Sailing

The nights are very temperate in this climate and around 3 or 4am a little breeze kicks in and with 15DegC its almost cool in the early morning hours.

By 8am the sun has warmed things up to 20DegC and today we reached 29DegC in the afternoon.

Life revolves around tide times and we left an hour before low tide to get to the lagoon. Yesterday we inflated Alan's kayak and this morning we launched it and explored the lagoon. The wind was keeping the temperature very nice but made the paddling a harder. I was very much hoping that we wouldn't find any crocs during our exploration or any other large marine life such as sharks which could easily sink the inflatable.

After a bit of paddling Alan had the great idea that we could rig up sail on the kayak and use it to cruise around the lagoon with the wind helping us. As we are both sailors it didn't take long to produce a makeshift spinnaker using a paddle for a mast and broomstick as a pole to hold up our poly tarp sail. A bit or string to hold it all together and to be used for sheets and we were off.

Although our plan was to sail on a beam reach across to the other side some unforeseen technical issues with the rig meant we ended up somewhere downwind and no way to sail back. We pulled down the rig, got out and pulled the kayak back to where we started. Although the mission was declared a partial success we decided to abort until some improvements to the rig could be made.

The kids did a bit of paddling, some swimming and lots of exploring in the sand but the turning tide soon reminded us to go back before were cut off.

We had a late lunch, meet some people from Albury, had a bit more of chat and the day was over.

When I returned to the caravan Alexander had been missing for some time and was last seen heading to the toilets. Just as I set off to search for him, he turned up and told us that he was locked in a toilet/shower cubicle with the door jammed and couldn't get out until someone else came to open the door.

There are quite a few Kangaroos living in the caravan park and they apparently are not scared of going into caravans to find food.

The Port Smith area is also home to an Aboriginal community located just south of the caravan park It is said to be one of the largest communities in Australia with a population between 1000 and 5000 depending on the time of year and what's on. They have no shops in the community, just a takeaway and a police station.