KatieKat 2001 Cruise Chapter Nine

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DATECONTENTSINTEREST
September 2001KatieKat 2001 Cruise Chapter Eight
12 October 2001 Port Douglas to Townsville
Family
15 October 2001 Signs in Townsville
Mixed
20 October 2001 Air Ducting
Yachties
22 October 2001 Another Missing Bicycle
Family
31 October 2001 Townsville to Gladstone
Family
November 2001KatieKat 2001 Cruise Chapter Ten

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Note change in chronological order from that shown on previous cruise pages: now, earliest is on top, so you read down continuously instead of going up for the successive date. - let me know if this is preferable (or not).
This is the ninth webpage of our cruise covering the year 2001. The purpose of the cruise webpages is to let family and friends know what is going on in our lives. The "Interest" column identifies the target audience, and is intended to spare you baby-picture slide-show agony. This is one long continuous page, and clicking on any of the underlined dates above should jump your screen to the appropriate section on this page (or you can use the scrollbar on the right to navigate up and down this page). Joe Siudzinski

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12 October, 2001 -- Port Douglas to Townsville

Sailed down to Townsville from Port Douglas, with a stopover at Dunk Island and Hinchinbrook again. Must say, Dunk is very pleasant if one ignores the daily tour boats - good anchorage and reasonable snorkeling, great hiking, daily newspapers, and includes cellphone and tv coverage. Hinchinbrook, two months since we last visited, now has mozzies and flies - definitely a bummer as we have no flyscreens. We stopped only overnight, then sailed down the Hinchinbrook Channel past the Lucinda pier. On to the Palm Islands, down to Magnetic Island, and into Townsville, where we've been for a week or so waiting for repair parts to arrive to fix (under warranty) a degraded computer display.

[NE Queensland Map] Port Douglas is slightly north of Cairns. Lizard Island (the furthest north we had travelled) is just north of Cape Flattery. Dunk Island is north of Hinchinbrook Island. Lucinda is just below Hinchinbrook. Photo of one of the maps in Alan Lucas' book "Cruising the Coral Coast".

[GPS Reading 33.2kts] Wish I could say what an exciting ride we were having! This GPS speed reading while at anchor makes one wonder what's going on...

[Dunk View] Dunk Island view from the hiking trail overlook which used to be a WWII radar station. KatieKat is behind Kathy.

[Kathy Dunk Rainforest] Dunk Island has its own rainforest. Note the natural buttresses supporting the tree.

[Kathy Hinchinbrook] The southern end of the Hinchinbrook Channel, looking out at Hinchinbrook Island. View from the mainland as we drove back up to Port Douglas from Townsville after Kathy's inland trip. Those mangrove swamps are filled with mozzies and flies!

[Joe Fly Killer] Fly's eye view of KillerJoe, armed with flyswatter and vacuum cleaner. Hundreds were massacred. Please stay off my boat!

[Lucinda Pier] The three-mile-long Lucinda sugar transport pier for loading deep-water ships. That circular object on the boat is the tv antenna - we've been glued to news programs for the last month, even when sailing. That webbing line running up to the shrouds is for attaching the safety harness tether.

[Smoking Palm Island] A bush fire on one of the Palm Islands as we motor past.

[Birthday Plate] [JoeKathyBruceLoretta Dinner Table]

My Birthday. Night out on the town being treated by fellow Seawind owners Bruce and Loretta Lewis.

[Tobruk Baths] [Tobruk Baths inside]

Located just 100 yards from the boat, this Olympic-sized (50m) swimming pool opens at 5:30 in the morning and provides us with much-needed exercise. Note that despite spending a year and a half in this climate I'm still not suntanned in this "Skin Cancer Capital of the World", and Kathy is totally pale.

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15 October, 2001 -- Signs in Townsville

[Bugs Painted on Lightpole] Townsville has great street art all over the place. Here, a plain old lightpole comes alive.

[Spider Float Menu] What is it with bugs, anyway? Amazing what's used to spice up ice cream sodas.

[Sign Changed Priority] Huh? I keep asking locals what that means, and the best response so far is that it's part of an old Australian tradition intended to confuse tourists. (They didn't know what it meant, either).

[Lane Marking on Divider] I've seen blue road lane marking occasionally, but straight across the divider...?

[Sign End Traffic Area] One Way, I understand, but why the other?

[Sign No Stopping] This is a normal sign seen all over the country. No, it has nothing to do with $, but simply states No Stopping.

[Sign McCafe] McDonalds is going after Starbucks, with elegant annexes part of the Golden Arches, notably located near up-market shopping malls.

[Sign Gentlemen Remove Hats] At the entrance to an RSL club.
Another cute sign I saw over a bar but forgot to photograph said "No Swearing Aloud".

[Sign Plate Smashing] In the window of a Greek restaurant. Sounds like fun. Let's see, back home we'd have protective goggles and clothing and have to sign a disclaimer...

[Sign Danger Electricity] Gotta watch out for that electricity! This reminds me of the scare tactics used here by unions airing television commercials showing people floating up to heaven after they tried to do their own electrical repairs.

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20 October, 2001 -- Air Ducting

Ordinarily, the Seawind is a very well-ventilated boat, especially when sitting at anchor; however, when sitting at the dock with ZERO wind and a temperature of 100degF and humidity to match, it was time to do something drastic. The forced-air ventilation system using a highly-efficient silent 4-inch computer fan and some clothes-dryer ducting worked wonderfully for the two really hot nights we had.

[Air Duct Inlet] [Air Duct Center] [Air Duct Outlet]

Nothing like Velcro to hold things up on carpeted surfaces. The air outlet right above one's head provides a continuous stream of fresh air and a smile to our faces - as demonstrated by Monkey. Note the added wire spice rack above the bed for books and glasses - works great and is completely unobtrusive.

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22 October, 2001 -- Another Missing Bicycle

Our second Dahon Mariner full-sized folding mountain bicycle disappeared on October 17! I had the bike upside-down on the dock next to the boat and had taken off the rear wheel because the hub had frozen - the wheel was in the shop, but the bicycle just vanished! At first I thought it might have fallen off the dock, but very careful dragging with a grappling iron failed to turn up anything. Still can't believe someone would have walked off with a one-wheeled bike! So now we have an extra wheel. Since bicycles have become our primary means of transportation, I quickly scrounged around and found an old used 10-speed for $A50 (US$25). The only good news in all this is that the new bike is lighter than the old one. (Sigh.)

[Bicycle on Deck] Gone, but not forgotten.

[New Bicycle] Kathy's new bicycle. It even has a basket.

Update 12 November 2001

Received an e-mail today that someone had found my bicycle by grappling under the docks. A relief to know it hadn't been stolen, after all! Can't imagine it's of much use now, as four weeks under salt water would do in most of its innards - and I have already given away the extra wheel. Anyway, to whoever found it - good on ya, and I hope you get some use out of some of the parts, if not the whole thing.

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31 October, 2001 -- Townsville to Gladstone

With favorable N/NE winds, it was time to make up for lost ground, and we roared southwards from Townsville, stopping in Shute Harbor (Whitsundays) for a nice mackerel dinner put on by friends Ray and Sally Roth on the 43' Fastback catamaran Raptor. and then continued straight down into Gladstone, from where I'm sending this update.

[Queensland Map] Large map of Queensland. This image is larger than its predecessors so maybe you can read the locations better. It is still a much reduced/compressed image from what I have in the computer, so if you think I should make it still larger, please let me know. The map is from the tide table book published by the Queensland government.

[Helicopters] One of our last impressions from Townsville, which is a military town with an army and air force base. These helicopters would come roaring in over the marina and, still flying very low, staight on into town and then would hover in front of a large office high-rise, before taking off and repeating the maneuvers (many times over). Something to do with anti-terrorist practice, we were told. No one minded, despite the deafening noise.

[Catamaran Raptor] [KatieKat Under Sail]

Raptor and KatieKat took each others' photos while sailing by Orpheus Island. Raptor is a 43' Fastback catamaran - built and kept light, she's definitely faster than KatieKat! On KatieKat, the two bicycles on deck don't interfere with any sail handling, their two drawbacks being rust dripping down onto the deck and the increased windage reducing our windward ability slightly. Yes, Kathy's new old bike (which had been rustfree) is already flaking after only a week!

[Kathy in Galley] Still a happy galley slave. Note the tv, providing all that disquieting news.

[Dawn in Saloon] [Dawn in Saloon]

Self-portrait taken at dawn while sailing down the coast.

[Spinnaker at Night] Yes, we fly the spinnaker at night - and yes, we leave the tv antenna up so we can watch the news if we happen to be within transmitter range - decadent. Actually, the antenna doesn't interfere with sailing (other than windage), and the antenna wire is usually tied down out of the way.

[Bugs on Window] We had sailed through some smoke from bushfires and not only was the boat covered with ashes but also with hundreds (thousands?) of homeless bugs of all sizes and shapes. There are just a few on the window in this photo. I'm typing this while still at sea (and swatting at the darn things), and I sure hope we can hose everything off the boat when we get to port. Note the threadbare gloves used for anchoring - that's my fourth pair of heavy leather gloves since we started!

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