Author: Ning Xue

02/07/2020

Pull up anchor at 7:30am, only with jib we sailed into the wide Harvey Bay, I heard there are lots of whales.

The wind stopped at 9 o’clock, and the water is like mirror. I took a nap on the deck in the sun, woke up and found that we are almost still at the same spot. I took a novel to read and waited patiently. We tried spinnaker after lunch but not much better so we took it down.

J asked if there was a formula for seeking the wind. I said yes, it needs 12g toad skins, 100g green mushrooms, two cat whiskers, a little bit of toenail from the rear left foot of an elephant, spitting and mix evenly, and bake in the oven at 180 degrees for one hour, rub it into balls, swallow them with warm water, and then do a folk dance till the wind comes… J said that the wind will eventually come before we collect all these.

At around 3pm, the wind finally came. I said that I smelled the wind. J asked does it smell toad skin and elephant toenail… Spinnaker was raised again and the boat ran again. But we changed our destination, instead of going to Rooney Point we headed for Lady Musgrave Island which is further away. It takes 80 nautical miles to sail, so we have to do night sail again.

Spent 12 hours just in the bay, as if it was reluctant to let us go. In the words of J, we got “bayed”.

We had curry potato claypot rice for dinner. My hands and feet were warmed up for night sailing. I went out to watch and J went in for nap so he can do the midnight shift.

Tonight the moon is very high and bright, and stars are less seen. A few dolphins were chasing our boat in the silver waves very closely, sometimes passing under the bottom of the boat, and sometimes leaping out of the water, one jumped so high, and I applauded.

Tonight is much warmer than last Monday’s night sailing. Blowing a gentle northerly wind, it seems to be able to smell the tropic…

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.