Current Position: 12 25.753’S 130 48.795’E; Local Timezone: UTC+9.5 SOG: At Anchor. COG: N/A; TWS: 14 kt; TWD: 158; Distance to Waypoint (Darwin, Fannie Bay): At Anchor; Total Miles Sailed: 9567 nm; Engine Hours: 220; Estimate Fuel: 49+8+50;
Comments: By 17:00 the slack tide was approaching as the current was now perpendicular to the port beam. I was still 9 nm from the inflection point in the preferred course, what I have been calling the NE entrance. The boat had been averaging 4.7 kt on a course that as nearly a run, which was as necessary to stay on course, so it will be close to 19:00 by the time I reach the inflection point. The current should be running S, my course, about 0.7 kt. That will build to 1.7 kt by 22:00. Most of the sailboats I have monitored seem to sail relatively close to Melville (probably to avoid the shadow of the cape). Unfortunately, it looks like there will only be about 10 kt of air there. There are three channels past the Vernon Islands, North, Howard (middle), and South. If staying close to Melville, the North Cannel makes most sense, and that is what Ambler took yesterday. With only 10 kt of wind, I will need to do some motor sailing tonight to make the 3.5 kt average speed necessary to make Vernon by slack tide. It is 17:00 and PW says it is 78 nm to the North Channel. It seems to think I will still see some 20 kt gusts in the Bay and I should reach the North Channel by 9:00. If I arrive at 9:00, I will have a 0.5 kt current against me, but PW tends to underestimate my speed at night. It is simple. To make the 8:35 slack tide, I need to travel the 78 nm in 15h at an average speed of 78/15=5.2 kt. To make the 14:35 slack tide, I need to travel the 78 nm in 21h at an average speed of 78/21=3.7 kt. The latter is more realistic and might be done under sail alone. If I reach the North Channel by 14:30 tomorrow, I will be aided by a strong current, up to 2.5 kt. According to PW, the distance from the North Channel to the anchorage at Fannie Bay is 34 nm, and if I am at the channel at 14:30, I should be at the anchorage by 21:00. I have looked at the long-range AIS and there are two cargo ships following the opposite route I am. It is 18:00, essentially the slack tide between ebbing and flooding. There is still a 0.5 kt current running out of the bay. The water is an interesting green color, I am guessing sentiment from the outgoing tide as I understand the bottom to be mostly mud. I am still 6 nm from what I would call the opening of the bay. There seems to be relatively large standing waves, even though the bottom is nearly 200’ deep. The boat is moving slowly, about 2.5 kt SOG in 12 kt of wind. I can see Cape Don to my port, but I cannot make out the island, in part because the setting sun is in my eyes. Sunset will be at 6:40. The jib is slatting. Since I have no intentions of following the chart’s “recommended route” through the bay, I set a new course of about 210 (essentially the waypoint) to fill the sails, stop the slattjng, and improve the speed. The boat is headed towards Soldiers Point on Melville, which is 18 nm away. In about 10 nm (2-3h), I will change the course to head into the bay. The boat is fighting a 0.6 kt current and making about 3 kt. It is sunset and the first of the two cargo ships has appeared in the AIS, 26 nm away and traveling 9 kt, so I expect our paths to cross in about 2h (20:30). By 19:00 the current began to have a positive influence. I am hoping after I have passed Cape Don the seas will settle down and the boat will roll less. The swell is to my port beam as I enter the bay. I can see the lighthouse on Cape Don. The first of the two cargo ships passed at 20:15. It is 21:00 and wind has dropped down to 7 kt, so the boat speed is 1.4. But, the SOG is 4 kt due to a 3 kt current!the windvane struggles in such light wind, so I am not sure how much sleep ai am going to get tonight. It looks like I will have positive current until midnight, another 3h, then the tide is going to go out. I don’t want the boat to go out with the tide! The boat is basically running as the rudder is ineffective at 1 kt boat speed. All this is going to change later tonight when the wind is going to pick up, maybe around midnight. Fortunately, the water is very smooth in the bay. The real challenge is working with the wind AND the current. I just optimized the boat speed using the sails and the SOG went to zero because the current exactly cancelled the wind. Right now I am essentially heaved to (jib and main are on the wrong side of the wind, but aim doing 4 kt because there is a 2.8 kt current in the opposite side acting like a sail to cause the boat to run. It is super strange. Until one or the other dominates, I am going to have to work with these strange configuration. I am just using Navionics to tell me what direction I am really going and how fast. I am sleeping in the cockpit tonight. The second cargo ship showed up and passed at 22:00. I was confused at first because I didn’t understand the orientation of my boat. My boat has been “sailing” the same course since my last jibe around 17:39 (it’s 22:00, more than 2h). The trace is almost straight line. But for the last hour I have been drifting sideways. The current is hitting the starboard beam but the boat is pointed downwind … the wind and current are 90 degrees from one another! In other words, I am sailing W at 1.2 kt and drifting S at 2.5 kt. In the darkness I wouldn’t have understood this except for the cargo ship passing my bow when I was expecting it to pass the port side. Now that I have reoriented the boat and trimmed the sails so I am using the wind in the same direction as the current, I am doing 5-6 kt. At 1:00, the current became slack and there was only 7 kt wind, so I the boat speed fell to a little over 1 kt. I could have exposed some more sail, but I knew it was going to blow soon, so left the double reef in. I used the time to sort out the anchor chain. The chain was not as tangled as I had seen it in the past because it has only been a week and the seas were not violent. Nonetheless, it was clear the chain did need to be sorted out. When I got back to the cockpit, the wind had dropped to 4 kt and the boat was basically drifting. Also, a third cargo ship was passing by. It had apparently left Darwin since the last time I checked the long-range AIS. A fourth one was queued up right behind it, about 11 nm (90m) away. The water was so flat and quiet that I could hear the ships engines from some distance. As the ship passed, a 7 kt breeze began and the boat started moving 2 kt. I am 41 nm from the North Channel and it is 1:30. I need to cross that channel at slack tide, in 13 h. The forecast this morning and for sustained 22 kt winds with 30 kt gusts beginning perhaps 4:00 and continuing through the afternoon. I only need to average about 50/13=3.8 kt between now and then. I figure I’m not going very far for next couple of hours, so I will probably need to average 4 kt. That should be half the Yankee and the double-reefed main. There will be a strong counter current near the Vernon Islands until 2:30, but I figure the best strategy is to get relatively close, fight the current with wind, and heave to if necessary to stand off until it is time. The fourth cargo ship passed at 2:00. The wind is back up to double digits. The boat is doing 3 kt but is fighting a 1 kt current. I have furled in about 1/4 of the jib. It is 3:00 and the winds arrived with a fury … 0 to 20 in a few minutes. The boat is doing 3 kt SOG against a 1.3 kt current with two-thirds of the Yankee and a double-reefed main in a close haul (TWA = 45). I made a mistake and got too close to Melville Island and I am now trying to angle away before it really starts blowing. I’m not really that close, but I’d rather be in the middle of the bay if it gets nasty. Sunrise will be at 7:02, 4h from now, but it will start getting light enough to see what I am doing in 3h. 4h will probably also be the time that I will rotate from a close reach to a beam reach. I was moving to slow in the close haul, so changed to a close reach (TWA = 70), and am now making over 4 kt. I will cross over the line that marks the recommended route in 12 nm, which I should reach around 6:30, as it is starting to get light. From there I will change course for the North Channel, about 25 nm away, which I will have 8h to cover (25/8=3.1 kt). I will be facing a current part of the way (9:30-14:39). At 6:30 I changed the course to 250, a beam reach, after 3.5h of brutal close hauling. The cockpit was filled with water several times as the boat rolled and pitched. When I finally cleared the “patches” and reached the navigation line for the North Channel, it was 6:30. The boat behaved infinitely better with the wind on the beam. With 25 nm to go to the channel, it is averaging 6.9 kt added by a 1.5 kt current for an hour more before turning into a 0.5 kt current I will have to run against. The wind is blowing 22-25 kt from 132. The boat speed is about 5.2 kt, which I expect to drop to perhaps 4.8 in and hour or two. Assuming I have 20 nm to go by then, 20/4.8=4.2h, or about 13:00. It is noteworthy the wind will be decreasing, down to 12 kt by 2:30. Also, the closer I get to Vernon, the stronger the counter current will become (until slack tide). It seems likely at this point that I am going to hit the window for the passage (14:30-21:00). I am not going to slow down. I figure the counter current will either stop me or it won’t. In any case, I have an important decision to make … whether to leave my sails up or not. In any case, I intend to run the motor because there are several obstacles in the channel, and it may be necessary to motorsail if the wind dies down too quickly. My feeling is I should furl the jib but leave the main up for stabilization. The North Channel is 10 nm wide, so unless I get help from the current (and I will), it will take 2h to cross. It is 7:30 and I have already knocked off 10 nm to Vernon, only 16 to go. It will be slack tide at the North Channel in an hour, then my progress will slow down significantly. There are almost no cloudy in the sky this morning, which is unusual when big winds come. It is not particularly clear though, as the winds have kicked up a lot of spray. I do see Melville though, and I saw lights from Darwin last night. It is 8:30 and I am 10 nm away from the entrance of the North Channel. It will be at least 11:00 before I get there and by then there will be 4 kt currents against me. I could try to fight it for an hour or two, by which time it would be 1-2 kt, which I could make progress against. The advantage of that is I would have a good current to my back when I get to the other side, still have 25 nm to go to Fannie Bay, and the wind is fading. It is 8:40 and I still have a 1 kt currents helping me along with a SOG of 6.2. The boat speed is 5.5 in 23 kt of wind. I’m not sure what is going to happen when the following waves hit the current head on. There is a small section of bottom that is 16’ deep just to the right of the channel and about 6 nm away. I am going to try to anchor there and wait out the current. The tide is +10 and going to +17, so it will eventually be 30’ deep. Since I think all the bottoms are mud and good holding, it’s worth a shot. It looks like there is almost a mile around the patch without more shallow waters, so it should be perfect if I can get there. I will probably see at least a 1.5 kt current by the time I get there. It is 9:30, still 2.5 nm, and my SOG has dropped to 5. There is a 1 kt currents helping to the port beam. I dropped the anchor in 36’ of water on a small shelf just E of the entrance of the North Channel. It is very rolly. It took me awhile to secure the sails in 25 kt wind and rough seas. Even at anchor, seawater poured over the rails and splashed into the cockpit. I made myself a quick sandwich and laid down at 11:30 for 2h sleep. I never actually fell asleep because the motion of the boat was so violent, but it was nice to close my eyes. At 13:00 there was still about 1 kt of current coming from the North Channel, perhaps a couple of miles away. A sensor on the other side of the channel about the same distance away says 1.1 kt. However, within the channel the sensor says 2.5. I plan to raise the anchor at 14:00 and begin motoring with just the jib. The wind is currently blowing 15. As expected, it has begun tapering off. The Cortex monitor suggests the anchor has not moved an inch. I am hoping it is not hard to raise. I was through the channel by 16:00 With an average speed of 7.5 and a maximum speed of 9.9, added with currents up to 3.3 kt. I have 25 nm to go to the anchorage. It looks like I may have 1.5-2 kt current until about 22:00. Unfortunately, there is single-digit wind and it is at 180 to the waypoint. I don’t want to spend another night drifting, so I am going to motorsail. With a bit of luck, I can cover the 24 nm in 4h, arriving at the anchorage at 20:00 or so. The water is calm again, making motor sailing easier. I forgot to note earlier that I transferred fuel from the main to the day tank and there was no sign of water. That wasn’t surprising as I had cleaned the water out of the tank at TI and I had not had any seas the put the starboard toe rail underwater. However, the toe rail was barrier for hours last night, so it will be a good test for the bent hose I rerouted. Since I am motoring to the anchorage, I will need to transfer fuel tomorrow. I furled in the jib … it wasn’t doing anything. Sunset is at 18:40, 2h from now. It is an hour since leaving the channel and I still have more than 2 kt of current backing me up while averaging 7 kt. I have 18 left to go. This is when I really miss the TillerPilot … while motoring. I put the old one back on. It is not 100% reliable, but it is better than steering by hand. I have modified the course to avoid obstructions near the anchorage. I will motor a course of 212 for 12 nm, then take a sharp turn to the port fire 2 nm to the anchorage. It is 17:30 and I can see the high rise building of downtown Darwin. It is 21:00 and I just put the bridle on the anchor chain and opened a beer. I arrived about 20:30, an hour after it really got dark. After weaving through the ships in the outer harbor, a task made easier by the fact there are well-marker designated anchoring “circles”, I complete the last five nm to Fannie Bay. I could see from the AIS there were dozens of boats anchored here, and I could see from radar there were more that either didn’t have AIS or had it turned off. The shoreline was lit up and I could hear bands playing in bars. There were even fireworks. But, I could not see a single boat nor a single anchor light. To make things more difficult, if that were possible, there were a number of boats anchored a long way from shore, in the approach to the bay. I had to inch my way into the bay, stopping periodically to stand on the bow and see if there was anything a hundred yards ahead of me. Even while I was setting the anchor, I knew there were boats around me, but I could not see them. This was a grueling passage … just a lot of moving parts. I am looking forward to settling in for a week or two.
Comments: By 17:00 the slack tide was approaching as the current was now perpendicular to the port beam. I was still 9 nm from the inflection point in the preferred course, what I have been calling the NE entrance. The boat had been averaging 4.7 kt on a course that as nearly a run, which was as necessary to stay on course, so it will be close to 19:00 by the time I reach the inflection point. The current should be running S, my course, about 0.7 kt. That will build to 1.7 kt by 22:00. Most of the sailboats I have monitored seem to sail relatively close to Melville (probably to avoid the shadow of the cape). Unfortunately, it looks like there will only be about 10 kt of air there. There are three channels past the Vernon Islands, North, Howard (middle), and South. If staying close to Melville, the North Cannel makes most sense, and that is what Ambler took yesterday. With only 10 kt of wind, I will need to do some motor sailing tonight to make the 3.5 kt average speed necessary to make Vernon by slack tide. It is 17:00 and PW says it is 78 nm to the North Channel. It seems to think I will still see some 20 kt gusts in the Bay and I should reach the North Channel by 9:00. If I arrive at 9:00, I will have a 0.5 kt current against me, but PW tends to underestimate my speed at night. It is simple. To make the 8:35 slack tide, I need to travel the 78 nm in 15h at an average speed of 78/15=5.2 kt. To make the 14:35 slack tide, I need to travel the 78 nm in 21h at an average speed of 78/21=3.7 kt. The latter is more realistic and might be done under sail alone. If I reach the North Channel by 14:30 tomorrow, I will be aided by a strong current, up to 2.5 kt. According to PW, the distance from the North Channel to the anchorage at Fannie Bay is 34 nm, and if I am at the channel at 14:30, I should be at the anchorage by 21:00. I have looked at the long-range AIS and there are two cargo ships following the opposite route I am. It is 18:00, essentially the slack tide between ebbing and flooding. There is still a 0.5 kt current running out of the bay. The water is an interesting green color, I am guessing sentiment from the outgoing tide as I understand the bottom to be mostly mud. I am still 6 nm from what I would call the opening of the bay. There seems to be relatively large standing waves, even though the bottom is nearly 200’ deep. The boat is moving slowly, about 2.5 kt SOG in 12 kt of wind. I can see Cape Don to my port, but I cannot make out the island, in part because the setting sun is in my eyes. Sunset will be at 6:40. The jib is slatting. Since I have no intentions of following the chart’s “recommended route” through the bay, I set a new course of about 210 (essentially the waypoint) to fill the sails, stop the slattjng, and improve the speed. The boat is headed towards Soldiers Point on Melville, which is 18 nm away. In about 10 nm (2-3h), I will change the course to head into the bay. The boat is fighting a 0.6 kt current and making about 3 kt. It is sunset and the first of the two cargo ships has appeared in the AIS, 26 nm away and traveling 9 kt, so I expect our paths to cross in about 2h (20:30). By 19:00 the current began to have a positive influence. I am hoping after I have passed Cape Don the seas will settle down and the boat will roll less. The swell is to my port beam as I enter the bay. I can see the lighthouse on Cape Don. The first of the two cargo ships passed at 20:15. It is 21:00 and wind has dropped down to 7 kt, so the boat speed is 1.4. But, the SOG is 4 kt due to a 3 kt current!the windvane struggles in such light wind, so I am not sure how much sleep ai am going to get tonight. It looks like I will have positive current until midnight, another 3h, then the tide is going to go out. I don’t want the boat to go out with the tide! The boat is basically running as the rudder is ineffective at 1 kt boat speed. All this is going to change later tonight when the wind is going to pick up, maybe around midnight. Fortunately, the water is very smooth in the bay. The real challenge is working with the wind AND the current. I just optimized the boat speed using the sails and the SOG went to zero because the current exactly cancelled the wind. Right now I am essentially heaved to (jib and main are on the wrong side of the wind, but aim doing 4 kt because there is a 2.8 kt current in the opposite side acting like a sail to cause the boat to run. It is super strange. Until one or the other dominates, I am going to have to work with these strange configuration. I am just using Navionics to tell me what direction I am really going and how fast. I am sleeping in the cockpit tonight. The second cargo ship showed up and passed at 22:00. I was confused at first because I didn’t understand the orientation of my boat. My boat has been “sailing” the same course since my last jibe around 17:39 (it’s 22:00, more than 2h). The trace is almost straight line. But for the last hour I have been drifting sideways. The current is hitting the starboard beam but the boat is pointed downwind … the wind and current are 90 degrees from one another! In other words, I am sailing W at 1.2 kt and drifting S at 2.5 kt. In the darkness I wouldn’t have understood this except for the cargo ship passing my bow when I was expecting it to pass the port side. Now that I have reoriented the boat and trimmed the sails so I am using the wind in the same direction as the current, I am doing 5-6 kt. At 1:00, the current became slack and there was only 7 kt wind, so I the boat speed fell to a little over 1 kt. I could have exposed some more sail, but I knew it was going to blow soon, so left the double reef in. I used the time to sort out the anchor chain. The chain was not as tangled as I had seen it in the past because it has only been a week and the seas were not violent. Nonetheless, it was clear the chain did need to be sorted out. When I got back to the cockpit, the wind had dropped to 4 kt and the boat was basically drifting. Also, a third cargo ship was passing by. It had apparently left Darwin since the last time I checked the long-range AIS. A fourth one was queued up right behind it, about 11 nm (90m) away. The water was so flat and quiet that I could hear the ships engines from some distance. As the ship passed, a 7 kt breeze began and the boat started moving 2 kt. I am 41 nm from the North Channel and it is 1:30. I need to cross that channel at slack tide, in 13 h. The forecast this morning and for sustained 22 kt winds with 30 kt gusts beginning perhaps 4:00 and continuing through the afternoon. I only need to average about 50/13=3.8 kt between now and then. I figure I’m not going very far for next couple of hours, so I will probably need to average 4 kt. That should be half the Yankee and the double-reefed main. There will be a strong counter current near the Vernon Islands until 2:30, but I figure the best strategy is to get relatively close, fight the current with wind, and heave to if necessary to stand off until it is time. The fourth cargo ship passed at 2:00. The wind is back up to double digits. The boat is doing 3 kt but is fighting a 1 kt current. I have furled in about 1/4 of the jib. It is 3:00 and the winds arrived with a fury … 0 to 20 in a few minutes. The boat is doing 3 kt SOG against a 1.3 kt current with two-thirds of the Yankee and a double-reefed main in a close haul (TWA = 45). I made a mistake and got too close to Melville Island and I am now trying to angle away before it really starts blowing. I’m not really that close, but I’d rather be in the middle of the bay if it gets nasty. Sunrise will be at 7:02, 4h from now, but it will start getting light enough to see what I am doing in 3h. 4h will probably also be the time that I will rotate from a close reach to a beam reach. I was moving to slow in the close haul, so changed to a close reach (TWA = 70), and am now making over 4 kt. I will cross over the line that marks the recommended route in 12 nm, which I should reach around 6:30, as it is starting to get light. From there I will change course for the North Channel, about 25 nm away, which I will have 8h to cover (25/8=3.1 kt). I will be facing a current part of the way (9:30-14:39). At 6:30 I changed the course to 250, a beam reach, after 3.5h of brutal close hauling. The cockpit was filled with water several times as the boat rolled and pitched. When I finally cleared the “patches” and reached the navigation line for the North Channel, it was 6:30. The boat behaved infinitely better with the wind on the beam. With 25 nm to go to the channel, it is averaging 6.9 kt added by a 1.5 kt current for an hour more before turning into a 0.5 kt current I will have to run against. The wind is blowing 22-25 kt from 132. The boat speed is about 5.2 kt, which I expect to drop to perhaps 4.8 in and hour or two. Assuming I have 20 nm to go by then, 20/4.8=4.2h, or about 13:00. It is noteworthy the wind will be decreasing, down to 12 kt by 2:30. Also, the closer I get to Vernon, the stronger the counter current will become (until slack tide). It seems likely at this point that I am going to hit the window for the passage (14:30-21:00). I am not going to slow down. I figure the counter current will either stop me or it won’t. In any case, I have an important decision to make … whether to leave my sails up or not. In any case, I intend to run the motor because there are several obstacles in the channel, and it may be necessary to motorsail if the wind dies down too quickly. My feeling is I should furl the jib but leave the main up for stabilization. The North Channel is 10 nm wide, so unless I get help from the current (and I will), it will take 2h to cross. It is 7:30 and I have already knocked off 10 nm to Vernon, only 16 to go. It will be slack tide at the North Channel in an hour, then my progress will slow down significantly. There are almost no cloudy in the sky this morning, which is unusual when big winds come. It is not particularly clear though, as the winds have kicked up a lot of spray. I do see Melville though, and I saw lights from Darwin last night. It is 8:30 and I am 10 nm away from the entrance of the North Channel. It will be at least 11:00 before I get there and by then there will be 4 kt currents against me. I could try to fight it for an hour or two, by which time it would be 1-2 kt, which I could make progress against. The advantage of that is I would have a good current to my back when I get to the other side, still have 25 nm to go to Fannie Bay, and the wind is fading. It is 8:40 and I still have a 1 kt currents helping me along with a SOG of 6.2. The boat speed is 5.5 in 23 kt of wind. I’m not sure what is going to happen when the following waves hit the current head on. There is a small section of bottom that is 16’ deep just to the right of the channel and about 6 nm away. I am going to try to anchor there and wait out the current. The tide is +10 and going to +17, so it will eventually be 30’ deep. Since I think all the bottoms are mud and good holding, it’s worth a shot. It looks like there is almost a mile around the patch without more shallow waters, so it should be perfect if I can get there. I will probably see at least a 1.5 kt current by the time I get there. It is 9:30, still 2.5 nm, and my SOG has dropped to 5. There is a 1 kt currents helping to the port beam. I dropped the anchor in 36’ of water on a small shelf just E of the entrance of the North Channel. It is very rolly. It took me awhile to secure the sails in 25 kt wind and rough seas. Even at anchor, seawater poured over the rails and splashed into the cockpit. I made myself a quick sandwich and laid down at 11:30 for 2h sleep. I never actually fell asleep because the motion of the boat was so violent, but it was nice to close my eyes. At 13:00 there was still about 1 kt of current coming from the North Channel, perhaps a couple of miles away. A sensor on the other side of the channel about the same distance away says 1.1 kt. However, within the channel the sensor says 2.5. I plan to raise the anchor at 14:00 and begin motoring with just the jib. The wind is currently blowing 15. As expected, it has begun tapering off. The Cortex monitor suggests the anchor has not moved an inch. I am hoping it is not hard to raise. I was through the channel by 16:00 With an average speed of 7.5 and a maximum speed of 9.9, added with currents up to 3.3 kt. I have 25 nm to go to the anchorage. It looks like I may have 1.5-2 kt current until about 22:00. Unfortunately, there is single-digit wind and it is at 180 to the waypoint. I don’t want to spend another night drifting, so I am going to motorsail. With a bit of luck, I can cover the 24 nm in 4h, arriving at the anchorage at 20:00 or so. The water is calm again, making motor sailing easier. I forgot to note earlier that I transferred fuel from the main to the day tank and there was no sign of water. That wasn’t surprising as I had cleaned the water out of the tank at TI and I had not had any seas the put the starboard toe rail underwater. However, the toe rail was barrier for hours last night, so it will be a good test for the bent hose I rerouted. Since I am motoring to the anchorage, I will need to transfer fuel tomorrow. I furled in the jib … it wasn’t doing anything. Sunset is at 18:40, 2h from now. It is an hour since leaving the channel and I still have more than 2 kt of current backing me up while averaging 7 kt. I have 18 left to go. This is when I really miss the TillerPilot … while motoring. I put the old one back on. It is not 100% reliable, but it is better than steering by hand. I have modified the course to avoid obstructions near the anchorage. I will motor a course of 212 for 12 nm, then take a sharp turn to the port fire 2 nm to the anchorage. It is 17:30 and I can see the high rise building of downtown Darwin. It is 21:00 and I just put the bridle on the anchor chain and opened a beer. I arrived about 20:30, an hour after it really got dark. After weaving through the ships in the outer harbor, a task made easier by the fact there are well-marker designated anchoring “circles”, I complete the last five nm to Fannie Bay. I could see from the AIS there were dozens of boats anchored here, and I could see from radar there were more that either didn’t have AIS or had it turned off. The shoreline was lit up and I could hear bands playing in bars. There were even fireworks. But, I could not see a single boat nor a single anchor light. To make things more difficult, if that were possible, there were a number of boats anchored a long way from shore, in the approach to the bay. I had to inch my way into the bay, stopping periodically to stand on the bow and see if there was anything a hundred yards ahead of me. Even while I was setting the anchor, I knew there were boats around me, but I could not see them. This was a grueling passage … just a lot of moving parts. I am looking forward to settling in for a week or two.