January 9, 2005 - Hamilton Island (The day we couldn't sail)

Well, we're out of here. Here's one last shot of us on the bridge of the Goldfinger. Gold fing-gaaaah... bup-bah BOWW! It was a great boat!

Later this afternoon we're taking a speedboat over to Hayman Island, where they have a world class hotel. So for Act IV, we'll have some world class pampering, which is good because we have a lot of bumps and bruises from the boat, and we haven't really slept.

Talk to you then! 

Forgot to mention: The rain and south wind have resulted in a "king tide" that has flooded the marina. There is also a cyclone out in the Pacific that's making things wacky. The posts holding up the floating docs were about 12 feet tall yesterday - today they're about 4 feet high. Here's the walkway to our boat, now underwater. They told us it's the highest tide in three years. Hopefully they'll be back to normal in a couple of days.  

Which reminds me: You think cockatoos are these beautiful exotic birds, but they're scumbag scavengers here. They hang out with seagulls and crows at the wharfs. Wendy say's they're like pigeons. When you're eating outside a cockatoo will come right up and snatch food out of your hand. And people at home pay hundreds of dollars for these? 

Which reminds me: I busted out the Chucks today. They symbolize how happy we were to be back on dry land after that rollercoaster boat trip today. It was difficult to decide which of my five pairs of Chucks to bring, but I decided on the white ones. I figured they would provide an ideal blank palette from which to collect the Aussie landscape.

Which reminds me: Yes, I rented a fishing rod and lure. And I made about 100 casts from all three anchorages, sometimes using crayfish and sometimes using the lure. And of course I caught ziggety dog donut. Although I did get nibbles and lost my bait about 6 or 7 times.

Of course we watched as some dimwit anchored about 100 feet away from us in Chance Bay caught a huge barramundi (i.e. 26 inches). Barramundi is on just about every seafood menu out here, a flavorful white fish. (But we had steak! Ha!)

Which reminds me: When they were showing us our boat on our first day in Hamilton, the guy asked us at the end if we have any more questions. I said yes, just one: how do you lock the cabin on the boat? There was no way to lock or even shut the door from the bridge to the galley. He just looked at me, shook his head and said, "No worries, mate - you're not in New York anymore." 

We were listening to the scids this morning and as we expected, there are 30-knot
winds and 2-3 meter swells from the south. We had to get the boat back and didn't want it to get any worse, so let's just say we had a memorable trip south from Cid Island back to Hamilton Island today. We couldn't raise the sails and had to motor straight into the waves.

We didn't leave until 10:30 or so, so at least it didn't rain on us. But it was very overcast and a pretty treacherous ride in the swells. This is a picture of the harbour before we left.

Well, that was sort of a dreary ending to an otherwise fantastic sailing trip. Days 1-3 were amazing, each one different. Day 4 (today) was a bit more adventurous than planned. Day 5 (tomorrow) we're spending on dry land, the Goldfinger safely back at Hamilton marina.

(They call Hamilton "Ham-o" on the radio. In fact, I've noticed in Australia everybody named Dave becomes Dave-o, Tom's are Tom-o, Bob's are Bob-o, etc.).