From Townsville to Cairns

These last two days have been so busy that we probably need a week or two to recover !

First, the technical problems on Papy Jovial. In Townsville, I had an electronician replace the guts and brains of the Navico autopilot, on his advice as he felt that the unit was the cause of the problem.

So, after a late an liquid night on board David's and Alison's boat next door, we left a 4:30 in the morning, hoping to get to Cairns before 10:00 a.m. on Monday.

Less than an hour into the trip, the new autopilot packed up. I woke up the electronician, without too much remorse, and we tried to trouble shoot the thing. In the end, it turned out that the problem was with the power supply. We jerry rigged a connection to supply the unit with electricity coming from one of the reading light in the aft cabin, and it worked fine all the way to Cairns (mind you, in stand by mode only since we had enough wind to use Firmin). So, it might turn out that I bought a new autopilot that I did not need an

d that the Navi

co might prove to work just fine once we solve the power supply problem. That's life.

What was a lot better is that during the day, Olivier got two simultaneous strikes, one being a huge spanish mackerel, and the other one being a spotted macquerel. It disturbed my nap, but I did not mind. It took more than an hour and a half to clean the fish and cut steaks and filets. Most of it will go in the freezer that we restarted for the occasion. We had not used it since we left Sydney, since we can go shopping almost everyday.

This time, we did not have to slow down intentionally, but just . . .We got to the entrance of Cairns harbour as the sun was going up. We sailed up the river to the Cairns Cruising Yacht Squadron and beyond at the Norship marine boat yard whe

re we are supposed to haul out to take the prop measurements. There was quite a strong current across from the access to the travel lift and I was relieved to hear that we could only go up on Tuesday and we should go to the Squadron marina.

In the afternoon, Olivier took me again for one of his favourite long walks, first to the town (5 kms away), then to the immigration office. all that for nothing as we cant do anything more than what we could do on Internet.

We visited the town, no character, but a lot of life, lots of young people, bars and restaurants.

For the way back, Olivier had mercy

on me and we returned by bus.

We haul out tomorrow and we should leave for Port Doublas on Wednesday morning.