A day spent in Hanover Inlet. We did laundry first off. Then it was anchor games. The morning breeze, afternoon sea breeze and tide conspire to spin us such that the sun is never fully on the solar panels, or so it seems!

First, we got the engines going and moved the boat back into the wind and tide, and left it there with the engines engaged. Then into the dinghy and dropped the stern anchor. Now when the engines were off, we’d sit on that - but to help it, a quick rolling hitch and a line up to the bow, so that we’d sit at a better angle. Too easy, as our Aussie friends would say. From that point on the solar panels were kicking out a net 70amps for most of the day.

As the sun is now setting, a quick summing up shows we generated 610amp-hours from the solar panels today. To put that into context, that means we could charge our house batteries from flat to full in the day. We didn’t need to do that, so we put a lot of the excess energy into generating water. The reason being, when we’re in the Prince Regent river with its tall cliffs all around us, we figure we won’t be able to generate as much power - so better to bank the water now, rather than try to make it there as well as keeping the house batteries charged.

Another chore is dealing with the rubbish. We separate it all into food waste (overboard when offshore), recycling (stored until Darwin), paper and the like (which we burn) and the rest which we also store until Darwin. The burnable stuff, we take ashore and burn below the high water line and with an offshore wind. We collect anything that doesn’t burn (usually not much as it only goes into the burn bag if we’re sure!) and damp down afterwards. Everything else is washed, so it shouldn’t smell, and then its stored securely.

Then some cleaning - and finally we could go for an explore into the creek on the dinghy. A rockfall has blocked the channel up to the fresh water creek, so no swimming. We’re looking forward to the swimming holes above the falls in the river for that.

We move tomorrow - it will be a bit of a game to judge the tides but the basic idea is to leave Hanover Inlet on a falling tide, get to the Whirlpool Pass as it begins to rise and ride that tide past Strong Tide point and into St George Basin where we’ll stop for the afternoon and night…