Vrilya Point Lat. 11 degrees 13.4' S Long. 142 degrees 07.2' E 11/06

Well, we had a fairly unpleasant introduction to the Gulf of Carpentaria yesterday. We left Seisia as planned at 0945 in company with "Mohea" to catch the tide at the entrance to the Endeavour Straits and all went well as we wended our way through the maze of shoals - courtesy of the chartplotter. You could not discern visually any shallow water except for a couple of breaking reefs that we saw.
Then after about an hour we left the Straits and were out in the Gulf. At that point we were about 12 miles from land. Suddenly it became very rough indeed as there appeared to be a conflict between the SW flowing tide and the SE wind which was gusting in the high 20's. We started sailing south and tried all sorts of combinations including motorsailing but were hammered by big seas and high winds. However, we didn't have much choice and continued battling south until we left the tidal influence and slowly but surely we came more into the lee of the coast as we came closer. From Endeavour Straits to Vrilya Point we had about 15 miles to travel but it was a very long 15 miles. We anchored in twilight in a calm anchorage (thank goodness) and after a quick meal and shower went to bed. Had to do a bit of cleaning up at first because we hadn't thought to put a cover on the fore hatch and with the amount of water cascading over the boat some salty drips came down onto our bed - much to Jean's chagrin. We slept well needless to say.
Tomorrow we will be going further down the coast to try to avoid the higher wind zone in the northern Gulf.
Cheers and love from us
Jim and Jean xoxoxoxoxo
Postscript to above - as the morning progressed the tide was going out and Jean noticed what she thought was a crocodile on the surface. On closer inspection though it turned out to be rock which was just uncovering with the ebbing tide. We hadn't seen it last night because it would have been covered so we were lucky we didn't anchor any further in, particularly as the tide went further out there were numerous rocks showing just in front of us! We had been blissfully asleep last night unaware of the proximity of these hazards only 30-40 metres from us! We knew there was s reef in front of us and that's why we anchored where we did but had we known how close we would have been a little further out. Anyway, we shifted anchorage this morning and are a little safer for tonight.
We are now debating whether to go direct to Gove direct from here as the weather is expected to moderate over the next 3 days. The wind angle would be better than if we go further south. We'll make a final decision once we hear the weather forecast this afternoon and see another set of Gribs. If we do go in the morning, there won't be any further blogs until we get to Gove which would be Friday night or Saturday morning. It's a bit over 300 miles - about a 1/3 of the distance from NZ to New Caledonia! But the wind will be with us this time unlike that 1st. passage!

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