Wednesday 25th to Tuesday 31st August 2021 – Woodwark Bay, Bait Reef and Long Island

Wednesday

We had a great anchorage at Woodwark Bay which provided shelter from the south easterly wind. It was an easy day as we recovered from the previous day’s voyage.

Georgie had been pro-active with her schoolwork prior to leaving Magnetic Island and had completed 2 days work in 1 allowing her a day off while we were on passage to Woodwark.

There’s a section of the shoreline at Woodwark covered in small rocks, so we thought we’d try a little social experiment. The three of us spent 2 hours balancing rocks like the ones we saw when driving from Cairns to Port Douglas with the Matenson’s over 5 years ago. We will go back in a week or two to see if anyone has added to the rock stacks, or if they have been knocked down.

Thursday

Peter was having trouble with his main sail track so he and Mark spent a couple of hours trying to find the issue and then contacting Coral Sea Chandlery to see if they had the parts in stock. It turned out they did so we picked up anchor at 0800 and sailed around to Airlie where the parts were picked up and the problem fixed, allowing us to depart the next day.

Friday

Mark and Peter (SV-Music Maker) made an agreement that they would not start their engines and would sail off their anchors to Blue Pearl Bay on Hayman Island, approximately 2.5 hours north east of Airlie.
We pulled up anchor at 0800 and sailed/ghosted along in 2 knots of wind. We had only been sailing for 10 minutes when I mentioned to Mark that we were on a collision course with another yacht, all Mark could do was laugh as he said it would be a slow motion collision as we were both going so slow it would take us 30 minutes to collide. After 15 minutes of doing 1.5 knots, I honestly thought we were going backwards and was sure I could swim faster, so I started the engine and we motored away from the yacht that we may have collided with (in 1 hours time) into Whitsunday Passage where there was more wind. We then turned off the engine and were sailing again at 5.7 knots…much better!

As we approached Blue Pearl Bay we noticed that all of the public moorings had been taken so we decided to continue on to Butterfly Bay. After lunch we all hopped in the dinghy and using the bathyscope scoped out the best snorkelling spots. Over the other side of the bay we found some lovely coral and plenty of fish. We tied the dinghy to a dinghy mooring and all jumped in for a snorkel – leaving Lucy to guard the dinghy for us. We realised we were in the right spot when 30 minutes later 2 tourist boats came along to snorkel in the same area. One of the tourist operators was saying that if you dived 2-3 metres below the surface you could hear the whales calling, so we gave it a try and to our surprise we could hear them, it was awesome.

Saturday

At 0730 we dropped the mooring and motor sailed for 40 minutes to Blue Pearl Bay on Hayman Island. Music Maker were able to pick up a mooring straight away, and after idling around for 15 minutes a motor cruiser dropped their mooring which we picked up. In Blue Pearl Bay you can stay on the mooring for 24 hours which is awesome. The weather was partly cloudy but it did not stop us from going in for a snorkel. The Bay is well known for fish, but not for coral. We were pleasantly surprised to see the fish swimming around the hull, just as we remembered from previous trips, with Greg & Tan and Frank & Phee.

With the a forecast of light winds for the next 24 hours we decided to make a dash out to the outer reef with Music Maker and 2getherII early the following morning.

Sunday

We dropped the mooring at 0558 hours, put up the main and set the auto pilot for Bait Reef. Mark had completed quite a bit of research into accessing the reef as he had heard a few horror stories on yachts that had got it wrong. He’d also managed to source satellite imagery of Bait, Hook and Hardy Reefs which we could then use to navigate through the uncharted areas of the reef (along with mounting a GoPro up the mast which relayed a live feed to his iPad) and having Georgie and I standing on the bow keeping watch with our polaroid sunglasses on.

Thankfully it all went to plan and we each picked up a mooring. After suiting up we jumped into the dinghy to scope out the best bommies to snorkel with the bathyscope.

We snorkelled along the Stepping Stones where there seemed to be the best coral and fish. It was truly amazing, the Stepping Stones were made up of several bommies which were approximately 15 metres high covered in coral and surrounded by fish. Thankfully, we did not see any sharks.

The wind was predicted to pick up during the night and increase on Monday so (taking a leaf from Peter’s book) we had a great day and rather than wait for things to turn bad, we made our way back to Nara Inlet.
As we were sailing, we passed a pod of whales heading north. The whales were doing huge tail and fin slaps – it was fantastic.

Monday

Feeling like we needed a walk we decided to pick up anchor at 1000 and sail across to South Molle Island to go for a walk up to the lookout with Peter and Sal. It was while we were at the lookout that it started to rain. Mark and I had not closed the hatches on Escapade. Welcoming the excuse to go for a run, I ran down the hill (with memories from 14 years ago with Frank & Phee – although it was a dragging anchor that time), jumped in the dinghy and raced out to Escapade to close the hatches. In future we will make sure we close the hatches whenever we leave the boat.

Walking back along the jetty, we were still intrigued at its size and purpose. Mark and Peter did a bit more research into its origin and found that Bairnsdale company, Carter Marine had actually built the jetty, amazing!

There was a strong south easterly forecast for the next few days so we sailed around to Happy Bay on Long Island where we would have access to walks and internet. On arriving we discovered that 18 other yachts had made the same decision.

Tuesday

It started raining overnight and continued through the whole day. While Georgie worked on her Bait Reef Power Point presentation, Mark ran the water maker and I vacuumed and cleaned the boat. Lucy had the very important job of sleeping, only lifting one eyelid when the boat leaned slightly in the 25 knot wind gusts.