Monday 9th August to Sunday 15th August 2021 – Breakwater Marina, Townsville to Horseshoe Bay, Magnetic Island

Monday

Making the most of being in the marina for a week we caught up on bookwork, refilled gas bottles, unleaded fuel, engine oil and did a few minor jobs on the boat.

Mark pulled out the bikes and while I took Lucy for a walk on the beach. Mark and Georgie rode 9km to the chandlery. It was a warm ride with the heat reflecting off the asphalt. And to make matters worse they had a headwind on the return trip to the marina. The ride was difficult and Georgie needed a bit of motivation in the form of the promise of an ice-cream once they got back to the marina.

Tuesday

Our berth at the marina was right down the very end of the jetty and it took us about 5 minutes to walk from one end to the other. It was great for getting exercise. After Georgie finished her school work we decided to go for a walk along the foreshore to the rock pools. We had just got to the end of our jetty when we heard loud explosions and turned around to see that on the next jetty a boat had caught fire causing extensive damage to two neighbouring vessels.

The boat had just come into the marina and the owners had just fuelled up. Thankfully the owners had managed to escape with the assistance of Marina staff.

Wednesday

The daily top temperature in Townsville is around 27 degrees so any strenuous walks are best completed early in the morning. We wanted to walk up the goat track to the Castle Hill lookout which overlooks Townsville. Taking Lucy along we left the marina at 0700 and did the short sharp walk up the hill. The goat track is a popular form of exercise for the locals. The view from the lookout was well worth the effort.

On our arrival back at the marina we discovered that we had a new neighbour who turned out to be Tony Longhurst, ex V8 supercar driver and Australian Champion water skier (holding the bridge-to-bridge water skiing race speed record for a number of years and still holds the fourth fastest time ever). Tony won the Bathurst 1000 twice once in 1988 with Tomas Mezera and again in 2001 with Mark Skaife, and is one of only four drivers to win Bathurst in both a Ford and a Holden. Nowadays, Tony owns Boat Works (a boat yard on the Gold Coast) and DreamWorld. He introduced himself to us and was super nice providing advice on cruising destinations along the coast. He suggested that we call him if we decided to put Escapade on the hard stand at Boat Works when we return to Victoria at the end of the year.

Thursday

When we were tied alongside the Post Office jetty in Lakes Entrance, we would often catch up with local caravan park owner Terry. Terry would update us on each of his three children. You may remember when we were in Hobart we caught up with one of his sons, James. Terry had told us that his daughter Kate was now living in Townsville working as a ships pilot out of the Port of Townsville. We had the pleasure of meeting Kate and her husband Jay in Townsville and heard all about their adventures sailing around the Bahamas.

Normally each marina has a courtesy car that you can borrow. The Breakwater Marina’s courtesy car was pretty worse for wear with numerous dents, a driver’s window which wouldn’t open and warning lights and alarms on the dashboard that would randomly pop up. We had booked the car for the maximum allowable time of 2 hours to do some shopping. As we were travelling through the CBD Mark pulled up at the traffic lights just outside the Police station where there were 3 police cars parked outside with several police officers unloading bits and pieces from the cars. At this point we were questioning whether the ute that we were driving would be roadworthy and what would happen if we got pulled over. With that the lights turn green and Mark proceeds to do a big burnout on the wet bitumen (there had just been a shower of rain – probably the first in months). I tried to slouch down as low as I could in the passenger seat trying to not make eye contact with all the police officers that had stopped what they were doing and were now staring at us. We managed to escape the scene with no lights and sirens following us.

Friday

We promised Georgie that we would hire an electric scooter. The scooters are not legal in Victoria, but are in NSW & Queensland. The scooters have geo locaters and are speed limited in high traffic areas (eg. 15km/hr on the footpath along The Strand). When you leave a high traffic area the scooter will speed up to 23km/hr, which was great fun. The scooters are well maintained, with contractors collecting the scooters each evening cleaning, servicing and charging the scooter and then lining them up neatly for the next day.

Saturday

We departed our marina berth at 0800 and stopped briefly at the fuel jetty to top Escapade up with diesel in preparation for our trip back down south once the northerlies start. We motor sailed in 20 knots of south easterly back to Magnetic Island and dropped anchor alongside 60+ other vessels in Horseshoe Bay.

Sunday

After taking Lucy for a swim and run we left her to guard Escapade while we took the dinghy to shore and caught the bus to Picnic Bay. Once at Picnic Bay we got off the bus and walked around to Cockle Bay with the intention of finding the wreck of SS City of Adelaide. The 80-metre vessel was constructed in 1864 in Glasgow and spent many years as a passenger ship before she was converted to a coal storage vessel in 1902. In 1912 the coal caught fire and the City of Adelaide burned for two days.

Three years after the fire, a Magnetic Island businessman named George Butler purchased the ship with a plan to refit her as accommodation for tourists, or as a breakwater in Picnic Bay. It was whilst she was en route to her new home that she ran aground in Cockle Bay 300 metres offshore.

It was near impossible to find a way through the mangroves to wade out to the wreck at low tide, so we put the drone up to try and get a few photos.