The Whitsundays

Monday 19th May

Well we finally made it to the gorgeous Whitsunday Islands & are really loving relaxing on the pure white sandy shores of Whitehaven Beach and snorkelling in the clear waters of Butterfly bay. With names like Daydream island how can we go wrong? The whitsundays are perfect for moving anchorage everyday and just taking it easy for a while. I've been showing Jimmy around as it was here almost seven years ago that I first discovered sailing while working on a charter boat trying to make cash to keep on backpacking! Nothing has changed and we've found ourselves anchored next to my old rivals & making fun of all the tourists in their very unattractive sting suits (they have to wear them because of the jelly fish).....Ingvil pointed out that they look a lot like Tele Tubbies going for a swim.

We celebrated Norwegian Independence day, 17th May, with a trip to Airlie Beach on the main land and Back packer central. The bars were packed and we partied the night away with hundreds of happy drunken people, the down side is that we're still trying to recover. It was this day last year that we arrived in the Marquesas after 25 days at sea, I can't believe how quickly the time has flown by. The plan now is to finish up some work on the boat as we have to stitch sails, brew some more beer and top up on fuel and water. We've had beautiful hot sunny days for over a month now so fingers crossed it keeps up and we can make a jump up to Magnetic island in the next couple of days. From there we'll move on up to Hitchinbrook and island hop up the coast to cape york, hopefully stopping along the way to get in some dives on the Barrier reef.

With over 140 boats now signed up for the Indonesian rally everyone we meet seems to be on the same schedule as us and from what we can tell there's going to be a lot of socializing and a lot of fun to come!! Check out the rally web site on the links up above.

Vacation Time!

Saturday 10th May

The past three weeks have been hectic, we’ve sailed over 300 Nautical Miles spending no more than two nights in any one place until reaching the Keppel Islands and all with Jimmy’s mum on board! Pat flew into Brisbane on the 21st March with over 150lb of spare parts, new clothes, bottles of rum, DVD’s and player, Girl scout cookies (delicious biscuits sold in the states by the Girl Guides- for those non Americans), New shoes, hundreds of zip lock bags (very important on a boat) and much, much more. After all that what space was left she managed to squeeze in a few clothes for herself!
We didn’t give her much of a chance to settle in before heading out of Brisbane to more exotic anchorages. However things didn’t go so smoothly as we’d expected….it started with us wrapping the second anchor line around the propeller and having to get a local guy to dive into the murky, bull shark infested water (Jimmy wisely decided not to do it himself) to cut and pull it free. All went well but it put us a couple of hours behind schedule and so we pushed to get to our first anchorage before it was too dark. No problem except we were anchoring between a row of sunken ship wrecks and the beach with not a lot of space for mistakes, we put on brave faces and maneuvered in. All went very smoothly until Jimmy went down below to switch on a light and found himself standing in water! Someone (we’re still not sure who) left the salt water pump in the bathroom switched on and so water was pouring into the boat. He swiftly found the problem and got it under control long enough to get the anchor down and review the damage.

The next two hours were spent getting the water to drain out into the bilges and washing the carpet out on deck with precious fresh water. When at last it was finished and we were getting ready to prepare dinner the wind and swell in the anchorage picked up and we began to roll back and forth as if we were in a rough passage. The rest of the night was spent trying to hold ourselves in our bunks and Jimmy decided the only way to stop Pat falling out of bed while asleep would have been to Velcro her in!
We survived the night and we’re all happy to get away out to sea the next morning even though it was an overnight passage to Fraser Island and the following day we had to cross the Wide Bay Bar. I think at this point Pat was starting to think twice about her choice of a ‘relaxing vacation’. The Wide Bay bar turned out to be very interesting as we watched boats ahead of us disappear through a line of breaking waves, knowing we had to go next. We got lucky and our timing was perfect, the breakers were all around us but we passed through safely (we later found out a 40ft Catamaran had been flipped over here a week before). To celebrate Pat decided that we should treat ourselves to a calm night and hot showers and so we happily pulled into the marina in Tin Can Bay.
The next week we spent day sailing the coast and exploring Fraser island, the largest sand island in Australia, hunting for our first sight of a wild Dingo’s and relaxing by the pool at the beautiful ‘King Fisher Resort’. With only one sleepless night caused by giant fruit bats fighting for a place to sleep in our rigging! Before long we were underway again and after another couple of day sails and one overnight we made it safe and sound to The Keppel islands. This was the end of the trip for Pat so we decided to spend a few days taking it easy before heading to the main land for her flight home. We hired a car in the town of Yeppoon giving us a day to do some sightseeing and visiting a zoo so at least pat could go home having seen a glimpse of the Koalas, Kangaroos, Dingo’s and Cassowary birds!
Pat flew out at six thirty in the morning so it was an early trip to the airport and a very sad farewell. The time always seems to fly by when anyone comes to visit and it’s never long enough. We really enjoyed having her with us and hope we didn’t make her suffer with too many rolly days at sea. We spent the rest of the day making the most of the rental car and shopped till we dropped stocking up for our trip around the top end of Australia and Indonesia. We haven’t brought this much food since we left Panama and there was no room left in the car once we’d finished!!
So now you find us sitting in another rolly anchorage on the Keppel’s trying to figure out where we can possibly store everything over a much needed rum and coke. I have to admit we are pretty exhausted but with the Whitsunday’s only two days sail away there’s no rest for the wicked and so much more to see!!!

Brisbane River

Sunday 20th April

Well we're back in another major city, Australia's third largest to be precise,and really loving it! sailing 15 miles up the winding Brisbane river we passed through ever changing industrial and residential areas and finally made our way into the heart of the city. Anchoring off the botanical gardens with towering skyscrapers all around us I quite literally think we have the best view in town.

Once we figured out how to anchor without swinging into any other boats as the tide changed direction (there have been many near misses!) we were able to get ashore and explore for at least six hours until the next change over. Brisbane is a much smaller version of Sydney and so instead of taking weeks to explore it's only taken us a couple of days to get ourselves orientated. It's a beautiful city with a really great vibe, the people are friendly and we've already met just about the whole cruising community living here.

We've also finally caught up with our friends Eli & Jorn on the Norwegian boat 'Silene' who we haven't seen since Bora Bora and have been making up for missed drinks and nights out! They've helped us to decide that we will be carrying on to Indonesia with an organised rally in July. If you know us you know that we're incredibly indecisive and would have procrastinated to the last minute. We did consider stopping in Australia to work but there lure of more exotic islands and warmer climates (yes it is autumn here and absolutely freezing at night) is just to much!! So we'll be leaving for indonesia on the 26th July and then cruise through to Singapore, Malaysia and hope to be in Thailand for Christmas.

Goodbye New South Wales - Hello Queensland!

5th April 2008
Yes we have finally crossed the border and passed out of the State of New South Wales and into Queensland! It’s been a bit of a slog over the last few weeks pushing up the coast as soon as the winds turned round from the south. However the quiet, tucked away little towns we’ve found along the way have been fantastic.
We pulled into the town of Yamba after a tough three day sail up from Port Stevens and our first experience of crossing over a bar – no, not the type you buy a drink in but the kind that’s created by a build up of sand at the entrance of a breakwater! The area gets really shallow and breaks in bad weather, however, with the help of pre- planning the tidal flow on an incoming tide you can hopefully avoid anything too bad.
Yamba’s a typical Australian small surfing town, really relaxed and friendly and completely laid back. We were lucky to catch up with some Norwegian cruising friends on board “Blue Marlin” who stopped here so their twin daughters could spend a couple of months attending the local school. Luckily for us they’d befriended the local shrimp fishermen and so we feasted on delicious cheap fresh prawns! We also got our first sight of Kangaroos.....at last! We'd heard that they love the grass on the Golf course and that's exactly where they were.
We took a side trip up the river to the town of Maclean , originally settled by the Scottish it’s still brimming with their ancestors and traditions. Unfortunately we’d just missed their yearly Highland games but we spent our time admiring all the painted telegraph poles with clan tartans and took a hike up to the cairn (almost killing Jimmy) with beautiful views over the river.

Our next stop was the town of Ballina, just 55 miles north of Yamba and a slightly more tricky bar entrance. The anchorage was on the other side of the river from town so it was blissfully quiet and just a short walk to a perfect surf beach. We jumped on the bus and took a trip to the famous town of Byron Bay, one of my favourite stops on my last visit. Byron is a mecca for travellers and surfers looking for that perfect chilled out experience. With all the great little clothes shops it's hard not to love it!!
I dragged Jimmy up to the lighthouse and Australia's most easterly point to get the great views of the coast and Fingal Beach - the famous surf spot. We visited the Arts Factory backpackers where I once called home and Jimmy got a feel for the possibility of becoming a backpacker for a while!

Our time as always was short and we decided to push on through to Queensland while we had a reasonably good weather window. However crossing the bar on the way out of Ballina in rougher weather was not a fun experience. After arriving we heard from a local that this one was rated one of the worst bars in Australia (we wished we'd known before coming in). As we started to leave we could see big breakers all across the entrance and as we got closer they got bigger. The thought of turning around was appealing but we decided to keep on and we're extremely lucky that our timing was perfect. With breaking waves all around us we slipped on through just before a rogue wave crashed behind us!

We are now safely anchored off of Surfers Paradise (yes that's what it's called) in the Gold coast and are waiting for the rain to stop before we sail up through the inland waterways to Brisbane. Jimmy's mum arrives on the 21st so we have a lot of work to do to get the boat guest worthy again!!