The Cosmos Adventure - News
Report From Joe Dorr -- Received July 4, 2002 CosmosJune 10 to June 19, 2002
Darwin, Australia to Broome, Australia
Our actual route has been somewhat different from our original plan. On the first leg, from the US to NZ, we spent much longer in the Society Island than we planned. This extra time was to wait for Aaron and Anton to arrive and sail with us through the Societies and on to Cook Island. On that leg, we also skipped Fiji for two reasons. First, we were slightly behind schedule due to our staying in the Society Islands. Second, Fiji was not getting the best press as a friendly place to visit, due to civil unrest. These changes were fine with all of the crew and allowed us to get to New Zealand for the return visit to home as planned.
Other than the delay getting started due to defective window materials used on the installation in Whangarei, we have had two principal changes in the schedule on the second leg. The first was the Captain’s decision not to visit Christmas Island because there is not a lot to see and anchoring areas there are very poor. The second change was at the choice of the crew and captain. We decided to continue down the West Coast of Australia, past the Northern Territory and onto the Kimberly Coast. The route along this rarely-visited coast appeared to add about 600 miles to our journey until close planning and estimations proved that it added only about 150 miles in total. The reason for this apparent difference is that for 600 miles we traveled at angle of about 45 degrees off our course that would have taken us directly to Cocos. Although my eyeball-intuition indicated that we would go way off course, actual calculations indicated something completely different.
This choice was a wise one, with a cost. The prevailing winds often come out of the south and our travel down the coast was mostly south-by-southwest making the ride rough and tiring. What we saw was definitely worth the cost.
We left Darwin at 4:40 PM on the 10th of June; four days behind the master schedule. We crossed 300 miles of the Joseph Bonaparte Gulf to our first stop at the King George River. We had read and were discussing how alone we were going to be during our visit to the River when we rounded the point to enter and approached a lone sailboat on anchor on the lee shore. We were slightly disappointed at our luck to pick the same day that another crew picked to visit this remote place on this lonely coast. We went forward into the bay before the river, and we dropped anchor. As soon as our anchor was set we noticed a dinghy coming out of the river, followed by a luxury tour boat, complete with helicopter on top. The dinghy was leading the way, finding the best course for the big boat and as the big boat approached our position, the helicopter engine fired up and the aircraft lifted off as it passed 200 feet abeam. So much for solitude. As we went into the river in the dinghy, we saw two more sailboats.
We did manage to have a lone ride four miles up the river in our dinghy. The river is only 50 feet wide in some places, but is immediately bordered on both sides by 200-foot-tall sheer, vertical rock-pile cliffs. The rocks were once all connected, but the best that I can figure is that they were ribboned horizontally and vertically with thin layers of iron that oxidized and leached out with rain that comes only during the rainy season. Amazing rock sitting upon rock as if placed there my a master stone mason. If a stone mason was the builder, he left some real fancy work at the top with some rock columns and cantilevers that defy the elements. The rocks themselves appeared to be a beige sandstone. The iron rusted to a contrasting scab-red, leaving the appearance that veins once flowed through the formation but they had collapsed under the weight of the huge rocks and then bled down the sheer cliffs.
We did not spend the night at King George River. We stayed only from about 1:00 PM to 5:00 PM. We wanted to get on to our next stop along the deserted Kimberley Coast.
As we often do, we sailed all night. We arrived at Shelter Bay a short thirty-eight hours later. Shelter Bay deserves its name, but because it is beautiful in addition to being a well sheltered anchorage, I wanted to rename it Paradise Cove. In fear that mass mutiny might be brought on by any other decision, (the first time on this circumnavigation) the Captain decided it would be best to spend the night.
The entrance to this sheltered cove is hidden between two beautiful rock, shrub-topped islands with numerous sandy beaches. The water is clear and beautifully blue. The rocks are formed similarly to those on the King George River, but without the red-iron-bleeding. The sun lights the sheer cliffs to a golden tone that contrasts wonderfully to the blue waters.
Excursions were the order of the day. We took the dinghy ashore to the tallest rock formation on the island and climbed to the top. I was climbing a vertical face that I knew I could not climb down. I kept saying to myself, “Cosmos is full of rope. Why didn’t we bring some rope?” I was searching for and finding one handhold or one foothold at a time, wondering if I would ever get out of this situation. At times I felt like I was following Sylvester Stallone (played by Steve Hall) in Cliffhanger as I followed Steve along the most challenging route. At one point, I found only the remains of a potential foothold and Steve said that it had broken as he was using it. The only thing that got me up over that ledge was a firm grip on Steve’s ankle as he held on to grips further up the cliff.
Finally I made it to the top and the views were fantastic. The top of the cliff was set back just enough to prevent a direct jump into the water, 120 feet below. A jump would have been tempting, if it were possible to hit the water. Thankfully, I discovered a way to more or less walk down to within fifty feet of the bottom before having to descend a mostly vertical face to water level. Un-thankfully, the walk was through an area that deserves its own description.
The top of the island appeared to be more than less flat with some slopes that went partway to the water, before disappearing over an edge. The top was actually rock pinnacles that could not be seen because some scrub that is a close cousin to cactus had covered the pinnacles and spanned the gaps between them. The trick to crossing the top of this island was to: a: ignore the cactus barbs going into you legs, b: find a pinnacle that came to the surface and hopefully would not slide, and c: if a safe pinnacle was not within the greatest span of your feet, then step onto the top of a scrub and hope it was strong enough to hold. I had visions of disappearing through the scrubs and down into a fifty-foot crevice. Sometimes the rock could be heard sliding under foot and sometimes the scrub broke, but they never let go completely, or you wouldn’t be reading this.
I was delighted and pained to get to the waters edge and leap with all my scratches and my in-tact skeleton, into the salty brine. The whole experience is one that I have to force myself awake from many times, with the exception that the views made it all worth it.
Earlier in the day, George and Steve had made an exploratory trip around the islands in the dinghy and discovered a beach loaded with turtle tracks. Steve was ready, (as always) for another exploration so he and I returned to the beach. The tracks were easy to spot. There were several huge trails that looked like they had been left by a small bulldozer, and there were hundreds of tiny tracks (all toward the water) that could have been left by penny-racer turtle models. I was surprised to see both sets of tracks because I believe turtles lay their eggs and leave them. Could adult turtles be laying eggs within hours or days of baby turtles hatching? I’ll find out what is going on here next time I have access to my brain (the Internet).
We all agreed to take ashore the fixings for a cookout. We hoped to have the added thrill of seeing large turtles come ashore to lay eggs, or tiny turtles come out of the sand and make their way to the water. The moon was waxing into its third day so until it set, we had sufficient light to operate around the campfire.
We built our fire on a stone ledge, just above the high-water mark, using driftwood. The weather was lovely, meal was great, but the turtles never showed. We did split up and do some night exploring. While Anders, George and Hilary walked down the high, sand beach, Steve and I went directly to the water. As mentioned in earlier reports, the tides here are tremendous – up to thirty vertical feet. Steve and I had to walk a New York City “long block” after passing the dinghy to get to the receded low tide water’s edge.
We waded in and saw some amazing night life. We saw six or seven different kinds and shapes of fish, we saw tiny sand crabs, we saw crabs that could easily take the “blue” name away from Maryland’s blue crabs, we saw shrimp, and a tiny squid. Most amazing was the phosphorus. The phosphors lit up like single eyes in the sand. I shined a bright light to see what they looked like fully illuminated and never found a single thing that I could say was the source of light. We did find a one-inch long crab with glowing mandibles and after some discussion, decided that the crab was either eating a phosphor, or eating something covered with phosphor. When Steve and I walked back onto the waters edge, I noticed Steve was leaving glowing tracks as if he had walked in dayglo paint. Looking at his white footsteps in the black-wet sand and new ones being created as he walked, invisibly along (the moon had set by then), was totally reminiscent of watching a television animation.
It was a bit tricky getting back to the boat in the dark. We had to avoid some off-shore rocks before turning back toward the smaller cove in which we left Cosmos, but we did leave the anchor light on so that we could find our way back and that paid off when we rounded the invisible rock-point and the anchor light came into full view with its companion reflection in the water between us and our temporary home.
We left lovely Shelter Bay at 9:20 the next morning for our last pleasure-stop along the deserted Kimberley Coast. Forty-nine hours later, we arrive at the largest of the Lacepede Islands. The small writing we have on this island indicates that it is a hatching place for birds and turtles. The island is mostly sand beach with a few sandstone rocks and large pieces of coral on the beach. Tufts of low grass grow across the highest elevations that reach about ten feet above high tide.
There is no cove or well-protected water here. The island is shaped like a elongated (one mile long and 200 yards across) kidney bean with the concave side facing north. The winds were from the East-South East so we got a little protection from the bigger rollers and almost no protection from the twenty-five knot winds.
We immediately anchored and took the dinghy ashore. Beaching was an adventure with five people in a ten-foot dinghy. Three foot breakers pushed us to the beach and on occasion, came aboard our small boat. We made shore with selves and cameras intact.
The whole island was one big nest. Turtle tracks ran from the waters edge to just above the high water mark and terminated at large pits where eggs had been left. The inner island was populated with stiff, tufted grass. About every thirty feet, was a booby bird nesting. The booby birds were in the middle of their nesting season, which from the looks of things, is a long season. Some of the adults were sitting on eggs. Some had tiny chicks. And some had one or two full-sized chicks that were still totally white and fluffy. Some chicks were so large, white and fluffy that they appeared to be larger than their parents.
It was simple for us to see how easy it must have been for early explorers to take advantage of unfearing creatures. On this remote island, they have almost no natural enemies. The booby birds, chicks and eggs would have been easy prey to provision our ship. We did notice that the seagulls were attentive to any separation of adult and eggs or chick. When we went so near any family that they were separated because the adult moved away, we were careful to make sure the adult had returned before we moved so far away that the seagulls might move in for a meal.
We left our anchorage off the Lacepedes to make our way to our final stop on mainland Australia . . . Broome. This very small town on the otherwise desolate Kimberley Coast of Australia had no real point of interest to us except as a fuel stop, and a port of debarkation – a place to clear out with Australian Customs. Even though Cocos Keeling (our next stop) is part of Australia, we are required to clear customs before leaving the mainland. The customs officials came on board, interviewed each member of the crew, checked out the boat, and gave us the required stamps and clearance document that we need to go into any country. As I have said earlier, we travel with either a cruising permit within a country, or a clearance document from one country so that the next country knows that we left our last country on good terms.
We have had a 51 day stay in Australia. We arrived at Lady Musgrave Island on April 30th and we departed Broome on June 19th. We saw much more than we expected. The weather for us was a delight. We haven’t seen rain for 40 days and 40 nights. And the winds have been highly consistent and favorable.
Next we will take full advantage of those highly consistent trade winds. One thousand five hundred miles to Cocos Keeling, two thousand one hundred miles to Mauritius, and another one thousand five hundred miles to South Africa. Shore duty is over. Raise the sails. We are going down wind. With just two months of 24-hour sailing, we will arrive in South Africa before you can wink.
Joe Dorr, Captain of the Cosmos
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