After carefully watching the weather forecasts, we left Lizard Island on Monday 26 June and were relieved to get reasonably good conditions. It’s quite possible for strong 25-30 knot trade winds to blow for days and even weeks on end, trapping boats in the sheltered bay at Lizard Island. Fortunately, we had winds of only 15-20 knots and the seas were mostly about 1 metre, conditions not unlike those we might encounter on Port Phillip.
Monday and Tuesday were long days sailing into the wind, from sunrise to sunset. Our progress was slower than our north-bound voyage. Tiring but it gave us more time to marvel at the rugged coastline of this part of the world. We stayed at Cooktown on Monday night and Port Douglas on Tuesday night. After 9 days on the boat, we enjoyed refreshing showers, dinners out and quiet nights tied securely in marinas.
On Wednesday we left Port Douglas at dawn for a relatively short 6 hour trip to Cairns. Dan and Gigi spent the afternoon sightseeing and in the evening caught up with Gigi’s childhood nanny. Catherine and I spent the afternoon shopping for more anchor chain! We finally found what we needed in the third shop and were trying to work out how to get 100kg of anchor chain back to the boat when David called unexpectedly. As luck would have it, he was in Cairns, too, continuing his family holiday, so we loaded the chain into his rental car and he helped us load it onto Debonnaire.
Thursday’s voyage from Cairns to Dunk Island was the longest leg, 79 nautical miles (147km) into the wind. To make sure we arrived during daylight, we left Cairns at 3:30am. It was a windy day with showers, so we were feeling quiet weary and ready for bed by the time we anchored at Dunk Island at 5:30pm. We originally planned to have a lay-day at Dunk Island to recovery after such a tiring trip. However, we were expecting strong winds in a couple of days so we decided to push on while the weather was still good. Friday morning was another early start, up at 5:30am to weigh anchor by 6:00am and head to Orpheus Island.
Come Saturday morning, the weather was better than expected so we decided to take the opportunity to move onto Townsville and spend today having a break. Carpe Diem preferred to stay at Orpheus Island for Saturday and travelled to Townsville today instead. We had a terrific time in Townsville, enjoying dinners and brunch out at nice restaurants; sightseeing, including the Townsville Aquarium; and relaxing on the boat in the marina.
Everyone on board is well and enjoying the cruising holiday. So far, we have seen 2 whales, a turtle and a sea snake, all of which raised much excitement.
Tomorrow, it will be another early start. We have 2 more long days into the south-easterly trade winds to reach Airlie Beach, the end of our Lizard Island cruise.
(I had hoped to post updates of our voyage more frequently but the combination of early departures, late arrivals and poor internet access at sea has left less time for correspondence.)
Debonnaire 