Monday 7th June to Friday 11th June – Island Head Creek to Shaw Island, Whitsundays

Monday

We attempted to pick up anchor at 0730 but as the anchor came into view it looked like a ball of twine! The chain had wrapped its way around the anchor several times, caused by the continually changing tide and wind. It took Mark 30 minutes to untangle the mess prior to us leaving the creek.

Once untangled we turned the bow into the wind, put up the main and motor sailed out of the creek. The sea was 1-1.5 metres with a 10-15 knot south easterly. We had a following sea and made good time arriving at Hunter Island at 1400.

Tuesday

Hunter Island is privately owned and is well known for the deer that live on the island. The owner’s homestead is situated on neighbouring Marble Island where not surprisingly, they used to mine marble.
Today the forecast was light but tomorrow, it was predicted to gust to 30 knots from the north and then swing west to south west. Hunter Island would not offer adequate protection in these conditions so we decided to sail on to Curlew Island. We picked up anchor at 0710 and motor sailed through patches of rain arriving at Curlew Island at 1330 hours. Once anchored, with 40 metres of chain out, we enjoyed some freshly baked sour dough rolls.

We lowered the dinghy and took Lucy across to the exposed sand bank that was about 800 metres long and did a few laps up and down. Curlew Island is a National Park described as the jewel of the lower Whitsundays. It was a lovely island with long sandy beaches and rocky outcrops. Where the sand met the vegetation was a long windrow of small rocks that looked as though they had been purposely placed to separate the beach from the vegetation, but in reality it was caused by crashing waves from a very strong wind or cyclone pushing them into that formation.

Wednesday

It was a rolly night at Curlew with the current holding Escapade at odd angles to the swell. Mark feeling uneasy about the forecasted change spent half the night in the pilot house. The change came through at 0600 and as predicted the northerly reached gusts up to 30 knots as it slowly changed to a westerly before going back to a southerly. As the fetch across the water settled down it was time to get some jobs done. Fresh water was getting low, so Mark ran the water maker. Making the most of the generator running we did the washing, vacuumed, and charged the drone batteries. With the strong winds the washing dried in no time and I was very pleased that we had no casualties with clothes being blown off the line into the water. Georgie made an apple cinnamon cake for dessert which worked out a treat!

The lack of phone reception was starting to get very frustrating as we were unable to keep in touch with family and friends or submit Georgie’s schoolwork. The connectivity was patchy and unreliable. When anchored, as the boat drifted on its chain the reception would come and go but as soon as we got reception, we would put Georgie’s phone in a waterproof cover securely tie it to the spinnaker halyard and hoist it up to the top of the mast. Mark and I would then hotspot Georgie’s phone to get the weather reports, check emails and text messages. We couldn’t make any phone calls as the reception was still dodgy and would drop in and out.

Thursday

We picked up anchor at 0700 and in a 10-15 knot southerly and a 1.5 metre following swell we rolled our way towards Scawfell Island. Having the main up did not make a lot of difference until we slightly changed our course and settled into a more comfortable voyage.

There were 27 coal carriers anchored off Hay Point, and as we neared the approach channel we had to alter course when two ships exited the main shipping channel and started approaching the anchorage. We could hear the helicopter pilots talking to the ship captains and I was surprised that the pilots were calling the ship captain “Sir”, I mentioned this to Mark who said that ship captains are very highly regarded. Mark then made the comment that Georgie and I needed to get our act into gear and go and do some more training as we were not referring to him as “Sir” as he was Escapade’s captain…I told him to keep the dream alive! 😉

We arrived at Scawfell Island at 1430 and anchored in 9 metres of water with 50 metres of chain. Scawfell was our first island in the vicinity of the Whitsunday group. We lowered the dinghy and slowly motored between the coral bommies scattered along the shoreline. The color of the coral was gorgeous, and we saw some colourful fish darting in and out of the cover of the sea grass, we found a sandy channel leading to shore and anchored the dinghy as the tide was still on its way out. We went for a stroll to stretch the legs along the rocky/sandy beach. Scawfell was a National Park so Lucy guarded Escapade while we were away.

As we watched the sunset, we were spoilt with the company of a large number of turtles surfacing around the boat. Lucy’s catch-cry used to be “ Lucy where are the fish?” and she would run around the deck of the boat looking for the fish, this has now changed to “Lucy where are the turtles?”

Friday

We attempted to pull up anchor at 0700 but found that the windless stopped working with the anchor 2-3 metres below the bowsprit. Initially we thought that the anchor circuit breaker had tripped, but this was not the case as we could let the anchor out but couldn’t not pull it in. While I slowly motored out of the bay, Mark manually winched up the remaining anchor chain using a winch on the mast and then set about trying to work out what the problem was. It turned out that the windless solenoid was faulty so Mark rewired it so that the anchor could be deployed manually but retrieved using the windless until we could source a replacement. With the intermittent phone reception, a job that what would normally take Mark 5 minutes took 1 ½ hours for him to research what was needed and ordered it on the internet to be sent to Hamilton Island.

We arrived at Shaw Island (part of the Lindeman Islands) at 1500.