11th June - Weipa - broken battens - gybing

Tuesday 11^th June

We are about to embark on an exploration of Weipa, the biggest town (2-3,000) on the Cape York peninsula.  My lonely planet guide says that Weipa is remarkable for one thing, other than bauxite mining – nobody can be born or buried here:

 Expectant mothers are flown six weeks before their due date, and a high water table beneath the allocated cemetery grounds disallows a normal burial.

I don’t imagine any of this will affect our Day Of Fun in Weipa.

We thought we were in Weipa yesterday… We had anchored precariously far from shore.  It was much too shallow, in the Mission River, to get any closer than this:

Weipa is on a little peninsula of its own…and we had gone up the wrong side.  We got into the dinghy, very cautiously, and tried to get to shore.  Dinghy said NO.  The poor little engine clogged up with mud and choked most desperately.  We looked back at 2XS, just a blot of the horizon…a long long way to row.  Fortunately the brave little engine-that-could coughed back to life once we were out of the mud and we got back to 2XS without having to swim, or row.

Back up the river, out to sea to avoid sandbanks, and up the correct side of the peninsula, just in time to anchor before dark.  A much nicer anchorage it is, too.  We are in a nice little palm-fringed bay, with a few other companionable boats, and the obligatory wreck on the shore.  A flock of graceful, silent frigate birds wheel overhead. Much nicer than bobbing way out in the Mission River…

Pete is struggling away with yet another difficult task.  Some of the battens are broken in the mainsail – one or two people have gybed the sail at sea in strong winds, causing a massive CRASH BANG WALLOP… And yes of course one of them was me… I do feel very bad about it but still don’t know how I could have avoided gybing – I had to steer through a maze of reefs and all I cared about was not running aground.  Bugger the wind direction!  Big mistake… By the way, we have been told that there are two sorts of sailors, on the East Coast of Australia: 

Those who have hit the reef

Those who are about to hit the reef

I didn’t want to be in Category #2 so…CRASH BANG WALLOP instead, resulting in a very unhappy Captain Pete and some broken battens.  Oh and some long bent screws…he has just brought one down, cradled gently in his hands, to show me… (I actually don’t think he would have been all that thrilled if I had hit the reef, mind you…)

Carsten and Mercedes too some photos and videofilm of 2XS at sea.  We never see 2XS from this perspective, of course, so we were delighted to have these, transferred niftily from a little USB thingy to my computer.   (Only headsail up; no scary possibly-gybing main...)