Cape Gloucester to Townsville

Lianne:

A pretty easy day for our trip to Upstart Bay including a leisurely start. We had one spot Abbott Point where we had to keep one eye on the ship at the coal loader and the other at the six at anchor awaiting fill, to ensure we did not meet in the shipping Chanel but otherwise nothing, not even other boats to keep us company.  The seas were a bit all over the place and towards the end I was feeling a little uneasy. It certainly was not rough just wind sea and swell all competing with each other.  A good cup of tea and some ginger and things were better plus seeing Cape Upstart in the distance helped!

As we entered the Bay a few fishing trawlers were having a well-earned rest before heading back out for a night’s work and small fishing craft were all over the bay.  A few years ago, when we stopped here, there were a few fishing shacks on the beach. Today, quite substantial houses have been built, along with some modest holiday homes but everyone has a fishing craft of some form and many “communities” have a tractor which they use to launch or retrieve the boats from the steep beach.

A few boats were already anchored, and we joined them a few miles up the bay. Rocky was not his usual settled self, and we did drag, Luckily, he settled in after a little while and held tight for the remainder of the night. I have got out of the habit of saying good night to him…maybe that was the issue 😐?

 I tried my hand at fishing again and only managed to catch two of these…. anybody know what they are?

An early start was in order for our leg to Magnetic Island and we were both bleary eyed after little sleep worrying about Rocky.  The weather forecast looked okay, but it was predicting a few hours of rough seas, so for the first time in 3 weeks I took seasick tablets just to be sure I was okay (yes, I get seasick). It was a little ‘messy’ out of the bay but as we got near Cape Bowling Green it seemed to ease and we had enough wind to cut the engine and get a decent sail in.

Cape Bowling Green is quite an enigma in the coastline. It is as its name suggest flat, very flat and very long, just like a bowling green! With sand flats all around it, it juts out and seems to take forever to get around. The rest of the coastline is granite rocks and if you delete the water from photos, you could be mistaken for thinking it was the Snowy mountains!

On these longer days I always have our meals pre prepared so I can limit how often I have to go down to the galley. The only problem is we tend to eat constantly when doing these passages. Coffee/Tea when we wake, then boat muffins (Lianne invention) for breakfast around 7 with more tea/coffee. Next up is morning tea #1 usually fruit (more tea/coffee), 11am morning tea #2 which is vita wheats with vegemite or if it’s cold a cup of soup. 1pm lunch of premade breadroll for Stu and a rice bowl for me. We try to be in an anchored by 3 but if not, a little chocolate is required, just to keep our energy levels right before we are anchored and having sundowners.

Magnetic Island can be seen almost as soon as you have daylight and further into the trip you can spot The Palm Group even further north, where we will head to shortly. Magnetic is huge in comparison to many of the other islands and is a common cruising stop over. As we rounded Horseshoe Bay there was at least 40 boats in the anchorage and in the morning at least half had moved on. (And by sunset it had filled with a new flotilla of cruisers)

After catching up with ‘Happy Hour’, who we had not seen since Fraser Island, for happy hour on Pyrenees we got a much-needed great night’s sleep. With TT already in the water and some mundane duties like paying bills out of the way whilst we have data access we went ashore. Of course, once on shore you meet more yachties and swap details for a meet up down somewhere on the water. Today’s chance meeting was with a catamaran that is from Pittwater, as they helped us drag TT up the shore (looking forward to getting some wheels on it soon!)

We had a great walk, around the community of Horseshoe Bay. A few little shops, plenty of holiday homes to rent and of course coffee shops!  The first walk was the Butterfly walk, a winter resting area for butterflies. There were thousands of them in the short walk that looped you back to the beach. Lunch was at the Blue Marlin pub with a sneaky drink or two before doing the Conservation Park walk. Another short walk that takes you onto a boardwalk across a wetland teeming with birdlife and we even spotted some swamp wallabies.

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The next day we booked into The Bungalow Bay Koala Park for their wildlife talk.  It is only a small family-owned park, but the Ranger Rachel who took us around had a great love of the animals, even though one in particular did not like her. Every time Rachel walked near Shadow the black cockatoo he would try and lash out!  With everyone else he was fine. They also had a visiting vet nurse Katie, who also assisted with the handling of the animals.  The highlight of the day was definitely Pebbles the Koala for Stuart and Harry the wombat for me (such a chilled dude!)

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On Thursday, the weather forecasts were showing winds dropping so we decided to make way to Fantom Island (part of the Great Palm Group). Unfortunately, the sea was horrible and re retreated back to Magnetic Island. It did give us time though to explore the Fort Walk the next day. It’s a short, 4km, walk at the top of the island and was where a camp was set up in World War II to protect Townsville. Little remains of the actual camp, though the lookout post and gun emplacements are still able to be walked in and around as is the communication tower, that today is still being used as a VHF repeater station. 

On the walk, it is important to continually look up and around in the gums.  The area is heavily populated with koala’s who are very blasé about people and are often sleeping in trees very close to the clearly marked trail.  People place piles of sticks on the ground to mark where they are, but you can often smell them before you see the sticks, particularly the males.  The island is home to about 800-1000 koalas, introduced for unknown reasons in the early 1900’s. Great news is they are thriving here and disease free.

With almost another week over, we head into Townsville a short motor from Horseshoe Bay and dock at Breakwater Marina with the roar of V8 super cars in one direction and rehearsals for a NAIDOC concert in the other. Marina time is always busy. Boat washing, laundry, shopping, catching up on emails and calls with family.  Sundowners’ tonight was with the kids via Zoom, Stuart tried to make it into a wine appreciation night, but we were all laughing too much at the usual family jokes

We are awaiting our first guests who fly in to join us for a few days. Luckily, they are from Newcastle and have avoided the Sydney lockdown and Queensland is yet to close its borders to regional NSW. We think it will only be a matter of time. Our thoughts are with everyone back home in Greater Sydney enduring a COVID lockdown, that by all accounts is going to be extended again as the numbers of cases continues to climb. Stay safe everyone.

Stuart:

Passage 2 of our journey to Magnetic Island from the Whitsundays saw some better winds on our 46 miles to Cape Upstart where we have anchored in about 4m of water with the tide set to rise another metre which is quite small compared the 4m ranges we saw around the Percy Islands. The Percy’s sit just outside Shoalwater Bay which has the highest tidal ranges on the Australian East Coast. As we prepared for dinner the wind has picked up out of the north east but as forecasted it did ease later in the evening. We had some unusual issues with the anchor dragging in the stronger winds which were funnelling down a very large valley in Cape Gloucester. I suspect we were in a sea grass bed which can make setting the anchor tricky – eventually it set after 2 drift alarms went off. I struggled with sleep worried that we would drift again and woke up regularly to check our position … the last was at 0400 only 30 minutes before our alarm for our 3^rd and final passage to Magnetic Island.

Passage 3 started with bleary eyes in both of us but coffee did it’s trick with me and we were weighing anchor at 0505 in around 15 knots of breeze though out of the south west which of course was not in the forecast! The seas were very “confused” with a 1 to 1.5m south east swell mixing with the seas built by the SW winds resulting in Pyrenees pitching and rolling for the first 5 hours of the 67 mile passage.  It is still pitch black at 5am so we motor sailed under headsail until after we had rounded Cape Bowling Green given the rolling as the mainsail is more difficult to carry in the heavy rolling with the wind almost directly behind us. From Cape Bowling Green, the wind was on our beam (port side) so we hoisted the main, turned the engine off and had a beautiful sail at around 5 knots listening to Triple M Townsville which plays a mix of music more like my playlist than I remember it being in Sydney ?? The wind dropped a few hours short of Maggie, so it was more motor sailing but with our destination in sight we were quite upbeat despite the lack of sleep over the past 2 nights. Horseshoe Bay was quite full when we arrived at 1545 so we ended up anchoring well out in the bay which promised another rolly night at anchor but the seas were kind or maybe we were just so tired we didn’t get woken.

Next day was a slow start after I managed 11 hours sleep, fixed by more Nespresso coffee and a shore excursion into the township of Horseshoe Bay was in order. We had a wonderful walk through bushland abounding in butterflies and a wetland with much bird life and swamp wallabies. We had lunch and rum’n’coke at the local bar before launching the tender back to Pyrenees only to find her rolling around again. Luckily a number of boats had left the bay and we were able to move about 400m closer to shore and subject to much less swell and wind. After a brief rain shower, we retrieved the tender to it’s sailing position on davits which hold it out of the water off our transom, ready for our next leg north.

After a good night at anchor and plenty of sleep (again), we set sail for Fantome Island which is 34 miles north east of Horseshoe Bay.  The forecast was for winds to ease from the south east but as we headed out of the bay, the winds continued to build and a short sea about 1.5m high was starting to break and our course was almost side on to the waves causing an awkward rolling motion. Discretion being the better part of valour …. we turned back to Horseshoe Bay only 4 miles out and spent the next 2 days exploring Magnetic Island which is picturesque and bountiful with wildlife including koalas. We did the “Forts Walk” to WW2 gun emplacements that protected Townsville from naval attack and very close to the trail we say 4 koalas in their natural habitat. The winds did eventually ease

Saturday morning was a short 9 mile trip in to Breakwater Marina in Townsville where we have stayed in 2016 when Pyrenees was on her way home from SE Asia to refuel and reprovision ahead of being joined on Monday by our first guests of the trip. We took the opportunity to scrub the decks and around the waterline to remove some of our 9 weeks of passage grime. This is a job like painting the Sydney Harbour Bridge …. It never ends and I just need to go back to the bow and start again when I get to the transom 😊