest.
This is the entrance marker for the creek at
Pago – note this is for the creek, not the entrance to the path for the old
mission…
The fresh water creek that the ruins sit
beside.
Just West of this is the landing
for a walk to the Pago Mission ruins. There’s
a large gap in the mangroves to mark the spot to go ashore. We went before low tide, so we had to anchor
quite away out and walk in.
The driveway entrance feature includes Avgas
drum and VB cans. Buffy shows her
appreciation…
On the way there is a community
phone…
…It’s free to call
Australian land lines. How many people
do we know that have a landline? Only one.
… Found it. Probably the first time we have gone on one
of these jaunts and actually found what we were looking for where we expected
to find it
…well, well,
well…
The old oven complete with
rusty barrow.
… Camping fees or fine?
Buffy the Barra Slayer was covered
in burrs by the time we got back to the boat. A clean up turned into a hair
cut…
…I don’t think she minded…
The end result however was not
what she expected…. She looks
like a Gremlin that’s been fed after midnight.
Never mind…There is only two weeks between a bad haircut...
15th August 2014 –Mission Bay to Honeymoon Bay 14° 6.061S
126° 40.896E
… Honeymoon Bay anchorage.
There is a pay phone here but, the bad news is there may not be gas
available. The water is not that bad for
bore water so we have done some washing and used their amenities…
… A nice relaxed bunch of campers, lots of
really friendly and helpful people.
We’ve been offered lifts into Kalumburu next week with the school run.
The guys even drop off fish for us
on the way back in…
… Fresh fish home delivered.
22nd August 2014 Honeymoon Bay
We were going to make our second trip
into Kalumburu to collect medications that have been flown in for us and to top
up with fresh vegies, but the Mission nurse came out to camp last night and dropped
off the drugs, so we didn’t need to collect those any more. However, we did still want to get some more
vegies, so I went into town with the blokes who were going in to get some fuel.
Unfortunately there is definitely
no gas available either here or at Kalumburu but we were able to convince one
of the campers here who was leaving to swap his half-filled gas bottle for our
empty one. They’ll refill the empty at
Drysdale when they stop for the night there.
If we are careful we will be able to make it through with what we have
now. We now also have a kettle that we picked up at Kalumburu shop for $30 …
… that we can use when the motor is running. At least we can have our morning cuppa now without
having to go ashore to boil water. No
one has died without smoking in the last months but there would be mutiny
without tea or coffee. It will just be better to do more cooking
onshore. It has been colder of the
mornings lately…
.
We have gone and got our own fish
as well…
Anyone know what this is?
Two at once.
The Mustang adds another
species to her list of catches.
We have really enjoyed the
anchorage here and have had dinner most nights with like-minded campers. We gave away our muffin mixes so that we
wouldn’t be tempted to use up our gas.
They cooked them for us and served them up complete with whipped cream…
Saturday 23rd August 2014 – Honeymoon Bay still
Saturday 23rd August 2014 – Honeymoon Bay still
Had a quiet day today, not much
happening.
The Mustang spent $40 on the Community
phone card to ring the kids this morning to make sure everyone is still alive,
then came back to the boat and changed the fuel in Merv. We ran some methylated spirit through the
tank to clear out the blockage he was suffering from and he ran fine, but then
we put some more fuel back in and stuffed it up again. We’ve thrown out the bad batch of fuel now, but he still runs
rough as guts for the first hour or so until he gets well warmed up, so we’ll
have to see if we can get some more metho somewhere so we can run it through
again. The kiwis camped on the beach
here went to town and got us some fresh fuel yesterday (thanks guys!).
We've been adopted by the travelling families at the camp and I was talked into being a Grandad today –
took one of the young blokes out to fish for some squid. Cheeky bugger caught all of them
himself. Maybe I should ask for some
lessons….
Went back ashore late this
afternoon to have dinner with the families who have been giving us a lift into
Kalumburu tonight. Lots of rum later – a
good time was had by all!
Sunday 24th August 2014
– Honeymoon Bay... still...still...
Went out fishing this morning but I
only managed to catch a couple of ugly baby cod (the Mustang reckons I caught
the same one twice) while the Mustang caught a mackerel that we’ll use for bait
somewhere. It’s too small to bother
filleting. Our mates that drive us into
town came out to Charisma for a visit this afternoon and had a coffee with
us. Wanted to see how the other half
live. I reckon we’ve given them some
ideas about how they can keep travelling for a while (really folks, anyone can
do this!). Going to try to bake some
bread tonight on the fire. We don’t have
a proper camp oven, but we’ll see how we go using our big crab pot. Its got a glass lid, so we’ll put coals
around it but not on top. Should still
work a bit like an oven right?
We will post this on Monday for our last visit to town. We've made pretty slow progress but that's cruising. We will head a little further west before heading back to Darwin next month...
