Gove, right on the top of Australia and situated on the western side of the Gulf of Carpentaria, is not one of those cruising destination you just happen onto. It is about as remote a beach town as you can find and is certainly not frequented often by cruising boats heading east from Darwin or west from the Torres Straits. It is, as the Aussies say, at the back of beyond.
But, that’s where veteran cruising couple Dominique Cabarroque and Arne Luehrs found themselves in April 2024. They had spent the previous cruising season in Indonesia and had then sailed to Darwin, which is a large port in north Australia.
From there, they were heading east to the Torres Straits and then the East Coast of Australia and the Great Barrier Reef. This eastward route is fairly uncommon since most cruisers tend to use the easterly trade winds to blow themselves in a westerly direction.
But not our intrepid authors and their catamaran Manuka who found themselves faced with the northeast monsoon winds and then the Pacific Trade winds. They departed Darwin and had to cling to the coast to make headway up wind. It was a tedious and uncomfortable passage. Finally, when they got to the Wessel Islands and with the wide Gulf upwind ahead of them, they bailed out and sailed south to the harbor and village at Gove.
