Whitsunday Islands

02 November 97

Juliette picked us up at the motel at 0845 and drove us over to the yacht harbor, where Dougall met us. Dougall and Juliette are co-owners of Whitsunday Yacht Charters. We spent the next 90 minutes stowing gear and going through the boat's systems. At last we shoved off, with Dougall still aboard, and left the marina for a short check-out sail. We hadn't sailed a boat in a couple of years, but the entire crew did right well. We sailed back to the harbor entrance and Tyler ran Dougall back into the marina with the dingy.

We sailed eastward past North Molle Island toward Hook Island. Winds were light and fluky and the ebb was pushing us hard to the north, so eventually we had to start up the engine and motored the last few miles across Whitsunday Passage. We negotiated the tricky entrance into Nara Inlet and dropped our hook in Refuge Bay. It was a beautiful and restful spot in which to relax and reflect on our first day under sail).

03 November 97

Woke at dawn to a cacophony of bird sounds: kookaburra's laughing maniacally, cockatoos screeching, seabirds keening, lorakeets and thousands tiny birds tweeting. Dan and Ty took the dinghy out to the end of Nara Inlet to try some bottom fishing. Hooked one small snapper, a rainbow wrasse, and Dan's left index finger. All were released in fair shape.

We finally weighed anchor at around 1000 and sailed/motored/sailed south along the western shore of Whitsunday Is. to Gulnare Inlet. Like most of the inlets hereabout, Gulnare has a very tricky approach due to barely submerged reefs crossing from both sides of the opening. The proper track is found by taking a back-bearing off Pine and Dent Islands to the south. As usual, Ty mans the bow lookout, watching for uncharted coral bommies.

After anchoring we piled into the dinghy and motored several km's up the head of the bay along channels through the mangrove jungle. Some local sailor likened these waters to the those of the 'Great Gray-Green Greasy Limpopo River'; hot, still, and quiet but for the occasional raucous laughing of kookaburras in the gum trees, and sharp cracking sounds probably made by crabs back among the mangrove roots.

When we returned K. started preparing dinner and Tyler fished off the end of the boat. He hooked and landed a fat mangrove jack, which we quickly filleted and tossed onto the grill instead of Kaaren's chicken. Fish doesn't get any fresher, and it was tasty.

We rigged a shark line using a huge hook we bought in Fiji, wire leader, and 150-lb. test line, and to this we laced on the carcass of the jack that Tyler caught. We tied the line off to a stern cleat.

04 November 97

We checked the line set out the night before and found that bait, hook, and leader were gone, cleanly parted right at the knot where line and leader joined. We were anchored to a flat mud bottom, so the line could not have fouled anything. It had to have been a very large fish, certainly a shark that took the bait.

We were obliged to wait until 1000, when the tide had risen enough to provide safe passage across the opening into Whitsunday Passage. We sailed across to Hamilton Is. to top off fuel, water, ice, beer, and cookies.

From Hamilton we headed east along the southern shore of Whitsunday Is. Cloudless skies, 15 knots of wind on the beam, flying fish skittering away from our bow wave. We spent a good part of the afternoon chasing feeding albacore. The schools were all around us throughout the afternoon, now and again causing the surface of the sea to violently erupt into a frothing mass of white water and leaping, churning tuna. The fish in each school seemed to all be of a given size: small ones of a couple kilos, up to big meaty beasts of 30-40 kilos. We dragged every lure in our arsenal through the schools of fish but none showed an interest.

I think we don't move fast enough to excite the fish; even with all sail set on a beam reach and the motor helping out we barely make better than six knots. Can't tell for sure since the knotmeter's not working. Dan dove down to clear the impeller, but it still shows 0.0.

Nightwatch is a very comfy boat for living; beamy and well laid-out with plenty of room for the three of us. As a sailing ship, however, she's a dog. She won't close haul at all, and off the wind the main won't lay enough out the side because of the raked spreaders, the latter a compromise that obviates the need for a backstay. The foresail is little more than a jib, so that with the mainsail full, you're forced to fight weather helm with so much rudder as to create terrific drag. Ah well, we're not racing anybody, but I wish she weren't quite such a tub. (Details, Details! For living space and comfort, this boat is just right for the 3 of us. Lots of room, a large master double berth, a great stern area (what is the official name for this?), a swimming ladder off the stern so you can sit or just swim from the ladder, a big propane barbie that is really a large griddle, and seats! at the very stern, but raised above fiberglass part, and an awning over the stern to keep us shaded. It was really a wonderful arrangement...much better than anything we have ever rented.)

After negotiating Solway Pass, a narrow spot notorious for currents and huge whirlpools, we rounded up behind a little islet to Chaulkie's Beach for the night. (I notice that Dan does not mention the topless sunbather on the boat "Mr. Bean", who was anchored next door! There is a lot of this going on, and my boys seem happy.)

05 November 97

Weighed anchor and motored across Whitsunday Bay to famous Whitehaven Beach for breakfast. The beach is a seven-mile long, gently curving expanse of fine, white silica sand, extraordinarily beautiful as you approach from the sea. We took the dinghy in and walked for miles up the beach. Tyler found guitarfish and a giant stingray in the shallows. Saw a white goshawk.

Sailed north with all sail set and a stiff wind just aft the beam . . . sailing as fast as this boat can go. We headed for Border Island, thinking that Cateran Bay would protect us from a quickly developing easterly swell. However, when we rounded the headland we could tell that the few boats already anchored there were rolling pretty badly, so we turned about and made for the north end of Hook Island and one of the sheltering bays up that way.

The wind continued to rise and by 1400 a thick black squall line stretched for miles across the northern horizon. Pinnacle Point, where we could turn west again, was still ten miles off, so we chickened out and ran for cover. So did all the other boats we could see. We slid through Hook Pass and into Macona Inlet.

Macona was a great anchorage, at least until an hour or so before sunset this huge monstrosity of a stinkpot set its hook inshore of us. It was 70+ feet in length, several stories high, and ironically enough, called the White Haven. It was a very sharp and new-looking craft, equipped with side-thrusters and a runabout on davits over the stern, and bristling with enough antennae, radar domes and dishes to look like some kind of spy ship. Only men aboard, so was probably some kind of corporate scow. Here we'd been in a calm, beautiful setting with only the cries of cockatoos and seabirds to disturb us, now to have the silence rent by drunken, middle-aged yabbos dragging each other up and down this sweet little bay on water-skis. Some people just don't get it

06 November 97

We raised the anchor at dawn and headed up the west side of Hook Island. It was a hot, mostly windless day. We had plenty of time, so we just ghosted along, finally rounding west and then south into Butterfly Bay. Airlie Comm Stat cautioned us against this anchorage as the weather was forecasted to shift hard to the north. The spot we found was in the very bight of the bay, however, and unless it blew right down the gut from due north, we were very well protected.

It was a beautiful, calm spot, with sea turtles coming to the surface everywhere we looked, and cockatoos and kookaburras soaring and squabbling overhead. Ty and Dan motored out around the point in the dinghy for fishing and caught only a couple of too small coral trout. As the sun set we swam and dove naked off the stern of the boat.

Dan joined a bunch of Aussies for drinks and poo-poos on a nearby boat.

07 November 97

Tyler's been having great fun racing all over the Whitsundays by himself in the dinghy. That, plus our fishing excursions, totally depleted our fuel supply for the outboard. We sailed over to Hayman Island and talked them out of only a few liters of gasoline for the dingy by pointing out to them that it was our emergency craft and it wouldn't do for it to be out of fuel.

We then found a shoal off of Bird Island where we tried our hand at fishing. We caught several feisty little pink-striped things (squirrelfish?), and a puffer; we kept the pink ones for bait.

Approaching the opening to Stonehaven we saw something afloat ahead of us, obviously animal, but we couldn't make out what. Only when we got almost alongside did we recognized it to be a mating pair of huge loggerhead turtles. They pretended to ignore us, so we granted their privacy and continued on our way.

Then sailed over to and dropped the hook at Stonehaven Beach. It is a very picturesque spot with precipitous sandstone cliffs rising hundreds of meters from the water's edge. Eucalyptus trees cover much of the rock faces and up and down these green and black walls soar sea eagles, ospreys, peregrine falcons and cockatoos. We motored over to the shore and clambered up some of the house-size boulders that long ago had tumbled down the mountainside. From our perch we saw stingrays, guitarfish, trevally, mullets and barracuda. A beautiful little anchorage.

Clothing is somewhat optional in these waters, and everyone pretends to pay nevermind, so again at sunset some of us went swimming au naturel off the stern of the boat. The water temperature is absolutely perfect.

After dinner we set up shark fishing gear off the stern, using one of the squirrel fish as bait. We tied a bight in the line around a beer can and set it in a holder, to serve as an alarm if something took the bait. Kaaren was back on the stern when the can went flying over the side (a la the beer kegs in 'Jaws'). Dan had gloves at the ready and grabbed the 150 lb. test line but could not begin to overpower the fish, which by then was racing back and forth at the surface behind the boat. Finally it came to the end where the line was tied off to a stern cleat, and with one more jerk straightened out the big snap that connected the hook to the wire leader. Probably just as well, since a shark so big would be too nasty to boat and unhook. Using his trout pole Ty caught a small barracuda, so we made up a new shark rig, and in short order caught and released a pretty little blacktip reef shark. Ty hooked one more big fish but again it shook the barbless hook free.

08 November 97

We return the boat this morning. Dan got up early to begin cleaning up the dingy and scrubbing the decks. Ty took care of all the diving and fishing gear, Kaaren squared away belowdecks, and we were underway, headed west back across Whitsunday Passage. Calm when we got underway, but within an hour the wind picked up to 25+ knots from the north. We reached all the way to Airlie under a double-reefed main.

Called in our final radio sked at 0805. Ian told us to call him when we reached Pioneer Rocks, so that Dougall could come out to meet us and lead us into harbor. On our way in he showed us the new 47' Hunter he'd just taken delivery on the night before. It felt to compare to our little tub as a Cessna does to a 747. He'll ask $650/day to rent it.

09 November 97

Southward to Fraser Island. Climbed aboard McCafferty's Coach at 2020 last night and have been rolling down the Bruce Highway all night long. Stops at Rockhampton, Macay, and Bundaberg. It's a comfortable bus, but a bus nonetheless, and it rolls and lurches, and we've not slept much.

Fraser Island.........................