Team Sandpiper Update Part IV
By Tom and Amy Larson, USCG Retired
For origional article with pics http://www.presidioyachtclub.org/Porthole3Qtr07.pdf
Ahoy PYC!! As I write this Team Sandpiper is anchoredat Lizard Island far north Queensland, Australia's east coast. Lizard Island is 15 miles off the mainland and iswhere Captain Cook and his crew from the Endeavor made his last stop in Australia back in 1774. There is a large hill here on Lizard Island where Cook walked to thetop with his telescope to get a view of the outer fringes of the Great Barrier Reef and was able to see a pass through the reef where they were able to escape these reefs that caused him so many difficulties now named Cooks Pass. Sandpiper's last stop was at Cooktown which is 50 miles south of here, Cook and his crew of Endeavor stopped there for 44 days to patch up their ship as they had just pulled it off a reef south of present day Cooktown in a 2 day effort after throwing much of their equipment overboard. Last weekend we were in Cooktown wherethere was a 3-day celebration called Discovery Days where they reenacted Cooks landing back in 1774. Cooktown was one of my favorite stops in Australia as it is so small and remote. The town's population is 1500 and is 90 miles from the nearest town; they just got the road paved last year. There is a mix of white Australians and Aboriginals, and the whole town is on one street with more bars then restaurants. We met some really nice people in Cooktown, but had to move on due to weather. As our last writing from Broken Bay just north of Sydney, Sandpiper has covered 1200 miles traveling up the east coast of Australia and we still have 300 miles to get over the top of Australia. Australia is such a large county with its endless coastlines and open unexplored lands. From where we are anchored now we will not see another town till we get to Darwin and that is still over a thousand miles from here! It is hard to compare the size of Australia to any other country as it so huge and has such a long unpopulated coastlines. On Sandpiper's trip up the east coast from Sydney many of the harbors we stopped at are much like the U.S.'s West Coast, many requiring crossing shallow river bars to enter. This changed once we made it around Fraiser Island (the largest sand island in the world), as we sailed inside the Great Barrier Reef. The Great Barrier Reef is about 30 miles offshore at the southern end and provides a nice break from the ocean swells. The farthernorth you go up the reef the closer it gets to shore, by the time we got to Cairns, the reefs were just 4 miles off shore and off Cooktown there are reefs all along the shipping lanes making the night sailing a little more adventurous. Even with the many reefs in this area, the charts here are very accurate with reliable aids to navigation making sailing at night not an issue, and if we were to restrict our sailing to day time only we would never be able to cover the distances we need to travel to get around the north end of Australia. The Australian Weather Service really does a great job as well, providing very accurate weather predictions that we are able to plan our trips along. However, being this far north we are no longer receiving them on VHF, only on our SSB radio. Team Sandpiper's current plans are to try to arrive in Darwin by early July to be able to depart in the Darwin to Kupang Sailing Rally with 100 other boats from all over the world while we all sail through Indonesia for 4 months. We are hoping to arrive in Puket Thailand by early December where we are planning on spending a year to explore inland and possibly make a trip back home to the states on a MAC flight from Singapore. If you have any information about flying from Singapore please drop us an email at sandpiper_38@hotmail.com. If you have not had the chance, check us out on the web at sandpiper38.blogspot.com where we post photos and give updates on our positions, you can also track us on Google Earth. We are hoping to be able to post Podcast's as well so you can hear audio files from some of out trips. Hope to see you out here!
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