Day 12 Port Douglas-Bali
Woke up in a very hot boat and as the AC has been on all night that could mean only 1 thing, the AC unit has frozen up again. It seems every time the boat stops anywhere over night it does this. The fact that the temperature of the water in the marina is 31c may have something to do with it!
Turned the AC to dehumidify and in 5mins it's al cleared, back to AC mode and pumping out cold air again, phew.
Tea, breakfast, another tea and we were ready to get stuff done in time for our departure. David washed the boat down while I wrote yesterdays blog. Then it was down into the engine room which we have renamed the sauna, for some greasing of the shafts/variable pitching system. This was a 2 man job as the grease gun is a little damaged and needs 3 hands to operate properly. Job done, next get ride of the half bag of rubbish we had accumulated since yesterday, disconnect the power lead and water hose, start the engines, turn on the bow thruster and electronics make sure everything is working as it should - cast off. Into the lock, a quick trip down 2.5m doors open and out we pop straight to the quarantine dock to wait for ABF to show up.
We didn't have to wait too long before 2 guys arrived, asked a load of usual questions, lots of writing, signing and then they went through the boat checking to make sure we don't have anything we shouldn't. Once that was done they gave us the all clear, handed over the clearance certificate and off they trot. For those that don't know the clearance cert is what you need to get into the next country. If you don't have it you are in trouble and may be denied entry or worse still arrested. It's a simple but important piece of paper. Once I had it I took a photo and sent it to Ruth who is our agent in Bali who is arranging the clearing in process for us.
We left the dock at 11:30 and headed out of Darwin harbour into the open sea again for a 955nm trip that should take us 5 days arriving sometime on the Monday 23rd.
We have been motoring now for 8hrs and conditions have been pretty good, 10kts of wind just off the starboard bow with sea being less than a meter. Our speed has been ranging from 7 and 10kts obviously being effected by tide/current. Hopefully we will loose the effect of this the further out we get and should then average around 8kts.
About 50nm out a target popped up on the radar screen and then on the chart plotter. It said "Unmanned". This is one of the Australian Border Force's new unmanned sea drones that are helping to patrol and monitor the vast coastline up here at the top end, it can stay at sea for months and has all the usual boating navigation equipment, solar, radar, Starlink for comms back and forth to land, loads of cameras etc etc. We didn't get too close to it but close enough to make out the masts.
Would you believe we had a roast dinner tonight?! We bought a cooked pork joint including the crackling and david knocked up some roast potatoes and salad, hmmmmm!
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