Cairns to Cooktown

Cairns is such a beautiful city and we found it very hard to leave. Rainforest surrounds the hills behind and reef a 2 hour sail away. In the city close to the marina is The Lagoon, a large public pool which is a draw card for tourists, backpackers and a favorite of the Saltheart crew.

Amy happy to go swimming

Our next favorite would probably be Rusty's Markets. Great value fruit, veges and herbs that were longed for by us folk that had been at sea away from fresh food for a few weeks. It's amazing how good fresh food tastes when you have been deprived for a while.



Rusty's Markets

We eventually sailed away from Cairns to Low Island. This tiny coral cay, which is about 150m in diameter, has a large fringing reef that provides a good anchorage in trade winds. The reef has very good soft corals and as it is a green zone there is a variety of fish to see.

Low Isle

Still taller than Daniel

Chasing turtles on Low Isle



One of many Monopoly nights

Our next stop was Hope Island not far from Endeavour Reef where Captain Cook came to grief before careening his boat, The Endeavour, on the banks of the Endeavour River, Cooktown(that's a lot of Endeavours). No green zone exists here so Daniel and Amy had fun netting the bait fish that colour the water black and surround the calm side of the island. We used these as bait and were pulling in these fish one after the other off the beach. Good fun and not bad eating.

Hope Island

Big game fisherman

Dark patches are bait fish

The anchorage

Snorkeling Hope Island

Warm water swimming

Turrum

She doesn't like to eat them, doesn't mind catching them though

From there we went to Cooktown. As previously stated Cook established the first White settlement here in 1770 when his ship hit the reef 20 miles from here. He and his crew spent 48 days making repairs here. 




The man himself

The first thing that struck us is the wind. In fact it has been windy every since we left Cairns but more so now. We are anchored in the river and the tide has us side on to the wind. When the gusts start howling we heel over and in the lulls we come back upright, all the time dancing around the anchor. To make things worse the river is a little congested and we a close to other boats. Our only savior and our greatest investment is our new Rocna Anchor. She is holding us fast. Our old plough would have had us dragging and not sleeping for fear of dragging up on the beach. I had read that the area north of Cairns had the strongest trade winds in the world so I was  expecting it, but wasn't expecting how relentless they are, day and night, day after day. 

Endeavour River anchorage

 

We were originally going to bypass Cooktown but we discovered one of the brackets on our duckboard had broken when we were at Hope Island. Since we have been ashore we have learnt of the Cooktown Festival this weekend that has a Cook reenactment along with heaps of other fun things that are on. Now we are thinking we will hang around until then and hopefully the wind might drop below 25-30 knots. Lets hope our stay doesn't match that of Cook's.

Next stop lizard Island.