01/07/2020
At 10 o’clock in the morning, we left Kingfisher and went northward. When the wind blows from the rear, you can spread the main sail and the jib to each side. The term is ‘goose wings’.
The recommended route is to take the middle section of the strait, and we choose to take the section closer to the shore. Both routes will encounter different sections of shallow water. After many practice, we seem to be confident enough to pass it smoothly. But when we are actually passing, watching the sonar meter’s number gradually decreased from 60 feet to 18 feet, it still inevitably made me nervous. When the number returned to more than 25, I was relieved. Not long after this hurdle, we have to face another choice, whether to enter the short entrance with a shallow and narrow coastal route, or take the middle wider route but with shallower exit? When we saw a whale watching boat passing smoothly by the shore, we decided to ‘walk on the wild side (have been humming this song in my head since then). It may be too close to the shore, the wind has weakened a lot, and the crossing seems extremely long. The shallowest seems to be 14 or 15 feet. However, here it passed a boat about the size of ours, so I didn’t worry too much. After the shallowest and narrowest section, we sailed slower and slower, and finally came to a complete stop, because the wind and tidal forces canceled each other out. After starting the engine for a short while, we decided to stop on the shore and wait for the wind tomorrow. Not long after we anchored and the wind rose…but we still wanted to spend a night here and celebrate the smooth passing of the Great Sandy Strait.
In the afternoon, we went ashore to watch the fishermen netting fish, and was going to ask for some fish, but they spent too much time not collecting the fish so we gave up. A beautiful white-bellied sea eagle swiped over the head and performed a dive to catch the fish that washed to the beach.
At night, eating pork belly, mushrooms, cabbage and tofu hot pot, and finally finish the last bit of pork belly. Before leaving, we bought a kilogram of vacuum-packed pork belly from Aldi. It will last in the refrigerator for a few more days. On the day of opening, cut it into a few portions and quick boil it, take them out adding soy sauce, wine, pepper, cinnamon sugar, ginger and garlic, slowly simmer for 30 mins to marinate, can add boiled eggs too (method taught by mom), put them in the refrigerator after cooling, it will last for a week. Each time just take a piece to slice and cook with various types of vegetable, the lard cooled and solidified on the surface can be collected for later cooking. In order not to repeat the dishes every day, I stormed my brain.
Sea Journal 