Over Night on Smooth Water

It's Aug 8th now and we have been motoring for three days and haven't turned the boat's stabilizers on once! The water is that smooth. One whole week of fabulous weather

 

Currently we are on a 60 hour nonstop passage that is taking us from the Percy's right into the Broadwater by Jacob's Well.  We are taking advantage of our last two full days of forecasted good weather. Our route is past Gladstone and Keppel Island, Bundaberg, around the outside of Fraser Island and the Great Sandy Strait, past Mooloolaba and Brisbane, through Moreton Bay and into the Broadwater, which will have us only a short distance from Sanctuary Cove. Initially we were going to overnight at Keppel Island, then overnight at Lady Musgrave Island, enter into the Great Sandy Strait Marina and hang for a day, then over to the Kingfisher Resort on Fraser Island, do the 4x4 thing on the island again, make our way down the Great Sandy Strait to Tin Can Inlet and wait for the high tide at the Wide Bay Bar, overnight at Noosa Heads, spend a couple of days at Moreton Island before entering the Broadwater back to Sanctuary Cove. But our fine weather is going to run out at the time we would want to cross the Wide Bay Bar, potentially holding us captive for more days than we could afford to spend. Decisions, decisions; boating is an ever changing lifestyle - no plan is ever written in stone (water?).

Glen is in the cockpit fishing. Or maybe I should say, changing lures every 1/2 hour to see if one will work! I have steak out for dinner, I'm not counting on fish.

Traveling South from Whitsunday

Our first day of travel got us to Scawfell Island around 2:30pm. Pulling up to the lee side of an island with a sandy beach is not a Canadian West Coaster's idea of "gunk holeing" (terminology used to describe hopping from anchorage to anchorage on the west coast - I don't know where the saying comes from, but this is what it means), but it is a brilliant day with no wind and smooth water so other than being exposed on three sides we can't tell the difference. In short, it is a story book place to be. We drop down the rubber dingy and scoot in to shore for a walk on the beach. The island is a National Park and nobody lives here. There are three sailing boats in the anchorage, but nobody on shore, so the beach is ours to explore. We enjoyed ourselves a bit too long though. The tide was ebbing (going out) so not only did we have to drag the dingy down the beach to float it, we also had to drag it about 1/2 a mile (exaggeration - just seemed like it) along the ocean floor, now high and dry, to reach the water. Who needs a gym! Nobody is whining though, because this is a "perfect day". Our reward is the viewing of a splendid sun set from our own back yard. I'm telling you, it just doesn't get any better.

 

It doesn't get any better unless,….. your next day of travel (like ours) brings you to Middle Percy Island after "another" stunning day of bright sun, calm blue ocean and whales performing like they know you are watching. We stopped at Middle Percy on our way north, so even though we were anchored up by 1:00 pm, today we decide to stay on the boat and just soak the "best of Australia" up (I think maybe we are remembering all of our hard work from yesterday too!) A group of humpbacks cruises right up to the anchorage and we have front row seats. We've seen turtles today too. It is a rule now, I can't start dinner until I've watched the sunset. It would be ungrateful and wasteful not to appreciate God's finest works.

 

From My Galley Window

From My Galley Window

(A perfect "after sunset" in the Whitsundays, Australia)

 

Water, shimmering navy blue satin, shot with streaks of dark silver grey. Distant mountains, gun metal grey and closer dotted islands, velvet black, in stark relief. The remnants of the sunset, deepening red gold at the horizon, diluting into a wispy baby blue background ribboned with candy floss pink clouds, culminating in the highest heavens to darkest navy blue. Here and there the bright pin point of an evening light; black silhouettes of sailing ships now resting peacefully at anchor. With each passing minute another layer of night is added until my window becomes black and my vision is held within.

 

Perfect Conditions in Whitsundays

Hamilton Island Marina in the Whitsundays is a good place to pass some windy days. We spent July 31 and Aug 1 nights there, gave the boat a well deserved bath.  We got together with Oso Blanco both evenings as we will be parting ways when we leave the marina. It is possible that we may never be together again on our boats. One night was a mud crab night, a great treat here. We bought some fresh and cooked them ourselves. What a feast! They are very much like our red rock crabs from the west coast, a very hard stony shell with most of the meat in the claws.

 

After all of the crappy weather we have had, now we are experiencing Australia's finest. We've been out of Hamilton Island marina for three days now anchored securely at Stonehaven on Hook Island in the Whitsunday Group. With such favorable conditions, putting the whaler into the water was a piece of cake. We've been re-diving our previous sites here. Each time we go under, we find something new and wonderful. On top of our new finds, we can clearly hear the humpbacks calling, they must be close. Diving is an amazing hobby. The visibility is still not so great, though sunlight overhead helps a lot. The currents have fooled us a couple of times, being stronger than we anticipated underwater, but we just adjust our dive to suit. At 68 to 70 degrees in the water, it is cold and we need every bit of sunshine to warm us up between dives. This is the end of our diving in Australia now and we are greedy to see (and hear) as much as we can.

 

Our anchor winch gave us a bit of concern when we were letting the anchor down. It just quit letting the chain out. Hummmm, wonder if we'll get it back up???? With a bright sunny afternoon at our backs, Glen and I dismantled the winch (mostly Glen, I just pass the tools) to find that the "cones", which are supposed to be free moving, were completely void of grease and stuck together. With grease everywhere, we finished the project, happy to find that there were no left over parts and started everything up to give it a test run. Yeah!! She works!

 

Today, under another sunshiny sky, we are continuing our way south. It is so hard to leave a beautiful area when you have beautiful conditions, but we are still 500 miles from Sanctuary Cove and need to be there by the end of August. It is also good to travel in beautiful conditions, no wind, no waves, no mess, no stress!

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!

 

Another Day in the Life

O.K. so now it is June 23 and after another really long and tiring stint in the air, we have arrived back at Hamilton Island. The General Store has complied all of the groceries that I ordered by email earlier in the week, so we pack our goodies away and head out, final destination…. Cairns, but of course we will have points in between. Our first day of travel sees us 80 miles north at Cape Upstart to anchor for the night. It is a nice calm night and no swell. We are definitely ready for sleep when darkness falls. Oh wait, it is only 6:00pm, guess we should have some dinner first and then turn in. It is probably the fact that it is the wee small hours at home that has us dragging so. I have also managed to catch (why I'd want to do that…) a terrible cold so am not feeling very swift. Glen will tell you that this is my usual state! The next day's travels have us pulling into the marina at Magnetic Island, just across from Townville on the main land. This is a really nice laid back holiday settlement. Glen and I spend a couple of days hiking to explore the place, because if we rent a vehicle (which we do anyway) it only takes a few hours to drive it. We get to see some wildlife, kangaroo, rock wallabies and koala, as well as lots and lots of birds. There is some WW II relics in the hills - gun stations and communication tower which provide good exploration. Again, we must judge a place by it's food and we had a delightful dinner at the local French restaurant Les Paradise, so this place "rates".  The weather has been rather cool and rainy since our arrival, rather like what we left back in Canada. It took us 4 days before we broke out our shorts. It is running around 23 degrees during the day and in the high teens at night.

 

Another day in a boater's life! We've had a beautifully quiet night anchored in the middle no-where of Missionary Bay at the north end of Hinchinbrook Island. It is sooooo shallow that we are about 1/2 mile off shore in 15 feet of water. The morning breaks bright and sunny and after a hearty breakfast of bacon and eggs, we do our one chore of fixing the dishwasher. The silly thing always seems to quit after a month of doing nothing - I guess it gets lazy! It is an easy fix (thankfully) open this, open that, push this button and then that button. Poof! It works again. We've only got a short trip planned today, 18 miles to Dunk Island. Glen goes to start the main engine and…….nothing! Not even a click! It is at times like this that having a "motor head" as the Captain (Glen) is a very good thing. A short time later the engine roars to life, something about "hot wiring"? The starting solenoid (sp?) is gone. Our mechanical knowledge is so great now, hot wiring, pounding things with a hammer, pushing buttons, our prospects are limitless!

Whitsunday Group and Hamilton Island

Wow, I can't believe how far behind I am in recording all of the wonderful things we've been doing here in Australia. May 2 until now June 30, is almost too long ago for my air conditioned brain to recall events. Lucky for me, 5 weeks of that time was spent at home in Calgary.

 

The Whitsunday area is a nice boating destination directly across from Airlie Beach on the mainland, with many small islands, resorts, beaches, diving, anchorages and so forth. It must be said though that there are few anchorages that protect well from the persistent south easterly winds that seemed to blow a constant 20 knots for the first 5 days that we were there. Stronger winds means bigger swells and the swell at anchor is the killer. Cid Harbor is a good safe place as well as Stone haven Bay, these became our outside bases.

Finally we got into the water again for some diving and although the visibility wasn't great, the underwater life is definitely wonderful and diverse. This is a popular tourist destination, so the local dive operators feed the fishes in order to give their clients lots to see……But…then these fishes expect that "everybody" should feed them. One very large giant trevally (type of fish) decided that my hand was food and grabbed a large chunk out of it! Besides hurting like crazy, now I am bleeding profusely…."Shark!" enters my mind. So, here I am, diving, one hand clasping tightly over the other to prevent bleeding and trying to carry on enjoying my dive (we had just entered the water). I'm here to tell the tale, so obviously survived.

 

When Oso Blanco rejoined us on anchor, we all decided that with a calm window of weather for the next few days, we would head out to the outer reef, some 25 miles from the Whitsunday Group. We anchored behind Line Reef across from Hook Reef, which we could find because of our chart plotters, but that was not visible to the eye until the lowest of low tide. To somebody looking at us, you would think that we were anchored in the middle of the ocean. It made me recall the question that so many people asked us when we first left North America to cross the Pacific to the Marquesas, "What do you do at night? Anchor?" The only response to that was "No, it is several thousand feet deep." But if we had anchored, how we looked at Line Reef, was how it would have been. Did that make sense? O.K. so we are here to dive…The "Real" Great Barrier Reef. I have to admit, we were a bit disappointed, poor vis being the biggest problem, big current and too much commercialism - there is a tourist barge (Pontoon) permanently moored here that sees 100's of tourist a day, they arrive on large power cats (boats). Glen and I did find some beautiful bommies (coral boulders) with lots of life to see, so all was not lost.

 

The main resort island of the Whitsunday Group is Hamilton Island. It is a big commercial project owned by Mr. Robert Oatley (or so the brochures claim). Mr. Oatley's granddaughter qualified for the Australian Dressage team for the London Olympics 2012. (Just a side note) There are restaurants, shops, hotels, holiday rentals and a marina here, all very, very nice. We are docking here for the next 5 weeks so that we can go home. It is nice to go out for dinner again and the restaurants are all pretty good quality, with Bommies being absolutely "note worthy".  We take a day to explore the island and go through the process of renting a golf cart for a day to tour the island, 8:00 am to 5:00pm, Will we have enough time???? By 11:30 am, we have driven every street on the island and have turned our cart back in. I guess we should have walked it; we would have at least spent the day doing it. We found it pretty funny. Hamilton Island has an airport and we fly from here to Sydney, spend the night and then fly back to Canada.

 

 

Moving On

The Percy Islands are very, very nice, they have the most beautiful swimming beaches in all of the south Pacific. Too bad we can't stay longer, but the weather is going to blow and there really isn't much protection in the Percy anchorages. Besides, Eric and Anne are on a deadline, they have to be to Hamilton Island for Apr 30 to meet some friends who are flying in.

 

Another day, another short trip, this time further up the coast to Mackay (pronounced "McI"). Both boats are tied up at the dock by 3:30, we've checked in and rented a car for the next few days. Anne and I have to rush out to get groceries as everything is closed tomorrow for their Anzac Day celebration - like our Remembrance Day. Dinner out is always a good way to end a stint on anchor and the food at the Thai restaurant at the marina was delicious.

 

In all, we spend 5 nights at dock in MacKay and the winds "do" blow, so it is good to be in port. Boat work and exploring inland fill our time. One of our inland days, Glen and I drove to the Eungella National Park and did a 14 km hike through a very lovely sub-tropical forest. We came across a young park ranger who was cutting overgrowth from the path and he filled us in on some of the things we could see. His parting remarks were "Watch out for the leaches, they'll eat you alive."  Up until that exact moment, we hadn't encountered any, there after, we had to stop regularly and check ourselves over as they truly were out to get us.

 

Platypus (es,i) live in this area, but we traveled to the viewing area two days in a row and didn't see them, so we are unconvinced that they still exist.

 

 

Middle Percy Island

Next stop...... Middle Percy Island, only and hour north of South Percy Island. Another brilliant afternoon is in progress as the two Nordhavns set their anchors in West Bay. We swing out our flopper stopper just in case it is needed. Immediately, two rubber dingys are racing toward the shore, another tantalizing expanse of golden sand, this time with palm trees swaying.  The swell is breaking on the beach, so it is a trick to get landed without filling the dingy with water or taking a bath ourselves. This island is inhabited as well as being a National Park. There is an "A" framed shelter on the beach that is full of yachting "we were here" items, like flags, t-shirts, placards and basically whatever passing boats can print their names on, dating back to the 1950's, draped from the walls and rafters. Oso Blanco installs one of their t-shirts in the melee. We (Glen and I) are ghosts, traveling a "mystery path", we leave "no trace"!

 

 Our evening rendezvous is graced with the most dazzling sunset.

 

Day two at Middle Percy is discovery day, actually a super exercise day too. We start with a hike (3.5 km) up to the homestead (where the people live) and are greeted firstly by a flock of Mother goats with brand new babies (kids) - I mean Brand New! Kate, the lady of the house invites us all in for coffee and treats us to a new variety of fruits that she grows on the island. Custard apples, fruit salad fruit, passion fruit, all are exotic, unique and very tastey. She fills us in on the history of the island and we pepper her with queries. Ernst, one of fellows who also lives on the island, takes us all on a truck tour to see some of the vantage points of the island and the "airstrip".  We are delighted to see some wild kangaroos and wild goats (left by early mariners as meat supply for ship wrecked sailors) and we stop at a wild lemon bush to pick a bag full of ripe lemons (yum). Guess what? All of the butterflies are congregating on these islands. They are Blue dragon butterflies and driving through the forest with thousands of them everywhere makes you feel like you are in "Avator" or some such movie. We finish the adventure off by hiking back down the hill on the short track (1.5 km) to the beach for a splash in the water.  Because Kate is stuck out here for months on her own while her husband works on the mainland, I asked if there was anything that we might have on board that she would like. At first she said "No", then she cocked her head and said "Do you have any chocolate?"  Lucky her, I carry a great stack of chocolate bars, so we dingy'ed one back in to shore for her and left it safely in the "honesty box".

 

Dinner and a movie on our own tonight was just what we needed to re-build our strength.

Butterflies and Dragon Flies

 

Keppel Island was a good refresher course for us on how to rig our flopper stoppers. Lovely anchorage, but the residual swell from the past week of big weather just wraps around into every nook and cranny. We blast our way through the surf on our rubber dingy and walk on the flawless sandy beach. There is a bit of an estuary here and we are surprised to find three sailing vessels all intentionally aground, tucked into the mangroves, enjoying the solitude. The tides here are an amazing 16 to 19 foot difference from high tide to low tide, so they will float free on the next high tide.

 

The rolling is too much for us so the next morning we head off for Port Clinton on the main land. This proves to be a beautifully protected anchorage, as big as a lake, but calm. We get parked up with lots of afternoon left so Glen and I do the requisite trip to the beach to poke around a bit before "happiness hour" with Oso to watch the sunset. We are even able to set the whaler down in the water so we can tour down to the end of the inlet. This is a military area, so not much to see but mangroves and the water is very shallow.

 

Our next jaunt is to the Percy Island group, a short 50 mile day. The winds are non existent and the swell is undetectable. It's like cruising in a convertible, we have the top down, the tunes on and we are just rocking along. Another one of those days that let you know "Life is good!"  But here is the butterfly and dragon fly part…. There must be a butterfly migration on as there are hundreds of them just flying along with the boat, black with white spots and some are yellow. I did see one huge dragonfly too; all just flying around out in the middle of the water. Magic.

 

We are the only two boats to anchor up at this neat little cove on South Percy Island. It is gorgeous. The swell is minimal, the water is a typical tropical blue and the sandy beach is calling our names. So why disappoint it? The beach is like a moonscape, hard packed sand, swirled into channels by the rapidly decreasing tide, with jagged black rocks piercing skyward. The next day, Anne, Bear, Glen and I head back in for a hike up the hills, it is hot and sunny and really interesting. Red sand stone gullies and tufted salt grass covered hills and of course the barren rock shore on the weather side, where the waves crash into flashes of white foam.

 

Somehow, after our walk, when we were taking off our shoes to ride the dingy back to the boats, we all got wet! Go figure! The sandy beach and the blue water just sucked Bear in and next Glen decided to experiment with water therapy for his feet which extended to his neck, Anne made the plunge and what the heck, I had a swim too. Pure luxury! Australia does have amazing swimming beaches, clean, hard sand that extends out to the dark blue depths and refreshing clear water. Swimming beaches in the south Pacific are very few and far between as most are rimmed with coral shelves that make swimming from a shoreline impossible. Salt water always thrills me, because I can actually float in it and therefore swim - wonderous.  

First Overnighter of the Season

 

We are on day three of our travels. Our leisurely morning is spent fixing things, Glen sweating over a drawer that will not work on the sliders anymore and me trying to get our computer to talk to all of our navigation equipment. We had some work done on the computer - new power supply and video card installed. It was a case of unplug all the wires and then plug them all back in. But I guess when that happens, the software has to be told where to find everything again and since I was not the initial installer, I didn't know that, so now I'm troubleshooting.  As I write this I'm only 1/3 complete, I have some ideas, but can't do anything more until we are done traveling lest I get us so screwed up that we can't find out where we are - not a good thing.

 

Everybody hauls anchor at 10:30 am, we are heading from beside the Kingfisher Resort on Fraser Island to Keppel Island, just south of Yeppoon, 177 nm, 20 to 21 hours at 8 kt. Initially we thought we were going to be having to out run some weather, but now the extended forecast looks really wonderful, so we are looking forward to having some great exploring, maybe diving weather and of course a smooth passage.

 

I'm on the night shift again, with only two of us, we each get some night shift, so I'm not complaining, just letting you know. As we pass by Gladstone, there is a field of freighters on mooring buoys outside of the harbour, about 30 of them. They are lit up like Christmas - which is a very good thing as running into one of these babies would be like hitting a mountain. These great sleeping hulks shinning in the darkness always freak me out a bit because they look sooooo close, even thought the radar tells me they are several miles away. The next thing that catches my eye is a flashing light in front of my line of travel. There is nothing on the radar and it isn't close enough to see more detail by binoculars, hummm? Close scrutiny of the chart reveals a light house further up the coast and the directions correlates with our heading. I'll be watching it though. Guess I'd better get back to work. The stars are really nice and bright tonight.

Two Ships Head Out

 

The beginning of our dual trip (Oso Blanco and Mystery Ship) out of Mooloolaba began with a "bash". We were lead boat out of the harbour entrance and where there were markers buoys on the sand bar when we arrived, now there was nothing, but the sand bar was still there as evidenced by the breaking waves. We followed our original course in, out (and a sailboat ahead of us) only to be rudely awakened by slamming the sand bar. We bounced once and were lifted clear by the next swell. Visions of our impending destruction flashed through my mind - being stuck aground, being battered with the swell, falling over on our side and ultimately filling with sand and salt water. Good thing my imagination is not reality. The worst that has occurred is that we now have a shinny spot on the bottom where the sand rubbed the anti foul paint off.  The rest of our day was uneventful, even the crossing of the Wide Bay Bar in a 1.7 M swell. (we wouldn't want to be going in anything bigger than that though).

 

It felt so good to be letting the anchor down for the first time this season. Even the little rust bits that flew all over the freshly polished white gel coat didn't dim the fun. We are just snuggled up to the shoreline of the Great Sandy Strait channel, in a spot just south of the very shallow crossing that we will do tomorrow on the afternoon high tide. Our freshly inflated rubber dingy is plopped into the water and Glen and I head over to Oso for pot luck super, so we can all exaggerate about our day. Eric has lots of good stories on touching bottom over his extended boating history and we find that they even kissed the sand at Mooloolaba today too.

 

Our sleep has been peaceful. The day begins on a falling tide, so after breakfast, Glen and I head out in the dingy to check out the now exposed beaches and sand dunes. There isn't much to find as far as neat shells, but as we crest one sand pile on the beach, we are met with the strangest sight….. it is like we are looking down from an airplane and under us we see the gathering of multitudes of armies, jostling for position on a great battlefield. These tightly packed foot soldiers turn out to be tiny little blue crabs with white legs, they are the size of small marbles and there are literally thousands of them swarming over the beach in compact groups. If you get too close, they all dig themselves into the sand, disappearing in seconds. They are funny to watch. We are wondering why the birds aren't down here having a feast? Maybe the little critters taste bad! Of course our camera is on the boat, so no pictures to validate our story. This is Fraser Island that we are on and we do come across some dingo tracks…so we did hear one howling the night before.

 

The high tide happens at 5:00 pm today so we up anchor and start motoring at about 3:00 pm so that if we get hung up along the way, we at least have a rising tide to wash us up and away. We let Oso Blanco lead - Eric has a track from when we came south through here (we forgot to make one on our chart - tisk, tisk). We make it through without incident; the least amount of water we showed on our sounder was 3 feet below our keel. Now we have to pour on the coal to get to our anchorage destination before dark, which is complete by 6:00pm. Tonight anchoring isn't so fun as it is raining and windy (breezy) so I am freezing in my shorts by the time I have the snubber lines properly set. I am mollified (is that a word) by the fact that we get to have pizza at the Kingfisher Resort.

Moving Northward

The weather over the Easter weekend was absolutely perfect. Calm winds and flat water. We should have been making northward tracks, and we thought we were, stopping in Manly for two nights then heading up to Mooloolaba for our next stop. Except that the winds and water changed while we were there and we got stuck for 5 days. Oh, well, time to go see what's great about Mooloolaba. We rented a car from 1/2 price rentals, this funny little box that we don't even know the company of manufacture. It can park where ever you can park a bicycle! Too easy! Off we head to Eumundi Markets, about an hour away. What a pleasant suprise, it was like stepping off of the boat in Ganges harbour on SaltSpring Island. All kinds of people gather with their home made everything - jewelry, food items, clothing, things, you name it. It was a lot of fun. We came away with some beautiful soap, some great sented insense sticks and a metal twirly thing for the back yard at home (it is too windy on the boat).
 
Another day's exploring had us heading up to Noosa Heads and joining up with the Discover Everglades Noosa Tour. Ten of us are on a tour boat heading out across a couple of fresh water lakes up to the Noosa River in the Great Sandy National Park. This tour is one of the best values that we have come across in Australia. We had a lovely boat ride, morning tea with cakes, more boat ride, because somebody stole all of the canoe paddles and we had to go back and get some more, then a 1 hour canoe trip - 8 of us canoed, we then had a lovely steak lunch with many salads and refreshments, we canoed back to point B and fianlly a boat ride back to the start. All for $119.00 per person. You can hardly eat dinner out for that amount here and look at all of the stuff we got to do. The canoe trip was through the everglades, lovely calm water, with overhanging trees and birds. We really enjoyed the whole deal. Might have to get a canoe for the boat or home or something!
 
So we've been in Mooloolaba that we have met some fellows Canadians on the sidewalk and invited them down for a visit to the boat - sometimes you just need some outside conversation. Nice people, they are in Australia on a house exchange. And also, we have been here long enough that Oso Blanco has caught up with us. The weather is changing to the better and we will be headed out again. We had a really good visit with Anne and Eric and Bear, so much that each side had to tell as we haven't seen them since last Nov.