Trip to Cairns

We did an overnight passage and arrived in Townsville 27 hours later. Although Townsville is Queensland’s largest tropical city and has many boating services, it was not a convenient place for cruisers like us.
All of the decent anchoring space had been taken up by marinas and mooring balls. The area outside of the marina wasn’t really deep enough to anchor but we didn’t want to pay to go into the marina so we dropped our anchor knowing that at low tide, Toboggan was going to settle her keel a bit into the mud. No big deal. It’s not like sand where it will grind the bottom paint off in no time.
It was quite a long dinghy ride into shore which was ok for a couple days until our dinghy motor choked and died. Steve combed the manual for the answer but to no avail. Our dinghy has oar locks on it but it didn’t row very well against wind and waves to and from shore so we finally bit the bullet and took toboggan into the marina while we took the dinghy engine in for repair. 4 days, $450 for a power pack and $200 for the marina later, she was as good as new. I guess the bright side is that if this had happened while we were in Papua New Guinea, we would still be rowing.
In Townsville, we visited the museum where the remains of the Pandora are displayed. Pandora is the boat that was sent out after the mutineers of the Bounty and ended up shipwrecked on the Great Barrier Reef just off Townsville. They found 10 mutineers and eventually got them back to England in spite of the shipwreck where 3 of them hanged. (I will keep this in mind when I consider defying Captain Steve’s order in the future).
We are very close to the Great Barrier Reef now. During our trip between Townsville and Cairns, at times, there was only 5 miles between the reef and the coast and there were many islands in between that we had to make our way around. Because of this, we decided to do 5 day sails instead of 2 days straight. Although our GPS and computer charts have never let us down, it is still very unnerving doing a slalom course in the dark. Of the 5 day trip, we had one heavenly day sailing and 4 uncomfortable ones. Steve didn’t mind it but there was just something about the motion of the waves that made me have to keep my eyes on the horizon and lay off the caffeine. Each night, we anchored at a variety of locations ranging from remote islands with good snorkeling to cane sugar shipping harbours with huge sugar storage sheds on shore.
The Queensland coast is absolutely gorgeous. From Airlie Beach on, it has been very mountainous (not huge like the Rockies but lots of them). In places, it reminds me of French Polynesia with the rocky slopes right down to the water and lush vegetation. In fact, it is so mountainous that when we were in nice protected anchorages, we could not get an SSB signal out (which is how we update our position report and get weather reports when we are underway). Australia has done an amazing job of protecting their coast from over development and much of the coast and the islands are part of a marine park and will remain untouched for future generations to enjoy.

Airlie Beach

We enjoyed 2 weeks in Airlie Beach. It is a fabulous little tourist town full of backpackers from all over the world. It is also home to the largest charter fleet of sailboats in the South Pacific and over 50 tourist boats that take daily trips out to the Great Barrier Reef for Scuba Diving. For us, it was just a nice placed to stop that had internet service while we sorted out the next 12 months of our journey.

We decided we wanted to change our planned route for the next year to include Papua New Guinea, Indonesia, Singapore, Malaysia and Thailand. It is amazing how much planning and paperwork is required before we set out. First we have to research the weather for the areas and make sure that the winds will be favorable for the new route and especially that there are no tropical storms at that time of year. We have to apply to our insurance company to obtain a change of coverage area. Then we have to research customs and immigration regulations for each country. Often we have to obtain tourist visas and cruising permits prior to arriving in the country which means obtaining them from the appropriate consulate here in Australia. Then we have to purchase the appropriate charts and cruising guides for the area so that we know which areas are good for anchoring. Then we have to go to the travel clinic to obtain the appropriate vaccinations and anti-malarial medication for these particular countries. Then we have to provision the boat with 4 months of food and supplies since very little is available in the areas of Papua New Guinea and Indonesia that we plan to visit (we tend to avoid the larger cities and enjoy the less traveled islands).

When we weren’t on the internet doing research, we enjoyed walking along the boardwalk that follows the beach. At first we wondered why we never saw anyone swimming. Then we stumbled upon a gorgeous man-made lagoon that was packed with sun worshipers. The lagoon was created about 10 years ago when the “stingers” (deadly jellyfish) were determined to be a problem for tourism.

Each Saturday, an open air market was held on the beach where we purchased all our fresh fruits and vegetables. One of the highlights of the market for the kids in the area were the camel rides available on the beach. Camels were imported many years ago to aid in logging, gold mining etc. in the outback. They have since been abandoned with the advent of 4-wheel drive vehicles (with air conditioning) and they have continued to thrive in the interior. There are apparently over half a million camels living wild in the interior.

Airlie Beach was hit hard by high winds about two months ago and over 50 boats were lost. Many have been salvaged from the bottom or off the rocks of the breakwater. There are still a few left waiting to be salvaged. About 10 are just plain missing. During our stay, we watch the long process of salvaging a 70 foot fishing boat off the rocks. It had to be cut into 3 pieces and craned onto a barge in order to remove it. It is just another reminder of how critical it is for us to keep our eye on the weather. (We were safely moored up the Bundaberg river at the time out of harms way for cyclone season).

After 2 weeks in Airlie Beach, we raised anchor and set out for Townsville where our research had uncovered that there was a store with all the charts and cruising guides we need for our journey as well as a travel clinic that specializes in the vaccinations that we require. We had a beautiful 28 hour sail with the wind behind us and arrived in Townsville just in time for the national holiday…ANZAC Day (similar to our Remembrance Day).