Mount Adolphus Island, Queensland

Anchored in Blackwood Bay
Mount Adolphus Island, Far North Queensland
Australia
10'38.5S/142'38.7E

190 nautical miles. Ships passing in the night. Zig-zagging through the Great Barrier Reef. Then we drop the hook here in Blackwood Bay at Mount Adolphus Island. Our overnight trip from Morris Island to here was a mixture of both sailing and motoring. We left the anchorage at Morris around 3:30 am with some great winds behind us making for a real comfortable wing-on-wing sail.

Being inside the Great Barrier Reef, the waves are very minimal, something I have really taking a liking to. Almost 24 hours later, 2:30 am, the wind dropped and left us moving slow. So we fired up the engine. About 12 hours later we got a puff of wind, set the sails, and pulled into the anchorage around 5:30 pm.

With our friends on Blue Sky and Shiraz already here we anxiously set the hook, put the dingy in the water and headed over to Blue Sky for sundowners, nibblets, and talk about our plan for the next leg.

One of the very cool things about being here at Mount Adolphus is we have made it to the top of Australia, Cape York! no more sailing north. It is all west from here. Of course this also means no more reef for protection from waves that has come to spoil me. As of today we are back in the open ocean of the Coral Sea, meaning we'll have to deal with the swells of the sea again.

From here, we will do a few day stop over at Horn Island, provisioning on Thursday Island, wait for a good weather window, and go. It's another 800 nautical miles to Darwin. So we are looking at an 8-10 day sail there.

Of course we will keep you updated with our 'Team Sandpiper' updates. Hope all is well for everyone back home.

Amy and Tom

Notes From Ron:

• Tom and Amy are now in the Torres Straight, the narrow band of water between Australia and Papua-New Guinea. As the sail west past Cap York, they will enter the Arafura Sea.
• Wing-on-Wing means to sail straight down wind with their mainsail on one side of the boat the and their jib sail on the other side. It is only possible when the wind is directly behind them and give the maximum amount of sail area.