Trouble in Townsville

We had spent nearly a week in Bowen. There is a major film being shot at the moment with Nicole Kidman and Hugh Jackman. The end of the main street is shut off and has been set up as a military scene. It is meant to be Darwin during the war. We didn't get to see any shooting as they were doing night shoots but it seems that half the town has jobs as extras and all the locals are excited about all the attention.

We were also tipped off that there was good calamari fishing at Horseshoe bay. Within about 10 minutes we had 3 large squid before some swimmers spoiled our fun, not before Michael and I had covered ourselves in ink.

While we were there we sent away for our PNG visas. We have decided to go to the Louisiade Archipelago. They are a group of islands off the eastern tip off the New Guinea mainland. We have spoken to a few of other cruisers who have highly recommended there as well as Wendys dad, Grumps.
Leaving Bowen it was 120 miles to Townsville, which we spread over 3 days, Cape upstart the first night and Cape Bowling Green the second. Shortly after leaving Cape Bowling Green the motor suddenly died. We were able to sail all but the last couple of miles. Our sailing companion, Hayden towed us into the harbor and hasn’t let us forget it since. We sent the injectors and the injector pump to the workshop for a rebuild and are waiting to see if that gets us going again.


At the moment we are still waiting for the parts for the motor and still praying for the rain to stop and all going well we will go out to Magnetic Island to give the motor a run and then either leave for PNG from here or Cairns.

Amy the super snorkler

Whitehaven Beach, Whitsunday Island.

For the last couple of weeks we have been cruising the islands of the Whitsundays. This has meant that there has been an anchorage within 2 hours of everywhere. It has been our first chance to snorkel in coral since Lady Musgrave Island, and the snorkeling has been pretty good. At first everybody would go in the dingy to the dive site and someone would stay with Amy while everyone else went snorkeling. However Kathleen decided that Amy shouldn't be missing out on all the fun and with a bit of time and a lot of bribing taught Amy to snorkel, and doesn't she love it. At first she couldn't stop talking through her snorkel saying look at this and that and now she goes off a little bit to explore for her self.

Amy, 3 years old and can swim as fast as anyone

Amy showing mum something "really cool"

So far the best snorkeling for coral has been on Border Island and the best fish and marine life has been at Manta Ray Bay and Bait Reef, which is on the Barrier Reef.
Huge wrasse that came up meet us at Manta Ray Bay. These guys are about 4 feet long and let you pat them in exchange for some corned beef or a sausage.

We left Bait Reef this morning and arrived in Bowen this morning, which is 50 miles in 9 hours with the wind at 10 - 15 knots on our beam the whole way. We managed to just beat Hayden, who we have been cruising with for the last couple of weeks, even though he was "just running the motor to charge the batteries".

We might stay here for a couple of days before shooting up to Townsville. After that we have to decide whether to go to the Louisiade Archipelago or continue to Cairns but at the moment we are leaning towards PNG.

Great Keppel Island

Well we made it to the Keppel Islands we were glad to drop anchor. We anchored at Svendan’s Beach. It felt better to be behind land even though we were still rolling around. The wind blew for the entire time we were here with gusts of up to 30 knots. There were also squally showers which made it hard to go ashore. We did drag while we were there and ended up moving to hide behind some small rocks, where we still managed to drag we ended up setting 2 anchors, one of one fell off and we had to dive down to find it when we were going when we had realized what happened. We did go shore everyday even if it was only for a short time.


Walking along the beach to the resort on Great Keppel Island.

The kids collected shells which we hadn’t seen on any other beach so far. It was really windy and rolly which made for not much sleep at night with checking we hadn’t dragged. We took the dingy for a ride to the resort the first time we went there as we weren’t sure on how to get there and Amy is getting too heavy to carry too far. We had tried to walk there but Ian said it looked like kilometers. We walked to the resort on the other side of the island when people told us the way they had gone and saw goats the second time. We had a camp fire 1 night which was a success despite not having dry wood which was fun to light but it got there in the end and we toasted marshmallows. We tried to have a game of cricket until the bat broke.

We stopped at Pearl Bay for a couple of nights it was a pretty place and is shut up at times for military training. We were asked if we could take some oars up to a man called Barry who had left them behind, we did this and he gave us a couple of mud crabs and fish which were great. We did a bit of exploring and collected more shells and had a swim. We saw turtles but didn’t see any dugong’s which have a protection area there. We then moved a little further up the coast to Island Head where we collected yabbies and tried a spot of fishing. Ian caught a small shark but it got off the line in the shallow water. You can go further up the river than where we did. It was a comfortable place to stay in the boat as it didn’t move much.



Ian and Amy walking along the beach at Pearl Bay.

From here we went to Middle Percy Island which was great and the water was clear. This is a place that you can only be visited in calm weather the anchorage is no good in anything else. As we dropping the anchor the gear box got stuck in reverse, yet another thing for Ian to fix. At first Ian was worried that we have broken the gear box but he found a crack in a tube which he was able to repair. There is an A frame building that heaps of people have left their mark on by leaving the name of their boat on different things from wood to a bra.



Can you find Saltheart's mark around the middle of the picture we all helped make it. It took a few hours.

The kids managed to make some friends here for the day before they left. We met the lady (Margaret) who has the lease of the island and told us a bit about the history of the place. We also went snorkeling amongst a huge school of bait fish which was amazing. We made a plague to leave here with the name of our boat which took the better part of the morning with a screwdriver and a soldering iron.

We moved onto Digby Island from here for the night before we went onto Mackay the start of the Whitsunday’s. We have spent about a week here. We needed to get the pipe that broke replaced or repaired permanently. Then the winds picked up to 25-30 knots so we stayed until it settled a bit. As it turned out the pipe wasn’t fixed properly and Ian had a hard time trying to get it to fit back where it came from after part of it must have been cut out. The marina is out of town, we have caught a cab a couple of times which is a bit of a rip off, we have walked back twice which was a bit of exercise it is a 5km walk. We got slightly wet once. We haven’t really done anything exciting here. We did stubble upon an event in a park where the kids got to do some volleyball, face painting, pillow fighting and jumping castles which were free. We are going to Brampton Island the wind is still supposed to be 25-30 knots but it wasn’t that strong today.