It's the island on everyone's lips in these parts: Lizard. The nominal turning point for the multiple vice commodores of the Shaggers, the grey navy and the general cruisers as well as long term home for some yachties. We left the channel markers out of Cairns and turned our bows towards the north to make our push to these fabled, fantastical bays of Lizard Island. However, Lizard is not just down the road - its a triple digit nautical mile trip from Cairns requiring some degree of planning and the odd course correction that wrinkled the brow of even one of history's greatest navigators. This area of the coast bristles with the ghosts of Cook, Flinders, King and others. The water coursed with the descendents of the Endeavour's barnacles - and in fact several great grandchildren had taken up residence in our speed sensor rendering it completely inoperable.
As is usual with the fair ship Arjuna, by the time we had retrieved the crew from various places and actually extracted ourselves from the marina it was getting late in the morning. The Third Mate very nearly missed our wheels up time - socialising on some remote marina finger instead of feathering the hatches and ruffling the bunting in preparation for departure. Our first planned port of call out of Cairns was Michelmas Cay, a well trodden favourite of the local tourist fleet. Not many miles into our voyage, we revised the calculations and with some prescience determined that we would be arriving into Michelmas in the late afternoon - never a good time to be trying to spy coral bommies from the foredeck while negotiating an anchorage. Instead, we altered course for Upolu Cay - also a tourist mecca but more achievable given the march of time. Entering Upolu was uneventful with full afternoon sun illuminating the delightful, colourful fish filled Reefs of Death surrounding the small sand spit and making the route in obvious. We were lucky enough to pick up the only Marine Parks buoy off the cay and in the late afternoon, the tourist boat moored nearby departed with all hands and we had the entire reef to ourselves and a small contingent of batfish begging, as usual, for risotto and other tasty Mediterranean treats from the galley of Arjuna.
There is little shelter to speak of at Upolu Cay. At low tide, the sand spit rises from the waters and holds back the chop and wind swell. Other than that, when the tide rises there is little more than a positive attitude and the sight of distant Green Island to keep the sailor sane. Fortunately, the winds had been milder for a few days prior and we had a reasonably trouble free night at this little atoll. The crew were all slightly plagued by some remaining land fever: a problem any time we were extracted from solid ground to rolling waters without a transition period. However, the next morning, a heavily equipped reef assault was launched and the Zodiac brought into the sand bar at high speed to revive the crew's esprit de corp and land lassitude.
Upolu Cay at low tide is a Tourism Australia, Lara Bingle, helicopter sweeping over azure waters TV commerical level experience. The coral around the sand bar was hard to find, and not bad, but the real jewel here is the crystal clear water over postcard sand bar. When the Captain, or more likely, one of the minions, dropped his prescription sunglasses overboard, it was an easy task to simply snorkel around in the water because the offending sunglasses were simply sitting clearly on the bottom. The crew, attracted by the possibilities of an unoccupied sand bar, promptly set to work digging, trenching and undermining the pristine sand thereby ensuring the doom of the next boat load of day trippers.
By the time the crew had reassembled on the poop deck of the Mothership the day had aged considerably. It was clear we would not reach anywhere else that day. We were faced with the terrible prospect of having to spend another day moored in paradise. We held on to the mooring and lo and behold, another night was spent in this most busy of tourist areas with not another boat in sight. Early the next morning, we dropped the buoy and headed out towards the Low Isles. We tried an innovative new departure route from Upolu Cay and found ourselves picking the way gingerly over shallow and very clearly visible Reefs of Death for twenty minutes or so before the bottom dropped comfortingly out of site. A refreshing reminder that coral anchorages are like black widows, cone shells and dugongs: beautiful but deadly.
We sailed happily North with the wind on our quarter and the trolling line trailing uselessly behind. The Low Isles were named by Cook on his mad scramble north for their lowness rather than the mental state they produce - Cook saved these sort of place names for a few days later in his voyage when times were more desperate. As we coursed into the Low Isles, we had our first fish strike in many miles when a reef shark ate our new super fishing lure and then headed off.
The bay at the Low Isles was bustling when we dropped sail and pulled in to pick up a buoy. Large tourist catamarans out of Port Douglas were testing the limits of their rated carrying capacity and the water was full of snorkelers, divers, turtles and the odd shark. The Captain lead a Zodiac assault on to shore awash with day trippers. On arrival, we made the acquaintance of the crew of a catamaran that we had sighted at various bays further south. It pays to stay on friendly terms with the crews of other vessels in the event that things turn ugly or mutinous at sea.
We also were able to chat with the Marine Parks staff who live on the island. The Low Isles features another classic Queensland lighthouse - from the same series of lighthouses that we had crawled past so far on the trip: Bustard Head, Pine Islets, Cape Moreton, Cape Cleveland, Dent Island. Actually we didn't get to Bustard Head. The Pine Islets lighthouse now sits outside the fish and chip shop at Mackay Marina. The Cape Moreton one now sits at Burnett Heads in the park. Interested lighthouse afficianados should look back through these informative blog posts.
Well after dark, the Captain sensed a disturbance in the force and peering out into the darkness was startled to see a sister ship to Arjuna cruising into the anchorage. It was
another Beneteau Cyclades. These boats were made in the billions, each finely handcrafted in top of the line fibre glass to a classic bluewater specification: put in as many showers as possible and make sure there are adequate cupholders on both sides of the cockpit. It was unusual then that we hadn't seen other Cyclades on the trip. Alas, the mysterious Cyclades and Arjuna passed in the night with Arjuna doffing the mooring early the next morning, never meeting her crew.
The early departure from the Low Isles was partly precipitated by the unseemly and unexpected swell that found its way between the isles and washed through the fringing mangroves at high tide. Unsettling our martinis and our sleep. After our early morning departure from Upolu Cay we had also been reminded of the need to arrive in coral atolls in the mid-afternoon when the sun was best to sight the bommies in fringing reefs so an early departure would give us time to reach the Hope Islands in good time, or so we hoped.
Today we passed Endeavour Reef. Cook and his band of merry men ploughed into it in the wee hours of the night holing the Admiralty's fine bark on the unforgiving coral.
We gave the reef a wide berth out of respect for the great man and dropped our sails instead on approach to the Hope Islands - a rocky and sandy outcrop visible from the the Endeavour as it foundered on the reef. These were possibly also the islands that Cook was trying to avoid in the dark when the Endeavour was almost wrecked. We followed the Gospel of Lucas on approach to East Hope Island cross checking for accuracy with Jarvis, the autopilot and coffee machine. When plotting the course into Hope Island, Lucas was obviously in his late "maze" or puzzle period because the entrance to the anchorage at Hope Island involves a complex sixteen step route that is apparently only revealed on the night of Durin's Day in late autumn and the absolute lowest spring tides. We entered at the bottom of the tide with the sun at its optimum angle and thus the yawning mouths of rock and coral were clearly visible as Arjuna pirouetted in from the West. The First Mate, with her hawk like eyesight and nerves of steel was posted on the bow to yell out course corrections. The Captain helmed, as he always does in the shallows, and also updated his Twitter account and posted cat pictures on Facebook.
We stayed several days at East Hope Island because it was very nice and because we caught a fish. Catching an edible fish is a rare occasion on Arjuna and indeed throughout the Great Barrier Reef - there being very few edible fish at all. At least from Yamba to the Hope Islands. The Captain was hailed as a hero and was set to work filleting the beast on the swim deck. The following day, while trying to repeat the feat, a fishing boat pulled up to the beach and offered us some fish they had caught because they had pulled in so many they couldn't fit any more in the fridge. This was a magnificent fish - a wide mouthed nanny-gai and fed us for several days. The lads on the fishing boat handed out fish to the handful of other boats in the bay. One does scratch one's head when a single boat can pull in 40 of these metre long monsters in an afternoon's fishing trip without wondering whether that might be pushing it a little.
It was a spring tide while we were at the Hope Isles. As previously mentioned, this
helped us avoid certain doom on the way in and it also managed to expose much of the reef around the island. Included below are some interesting photos of what a reef looks like when it runs out of water. Normally delightful soft coral looks like wilted overcooked cauliflower. Giant clams are left high and dry. The sort after table sea food beche-de-mer or 'sea slug' begins to look slightly more unappetising. Carnivorous cone shells try and attack the First Mate with foot long poisonous barbs.
That sort of thing.
It turns out you don't need to thread the needle to enter the Hope Islands, reading the charts only under certain moons and sending out the tender ahead to plumb for soundings - you simply sail straight in from the North. Which is how we departed this fine group under the shining brilliance of Arjuna's sail cloth. Lizard Island was still over the horizon but that last bastion of Queensland urban sprawl lay close by: Cooktown. Jewel of the Far North. We missed it though, managing to send a few scant emails, download some year 6 maths lessons and send some cat videos on the furthest lobe of internet coverage probing out from Cooktown Harbour as we passed by several miles out to sea.
It was getting on late in the day when the officer of the watch, short order cook and fish gutter sighted a vessel approaching rapidly from the North. At a distance, we speculated that this might be the S.V Dilligaf returning from her mission to the North. It had been some time since we had last seen this fine specimen of French workpersonship. It transpired that this was indeed Dilligaf under full sail, riding the easterly southwards when we attempted to hail them on the VHF. For reasons unknown, we had trouble understanding each other over the radio even at line of sight distances. Perhaps barnacles had started invading our electricals. Instead, we resorted to our little used selection of signalling flags and our copy of Brown's Signalling to communicate. Being unused to signalling with flags we started off with a simple hail to try and open up the conversation. This seemed to go well so we then raised the blue and then green stripe in quick succession after dipping the red barred pennant to indicate "All crew well. How are you?". Unfortunately, at this point things began to unravel. Dilligaf perhaps were missing some flags since their response, when we consulted Brown's, seemed to translate as 'Bear to port. Shallows are indicated'. Our charts certainly seemed to indicate neither depth issues in these parts or members of the genus Ursus so we raised the green dotted standard with purple trim to the second spreader then lowered it to signal that 'We do not understand. Depths at 15 fathoms'. The response this time being 'We have suffered iceberg damage. Do you have stores of salted herring ?' Quite likely Dilligaf were using a US flag system whereas we were basing our messages on the more recent 1927 edition of Browns. Needless to say, the constant running between the flag halyard, the navigation table and the helm was beginning to take its toll on the crew which meant our next message intended to be 'Flag communication impeded. Respond with mirror flash in liu'
actually was sent as 'Is your wide screen TV functional?' Dilligaf passed us at high speed in the opposite direction and we waved farewell as their big screen TV faded out of sight.
In late afternoon, we pulled around Cape Bedford and nestled in for the night. This is all aboriginal land and appeared to be completely deserted. On nightfall however, we could pick out fires on the beach - which stretch many miles to the north from the very impressive flat topped hills at the cape itself. A few boats came and went during the night and early morning taking advantage of some protection from the southeasterly.
The next morning, starting early we again headed north under sail, the wind, favourably in the east meaning we didn't have the constant problem of direct downwind sailing for a change. Lizard Island and its high peak rose up from the horizon as we passed Cape Flattery.
We approached Mrs Watson's Bay on the northern side of the island. Numerous yachts and motor cruisers were moored in the bay. To impress our magnificent sailing credentials upon all we elected to approach under full canvas deciding that we would sail proudly into the anchorage on a close reach before turning slightly at the last minute to drop our sails and come to rest gently at anchor. A southeasterly bullet accelerating over the island put paid to this and we luffed up uncontrollably with sheets flailing and tangling. The main was dropped and some random crew member was shoved into the sail bag to try and pin it down while we sort for an anchorage amongst the fleet.
 |
| An interesting camera angle makes the Low Isles lighthouse seem taller than it is. Eagle perched on railing |
As is usual with the fair ship Arjuna, by the time we had retrieved the crew from various places and actually extracted ourselves from the marina it was getting late in the morning. The Third Mate very nearly missed our wheels up time - socialising on some remote marina finger instead of feathering the hatches and ruffling the bunting in preparation for departure. Our first planned port of call out of Cairns was Michelmas Cay, a well trodden favourite of the local tourist fleet. Not many miles into our voyage, we revised the calculations and with some prescience determined that we would be arriving into Michelmas in the late afternoon - never a good time to be trying to spy coral bommies from the foredeck while negotiating an anchorage. Instead, we altered course for Upolu Cay - also a tourist mecca but more achievable given the march of time. Entering Upolu was uneventful with full afternoon sun illuminating the delightful, colourful fish filled Reefs of Death surrounding the small sand spit and making the route in obvious. We were lucky enough to pick up the only Marine Parks buoy off the cay and in the late afternoon, the tourist boat moored nearby departed with all hands and we had the entire reef to ourselves and a small contingent of batfish begging, as usual, for risotto and other tasty Mediterranean treats from the galley of Arjuna.
 |
| Again with the batfish, Upolu Cay |
There is little shelter to speak of at Upolu Cay. At low tide, the sand spit rises from the waters and holds back the chop and wind swell. Other than that, when the tide rises there is little more than a positive attitude and the sight of distant Green Island to keep the sailor sane. Fortunately, the winds had been milder for a few days prior and we had a reasonably trouble free night at this little atoll. The crew were all slightly plagued by some remaining land fever: a problem any time we were extracted from solid ground to rolling waters without a transition period. However, the next morning, a heavily equipped reef assault was launched and the Zodiac brought into the sand bar at high speed to revive the crew's esprit de corp and land lassitude.
 |
| Dry land at a premium, Upolu Cay |
Upolu Cay at low tide is a Tourism Australia, Lara Bingle, helicopter sweeping over azure waters TV commerical level experience. The coral around the sand bar was hard to find, and not bad, but the real jewel here is the crystal clear water over postcard sand bar. When the Captain, or more likely, one of the minions, dropped his prescription sunglasses overboard, it was an easy task to simply snorkel around in the water because the offending sunglasses were simply sitting clearly on the bottom. The crew, attracted by the possibilities of an unoccupied sand bar, promptly set to work digging, trenching and undermining the pristine sand thereby ensuring the doom of the next boat load of day trippers.
 |
| Negotiating a route into a coral anchorage. First Mate on look out |
By the time the crew had reassembled on the poop deck of the Mothership the day had aged considerably. It was clear we would not reach anywhere else that day. We were faced with the terrible prospect of having to spend another day moored in paradise. We held on to the mooring and lo and behold, another night was spent in this most busy of tourist areas with not another boat in sight. Early the next morning, we dropped the buoy and headed out towards the Low Isles. We tried an innovative new departure route from Upolu Cay and found ourselves picking the way gingerly over shallow and very clearly visible Reefs of Death for twenty minutes or so before the bottom dropped comfortingly out of site. A refreshing reminder that coral anchorages are like black widows, cone shells and dugongs: beautiful but deadly.
We sailed happily North with the wind on our quarter and the trolling line trailing uselessly behind. The Low Isles were named by Cook on his mad scramble north for their lowness rather than the mental state they produce - Cook saved these sort of place names for a few days later in his voyage when times were more desperate. As we coursed into the Low Isles, we had our first fish strike in many miles when a reef shark ate our new super fishing lure and then headed off.
 |
| Low Isles reef shark and posse |
The bay at the Low Isles was bustling when we dropped sail and pulled in to pick up a buoy. Large tourist catamarans out of Port Douglas were testing the limits of their rated carrying capacity and the water was full of snorkelers, divers, turtles and the odd shark. The Captain lead a Zodiac assault on to shore awash with day trippers. On arrival, we made the acquaintance of the crew of a catamaran that we had sighted at various bays further south. It pays to stay on friendly terms with the crews of other vessels in the event that things turn ugly or mutinous at sea.
 |
| The Low Isles |
We also were able to chat with the Marine Parks staff who live on the island. The Low Isles features another classic Queensland lighthouse - from the same series of lighthouses that we had crawled past so far on the trip: Bustard Head, Pine Islets, Cape Moreton, Cape Cleveland, Dent Island. Actually we didn't get to Bustard Head. The Pine Islets lighthouse now sits outside the fish and chip shop at Mackay Marina. The Cape Moreton one now sits at Burnett Heads in the park. Interested lighthouse afficianados should look back through these informative blog posts.
Well after dark, the Captain sensed a disturbance in the force and peering out into the darkness was startled to see a sister ship to Arjuna cruising into the anchorage. It was
 |
| Formalities at sea |
The early departure from the Low Isles was partly precipitated by the unseemly and unexpected swell that found its way between the isles and washed through the fringing mangroves at high tide. Unsettling our martinis and our sleep. After our early morning departure from Upolu Cay we had also been reminded of the need to arrive in coral atolls in the mid-afternoon when the sun was best to sight the bommies in fringing reefs so an early departure would give us time to reach the Hope Islands in good time, or so we hoped.
Today we passed Endeavour Reef. Cook and his band of merry men ploughed into it in the wee hours of the night holing the Admiralty's fine bark on the unforgiving coral.
 |
| A clear shot of Endeavour Reef. Cook must have been blind to have missed this in the dark |
We stayed several days at East Hope Island because it was very nice and because we caught a fish. Catching an edible fish is a rare occasion on Arjuna and indeed throughout the Great Barrier Reef - there being very few edible fish at all. At least from Yamba to the Hope Islands. The Captain was hailed as a hero and was set to work filleting the beast on the swim deck. The following day, while trying to repeat the feat, a fishing boat pulled up to the beach and offered us some fish they had caught because they had pulled in so many they couldn't fit any more in the fridge. This was a magnificent fish - a wide mouthed nanny-gai and fed us for several days. The lads on the fishing boat handed out fish to the handful of other boats in the bay. One does scratch one's head when a single boat can pull in 40 of these metre long monsters in an afternoon's fishing trip without wondering whether that might be pushing it a little.
 |
| Reef beauty |
 |
| An attractive shot of Arjuna and giant clam in a field of soft coral slime |
 |
| The cone shell that attacked the 1st Mate |
It turns out you don't need to thread the needle to enter the Hope Islands, reading the charts only under certain moons and sending out the tender ahead to plumb for soundings - you simply sail straight in from the North. Which is how we departed this fine group under the shining brilliance of Arjuna's sail cloth. Lizard Island was still over the horizon but that last bastion of Queensland urban sprawl lay close by: Cooktown. Jewel of the Far North. We missed it though, managing to send a few scant emails, download some year 6 maths lessons and send some cat videos on the furthest lobe of internet coverage probing out from Cooktown Harbour as we passed by several miles out to sea.
It was getting on late in the day when the officer of the watch, short order cook and fish gutter sighted a vessel approaching rapidly from the North. At a distance, we speculated that this might be the S.V Dilligaf returning from her mission to the North. It had been some time since we had last seen this fine specimen of French workpersonship. It transpired that this was indeed Dilligaf under full sail, riding the easterly southwards when we attempted to hail them on the VHF. For reasons unknown, we had trouble understanding each other over the radio even at line of sight distances. Perhaps barnacles had started invading our electricals. Instead, we resorted to our little used selection of signalling flags and our copy of Brown's Signalling to communicate. Being unused to signalling with flags we started off with a simple hail to try and open up the conversation. This seemed to go well so we then raised the blue and then green stripe in quick succession after dipping the red barred pennant to indicate "All crew well. How are you?". Unfortunately, at this point things began to unravel. Dilligaf perhaps were missing some flags since their response, when we consulted Brown's, seemed to translate as 'Bear to port. Shallows are indicated'. Our charts certainly seemed to indicate neither depth issues in these parts or members of the genus Ursus so we raised the green dotted standard with purple trim to the second spreader then lowered it to signal that 'We do not understand. Depths at 15 fathoms'. The response this time being 'We have suffered iceberg damage. Do you have stores of salted herring ?' Quite likely Dilligaf were using a US flag system whereas we were basing our messages on the more recent 1927 edition of Browns. Needless to say, the constant running between the flag halyard, the navigation table and the helm was beginning to take its toll on the crew which meant our next message intended to be 'Flag communication impeded. Respond with mirror flash in liu'
 |
| We sight a Jawa ship bringing stolen droids to market |
In late afternoon, we pulled around Cape Bedford and nestled in for the night. This is all aboriginal land and appeared to be completely deserted. On nightfall however, we could pick out fires on the beach - which stretch many miles to the north from the very impressive flat topped hills at the cape itself. A few boats came and went during the night and early morning taking advantage of some protection from the southeasterly.
 |
| Cape Bedford. Bottle that sunset |
We approached Mrs Watson's Bay on the northern side of the island. Numerous yachts and motor cruisers were moored in the bay. To impress our magnificent sailing credentials upon all we elected to approach under full canvas deciding that we would sail proudly into the anchorage on a close reach before turning slightly at the last minute to drop our sails and come to rest gently at anchor. A southeasterly bullet accelerating over the island put paid to this and we luffed up uncontrollably with sheets flailing and tangling. The main was dropped and some random crew member was shoved into the sail bag to try and pin it down while we sort for an anchorage amongst the fleet.
 |
| A tropical sun burns down on the fleet at anchor, Watson's Bay, Lizard Island |
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