Making Tracks Again

We are making tracks south again today July 29. I have to write the date down every once in awhile as I tend to lose track.  It is a normal travel day, bouncing into the south east swell and being sprayed by the persistent 15 to 20 knot trade winds. It is whale season here. The humpbacks are up for calving. Without even trying, we spot and watch a total of 9 whales along our trip, all are feeding as they are jumping straight out of the water and crashing back in and slapping their tails and flippers. I will never tire of watching these gigantic creatures in their natural homes. When we anchor for the evening at Cape Upstart, we have the opportunity to watch a large manta ray feeding on the ocean surface. He had about a 5 foot wing span and glided through the water like a bird in the air. These creatures are prehistoric and are stunning to see when you are diving.

 

It's a beautiful evening and we will have a wide open view of the sunset.

Horses in the Tropics

I forgot to title my last update - it should have read "Goodbye Cairns".

 

The next day we traveled to Magnetic Island Marina. I will sing the praises of the wonderful day. This is "happiness stuff" for power boats heading against the normal flow. The wind was a light breeze, the water was flat with barely a ripple, the sun shone brightly and it was warm. We had the pleasure of watching a couple of humpback whales stage a performance of breeching and slapping the water with their flippers. Although the show was for their purposes of catching food, we like to think it was for us. I whine that we should be diving not traveling and although Glen has the same sentiments, we both know that tomorrow is not going to be a nice day on the water and we certainly don't want to be stuck out, exposed on the reef.

 

Magnetic Island is a familiar place now as we have been here before. We arrive with enough time to give the boats a splash to dilute the salt then head out for dinner at a Mexican?? Restaurant. The highlight of the meal is the resident possums, dozens of them, that the restaurant owner feeds with taco chips and carrot slices. They are quite entertaining.

 

The weather man was correct! We woke Wednesday morning to lots of wind and big waves, even inside the marina. So it is nice to be tucked in. I decided it was time for a "horse fix" and joined Ann and Bear for the two hour Bush and Beach ride in the appropriately named, Horseshoe Bay. We hopped the island bus right at the marina gate and jumped off at the ranch gates - efficient. The horses were all respectable riding horses, with peppy attitudes and not too many vices. My steed's name was Kitaboy.  Five riders (on horses of course) set off behind the trail guide (she on horseback also) along a track that meandered through open paddocks, where the wallabies all stood up to watched us ride by and heavily vegetated areas, where numerous bird types flitted on the branches overhead. It has been quite a while since I have been in a saddle and it took the better part of half an hour for me to get limbered up (age? Or out of shape?) Good thing it was a two hour ride. The track opened up onto the beach at Horseshoe Bay and our horses faithfully followed the fellow in front, each stepping into the footprints made before him. My horse skipped a beat every once in a while as he tried to keep his toes from getting wet, silly horse, because he knows very well what is coming up… At a predetermined stopping spot, everybody dismounts, the saddles are stripped from the horses, we strip down to our "swimmers" and we all go for a swim - on horseback! A very cool experience. Kitaboy made groaning sounds for the whole water trip, pretending to be a motor boat, I'm thinking. Once we finished a great big loop in the water, we all tack up again and head back to the ranch. They allowed for trots and canters all along, which is unusual for tourist trail rides and I'm very happy for that. It was a very fun afternoon.

 

July 23, 2012 - we finally left Cairns and headed south. The cruising is a bit splashy, but we expected as much. Once the boats are all salty the oceans level out. We pull into the anchorage at Dunk Island and have a peaceful night with minimal swell - didn't even have to put out a flopper. The next morning sees us heading out at day break, bound for Otter Reef and our hopes are high for some good diving. The conditions are awesome, the sun is shinning, the winds are an easy 10 to 15 knots and the water is nearly flat. Unbelievable. We have to dodge our way through the bommies, which we can't see very well but our Angels guide us to a safe stop over a beautiful sandy spot with water so clear we can see the bottom. Imagine! There are turtles in the area, because I saw one while anchoring. Eric and Ann pick us up and the four of us head out to find the perfect dive spot. Well we searched and searched, but couldn't seem to get into any water deeper than 30 feet. Because we are at water level with the whaler, we can't see the color variations well enough to get clear of the reef and what we thought was forever for distance probably wasn't (just driving around in little circles and thinking we've gone a long way). We finally found a spot where there were a couple of deeper spots and we flipped over the side. What looked like it would be a really bad dive (initial looks indicated no coral, few fish) was actually - in my opinion - a very interesting dive. The visibility was the best we have had so far in Australia, making that a huge positive. The area is terribly fished out, only a couple of large sturgeons and one grouper hiding in the shadows and a medium amount of tiny fish. The corals and sponges, though sparse, are beautiful specimens, nicely formed, colorful and large. We found four gigantic, giant clams and came across a turtle feeding; it is still a thrill to see them in their own environment. The water is only 70 degrees, still comfortable in our 5 mil suits.

 

There isn't enough time to do a second dive - well there is if we pushed it, but Eric and Ann were frozen and we didn't really have any place spectacular to head too, so we cleaned up the gear and just enjoyed the rest of the afternoon in a lazy way. It was so nice and warm on the back of the boat and it seems like we haven't seen much sunshine for so long, that I couldn't resist laying out on the swim platform to absorb it, much like a seal sunning. Eric and Ann came over for Happiness Time during which we planned our next few days and savored some of our finer Australian wines.

 

The evening water was "flat", a phenomenon we haven't encountered here yet. Remember, we are anchored in the open ocean behind a bump in the ocean floor that doesn't even break the surface at low tide. Glen and I soaked it up by illuminating the crystal water behind us with the underwater boat lights. You would be so surprised at what creatures swim through the brightness. Maybe we are getting simple minded, because this was certainly a simple pleasure for us. When all the conditions are right, things just don't get any better and it is great. This is why we are here.

National Parks and Wild Life

Almost! We almost saw a cassowary. Cassowary - prehistoric - big, black, flightless bird, aprox. 5 feet tall, with blue head, red wattle, grey comb (like and axe stuck in it's head), can be ferocious (?? Big Bird??), leaves BIG piles of "sign" on the hiking tracks and leaves footprints as big as my own! Maybe, I'm happy we didn't come face to face! But we know he was there and we heard him crashing in the bushes. We are hiking in the rainforests of the Misty Mountain National Park, south of Ravenshoe. It is gorgeous. Breathing is easy. We did encounter a feral pig on the track and decided that it would be better to let him know that we were there than to let him run into us, so called out to him well in advance. He just scooted off into the bushes. We also saw a wallaby and heard the calls of several different birds. This is one of the things that we really like about our down time from boating, especially here in the "Wet Tropics", hiking in the rainforest.  Absolutely awesome. The leaches are a problem, next time I will wear socks.

 

"Oh look, there is a different bird! Hand me the camera." We are driving now, on our way back from a good day of hiking. Hummmm, no camera in the car. Somebody, thankfully not me, left it on the roof of the car when we left the park. We back tracked the 10 km that we had already made, thinking it would be in the middle of the track where Glen would normally have spun out on the gravel. He must have been tired, he didn't spin out thus the camera was not where we expected it to be.  Slowly driving along checking both sides of the road as we went, we found it had ridden almost 5 km from the start point before letting go and diving into the ditch. After gathering all of the scattered bits, battery, lens cap and camera, we were astounded to find that it had earned only two miniscule scratches and a barely noticeable bruise. Amazing. Not everything turns out bad, every time!

 

In all, we had two fun days of kicking around. Now we're back at the boat, it's Monday, Wednesday is our planned day of departure - the weather is looking great for a week after that. More Diving - here we come. Since we haven't seen Eric, Anne and Bear for a whole two days, we all head out to a local Noodle House to exchange stories (they went out touring too) and plan our next cruising moves.

 
Cindy Kerunsky

Spending Waiting Time

This coast of Queensland, Aust. has some pretty tough weather and there aren't many places to hide the rough stuff out. So we putz on the boat for a few days and enjoy more of Cairns. The weather calms down and we head out to Michaelmas Reef for a couple of dives, one much better than the other. The water is a lot colder than we would have expected. Even in my 5 mil suit, it gets pretty chilly. We spend the night at the reef then head back to port as the wind begins to build "AGAIN". Sheesh! Michaelmas Reef is really close to Cairns, so the tour boats all head out there and it gets pretty "used". It would have been time for us to move on anyway.

 

Amazingly, there isn't too much washing to do on the boat. Now we have all of this spare time to kill, so we decide to scrub a year's worth of weathering off of the teak decks. Oh, my aching knees! But the decks look "Bellisimo"!

 

Enough sitting around, all it takes is one rental car. This time, we head south from Cairns, through Yungaburra, Atherton and Herberton, ending up in Ravenshoe for the night. Only one Motel there, the Kool Moon Motel, and we got the last room. Lucky.  Dinning out consisted of pub food at the 1911 hotel, which has withstood many cyclones, only needing a new roof after cyclone Yasi in 2011. Good people, decent food, a nice rural town. We checked with the front desk to see if we could get a 6:00am wake up call…."Well, if I'm awake, I guess I could call you." I giggled, "O.K." We set Glen's iphone, just as a back up. Ravenshoe has the distinction of being the highest town in Australia. That being said, it is cold there this time of year. What were we thinking? I packed shorts!

 

Diving the Great Barrier Reef

Finally, we got a break in the weather and Oso Blanco and us scooted 40 miles north of Cairns to the Agincourt Reef. We anchored behind Crispin Reef. Our whaler is too heavy to unload in the still persistent swell, so Glen and I lowered our rubber dingy and headed over to help Eric get his whaler down - it is a lighter version. It was still a bit of a rodeo, but we managed without breaking anything. Both big boats have their "flopper stoppers" out, we look like fishing trawlers at work, just sitting at anchor, but it does minimize the roll of the waves. This is the big times for diving and we can hardly wait for tomorrow to come.

 

First thing in the morning we all head out for our first splash of the day. Eric's whaler does not have a chart plotter on it and there is no showing land for us to reference our position, but we have a hand held GPS and so armed we head out into the great blue ocean. On route, I discover that I don't know how to operate the handheld (figures!) and we make a big 2 mile loop in no less than 130 feet of water - Where are the reefs and bommies when you want them?  Undaunted we return to the reef encircling the big boats because we can see the waves breaking on it (thus we know where it is) and we dive there; big disappointment!  It just "had" to be a "wrong" place to dive.  We head back to our respective big boats, grab a bite to eat, swap tanks, learn how to operate the handheld GPS and head out again. Woo Hoo! The GPS directed us to the dive spot we wanted and there was even a tiny buoy there to tie up too.  The dive was well worth the effort. Maybe not as full of life as our Fiji dives, but many new things to see and that's what counts. There were 5 giant squid hovering over coral heads, trying their best to blend with what ever color was closest to them.

 

In all we had two days of diving before we had to head back to Cairns because of impending bad weather. The weather forecasters were off by 1/2 a day and we bashed and crashed our way back to port. Probably the worst conditions we have been in since leaving Canada. But it was only a 5 hour run and other than being super salty, Mystery Ship handled it beautifully.

Daintree Forest

O.K. So we have some down time!

 

Imagine the soft hush of a sleeping rain forest. Your foot falls are cushioned by damp leaves and the humidity clings to everything as heavily as actual rain. It is cool and refreshing, alive and breathing; pulsing with life, seen and unseen.

 

Daintree Rainforest Reserve is a World Heritage site and rightly so. It would be truly criminal to cut this living organism down in the name of commerce and development. When one is stuck with time on their hands in Cairns, this is the place to go. There aren't a lot of accommodations to choose from and we are lucky to pick the Daintree Heritage Resort as it is tucked deep into the forest backing onto the Cooper Creek. We stayed for three nights, hiking creek beds and forest tracks and literally soaking up the forest. It rains - LOTS - but it is warm and you just don't mind it at all. If a person needed a peaceful retreat with no cell service or internet, this would be it; total relaxation and communing with nature. Cassowary - giant flightless birds - make this forest their home and though we weren't fortunate enough to see one, we did see convincing evidence that there is at least one bird left in the forest and Eric and Anne reported an actual sighting when they did their tour up here.

 

Our drive back from Daintree winds through a bit of the table lands. Mareeba and Karunda are towns of note on this highway. Austalia has a coffee plantation industry, albeit very small and we spend an afternoon touring a coffee plantation and learning how to make coffee. It is actually more complex than I would have imagined. Of course we came away with several bags of premium coffee for our morning brew.

 

Now we are back on the boat and waiting for the wind to calm and the swell to abate. There are only so many things to clean and polish on the boat.

 

Dunk Island to Cairns

Dunk Island used to be a very popular resort destination until last year when the island took the brunt of a cyclone. The resort was trashed. There is a lovely sand spit that exposes at low tide and is barely visible at high tide. We get anchored up by mid day so we let the rubber dingy down and speed off to see what we can see. The spit is still an attraction with day boaters and since it was a lovely day, there were several families enjoying the sun and sand. The destructive forces of the cyclone are eerily evident in the hulks of the still standing apartments. Don't mess with Mother Nature. The evening is still and beautiful, the anchorage is perfect in these good conditions, but would not be so great if the wind and water were up. We are only a day away from Cairns right now and when we get there tomorrow, this lovely weather will be gone.

 

On our way into Cairns marina the next day, we wave to Oso Blanco as they head out of harbour to anchor with guests at Fitzroy Island. We wish them luck as the winds are up and the sea state is following - meaning coming up too. We are happy to be safe and comfortable at dock. The boat needs a bath and we need some shore time.

 

Downtown Cairns is an easy "walk about" (local term) with multitudes of restaurants to choose from and brand name shopping. It is quite a destination because of the Great Barrier Reef. There are also some pristine rainforest parks in the region that draw people from all over the globe. We are chomping at the bit for some diving, but the weather is not "playing ball". Oso Blanco comes back to harbour - early - it is too lumpy for comfort out there and the reef is totally unprotected. WE all wait!