North again

The journey is continuing on from Townsville with the new motor being much quieter than the old one. We headed to Magnetic Island’s Horseshoe Bay where we had been before when the issues with the old motor were going on. We only spent one night here before heading off to Palm Island. Palm Island is an aboriginal owned island and permission has to be sought to go ashore which we hadn’t arranged prior, we looked around for a good place to anchor but decided that we would continue on to Orpheus Island where we could go ashore without any issues. On the way there the motor stopped, we couldn’t believe it not with the new motor. Ian found that there was air in the fuel lines, he got the air out and we were back in business. We later found out that the pipes had been put on wrong and the motor was running on the return pipe back to the fuel tank.
We arrived and stopped the motor as always Kathleen told us that she could hear water running into the bilge. Ian stuck his head to the motor room and found that water was coming out of the air filter which didn’t make any sense. We quickly turned off the sea cock and the water stopped coming out. What was going on??? It took until after midnight to fix it. The fuel injectors had to be taken out so that the water could be blown out without causing any damage this wasn’t the hardest part of the night. When the motor was turned over by hand with the injectors off the little caps inside and washers were blown out of the engine and into the bilge or somewhere in motor room. Kathleen said she would go down it and try and find it. The adults can’t fit down along side the motor. She found the cap after a while thank goodness. Ian put his hand over the other 2 injectors to stop anything blowing out of them when they kicked the motor over but the force was too much and both caps and washers from the other injectors went flying. This time Michael and Kathleen got dirty as Kathleen was having trouble finding the bits. Michael was lucky and found one almost straight away. It turned out to be a long night but what had happened was when the motor stopped the fingers on the impellor had spread out and water was able to travel through the holes and the valves must have been open which was very unlucky we are going to put a siphon break in so this can’t happen again.
We didn’t go ashore that night when we arrived but did the following morning. Orpheus Island wasn’t as attractive as the places we have been. There were heaps of mangroves and no real beach to speak of. We did go for a walk around the back of the mangroves to check it out as we had time before we would have enough water over the bar at the Hinchinbrook Channel our next destination. We found some interesting shells on the mud flats a lot of the shells there were black and old there wasn’t really new looking ones. The kids were looking for mud crabs in the mangroves but didn’t find any they did however find a hole that they thought might have a crab in it. The hole was in a sand/mud bank which wasn’t in a muddy spot, they thought that they would try and smoke out what ever was in there with dry grass. I don’t know if this would have worked if it was crab but the kids had fun trying.

We pulled up anchor which was stuck firmly in the mud and headed to Lucinda just inside the Hinchinbrook Channel. We had no trouble crossing the bar following the huge sugar loading wharf in. The wharf goes out across the sea for almost 6km as there isn’t enough water for the transport ships to get in, it is an amazing sight. We dropped anchor to check out the town of Lucinda which basically has one shop a general store/takeaway/hardware, a pub, and caravan park. We had hot chips in the park for tea before having a drink in the pub. We decided to stay the night here as it was getting late and couldn’t really be bothered pulling up the anchor again today.

Lucinda jetty, 5km long