Whitsundays!

Wow the days just seem to be disappearing. We have spent the last few weeks playing around the Whitsundays. We have been lucky with weather with only the odd day hiding away from strong winds. It seems the peak period is starting to slow down but with still many charter boats heading out we decided to head up to Cape Gloucester home of the “Shaggers” (SICYC – Shag Islet Cruising Yacht Club) https://www.sicyc.com.au/

“Shaggers” is a yacht club open to everyone, when you join you become “Vice Commodore” representing a Nautical location for example an island, river, bay etc Dean is now Vice Commodore of Pope’s Eye. The membership is for life & proceeds go to Prostate Cancer Foundation and they have raised over $500,000 the past 7 years. The shaggers meet every year on the last weekend in August at Shag Islet for fun times & most importantly fundraising. We hope to get there next year.

Della-Rue informed us the winds weren’t so kind at Cape Gloucester so we decided to spend a couple of nights in Woodwark Bay where we met up with Sea Fever. We did a little exploring on the beach looking for our parts to build our coconut race boats for the challenge set by King Billy 1. Dean caught a Hexagon Cod which we returned to the sea. We also caught up on the blog & videos, we are finding we need bad weather to get these jobs done.

 

After a couple of nights we continued on to Cape Gloucester motor sailing with our headsail in 5-10kn SE, we spent a magical 3 nights spending our days on the beach swimming & socialising. Dinner at Monty’s with Della-Rue & Cautella. We said our final goodbyes to Della-Rue as they slowly make their way south back home. I found it quite hard to say goodbye as they have been a big part of our lives the past 6 months and I will miss seeing their smiley faces. I was flat for most of the day so Dean took me to shore for an icecream to cheer me up.

It was time to head back to Airlie to provision. As we were motor sailing we had our line out trolling and just as we came around Grimston Point near Woodwark Bay bang! We quickly turned the motor off & Dean slowly brought the fish in. It gave up a bit of a fight jumping out of the water a few times, it was a big one. Once we landed it we identified as a Queenfish. We estimated the fish to be 5-8kg & 90cm long. It ended up feeding about 10-12 people. We gave a big fillet to a lovely man we met when filling up with water at the boat ramp in Abell Point Marina, he was pretty stoked as he hadn’t caught any fish off the jetty.

 

We anchored off Airlie near the North end of the marina. It was a little bumpy but manageable. We took the dinghy into the little beach near the lagoon pool & had a quick swim before heading to the supermarket to get some supplies to get us through the blow over the next few days. We decided to spend it in Nara Inlet hoping that we would get some rain to enjoy a little shower in the waterfall.

We caught up with King Billy 1 where it was time for the big race. We took over some fish for dinner. Dean finished off his boat “Harold” while Matt put some finishing touches to “HMS Nutty”. Unfortunately daylight had gotten away from us so we set them sailing in darkness. HMS Nutty seemed to do a few circles before gaining on Harold, sadly she looked to have broken a spreader and keeled over taking on water & finally sinking. All the while Harold continued on eventually heeling over a little too far and capsizing he didn’t sink though. All in all we had a great laugh at poor HMS Nutty’s expense, a fun night had by all and the fish was yum.

Harold in the making

Proud Matt & HMS Nutty

Early part of the race before a gust took HMS Nutty down.

Dinner C/O King Billy I

As we were sailing over to Nara, Dean had just gone down below when both lures went off. It turned out the Mackerel we caught had crossed over the other line. As we brought it closer to the boat it decided to run off again a swim around our rudder where the line broke. Dean was most upset because it stole our lure. He didn’t care that we didn’t land it as we had plenty of fish to get us by the next few days. We continued onto Nara Inlet to wait out the 20+kn winds.

We anchored up the top of Nara as we were hoping it would rain so we could explore the waterfall, mother nature kindly gave us a good amount of rain. It is best to explore the waterfall at a flood tide as you can get in closer, but be mindful of what the tide is doing as your dinghy can be left high & dry on rocks with oysters, which don’t go well with soft bottom dinghies.

We stayed 2 nights in Nara, again working on the videos & blog. I stupidly deleted my nicely sorted photo folder, which unfortunately we couldn’t recover. This filled up most of the day.  We had some strong wind bullets of over 25 knots but it’s the calm waters that make Nara pleasant in high winds. The down side this time around is the pesky March Flies!

The locals visiting for sundowners

 

We headed back to Airlie and anchored off the south end of the marina nearer to Cannonvale. Our first priority was to visit BCF & replace our stolen lure and also grabbing a couple of spares. Dean also had new line put on both fishing rods. Dean also climbed the top of our mast to dismantle our weather instrument as it seems to be playing up. We have sent this back to Raymarine for warranty.

We did a big provision which took two trips to the supermarket. Anchoring near Cannonvale we took the dinghy to the boat ramp near VMR Whitsundays & it is a short 10 min walk to the shops.

Looking at the weather we decided to head to Turtle Bay & then onto Waite Bay, Haselwood Island, hoping to make it to Whitehaven. Turtle Bay was a lovely anchorage with calm seas, we caught up with Cautella for sundowners before heading to Waite Bay.

Turtle Bay

 

Turtle Bay

We spent 2 nights at Waite Bay. The wind decided to pick up and the sea state made it very uncomfortable. We snorkelled & had our very first dive. We will definitely be back in better conditions. We also came across turtle tracks leading up to a nest on the beach, in 9-10 weeks time hopefully there will be some new additions to Waite Bay.

Ready for our 1st dive

Sunset

Sunrise
 

We were not happy to continue onto Whitehaven as we wanted to visit in calmer conditions, so we decided to head around to Homestead Bay. We lifted anchor at first light as we wanted to make sure we got through Fitzalan Passage on an ebbing tide and we didn’t want to wait until late afternoon. Going through some of the passages on windy days it is best to avoid wind against tide as the sea state can be very messy, which makes for an uncomfortable ride. We made it with 1 hour to spare, we continued onto to Homestead Bay where we ran into King Billy 1. Their first words to us were “we’re going to the reef tomorrow, do you want to come?” There was no way we were not going to go.

We decided to move onto Stonehaven to make an early exit to the reef the next morning. We had a nice slow sail and found a mooring in Caves Cove, just before Stonehaven. We had a very comfortable night and a great sleep.

Us sailing, thanks King Billy 1 for the pic :)

We dropped the mooring just after 5am and made our way out to Bait Reef. Ahead of us were two boats. As there are only 5 public moorings it becomes a little bit of a race to get out there and hope there is one free. There was another sail boat & 2 power boats who went past us as well. Looks like we may have to continue on to Hook reef and anchor. As we got closer I studied 100 Magical Miles, it also included a few commercial moorings, so we decided we would pick up one of these and wait to see if anyone was leaving.

We picked up Hayman Island mooring & prayed no one was going to need it. We had a quick snorkel before getting our dive gear ready to blow bubbles with King Billy 1. They were lucky enough to raft up to some friends they had met. I was chatting to the lovely gentleman on the power boat next to us, when I jokingly asked if they had air, his reply shocked me as it was yes. He was happy to top up our tanks, we gave them some fresh tuna which we caught on our way out. I was very proud to have “hoave to” Time Flies while Dean landed it. Unfortunately we were asked to leave the mooring so we moved to another commercial mooring over the other side. We were able to stay on this overnight.

Bommies

We blew bubbles with King Billy 1 around a few of the stepping stone bommies. I will put this dive & the one we did the next day on the top of my best dive list. We moved to a public mooring the next morning when someone left, we had perfect glass seas for the morning. We were then able to swim directly off the boat to the stepping stones. I swam with a very friendly Hump-headed Maori Wrasse who was happy to receive plenty of pats from me. At first I was a little frightened but then realised he was harmless. We also had a Black Tip Reef shark swim past. While diving we saw plenty of batfish, wrasses, angelfish, parrotfish & much more. Dean was lucky enough to have a Hump-headed Maori Wrasse, turtle & white tip reef shark all within 3 meters of each other. We had at least 20-30m visibility. I can’t wait to go back again and hopefully spend a few nights out there.

King Billy 1 popping over for breakfast.

Hump-headed Maori Wrasse

As the wind was going to blow over 20+ kn later in the day we made our way back to Caves Cove. The wind picked up just as we were coming into the channel between Hayman & Hook Islands. Caves Cove wasn’t to be as comfortable as the other night, the wind was supposed to be SE but instead it blew SW for most of the night. The wind was blowing at least 30 kn & gusting 40 kn. We decided to move to Nara Inlet later in the afternoon when the wind had died down slightly. We still encountered 1-2m waves when we came around the corner but it was short lived. We anchored in Nara Inlet and had a very comfortable night with plans to work on our blog & videos for a couple of days before heading to Abel Point Marina for a couple of nights.