Blog 37. Horn Island. Sunday 14 July. 10.35.748S 142.14.50E
Alcedo
David Batten
Sun 14 Jul 2019 11:27
Thursday 11 July. 06.15am start to arrive for High Water at the Hovell Bar in Elliot’s Channel. Good downwind sail and arrived in good time to motor through the shallow, seeing least depths of approx 6.8m except for one flash of 5.00m seen by one of the crew.
Photograph of our route and actual track over the Hovell Bar. Skipper wanted to go close to the cardinal buoy because of the tide, so we did.
We were late arriving at Horn Island compared with most of the fleet, so the anchorage was pretty crowded, but we did manage to find a reasonable space in 10m water, nice and flat if somewhat breezy.
Anchorage at Horn Island from the ferry pier. Alcedo just visible on the left side of the picture as you look at it.
Since then we have booked a slot with Border Control to check out, done more shopping, organised some frozen meat from the butchers, collected three new water pumps from the post office and installed one in the starboard engine. Full marks to Beta for getting the part to us as promised. Conversely, we have tried to organise a replacement winch control box for the starboard Genoa sheet winch which recently gave up working. Lewmar have 9 on the shelf but appear to be incapable of despatching one on any day other than their regular despatch day to any of their distributors and we have, of course, just missed the day. Ocean Chandlery in Southampton have promised to put the part on an aeroplane to wherever we can pick it up once Lewmar have sent it to them. Really, really poor service from Lewmar. Would they be so bad if we were a big race boat with lots of publicity and a big budget? Skipper has managed to organise some 6 batteries taped together to bypass the control box, but we are disappointed with Lewmar’s attitude and somewhat concerned as we have no spare winches.
We have also explored the cemetery and fort at TI. The former is quite impressive, covering a huge area with groups of graves in amongst the dry forest, presumably organised according to religious groups or cultures. The Arabic ones were definitely facing in the opposite direction compared with the other groups, something to do with MECCA?
A group of graves in the cemetery at TI. Many of them for the young and under 70s.
View of the Torres Straights from the Fort.
View from the Fort looking over the port at TI towards Horn Island. The yachts anchored off Horn Island just visible in the background
We have been trying to get a good photograph of the crocodile that regularly suns itself on the mudbank by the anchorage but it has been too far away to date. So herewith a picture of a Pelican instead.
An Australasian Pelican, which we frequently see by the ferry dock and which likes to pose for photographs. Such a lovely bird!
This afternoon we are booked in for a WW2 tour of Horn Island with Stuart and Ann of Time Bandit and some of the other rally members.
Alcedo
Sent from my iPad