Whitsundays to Yeppoon

We celebrated the Second Mate's birthday at Whitehaven Beach. Happy birthday Second Mate, we can't believe you are ready to start high school.

 

Second Mate in action - a fine sailor and indispensable crew member

 

Vast Distances Are Covered

What the ?

The Rock left us in Cairns. Older, wiser, more suntanned and anxious to join the Hakluyt Society for original travel journal enthusiasts. The Second Mate also left us in Cairns with urgent business to attend to down south. We turned back out of Cairns in a few days after replenishing our stores and finally refilling our water casks. We left with memories and, in return we left behind our stamp on the marina: a spatula here, a pair of glasses there - claimed by the bottomless mud lurking at the bottom of the estuary.

The way ahead was South. Many, many miles of South. And some East. But mainly South. Our plans at this stage were mildly indistinct. There were friends to pick up further down the coast at specific dates vast distances away and beyond that a vague plan was forming to reach Brisbane by December. In either case, we needed to make like the black marlin and get moving in case we were caught in Cairns.

Capering round the Capes - Gloucester to Cleveland Bay

East cardinal mark, Gloucester Passage, with nestling chick.

Buoyed by our fantastic dinner ashore the previous night at Monte's Resort, we set off early from Gloucester passage across Edgecumbe Bay towards Bowen. We bid farewell to the wild and windy Whitsundays, although they had really had the final word: another wild sou'easter had blown up on our last day and shredded our mainsail as we headed across the top of Whitsunday Passage.

Third mate reports from the Whitsundays

Hello. It's the third mate here to tell you about Hammo, Montes, and Mays Bay. I have been living aboard for six months and I'm ten years old. I'm loving life on the seven swelly seas (a.k.a. Coral Sea). So down to business.

Mum, can I have a pie for breakfast? Mum, can I have a pie for dinner?

Again with the Whitsundays

At Blue Pearl Bay we spied the sun and courted the voracious batfish with their favoured meal of delicately flavoured arborio rice. At last, the Whitsundays were beginning to show us their true colours and some snorkelling was likely in the upcoming days with the water clearing after the turbulence of the recent winds. All was well. Which is when a gentle wind change, much like that early in Pirates of the Carribean, wafted across the bay and heralded trouble brewing in the air. Months on the sea had tuned the senses of the Captain to these subtle shifts in the atmosphere and sure enough, on the falling of dusk, a no good pirate ship drifted into Blue Pearl Bay and secured itself to another mooring buoy. There was something unusual about this boat indeed: it came with the lines of a clipper but with a fully enclosed transparent marquee erected on the deck. The immediate blaring of some sort of Ibiza house music mix heralded its intentions and these intentions were unmistakable: a backpacker's dance party until the wee hours of the morning.

`The sun departs for the Winter Solstice at Stonehaven

Windy Week of Whitsuntide

The entire week after Whit Sunday (seventh Sunday after Easter) is known as Whitsuntide or Whit week. At this point if I was the Captain, I would be able to insert some hilariously self referential "Whit" play on words - but it's beyond a First Mate. 

Submarine vision (Second Mate)

Pleasure sailing on WhitSaturday

We left you with the drama of the outboard motor being submerged by a bullet at the uncivilised hour of 4am at Shaw Island, but our stoic Captain immediately rinsed it with fresh water, and the outboard so far seems none the worse.

From Shaw Island, it was a short hop past yet another abandoned resort (Lindeman Island) and up the Dent Passage to Hamilton Island. Yachtspeople up and down the coast grumble about the cost of Hamilton Island marina, however none can deny its absolute fabulousness.

Hamilton Island glam

Brampton Island

On June 2nd, after a week spent with the captain muttering and cursing in the bowels of the boat in Mackay, we raised the sails and headed back out to wage battle with the shoals and bulk carriers. After a punishing schedule of boat repairs, the captain was really looking like he needed a holiday on a nice tropical island.

Insert tropical island picture here