Category Archives: Passage

Time spent between destinations travelling on the water.

Thursday Island, Australia to Kupang, Indonesia — Day 1

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Yesterday, our first stop was fuel for Kosmos. We had an appointment at 09:00 and we filled up with duty free fuel at only AUS$1.11 per liter (~ $4/gal USD). Ouch. At least it was cheaper than filling up in Cairns by about 35 cents per liter. The fuel dock is made for taller boats and getting off of it was tricky. After we were done pumping, they told us to go and re-anchor and come back later to pay. We suppose that with 8 zillion customs boats and planes patrolling the area, they figured we couldn’t get too far away if we decided not to pay.

We re-anchored, paid, and then hopped the ferry to TI. Debbie and Jim were kind enough to let us use their internet again. The other day we had run off so fast after looking at the forecast that we hadn’t checked email, posted blogs, or done any of the other stuff we need to do on-line. While doing a little research on Indonesia, we realized that our intended first stop, Saumlaki, isn’t normally Continue reading →

Welcome to Horn Island, Torres Straits, Australia

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10′ 35S by 142′ 14E – Yes, we know. We said we were going to Thursday Island. Thursday Island is a small island in the middle of a group of islands. Horn Island is the next island over and has a better anchorage than Thursday Island, so we are anchoring at Horn. Kind of like when we went to Luganville but were anchored across the channel at Aore Island.

Yesterday, almost as soon as we finished writing the blog post saying the ride was good, it got worse. We are getting close to Continue reading →

Passage from Lizard Island to Thursday Island

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We went over to visit with Maria and Gary on Merlin. They were a wealth of information, telling us all the best places to go in Indonesia, Singapore, Malaysia and Thailand. While in Port Douglas we had picked up a cruising magazine with an article about Indonesia, and it turned out they are the authors. They have written a couple other articles for the magazine on Indonesia, as well. Guess we bumped into the right people!

The plan was to Continue reading →

Welcome to Lizard Island, Queensland, Australia

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We only had 18 hours left to go to Lizard Island, so we didn’t need to leave yesterday until the afternoon. We realized that in the small slip we could easily reach the rub rail and miscellaneous external metal pieces that can’t be reached in a full size spot, so Christi spent a couple of hours polishing the metal on the starboard side of the boat. We have to admit that we have been incredibly lazy about the metal and, until today, haven’t polished it ourselves once since we left home. In Fiji the people who waxed the boat also did the metal, but it was looking pretty bad again already. The areas that Christi did are sparkling and shiny, which makes the rest of the dull and partially rusted metal look that much worse.

We pulled out at about 13:30 (1:30 pm). The ride to Lizard Island was wonderful. The views were pretty, with mountains similar to Port Douglas along the coast most of the way up. There were lots of Continue reading →

Off to Lizard Island — But We Wound Up in Port Douglas, Instead

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It will take us about 24-hours to get to Lizard Island, so we headed out a little before noon, figuring noon was the ideal time of day to arrive at Lizard Island. The seas were incredibly calm and it was a nice ride.

Eric was constantly checking the shaft. The collar of the shaft was still running too hot. He started running water from the hose on it to cool it off and pulled out some of the stuffing material. It was still running too hot, so he kept the water on it. After a while, the water pump overheated and shut off. We slowed down, hoping that would help. It didn’t. The shaft seemed to be OK temperature wise, but it was making friction on the collar and the collar was just too hot. After being underway about 2 ½ hours, we decided Continue reading →