RTW Leg 22: Australia to Indonesia

We arrived at Mackay at 1am. Utterly exhausted from lumpy seas and very little sleep. We had to moor at the quarantine pontoon and await till the next day for all the clearing and checking to be done. Once competed, we moved to our allocated berth on another pontoon.

Marinas don’t like Broadsword and the feeling is pretty much mutual. If you are going in and out of your berth every day, you get used to it and understand the wind and the routes you need to take. The big challenge we find is that after many days out at sea, to come in to a new marina, completely different from the last the stress levels are high not knowing what to expect. Typically, the beautiful calm water that we experienced during the morning decided to whip it up just as we came into the berth. 1st mate leapt across the expanse of water to get to the pontoon and because the land legs didn’t quite kick in, it all went a bit messy. At 7am in the morning most people are fast asleep but because of the swearing and general cuffuffle of the crew, we are were waking up most of the marina. Suddenly from the next-door boat a vision in his shorts and socks jumped to the 1st mates assistance followed swiftly by his wife. Al, Debs and Sherbert (their dog!) are my heroes. As well as assisting with our lines, their words were calming and kind… “Welcome to Australia, when you’re a bit settled, come and have a cup of tea.” The 1st Mate nearly burst into tears with gratitude. We couldn’t have asked for a better welcome.

Starlink installed on our custom banana bracket. Other antennas from left to right: GPS, WiFi, Iridium satellite.

When you get to a new marina in a different country, sometimes you have had to have orders for parts delivered to the marina offices for your arrival. Great excitement is to be had when picking up various packages. However, this time it was different. We have gone to the dark side……yes, beam me up Scotty, Starlink has arrived. We commissioned a fabricator to make a new stainless steel bracket to mount it and then the Captain ran the cable through all the dark tiny corners of the boat to connect it all up. It is impossible to describe how amazing it is to have a phone call with family or work and be 300 miles from land. Gone are the days when we had very no contact with anyone whilst on passage and of arriving at a destination, scrambling to buy a local sim card and then dealing with the stock piled emails and whatsapp messages. Thank you, Elon Musk!

Stripping the water maker down and replacing a damaged membrane.

During the next few days, we busied ourselves with the usual tasks. Maintenance and repairs, cleaning and laundry and the all important reprovisioning. Perhaps, the most important bit of kit waiting for us was a new membrane for our water maker shipped from Spain. The Captain out did himself in stripping the whole unit down and putting it all back together again and remarkably got it to working again. For someone who was rarely trusted with a fuse change, he's doing ok!

Endless maintenance: This time stripping, cleaning and re greasing the anchor windlass (anyone recognise the cloth?)

We were on a short timescale so we organised a day trip to a wildlife park hiring the marina rent a dent car. The 1st mate loves wombats! And whilst you aren’t allowed to actually hold a wombat. I got up close and personal with Stella. Stella was beautiful but very hormonal and it was advised that there should be no quick movements in her presence. A bit like the 1st mate, actually! Then there were the crocodiles, lizards, kangaroos, koalas. It was a fantastic and very educational. Did you know that wombats do square poos?!

Lucy in love

What is it Skippy? There's a little boy stuck down a well? Lets go rescue skip.

After this first immersive introduction to Australia, we set off for Cairns, stopping of at the Whitsunday Islands on the way. Beautiful waters but dangerous swimming. If you manage to dodge the salt water crocs, then you’ll be eaten by a shark and if by luck you escape them, the box jelly will kill you. We bought stinger suits and shark banz, and so equipped plucked up courage to do a single lap of the boat. The most expensive and least enjoyable swim of our lives.

Lachlan Murdoch in Cairns on his yacht Istros. Lucy could not be separated from the binos, spotting dad joining him for a sundowner on deck.

Cairns was a bit more cosmopolitan and scarily busy. We organised a dive on The Great Barrier Reef which was on huge dive boat of over 80 people. It all felt like a bit of a conveyor belt, but interesting all the same.

A huge Banyan Tree. A bird will have eaten a fig seed, then pooped it in flight. By chance the seed lands in a host tree and 500 years later, this is what you get: The Cathedral Fig tree.

The crew were getting a bit cabin fever and felt it would be nice to go away for a night in a AirBnB. We went to the Danbulla Forrest Reserve in The Tablelands where we parked up and walked to some crater like water holes in the tropical rain forest. Thirty minutes later we got back to the car only to discover we were covered in leeches. A lot of jumping around and screeching from the 1st mate alerted the other family who had been on the walk with us. The sight of the crew checking each other and screaming "get it off me" had them running around checking each other with rivers of blood flowing from the wounds.

An old railway station hotel was a fabulous time capsule with a lovely busy community atmosphere in side.

We stayed in Yungaburra and went for supper in a fantastic pub, which looked like it was straight out of Crocodile Dundee and even had a pianola in the corner. The next day we had one last objective before heading back to the boat. To go and swim in a waterfall. But, not any old waterfall. It was the waterfall as featured in Peter Andre’s ‘Mysterious Girl’ music video. The 1st mate knows what you’re thinking. ‘How cool are you!’ Sadly, it was not actually like the music video. It was very murky after heavy rain. Neither of the crew had the six pack to compare to Peter’s and the swim was quick, due to the heightened fear of leaches and eels! But it’s box ticked.

Sadly, no mysterious girl on our visit

Back to the Broadsword and the next passage to Darwin was to be prepared for. Lordy it’s a long way to get anywhere in Australia and there was an ill wind in the air, which was not just down to the weather. We had set out on what the 1st mate thought would be a three-day passage with a few stops enroute. Sadly, the Captain decided we should just forge on through to Darwin which would ultimately make it nearly two weeks at sea.

We would stop off and put our anchor down on Mount Adolphus Island. Here we could grab a few hours sleep and then head off at first light. It was terrifying! Broadsword arrived well after sunset in a moonless night and the crew could see diddly squat when they entered the bay with the wind gusting up to 27 knots. The 1st mate was on the bow keeping watch, hanging on for dear life and getting the anchor ready to drop. A happy ‘figurehead’ she did not make. She was raging by the time the anchor was down and when boat was made safe she proceeded not to speak to the captain for a suitably sustained period of time. The next morning we set off to negotiate the Torres Straits into the Carpentaria Gulf to the Northern Territory. The Torres Straits have wicked tides running through and Captain spent an age on his calculations to get our timing right. More big winds were due in four days and it was a race to cross the gulf before they hit us and drop anchor in Temple Bay on the lee of the Wessel Islands.

Like buying eggs on the side of the road in the UK, in Ausieland, you can help you self to a bag of avos with an honesty box.

Thankfully the rest of the journey was uneventful, oh, apart from the fact that the wind then dropped in Van Diem Gulf, and we were on the engine and we were running out of fuel. Fanny Bay, Darwin eventually appeared on the horizon, and we were running on diesel fumes with paddles at the ready.

The crew were tired and cross, and Darwin is hot, hot, hot. To enter into the marina you have to go through a lock. We were told the procedure but not the whole thing and it resulted in a very heated discussion between the Lock- keeper and the Captain. A few hurtful insults were exchanged and the 1st mate burst into tears. We eventually got into our pontoon and expelled a huge sigh of relief and then went to the pub. It’s always 6pm somewhere in the world.

The few days in Darwin were used productively for the usual round of repairs. The bimini and sail lazy bag needed to be patched and stitched while the boom break had been bent out of shape and had to go to a metal shop. Our electrical control unit had given up the ghost and remarkably the Captain had managed to find someone to mail us a new one in time.

More repairs. This time a bent boom break

On Thursday 3rd August we left Australia. On leaving the marina we had the same Lock-keeper helping us through. The 1st mate was extremely nervous of a rematch but the captain showed great maturity and apologised ‘first.’ The Lock-keeper also apologised in return. So, they made up in the end and everyone was happy.

Always a painful exercise, refueling for the next passage. Broadsword's tank takes 625 liters.

Indonesia beckoned and our destination was Kupang, East Timor. A fairly nice passage of three days and a quite uneventful. Not another boat to be seen…. until our approach in the pitch dark and there were obstacles everywhere. Fish farms, tankers, larger fishing boats with bright LED lights for attracting the fish, small fishing boats with no lights at all. It was Sauchiehall Street busy and very nerve racking. The 1st mate was at the bow with torches to see and to be seen screaming ‘Port’, ‘Starboard’ above the noise of the wind and engine. All the while the little unlit fishing boats played chicken and kept dashing across our path in the dark. It was scary stuff. At last, weary and grateful we approached our bay in Kupang and dropped the anchor. We had arrived to the chaos of Indonesia and the Captain and 1st mate are, amazingly, still married!

An Indonesian sunset.

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