Gary's deliveries

We had a night at anchor when we arrived waiting for ABF to call us into the pontoon to clear into Australia. The call came and we were told to go alongside the pontoon for a 09:30 appointment with ABF and Biosecurity. The later took ALL our Chinese takeaway meals we had left over from Hong Kong and all the top up ones we bought in KK . I have only ever had the pork meals taken, but, no not Darwin they take ALL meat! Grrrrrrrr……. Then it came time for ABF. Well, we had 2 officers doing the clearing in paperwork with me, a sniffer dog going through the whole boat, THEN another 4 officers going through EVERYTHING for 45mins! OMG. Nearly 2hrs later and we were all done. Then at the end of all this the ABF officer give me a piece of paper that says “Restricted to Port”. There was 1 piece of paperwork missing for the importation of the boat into Aus so we were not free to leave Darwin till that was sorted and it was now the 23rd Dec and we wanted to leave on Christmas day, BUGGER. Another p...

Sunday 22nd Dec '24 Sun Dec 22 2024 13:27:00 GMT+0930 (Australian Central Standard Time) We have arrived! The picture shows what is the most expensive flag pole I have ever seen on a boat! The ships crane. When we arrived into KK I put the flag’s on the bow rail as we do not have a flag staff set up up high on the boat and it was the only place I could think of until I had a brain wave this morning! We have a very nice, shiny, expensive, crane that even extends and is also up high on the fly bridge aft deck . So I thought that would make a great flagstaff and get the flags way up high. It worked so I gave myself a big pat on the back for such a brilliant idea especially as it was still only 06:00! We arrived into Darwin and anchored in the Quarantine anchorage just before dark 18:00. Yah! Just have to wait for all 1 document from the import agent to arrive at ABF tomorrow morning and we can then go to the Quarantine pontoon outside Cullen Bay Marina where we will be met by ABF and ...

Well, everything calmed down overnight and we both had very relaxing watches. During today we have had no wind, 25-30kts of wind, calm seas, choppy seas and everything in between. We are finally on the downward slop to Darwin with only 250nm to go we “should” be in Darwin before midnight tomorrow, Sunday. Then the fun starts with the authorities. If we are lucky we will only have 2 or 3 ABF (Aussie Customs) come onboard, maybe 1 person from Health and 1 or 2 from Ag & Fisheries. Hopefully that should be it and it all goes smoothly… I saw a strange sight this afternoon just before i was going to call Darwin ABF to confirm arrival timing and where they want us to go, I spotted something floating in the calm water ahead of us. As we got closer it looked a bit suspicious. As you can imagine that spending so much time out here you get used to the way most things look so you notice things that look out of place. So I got the boats super effective stabilised binoculars out and had a look....

Yesterday, Thursday, turned out to be slightly different.   It was also pretty calm again, until, it wasn't!    I got up for my 06:00-12:00 watch and had to hold on moving around! The calm seas had gone and the squally weather had set in with 30kts gusts, 1-2m short chop, torrential rain and sheet lightning.  The waves  were on the beam so we are getting thrown around a bit and the boat was getting a salt water wash down, even the fly bridge!   With all the fuel off the bow yesterday, good timing, the boat is riding well and handling the conditions no problem, we just need to hold on walking round.  Can't really complain as we have had a decent run of good weather.  The seas did calm down a bit during the day, still from an uncomfortable angle but picked up again in the late afternoon/early evening.   The best news is we still haven't seen any fishermen, fantastic!

Not only did we have a really relaxing night, for the first time since leaving KK, due to lack of fishermen, we also had a big moon, calm sea and were lucky enough to have a stunning sunrise. The1st picture below was taken around 05:30 from the flybridge. What a way to start the day. The 2nd picture is of one of the many we will come across while transiting Indo and that is of a tug towing a very large barge. When Griff and I did the Selene we would come across these things with a mountain of sand, no AIS and no navigation lights. Maybe they have been told cause we have come across a couple so far and both had AIS we will see tonight if they also use their lights. The day turned into a productive day as we moved the fuel (picture 3 is of Kel looking after the suction end of the hose) from the forward boat tanks to the main aft tanks then refilled the forward tanks with the 2 x 1,000lts cubes we have on the aft deck. Then we transferred another 300lts out of the 6 x 200lt drums we have ...

It’s the early hours of Wednesday morning and I’m the 22:00-02:00 watch. We are still in the super highway current doing 10.5kts when all of a sudden there’s an almighty thud as if we were hit by a big wave but the seas are pretty calm. I suspect we just hit a log floating around. Will have to wait till daylight to see if there was any damage but the good news is that so far none of the 8 bilge pumps has been auto activated which is obvious a good sign. When daylight came I had a walk around to check as best I could to see if there was any obvious damage and to my relief I couldn’t see any. Now 02:30 on Thursday morning and we have had a busy Wednesday. In Indonesia they have a particular fishing method whereby they anchor what can only be described as a shed (see photo) on floats in waters 4-5km deep! Yes you read that right and apparently they use rope. OMG! Theres a story back in 2019 where an 18yr old Indo fisherman’s shed broke it’s mooring line and drifted for 49 days and thousan...