Darwin stopover - Christmas day departure

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 problem we had was we had something wrapped round the starboard prop, Again! So I made some phone calls only to find out that all the divers in Darwin had finished work for Christmas. I got hold of one “lucky” guy who said he could do it that afternoon or after the 7th Jan. But he would need to call a couple of guys in from their holidays. Cash price AUS$2,000!! OMG! no choice so had to pay. Turned out to be one of those big woven plastic bags and took him about 20mins. Not bad money if you can get it.

Christmas Eve and we finally get the clearance from ABF to be able to leave so it was on with the job list.
Change fan belts on both engines, empty the Racor water separators and check filters, replace the fuel polisher filter, tighten anchor hydraulic lines as they have been leaking and top up the hydraulic fluid for the PTO that runs the anchor winch and also the bow/stern thrusters, dump all the spare fuel that is left on deck into the main tanks, move the 6 blue drums from the bow that are now empty, put them on the aft deck upstairs and once that was all done have a shower and off to ashore to the boat club for a nice early dinner. There was a "Cyclone Tracy” reunion club having their annual gathering. It’s been 50yrs since “Tracy” left devastation in her wake on Christmas day 1974 with highest recoded wind speed of 135mph.

Christmas day morning sees heading to the fuel dock for the top up of tanks. 2hrs, 4,500lts and many thousands of Aus $’s later we were done and cast off for our next leg to Cairns (possibly/probably?) for the next top up of fuel.

According to the forecast weather looking really good for this leg so it should only take about 6 days to get to Cairns - we shall see……

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