Out of Cooktown and at the Hope Islands

And the hope is for some wind to sail by.

The Hope Islands are two small cays twenty miles south of Cooktown. Punched into 15 knots of SE all morning to get here and decided that was enough. Not real rough, but not real comfortable either. The forecast is looking better for tomorrow. I feel quite desperate to get further south and get into some NE to NW wind.

Ten days in Cooktown was about nine days too long. The SE wind was up hard and there was no chance of leaving. I placed a sign at a backpackers and had a girl lined up who didn't show when it was time to leave.

The Endeavour river at Cooktown is very shallow and I spent as much time sitting on the bottom as much as floating. The big drama was saved for my last day there. Going over to the fuel jetty I went a little wide to enable me to turn into the jetty. The boat slowly bumped onto a sand bank and as I went into reverse to back up the motor stalled. It stalled again and then going forward I felt the engine load up and stall. It was either going to be the gearbox or a line wrapped on the shaft.

In the next few minutes the boat is laying over on the sand bank with the tide racing in pushing it further into the shallows. Brent off Playground, who has been going south as well, came to my aid and took the anchor out to deep water and I was able to put some tension on it so that it wouldn't ground further as the tide rose. So then with the water swirling madly around the broadside boat I spent half an hour diving down to cut away the culprit.

It was my fault, as it was the end of the dinghy line, known as the painter, must have fallen over the side a few days ago and, while running the motor to charge batteries/cool frig, got itself around the shaft. The shaft turns with the current when the motor runs. I always check the painter is clear before moving but didn't notice the painter had become shorter.

During the diving effort the tide came in enough for the boat to swing back into deep water and the motor started and propelled OK with no damage done. Now I am away, full of fuel, water and fuel, and now just wanting weather to get me south.

Getting very tired of this trip!