We spent a week at anchor at Airlie Beach using the time to do some work on Volante, getting the outboard serviced and setting up the port hull for the arrival of our first guest, Anna’s younger sister Claire. We made friends with Al, who owns ‘Zenataos’, a catamaran so big that it could fit Volante between its hulls (without a mast) and be fine. After a week sharing dinners, stories, and some of the first coffees on our trip, (that kept us both awake for hours into the night), he has become a real neighbour.
Ken and Sue the couple we met at Magnetic Island sailed in next to us. It was great to see them again and they invited us over for a delicious dinner cooked on their camp oven. They were eager to know how our three day trip past the three capes had gone, with favourable northerly winds they were able to do the trip in one full day of sailing (with southerlies on the nose it took us three days). After the dinner we raced down to the bus stop to meet Claire who is going to be onboard for the next five weeks. We had a great sail the next morning (mainly thanks to Claire for doing most of it, while we got the chance to sit back and relax!) towards our first night anchorage at Tongue bay, a big bay near Whitehaven beach with magnificent views over the inlet and beach. We chose to anchor inside the other boats, thinking it to be nice a sheltered spot. Although we were protected from the wind and waves, we found we weren’t protected from all of nature, this time it was a whale that thought we needed a scare...
After a few hours sleep, Anna heard a whale spouting, rather close. After trying a few times to unsuccessfully convince Rob that there was any danger, she turned her attention to Claire, who she managed to rouse first time round. They stood entranced by what was going on hoping that ‘Mr Whalie’ would miss them, however the sleeping whale only drifted closer. Finally Rob got up after hearing a loud, “Get up now, it’s gonna hit us!!!...” at which point the whale was only a few meters away, where by now we realised it was too late to try awaken him, afraid it might stir with a fright and damage the boat. We could only wait out the last few seconds before contact, mentally preparing to jump and swim to another boat should anything happen... The very large whale awoke with a start once he bumped into our anchor line, annoyed that his sleep was interrupted. With a jerk and lunge with his tail, sending the boat into convulsions with all the water churning under us, he swam away with purpose, exhaling deeply, creating a fearful roar, before brushing forward and away from Volante. After a few moments and some trembling hands, we were able to re-gather our own breathes, as it seemed that we were going to be spared the Moby Dick treatment for another day.
The following morning while we sailed off our anchor, we were treated with a fantastic whale breaching display in the bay. Maybe the whale was trying to tell the story of the night before to his mates, “and I breached like this to get rid of them...” or maybe they were just showing off, It was nice to be able to leave the bay to the whales and their antics before any other mishaps occurred. We sailed south past Whitehaven, towards Solway Passage. The most unforgiving of the navigable passages around Whitsundays, known for its curling waves, overfalls and huge gyres in the right conditions (or wrong for those unlucky enough to encounter them), we were fortunate to get some wind behind us to get all the way through. We headed for Hazelwood Island which is a protected zone and less visited than many of the other islands. Along the way the tension cord for the newly serviced motor started to play up as they hadn’t put it back together properly after servicing it (ggrrr!) so we sailed most of the way. We edged over the reef near to high tide to get into the idyllic Waite Bay.Pristine white sand and crystal clear water greeted us and we quickly jumped into the water to cool off. Soon the tide went out and the boat was beached, enabling us to easily explore the reef and beach by foot. The snorkelling was excellent with many turtles and rays. After two nights here we moved to Whitehaven beach, anchoring away from the crowds that mostly came up for Hamilton Island Race Week (with some that were ridiculously too big, note the boat in front of it which is pretty big itself!!!!) we soon found we weren’t immune to the crowds either. With boats coming thick and fast, and a few trying to anchor within spitting distance. After having a diving competition off the boat we went for a walk along the pure white sands of Whitehaven and over the hill to another secluded bay, where we got to appreciate the Island some more. With the winds picking up we headed for Hill inlet to rest for a few days. Here we met our friend Al from Zenataos. The water was filled with orange stingrays and we had to be careful every time we stepped into it. At low tide we got to explore the tidal flats and mangroves and Rob met up with his good friends the thousands of soldier crabs marching around on the sand.
Leaving Hill inlet as the tide rose at 11am, we decided to go the long way back to Airlie around all of the islands. This is where we needed a super effort (a term coined from a book) to get round the 35 miles to get back to Airlie before dark. Leave it to Mr. Spinny, our trusty spinnaker. We cut down the first 15 miles in just over an hour and a half. Surfing and connecting 2 or 3 waves at times and passing yachts that were motoring. Dropping the spinnaker, we next, had to get past northern Hook and Hayman, Anna’s nemesis for getting becalmed and the swirling currents. We gave Claire a quick glimpse at the beautiful bays up north and the dark blue waters here, but we had to keep moving. And were we moving. We had averaged 8 knots for the first 4 hours. Before getting around Hayman and getting a southerly. And just like back in NZ, the southerly, even in the tropics can get very cold!! Tacking back and forth to get to Airlie as the wind died, we arrived a little late. Not being able to see the boats anchored in the dark night, we decided that we wouldn’t take the risk of trying to sail between things we couldn’t see. So we anchored out the back, to wait till the morning to head in closer...

A storm and an Outer Reef excursion

We left Airlie mid-afternoon and headed for Cid Harbour. On the way we detoured past a massive cruise ship filling the bay, Rob has his eye on it for his next boat. Due to currents and wind we arrived at Cid in the dark but luckily it is an easy anchorage, just head towards the masses of lights and anchor off them. On the way we witnesses an amazing sunset and another encounter with a whale which headed straight towards us and dived just under our bows, letting out a large roar which vibrated the boat and had the crew on high alert. We heard on the forecast that a southerly front was coming so we headed for the all weather safety of Shute Harbour (although it was the site of massive ruin during the last cyclone...). At around 1am the storm hit and was much stronger than predicted. Winds over forty knots, buckets of rain, lightening and breaking waves pummelled Volante. After donning our yellow wet weather gear, securing everything down and then bailing a full Joy who was bravely fighting the large waves, we retired to the cabin and rode it out. Anna even cooked pancakes in the morning in the midst of a strange lightening storm with no thunder until she realised it was Rob taking photos with the camera flash. Others were not so lucky with emergency radio calls from people stuck on reefs, and lots of reports of dragging in crowded anchorages. With the continued development of the coastline for marinas and resorts many of the safe anchorages have been taken away. Along with all the environmental problems this brings, it is also a safety hazard as it leaves only a few anchorages left to ride out storms and these get very crowded, pushing boats into the outer margins and causing chaos when something does go wrong. We heard later that one of our friends in a 43 foot monohull actually dragged their public mooring and headed for the rocks, luckily they escaped unharmed as their inflatable dinghy acted as a fender holding them off the rocks.
After everything had quietened down a bit we then sailed off to Northern Hook Island to wait for some good weather in which to visit the outer barrier reefs. We had drinks on a neighbouring boat and he gave us some fresh coral trout he had just caught, very delicious. At night the water was alive with garfish jumping all around the boat. The next morning we headed out all eager to get to the reefs. However after sailing out to sea for a couple of hours, and even though we were having fun surfing down the waves, we realised the weather report was a little on the light side compared to reality. Needing pretty much perfect weather, light winds and small swells, we decided to head back to Hook for the rest of the day.
Butterfly Bay where we found a free mooring was beautiful and we went for a walk up a nearby dry streambed to find that it was filled with thousands of blue and black butterflies.
The wind died during the evening, which we took as a sign of things to come. We arose before the sun was up, and set off, sailing silently away from Butterfly Bay. After much to’ing and fro’ing of ideas on how to best have the spinnaker set up, we deciphered how it must have been done previously, and it worked great. It was much easier than expected. We could lower the jib, hoist the spinnaker then watch it billow out as the bucket and sock are raised! As we are writing this, in the distance, Airlie Beach Race week is in full swing, with their colourful spinnakers flying in the downwind leg. We raced out towards the reef, matching wind changes with sail adjustments. A pod of whales ahead moved towards us, we turned quickly around to get past what appeared to be numerous males fighting each other vigorously in pre-mating behaviour. We were to get an even closer look and perspective in a few days time.....
We headed to Bait Reef Lagoon which is one of the only sites that has public moorings on the outer reefs, making it popular amongst yachties. We negotiated through the reef entrance and around the bombies with relative ease even though there were strong currents. We made the most of our time here in the small lagoon for the next few days with perfect weather. Even the locals were friendly with a turtle coming to graze on our mooring line every morning and evening.Looking into the water we could see a myriad of fish swimming underneath, making us itch to get into our wetsuits, thanks Aunty Helen who posted them up to us, for a snorkel. As the tide slackened in the afternoon, we made our way to the Stepping Stones, which are a series of around 18 coral pinnacles rising from around 20m of water that are in a line and exposed to the current, which, in turn creates a diverse ecosystem. We entered the deep water from Joy and were instantly greeted with a 6ft reef shark that was acting a little erratic. It was twitching nervously in the distance, darting up towards us before quickly veering away. The look in Annas’ eyes was of those of someone about to witness an attack. We headed to the relative safety of the reef, and Annas’ shark attack images were rather instantly washed away by the beauty of the coral reef. ...... We spent the evening having a couple of sundowners while watching the sun set, as we tried to capture the green flash that you get when the sun disappears just over water. When the tide came in and the reef was fully covered it was a very different feeling being out in the ocean with the closest land over 17 miles away in the distance. The next day we explored the Stepping Stones again and the snorkelling was AMAZING, definitely the best we have seen so far! Great visibility, heaps of fish, turtles, clown fish and large cod. It was an awesome experience when the boisterous whales came close by again. They were breaching and thrashing around for a long time near us and their singing was deafening under the water, however when they came close enough for us to see them under the water we just got a flash of their enormous frames as they rushed by before they were gone.
We headed around to another snorkelling spot on the reef edge called Manta Ray Drop Off, the water was crystal clear and there were many jelly fish swimming past. We did some more snorkelling here and saw many colourful fish and an inquisitive turtle. We went to sail back to the islands for the evening but fate had other plans as we broke the pull cord on the outboard motor. Luckily it wasn’t too difficult to start it with the emergency fly wheel but we decided to stay the night anyway and leave early the next morning.
Safely back in port with some reef experience under our belts we are super keen to explore the outer reefs again, and hopefully some of those that are not frequently visited, but of course, only if the temperamental weather permits.

Double Bay, Northern Hook and the City of Cid

The Whitsundays proved they are the crème de la crème for cruising this last week. So much happens in just a week that you find it hard to keep up with the pace at times. We sailed north with 25 knots at our heels, finding that Volante did well sailing with just the Jib up downwind. We arrived at Woodwark Bay to recycle some washed up marine ply to make some boxes for the deck. The ply was washed up from the Tropical cyclone in summer where “50” boats were sunk and wrecked. We found some quality wood easily and moved around to the next bay (Double Bay) to set up a woodshop in an old fishermans hut. The anchorage was nice and small, with only 1 or 2 other boats around, but the wind bullets coming off the high hills were brutal at times, particularly at night when everything seems to increase along with the anxiety levels. Rob did some fishing on our new rod and caught a nice trevally for dinner.
After five weeks of relatively windy weather we finally had a forecast that has been by far the best, which turned into 4 days ranging from variable to 15knots of winds! Wanting to make the most of it we decided we would snorkel as much as we could, and get to some of the anchorages that needed calmer days. Our first stop was Langford Island, the Island with a mile long sand coral cay, the site of the TV ad with Lara Bingle, standing in turquoise water, white sand and a mountainous backdrop saying “what the bloody hell are ya”. Here we had a snorkel and walk up the cay, watching the reef sharks foraging just off the beach, where Anna finally got her chance for the mock photoshoot (perhaps to fulfil her dream of one day being in Womans’ Day).
Langford had the first of about 30 public mooring buoys located around different islands and bays containing deep waters and coral reef areas in need of protection from anchor damage. They are great as they are easy to use, where you don’t have to put down 60metres + of chain and are easy to sail off. The more popular spots have only limited space and a couple of moorings. A two hour limit applies to the buoys, but the catch is, if you get one after 3pm, you are allowed to stay on the mooring overnight, so it can become quite frantic, racing other “mooring competitors” to try and get a spot after 3pm. They also have size limits, and there are a handful scattered around that are only to be used by small boats such as us. However a small matter such as a maximum size limit unfortunately doesn’t deter large charter boats from tying up on the small moorings. Twice we have gently persuaded them off by sailed directly towards ‘our’ mooring.
With courage from our efforts of sailing through the Gloucester passage, we set off sailing through the reef littered passage between Hayman Island and Hook Island. After some confusion over what navigational marks were what and the direction that currents might be running, we escaped the channel unscathed and headed around the corner, towards some of the spectacular northern bays. We sailed into Maureens’ Cove, onto a mooring and had a great snorkel amongst fantastic staghorn and fan corals, and thousands of fish. In the morning we sailed off our mooring (without using the motor) apparently inspiring a charter boat to do the same, however without the desired effect as they were still attached to their mooring with their sails flapping a while later.
The next morning, seeing a lot of splashing offshore, we ventured a couple of miles out to sea to find out what it was, seeing a breeching whale and calf was rather exciting, although Rob also seemed more focussed on the flying fish leaping around our bow. Coming back in we spotted a large sail fish, shining an amazing iridescent blue swimming around on the surface. We headed into the most north-eastern bay, Pinnacle Bay, where all the water runs around the corner creating overfalls, swirling currents and oodles of turbulence. After mooring we spent an uneasy 10 minutes wondering whether we would be able to swim back to the boat if we were to venture for a snorkel. We decided to take Joy for a row to shore, and snorkel from there. Spotting multiple whales playing in the strong overfalls just offshore and having turtles in the water while we snorkelled made it pretty worthwhile to be here. We sailed back around the corner under jib, patrolling 2 bays that we were eager to get a spot at. One ‘mooring competitor’ under motor bet us to the first free mooring , and luckily we managed to squeak in past some friendly kiwis on a big monohull to get a spot at the desired Manta Ray bay. We put up our big flash umbrella to shade the deck and which is very useful on the days when we are moving regularly to different snorkelling sights. It gives the boat a tropical, relaxing and nearly Indonesian look and heaps of people comment to us about it as they drive by. We had a perfect night at Manta Ray Bay with a beautiful calm evening, amazing sunset and heaps of whales swimming around us. Seems we didn’t have to sail way out to sea to view them after all! At night under the stars we could hear the whales through the hulls singing as we slept, it gives the place a special feeling having the whales around.
The next day we headed back out to see to a small offshore island called Deloraine which was meant to have great snorkelling. However we found lots of locals fishing out there and found that it was not zoned green as we hoped but actually yellow which means fishing is allowed. This was a disappointment as we had found limited fish life where even only recreational fishing is allowed and especially none of the larger species such as coral trout. In the end we found Deloraine had too many currents and too deep to anchor anyway so we set off for Border Island instead, another place recommended for snorkelling.
The main highlight at Border Island, as the snorkelling wasn’t great with bad visibility, was our altercation with a charter boat. They had been rather snobby, telling the one decent member off on their boat who was waving nicely at us. Due to this (and the fact that they took their dinghy pass the reef protection markers and illegally anchored on the coral) Rob decided that a little sailing competition wouldn’t go astray so as they set off from their mooring and attempted to hoist their mainsail, we quietly sailed off our mooring and watched the debacle as we sailed closely by.
Twenty minutes later, and slowly drifting out to sea the 5 ‘crew’ were still peering up into space and wondering why the sail just wasn’t going up higher. We then heard an enormous crack that we wouldn’t want to hear on our boat and we could still see a wired cutting across the back of the sail. We left them in their chaos and carried on.
Our next trip out to Hayman Island was in pleasant breezes and sparkling waters and we had fun diving off the bow of the boat and floating through the hulls before catching a line we had hanging out the back and dragging ourselves back up to the boat.
Hayman Island boasts the famous resort, although they have scarred the island considerably by building roads and all the deforestation. We were heading there for the coral though, and were impressed by the good visibility and numbers and diversity of fish we saw. Especially the large friendly batfish, who greet you as soon as you hit the water, as well as the massive humpheaded parrot fish that was feeding by scraping the coral with its beak-like teeth.
After hearing some strong winds were headed our way we set sail for what Anna calls the ‘City of Cid’. This is a sheltered harbour always packed with boats and at night from a distance it looks like a massive floating city. We joined this city just on dusk after seeing some more breaching whales out in the bay. Cid Harbour was actually a pleasant surprise when we went ashore the next morning, with plenty of turtles and a lush ‘dry rain-forest’ filled with Hoop Pines where we were able to climb to a rocky point (Whitsunday Peak) which is the highest peak in the Islands that offers amazing 360 degree views of all of the islands.
Leaving later that morning to cross the Whitsunday Passage with wind against tide, we experienced our biggest waves so far, we were having a great time as we were running and surfing with them, but seeing the hulls and cabins of big catamarans disappear in between the swells with white water spraying everywhere as they were trying to head into it made us thankful we were getting a nice bit of luck for a change.