Darwin Careening

While in Darwin, we spent most of our time with SeeBeeZee anchored in Fannie Bay, with shore access at the Darwin Sailing Club. One of the activities that we could easily undertake was to careen on the beach, giving easy access to reprovision without requiring the dinghy, and an opportunity to get outside the boat and perform maintenance tasks.

With big tides and offshore winds, the hard sands of Fannie Bay are a popular place for multihulls to sit on the bottom, or for deep keel yachts to tie up to the careening poles that have been installed by the sailing club..

Washing the saloon carpet on the ramp of the sailing club was easy while on the shore, without having to carry the carpet in the dinghy.

The hard sand at Fannie Bay allowed the bike and trolley to carry heavy loads like groceries and petrol up to SeeBeeZee. Getting around with the bikes was easy, with so many excellent bike paths around Darwin.

It wasn’t always easy, as here in this photo, I struggle with the chain that had jumped off the top cog and jammed itself against the wheel spokes.

High up on the beach, a line of beach rock caused us to wait until the tide was well out before taking to the bottom. This photo was taken out the front windows of our saloon, and patches of rock can be seen close to the high tide line.

One of the maintenance jobs that the flat sand allowed was to get out with the orbital sander and take a layer off our timber rubbing strakes. Once the weathered surface was removed, we reapplied our favourite timber oil, and this should be good for another year.

We ended up on the beach on six different occasions, taking the opportunity to replace one of our outboard motors.