Wednesday 30^th November

We left Nara Inlet, with its calm green water, resident turtles and friendly cockatoos early this morning to get James to the airport on Hamilton Island.

We will miss him.

Heading south now, hoping to get to Goldsmith Island tonight.  I will write more next time we are within internet reach.

And…I tried to publish this tiny weeny blogpost as we cruised just out of Hamilton Island Marina and…Computer Said No.

So now we are sitting in a little bay on Goldsmith Island, way down the south of the Whitsundays.  I had a very quick dip in and out of the water – I have a fear, irrational it may be, of the sea in the evening, and in the dark.  Now it is G & T time, and dinner time, but we are absolutely full.  At lunchtime, after we had walked James to the airport (he was the very last Jetstar passenger to check in to his flight) I felt an overwhelming need for fish and chips.  We did our shopping, I sent some postcards, and then – fish and chips it was.  We ordered fishermen’s baskets and they were heroic in proportion, almost as big and wonderful and the ones Michael bought for us in Townsville.  And now we are stonkered, maybe not able to eat our (leftover Bolognese) at all.

(Postscript – we didn’t manage, we just had sakata biscuits and cheese)

We had a funny experience at the marina, where we arrived at about 10.30 (make note of this time of day if you ever want to take advantage of this particular form of Hamilton Island Marina good fortune.)  I had loads of rubbish to empty into the bins, an eagerly-awaited task.  Rubbish builds up on boats and it is always a great relief to be able to dump one’s wrappings and tins in a good solid legitimate wheelie bin.  There were some big bins alongside one of the charter boats, so I stopped and asked if they were for public use.  “Goodness yes,” said a pleasant posh-sounding man (later to be revealed as a New Zealander.)  He asked if we were on our own boat, and traveling on, and when I said yes, he asked, a bit hesitantly, if I would like their leftover food.  It would otherwise go into the aforementioned wheelie bin.  So off I went with a big bag full of olive oil, garlic cloves, balsamic vinegar, half-bags of sugar and flour.  When I came back, my new BFF was waiting with his wife with: a quiche, some chicken schnitzels, some boxes of cereal, some ham… They followed me back to 2XS a few minutes later with more goodies.  Pete and James, still on the boat, were fascinated and slightly appalled. 

So off I set again.  A young bloke was taking photos on the end of the pier.  He asked if we were on our own boat, and when I said yes, he asked if we would like some leftover food… well heydiho YES please!  He led me to a very swish-looking chartered catamaran, aptly named Serendipity, and started loading my arms with even more luxurious goodies.  I looked out the window and saw Pete walk past and called him on board.  He looked a bit dubious but when the blokes on board asked if he wanted their leftover beer his reticence vanished.  They filled a polystyrene eski with cans of lemonade, food from the fridge, this and that.  I set off to have my shower and postcard purchase time, and Pete went back to 2XS.  He did THREE more trips back and forth because every time he walked past Serendipity he was plied with more goodies.  And when we got back to the boat, after walking James to the airport, we found a bottle of Sacred Hill Shiraz Merlot on the outdoor table as well.

We certainly scored!  The New Zealand people told me that in Europe, at yacht clubs, there are co-ops where you can leave your leftover half-used packet of sugar or whatever, for the next people to take on board.  But here – it all goes in the bin.  So these two boatloads of departing people were more than thrilled to be able to give us their soy sauce etc.  I spent a very happy half hour unpacking and consolidating, pouring this into that, and discarding the packaging into the next available wheelie bin.

And yes we still did have to go shopping.  Our new BFFs didn’t give us: toilet paper, Jif, Cruskits/Ryvita, tins of tuna, tonic water, lemons, potatoes. 

And…oh how amazing – Pete bought a new Precioussss!  A lovely new dark blue snorkel, with matching mask, to replace the ever-leaking, ever-disappointing Pink Preciousss.

James and I have been fascinated by boat names.  Jaw Crusher – yucko, why?  Sushi Maker – ditto.  Spank Me – oh so Playboy Mansion.  Seabear – great name.  But today we came across the best name of all – I want Pete to change 2XS to this: For Pete’s Sake.  We also found one called Life of Brian but none of us is called Brian so maybe…not appropriate.

Tonight we are having An Early Night. Pete is a bit bewildered – why is he so tired?  “We didn’t have a late night, did we??”  Well… I stayed up till nearly midnight.  We played Oh Hell and I won, with the most amazing score – we have taped it to the wall, near our Family Photos and Rachel’s origami 2XS:

James – Minus 21

Pete: Minus 23

Me: Minus 8.

A glorious victory I don’t think!  And then I went to bed to read a few pages…Snoozyland beckoned… I could hear, through my snoozing,  rumbles of conversation, bursts of laughter, serious tones.  And eventually Pete came to bed and James went to his cabin – 2AM.  Not a late night??  I got up early and crept around boiling the kettle very quietly.  I woke Pete at 8.00 because i knew we needed to get to Hamilton Island and thought maybe he wouldn’t like me to glide 2XS out of Nara Inlet without him at the helm.  As for our darling James – well he missed out on chocolate pancakes, and he missed out of gliding out of Nara Inlet and into Hamilton Island Marina!  He appeared, slightly bemused, at 10.30 to witness the Food Acquisition Tango.

Friday 2^nd December

Happy Birthday Brother Pete in Hobart, and tomorrow Andrea, his beautiful wife.  Last year I excelled myself by sending her a very lovely birthday message two days early…this year maybe I won’t be able to send either them anything; Computer Says No, we are in a remote and inaccessible bit of the world again.

We are both very tired.  Fortunately we got to this anchorage, on Hunter Island, part of the Duke Island group, somewhere off the mainland coast, south of the Whitsundays, (21 degrees latitude, 150 longitude, if you want to place us accurately), at 2.30, so we can have a relaxing afternoon.  I am going to cook fried rice with prawns and lots of fresh vegetables and without the boat rocking wildly beneath my feet – a big treat!

Yesterday we left at Goldsmith Island mid-morning, quite confident that we would get to Digby Island in good time, to get a nice safe anchorage.  We underestimated…the wind and the sea were against us and we ended up having to take shelter in a little stony bay on Prudhoe Island.  This was not a recommended anchorage on any of our charts or in any of our cruising books.  So we stayed up all night, taking shifts of two hours, to sit and watch that the anchor didn’t uproot itself from its stony ground and leave us to be washed up onto a very rocky and inhospitable looking shore.  Our fears were needless, as it turned out, and the anchor held nobly all night long.  I quite enjoyed sitting up because, miraculously we were able to get Local ABC Radio Queensland and I was able to listen to Tony Delroi for the first time for many many months.  I thoroughly enjoyed the quiz in particular, and now I know all five countries which border land-locked Laos: Thailand, Burma, Vietnam, Cambodia, China.  (I got all of them except Burma, as did several of the hapless contestants.)

We had our leftover Bolognese for dinner, and it was very nice, especially in contrast to our extremely nasty lunch.  In amongst our gifts from departing yachties was a big bag of frozen chiko rolls.  Waste not want not…I fried up a batch of them in some not-very-nice PNG vegetable oil (wasn’t going to waste our lovely olive oil on chiko rolls…)  This was the most unhealthy meal we had eaten for ages, even nastier than the fried rice I made with tinned corned beef in the Solomons.  The rest of the packet went into the sea to feed some fish, which will, I think, be very surprised with the taste sensation.

This morning we got up at 4am – well we were already up, in fact – and set off once again into the wind and the choppy sea.  Very hard going.  We hardly managed to go more than 5 knots, so it was slow and unpleasant traveling.  But here we are, in a perfectly nice anchorage near a sandy beach so all is well!

Saturday 3^rd December

We left our perfectly nice anchorage, which was, in fact, a bit rolly-polly overnight and set off hopefully for a destination further south.  Island Head Creek was only 35 nautical miles away – easy-peasy!  We could surely get here by lunchtime.

Well we did get there – by nightfall… It took over ten hours of heroic battling through stormy seas.  The wind blew, up to 35 knots, and the sea was BIG – 3-4 metres, unrelenting.  We took turns at the helm and steered our way up and over the waves to prevent too much crashing.  (The autopilot would have led us to Island Head Creek, but we would have had much more wear and tear on everything, boat included.)  2XS was wonderful; neither of us felt in the least alarmed, although we did get very tired.  This cheery little boat just kept on going, up and down, over and never under the waves.  The sea was beautiful, a pale jade green, and occasionally we would get a sudden rainbow dropping down briefly onto the deck.

Our only scary moment was when we FINALLY got to the mouth of Island Head Creek.  Pete steered us around the eponymous island and into the “creek,” which is, in fact, a big wide shallow river, lined with mangroves.  We were both anxiously gazing at a stony little outcrop on our right when we looked to our left and saw – an enormous breaking wave bearing down on us sideways.  EEK!  Pete uttered a few startled expletives and pulled the engines grindingly into reverse.  This had the effect of stopping the boat dead in its tracks and the wave slipped past us with no effect at all.  I’m glad he was at the helm; I would have just stared at the wave in horror, which would have been no help whatsoever.

Once we were safely in the creek, we thought we were home and hosed.  Pete pointed out to me a large sea eagle, majestically welcoming is to its habitat, and I started thinking very seriously about a lovely hot shower and a lovely cold G & T.  We were both exhausted, and salty.  I had more salt encrustation than Pete because, when it was my turn at the helm, I kept peering out around the windscreen, which was – no surprise – both salt-encrusted and wet, so visibility was very poor.  And every single time I stuck my head out to have a quick look, a big rush of spray would hit me right in the moosh.

The first and second anchorages in the creek were no use to us at all – much too shallow, with the SE wind blowing ferociously right at the boat.  Our usually infallible Cruising the Coral Coast book said the best anchorage was at the head of the bay.  Well that couldn’t be too far away, could it?  Well it could – it took another half an hour to get there, down a long and lonely expanse of darkening water.  I was so tired I didn’t even look for crocodiles with any real enthusiasm.  Just as the light was fading completely, we came around a bend in the river and found – five yachts peacefully anchored!  We were so astonished we perked up and anchored right amongst them.  We hadn’t seen a boat for days, except for one battered-looking monohull limping off looking for shelter a bit before Island Head Creek.  And suddenly there we were, surrounded by yachts. 

We dropped anchor and I rushed for the shower, which didn’t manage to cough up any hot water for me at all.  I didn’t mind, all I wanted was to remove the layers of salt and grime so I could lie on the couch with my icy G & T.  Pete did manage to get hot water for his shower, which he richly deserved, because while I say we took turns at the helm, I only did about a third of the work, if that.

The weather forecast is ghastly – strong winds, in the wrong direction, so we are going to stay here.  It is lovely.  We are anchored in the midst of the mangroves, cicadas are chirping, the other boats are bobbing around gently.  The only thing is…NO SWIMMING.  And no phone or internet. 

Monday 5^th December

Well as it turned out, we didn’t stay at crocodile-y Island Head Creek.  At lunchtime, Pete listened to a weather forecast or two, rang the coastguard, and said, “Right!  We’re off!”  We had a very comfortable trip, lots of big waves but not as ferocious as the day before, and now here we are, so surprising, at a dear little marina in Yeppoon!  I have had a shower and am about to do a vast load of washing, then we will explore Yeppoon in the courtesy car provided by the marina – we have never had such a treat before, what fun!  I will be able to answer the burning question, “Why is Yeppoon?” when I get back.