We enjoyed our stay in Gove, though I can't really recommend it for a place to provision for the Indian Ocean crossing. We went one night to town to see the Arafura Days talent show- arriving in time to see the winning final act- a bunch of blokes in nun costumes singing and dancing. We met a nice fellow named Owen and his two daughters after he heard our American accents. His daughters were anxious to visit America and Disneyland. I can't help but feel how disappointed Australians will be once they get to Disneyland. The entire continent of Australia is like one giant theme park. Strange animals bouncing, hopping, soaring, floating and swimming around. There are "Outback Adventures" and "Reef Adventures" advertised on every street corner. We have had to look hard for trash- finding it in only a few places tucked away on some islands. The usual fluorescent light bulb tubes- which for some mysterious reason, along with "flip flop" sandals, will be all that remains of human civilization, once we manage to make ourselves extinct. Both, New Zealand and Australia are surgery suite clean. They even give out "Tidy Town" awards. For every Australian, there appears to be at least one tourist. So, it is not unusual to hear German, Japanese, and Swedish, spoken at once, on any street corner. Gove was the only town we visited which had no tourists. It did have three pubs though, a good library, one bank, the ever present Qantas office, and a so-so Woolworth's supermarket.

Our new friend Owen, crane operator at Alcan, even offered to take us on our own private tour of the mining factory. Its smoke belching Lego shaped structure sits on a point of land leased from aboriginal Australians. Somehow it manages to take ochre colored dirt and turn it into aluminum for cans, leaving small hills of bright red dirt as a waste product. Reluctantly, we told him we had cleared out already and had to keep moving along.

After waking the following morning with a hangover, from drinking just one Australian beer, (I had forgotten they pack twice the amount of alcohol and lacking the new Aussie drug to prevent hangovers- what an invention) we timed our departure to coincide with an ebbing tide through the "Hole in the Wall". A narrow pass through very long Raragala Island, which if not timed perfectly can mean a long roundabout deflection to get by the cigar shaped island. Our arrival eastward had to coincide with high water at Gove- with full sail up and the engine ticking away, we slipped easily through. Only after we were anchored safely on the other side, did Phil read the description in Warwick Clay's "Downwind Around Australia and Africa". 'If not passed at slack water the current may reach twelve knots with overfalls of three meters. It is too dangerous for yachts'. If you screw up you really are on your own as there is not a soul around who can help. But, a well-timed arrival is rewarded with a fun ride and some pretty bizarre looking rock strata.

Most of the Northern Territory is undeveloped. Huge tracts of land are set aside for aboriginal people. White guys must have permits just to land on shore. Crocodiles and jellyfish don't have to. Despite hanging chunks of meat off Iwalani and slapping a cushion tied to a line for half-hour each night on the surface of the water, then shining a light over the waters surface hoping to see just one set of beady eyes- I never did. I guess the crocs have figured out that I am no match for them.

August 7 we were reefed down in anticipation of 30-knot winds. By ten am the wind warning was cancelled so we shook out the reef and turned on the engine- while Phil made me "sticky buns" for my birthday. Now I must toot my husbands horn very loudly, because these really were exceptional sticky buns. In fact, these were the very best sticky buns ever made in the whole history of anyone making sticky buns. One of the very best things about Phil, unlike other "renaissance people", people who can do a whole lot of things, but none of them very well, (myself included) is that Phil can do a whole lot of things much better than the supposed experts in a particular field. When he does a repair, it no longer becomes a repair, but a metamorphosis into something better made than the original. The "repair" on the toilet has resulted in a piece of equipment I no longer have to arm wrestle. I actually had gotten to the point at sea where you couldn't pay me to "use the head". Becoming a bulwark trapeze artist was infinitely preferable, even in ten-foot seas, to working up a sweat with a stubborn pump handle and getting splattered in, well, you get the picture. Now with two strokes, done with two fingers sporting long polished nails, the whole bowl is whooshed clean. I don't know what he did, or how he did it, but it's a miracle. Similarly, the sticky buns were so light and fluffy, with just the right amount of chopped pecans and sticky sauce, that any baker would have been instantly envious. I ate the whole batch of them. Later that night, after a supper consisting of a fistful of Tums, while motoring along in glassy seas and getting kind of bored watching the phosphorescent trail we left in the water, I joined the small select club of people that gets to watch movies at sea. I firing up the computer and set out the digital speakers to watch one of the DVD's Phil gave me for a present. We continued Iwalani's tradition of birthday DVD's at sea. He also got me a "real" didgeridoo made in Gove, in addition to my very own machete. Good for whacking any crocs or pirates that might get in my way. It was a pretty nice birthday and I only got a little homesick thinking of my family, sailing in Penobscot bay, eating mussels and chocolate cake, celebrating the big day without me.

The further west we went, the lighter the winds became. Our hospice care patient has gone steadily downhill. I had stopped his blood pressure medicine, but have continued with the Clindamycin. Motoring along wasn't different than being tied to a marina and gave me an opportunity to pull out many of the medical tomes we carry on board. I began reading and convinced myself, that perhaps Stewart was having a resurgence of his thyroid disease. I could make a case for either hypo or hyperthyroidism. I could help him, if that were the case. Darwin, largest city in the Northern Territory was just three days away. It wasn't hard for Phil to agree to a diversion. Having already cleared for Cocos/Keeling, we just had to convince customs that we had a medical emergency with one of our crew.

On Saturday we motored in to Darwin having gone around Cape Don and through the Van Diemen Gulf (a reportedly turbulent area with strong tides and rough waters) with glassy calm water. I got on the radio to reach customs and report our re-entry into Australia, only to find out after several tries that no one works on weekends. Forget about sneaking in on a weekday- airplanes, boats and surveillance crews are hard at work. But on a weekend, the doors seem wide open. I explained my situation to the fellow that came back to me from the lurking bunch of cruising boats, with nothing better to do than sit around and listen to channel 16, and one of them said he couldn't see any reason why I couldn't go to shore. He even offered to bail us out of jail if he was wrong. I waited until it was a little cooler to go to shore and make a phone call to find a vet hospital.

Darwin is a great place. I am glad we didn't go by it. Provisioning is better here than anywhere else we've been. The city is typically clean, lots of parks, tall trees and some older architecture. A high promenade encircles the city showing off the views of Darwin harbor. The anchorage leaves a little to be desired, as the tides generally rise and fall twenty feet. But, the people are very friendly and helpful.

On Sunday, Stewart and I were picked up by a very nice young vet named Melissa and whisked off to the hospital where she works with four other women. They had just bought a Doppler blood pressure instrument and unfortunately, Stew's BP is normal. I say unfortunately, because that would have been a manageable reason for his blindness. His thyroid is also normal. All of his organ function- normal. His white blood count is now up to 33,000(up there among the top ten high White blood counts I have seen in a cat) and I am waiting for a pathologist to look at his blood slide, as I saw a discrepancy between what was on the smear and what the machine was spitting back for a differential. Machine said lots of lymphocytes- I saw normal amounts of mature cells with some bizarre segmented cells, possibly bands, but with dark blue intracytoplasmic inclusions. We sent off a toxoplasmosis titer-, but, in all honesty, my experience has been, that a white blood count that high usually points to one thing- and in Stewart's case that means a brain tumor. Brain tumors have always existed mostly in soap operas and bad novels. Here I am living out the bad drama made by writers with limited imagination. He has periods of "Stew lucidity" but, they are becoming fewer and far between. He is like a newly completed house going through a time lapse series of construction photos in reverse. First the wiring and plumbing get removed, then slowly all the other parts and pieces until all that's remaining are a skeletal framework and some fur. I am totally selfish in that I do not want him to die on Australian soil. I do not want to remember Australia and have to choke back tears in the process. APW