Day 11, Year 3: The Whitsundays-North Hook Island

Day 11, Year 3: The Whitsundays-North Hook Island
Date: Tuesday, May 20, 2008
Weather: Couldn’t Be Finer
Location: Butterfly Bay, Hook Island, Queensland, Australia

We’re starting to feel like a beach ball. We started today in Maureen’s Cove, moved next door to Luncheon Bay, took the dinghy to Manta Ray Bay to snorkel, had lunch back in Luncheon Bay, moved back to Maureen’s Cove where we had started the day so that we could snorkel at low tide, and then ended up back where we first moored on Sunday in Butterfly Bay. Whew! Just keeping track of ourselves wears me out. But it was a good day, and actually very relaxed. Being able to pick up a mooring everywhere
we go is so much easier than anchoring. The good news today was that we saw some great fish, but the bad news is that our underwater camera is once again not working. We sent it back to the factory while in the US and we thought they replaced it with a new camera, but this one is giving us the same screwy readings that we were getting with the old one, so something is surely not right. I can’t believe we missed the picture of the Giant Humphead Wrasse that came to greet us in Manta Ray Bay. He
was right beside the dinghy the minute we tied up to the mooring ball and he didn’t scare away easily even after we were in the water. In fact there were so many fish around us that we think the tourist boats must feed the fish. There were abundant Sergeant Majors and Blue and Yellow Fusiliers and the instant the dinghy stopped, the fish dove toward us. That happened to us in Bora Bora, but the fish there were fed as well. We also saw such beautiful, big parrotfish today, but unfortunately we
won’t be able to share photos of those things with you. But no matter where we went to snorkel and no matter what time of day in terms of high and low tide, the water here is just not as crystal clear as many of the places we visited last year. I guess we are really spoiled. We not only want to see beautiful coral and unusual fish, but we also want clear, warm water free of any dangerous creatures.

Mark continues to work on his list of projects. Today’s Project of the Day was to get the watermaker back up and running. Easier said than done. After trying all his tricks to no avail, he consulted the manual. Evidently, we need to do a special cleaning process for the membrane, so that work will continue tomorrow. We spent our evening onshore watching Sulphur-Crested Cockatoos come in for the night. These magnificent white birds with their yellow tops can surely make quite a raucous. They
look prettier than they sound and I think maybe they were especially loud tonight because of the full moon rising. As that full moon sets in the morning, we will be on our way further north. We could spend many more days here, but Darwin calls us. We have to keep moving if we are going to get there by early July.

080520 Day 11 AU Hook Island, Whitsundays–Anchorage to Anchorage
080520 Day 11 Underwater in Maureen's Bay

Day 10, Year 3: The Whitsundays-Butterfly Bay & Maureen’s Cove, Hook Island

Day 10, Year 3: The Whitsundays-Butterfly Bay & Maureen’s Cove, Hook Island
Date: Monday, May 19, 2008
Weather: Gorgeous, But Cool
Latitude: 20 degrees 04.098 minutes S
Longitude: 148 degrees 56.233 minutes E
Location: Maureen’s Cove, Hook Island, Queensland, Australia

We finally made it into the water today and had no problem with jellyfish of any sort. We snorkeled in Butterfly Bay where we were moored this morning. It is not marked in the guide we are using as a snorkel spot, but there were lots of fish and coral. This is a marine park and there is absolutely no fishing allowed, so the fish we saw were larger than average. We saw many of the same varieties we have seen throughout the western Pacific, just bigger. I saw one three to four foot grouper and
a couple of Napoleon Humphead Wrasse that were about four feet in length. There were parrotfishes and wrasses of all kinds and butterflyfish, some familiar, some new. The coral was not particularly colorful, but there was a great variety. There were even a few large clams. The one thing that was missing was the little anemonefish. I didn’t find my obligatory anemonefish family, so I will have to continue that hunt tomorrow. Mark got cold and got out early but Gerry and Donna and I continued
to swim across the bay to a rocky outcropping separating our wing of Butterfly Bay from the other wing. The trip back to Windbird was a long one and all three of us struggled a bit with the current. We are obviously not in sailing or snorkeling shape yet, so we had to forego the afternoon snorkel. We did, however, move the boat to the bay next door, Maureen’s Cove. The move happened late in the afternoon as we were waiting for some of the large sailing boats that bring tourists out from Airlie
to leave the mooring balls. We can anchor here, but we are trying to use the mooring balls to keep from accidentally tearing up any of the coral. You are really only supposed to stay on the balls for two hours during the daytime, but if there is not high a demand, it seems you can get by with staying a little longer. We moved today at 3 pm so our two hours are up at 5 o’clock. But after 5:00, you can stay the night and not have to move until mid-morning. We will snorkel in this cove in the morning
and then move on to the next bay for the afternoon. If the snorkeling in this cove is really good, we might try to come back late tomorrow afternoon and spend another day here. Since this cove is where all the tourist boats come, I’m figuring there must be something special to look at underwater. Right now there is big sailboat named Boomerang anchored next to us. The deck was littered with young people when she came in and now they are all in the water. We’ve watched carefully where they snorkel and will trace their path in the morning to see what is there.

I had a strange incident today. Mark and I had both bought new dive masks while home and today was they first time we used them. Mark’s works great, but I struggled the whole time we were out today with water gushing in the mask. When I finally got back to the boat after being in the water for almost two hours, I took the mask off and looked at it. The entire rim around the goggles was cracked and crazed with parts of it missing entirely. It looks like someone took a hammer to it. Very strange.
It was wrapped in plastic and in the plastic case it came in until this morning. Neither Mark or I can figure out what happened to it, but I guess I’ll have to find a new one when we get to Cairns. I’ll definitely want a good mask when we get to Lizard Island in a couple of weeks.

I’m writing this log in the late afternoon and plan to send it as soon as the sun sets. Last night we waited until later in the evening to send the log and we could not get the email to go. We had to wait and send the log early this morning. I got up at 4 am to send the log, but still had radio trouble. So when Mark got up at 6 am, he discovered a couple of problems. There were some settings that had been accidentally changed on the radio and when he started the engine to boost power for sending the log, he discovered that we had a charging problem again. This time it was loose connections, but poor Mark worked all morning on one problem after another. We think we have the radio issue under control now, but we will be sending the logs earlier in the evening for a while just to make sure. We are now headed to the beach to watch the sun go down and do some bird watching. We will then have dinner on Scot Free II, so I’ll have to report on those things in tomorrow’s log.

080519 Day 10 AU Hook Island, Whitsundays–Butterfly Bay & Maureen’s Cove
080519 Day 10 Underwater in Butterfly Bay

Day 9, Year 3: The Whitsundays–Airlie Beach to Hook Island

Day 9, Year 3: The Whitsundays–Airlie Beach to Hook Island
Date: Sunday, May 18, 2008
Weather: Yet Another Beautiful Day in Queensland; Winds SE 5-10 Knots
Latitude: 20 degrees 04.370 minutes S
Longitude: 148 degrees 55.763 minutes E
Location: Butterfly Bay, Hook Island, Queensland, Australia

Hordes of jellyfish in the water . . . that’s not what you want to see when you arrive in an anchorage where you have come to snorkel the Great Barrier Reef. But that is what we found when we arrived in Butterfly Bay this afternoon. The jellies we saw were tiny, and probably harmless, but with all the scare about box and Irukandji jellyfish having deadly stings, a little precaution is in order. So instead of diving in the minute we arrived, as was the plan, we got in our dinghy and went around
to talk to other cruisers to see if they had been in the water and to get their take on the situation. We found that others have been in the water and have had not ill effects. The locals we talked to say that this is just not the season for these critters, and that if we wear our dive skins, all should be well. So tomorrow we will dive in with great care and explore. Stay tuned for a further report on that.

Our morning started by heading into Airlie Beach to make a Skype call to our grand baby Sam. Since our 8:30 am is his 6:30 pm and bedtime for him, we got to town early so we would be ready when the internet caf� opened at 8:30. But no one was there at 8:30 or 8:35 or 8:40. We had double checked yesterday and they assured us they would be open no later than 8:30, but then we are on Aussie time here, and hey, what’s fifteen minutes here or there? Well, we scurried down the street looking for other
internet possibilities. A young woman pointed us in the right direction. We found a caf� playing extremely loud rap music and it was our place. It was open and it had internet. We asked if the music could be turned down since no one else was in the place, but the young woman said that was not possible. So we made our call and hoped for the best. Actually the music wasn’t the problem that we thought it would be and we thoroughly enjoyed our Skype time with Sam. I definitely saw recognition
on his face when he saw us on the screen, and when I asked him about seeing elephants at the National Zoo in Washington last weekend, he immediately launched into his animals sounds and signs we had made when reading books together this winter. He then took hold of the laptop screen and pulled it forward to look behind it. He was thoroughly confused when we were not there. I guess we will become the grandparents that live in a computer monitor!

We tried to call Justin and Jo, but they must have been out doing something fun on a Saturday afternoon. We left a message and will hope to talk with them at our next land-based stop. We were able to talk with my sister Patsy and with the Stuart family back in Concord, New Hampshire. The Stuarts, Linda, Michael, and son Garrett, are good friends that flew to Rarotonga to visit and sail with us last season. Garrett has Dystonia and has recently had deep brain stimulation surgery. He is doing
great and we are so very happy for him and for Linda and Michael. Every time we talk with him, he just gets better and better. The wonders of modern medicine are sometimes almost inconceivable, but the results in this case have been phenomenal.

One last note about the cruisers we met when we went looking for jellyfish information this afternoon. We met a couple named Chris and Erin from Boston. We couldn’t believe it. We haven’t met anyone else out here from the Northeast US, but this young couple lived in the North End and kept their boat in Rhode Island. They left in 2006, so they are traveling even faster than we are. They spent the Australian summer in Brisbane and met an older couple with whom they became good friends. That
couple was aboard Barefeet today and they gave us their take on the jellyfish situation. Anyway, it was quite a find. We hope to meet up with Chris and Erin in Darwin and share more New England stories. They have an interesting name for their website: www.NotAllThoseWhoWanderAreLost.com. We’ll check that out the next time we come to land.

080518 Day 9 Airlie Beach to Hook Island, Whitsundays

Day 8, Year 3: The Whitsundays–Shaw Island to Airlie Beach

Day 8, Year 3: The Whitsundays–Shaw Island to Airlie Beach
Date: Saturday, May 17, 2008
Weather: Another Beautiful Day in Queensland; Variable Winds 10 Knots
Air and Water Temperature: 76 degrees F
Latitude: 20 degrees 15.531 minutes S
Longitude: 148 degrees 43.382 minutes E
Location: Airlie Beach, Queensland, Australia

In anticipation of a trough that is predicted to move off the Queensland coast tomorrow morning and bring with it “vigorous” southwest winds, today was the calm before the storm. We had beautiful, sunny weather, but no wind. So, after retrieving our anchor from mud that resembled concrete, we motored the 25+ miles from Shaw Island to Airlie Beach. Airlie Beach is a little tourist town on the coast and we saw only six people in town today that were older than our children. This is the backpacker’s
heaven. It is also one of the main places you come if you want to charter in the Whitsundays. If we had walked as far as the marina today, I’m sure we would have seen more people closer to our age. But we see them all the time and decided not to stray that way.

Our main reason for making this little side trip to mainland is so that we can make a Skype call early in the morning to see our grand baby Sam. Our early morning will be his evening, but thankfully the internet cafes here open by 8:30 am, even on a Sunday. That will be 6:30 pm on Saturday on Cape Cod. After we “talk” to Sam, we will make some other calls to friends and family and then head out to the northern end of Hook Island to Butterfly Bay. It is only 20 miles, so we might get there in
time to do a snorkeling tomorrow afternoon. Every post card in Airlie Beach features the cutest anemonefish you can imagine, so I am hoping to see them in person by this time tomorrow night. Weather permitting; we will stay in Butterfly Bay for at least a day or two. There are a number of different bays to explore and I hope to explore them all.

While in Airlie Beach today, the very first thing we did was to go to an internet cafe. We are addicted. We checked our land-based email and checked our website for recent comments. Thanks to Dave Mackay from Concord who emailed us to remind us to make sure we wear our dive skins while in the water here to avoid jellyfish stings. It really can be a matter of life and death, and we fully intend on wearing dive skins, dive booties, and gloves. We might even consider buying dive hoods if we can
find them in Airlie tomorrow morning. This is not prime jellyfish season, but a box jellyfish sting can be deadly and the sting of the Irukandji jellyfish has caused deaths. So it never hurts to be super cautious. And a note to Rich from Ohio who follows our site-Yes, we were most certainly at the Percy Hilton a few days back. We hope you enjoy the photos we will be posting. We also heard from another person who follows our log, Cheryl from Maine. She is going to be grandmother and we are so
happy for her.

080517 Day 8 Shaw to Airlie Beach

Day 7, Year 3: Scawfell to the Whitsundays–Shaw Island

Day 7, Year 3: Scawfell to the Whitsundays–Shaw Island
Date: Friday, May 16, 2008
Weather: Picture Perfect Day; Winds SE 10-15
Water and Air Temperature: 72.5 degrees F
Latitude: 20 degrees 30.137 minutes S
Longitude: 149 degrees 02.907 minutes E
Location: Shaw Island, Queensland, Australia

We’ve been out of Bundaberg a week now and we have arrived in the southern Whitsunday Islands. These islands are a playground for Queenslanders and for people from all over the world who come here to charter a sailboat. We were here twelve years ago when our daughter was in college at James Cook University in Townsville. Townsville is couple of hundred miles north of here, but while visiting her, we chartered for a week in the Whitsundays. It was the first time I had ever been snorkeling and
I just couldn’t get enough of it. The underwater world was so full of color and fantastic life. I’m hoping to enjoy that underwater world in just a day or two when we return to Butterfly Bay on the north side of Hook Island. That was my favorite place to snorkel when we were here before, and I hope it won’t disappoint this time.

Today was another motor sailing day although we did have periods of sailing. When the winds were below 10 knots, we motored, but when they increased toward 15 knots we sailed. It was just a gorgeous day. The seas are totally calm since the winds have died down and that made for an easy day as well. I did laundry and that was about the only work that happened on Windbird today.

We haven’t decided where we are going tomorrow. We think we might like to head to the mainland to Airlie Beach. There is an internet cafe there and we could make some Skype calls home. After the Whitsunday Islands, our next stop will be Magnetic Island just across from Townsville, but unfortunately there doesn’t seem to be an internet cafe out on the island. We would have to take a ferry to Townsville. That’s no problem, but getting there by 8 am our time is a bit of a problem. In order to see
Sam before his bedtime, we need to call by 8 am here, so we’ll give this a try in Airlie. And who knows, maybe we will sail into Townsville as well. There are only a couple of towns north of Townsville that have internet, and then we will have a long dry spell until we reach Darwin in July. The northern part of Queensland is definitely outback and internet cafes are just not there. There are only crocodiles, and they don’t need the internet to communicate!

080516 Day 7 Scawfell to Shaw

Day 6, Year 3: Middle Percy to Scawfell Island

Day 6, Year 3: Middle Percy to Scawfell Island
Date: Thursday, May 15, 2008
Weather: Beautiful Day; Winds SE 10-12
Water and Air Temperature: 73 degrees F
Latitude: 20 degrees 51.828 minutes S
Longitude: 149 degrees 35.930 minutes E
Location: Scawfell Island, Queensland, Australia

Out of bed at 3:30 am, up with the anchor by 4 am, motor sail all day, pull into the anchorage at 4:30 pm, sun goes down around 5:30 pm as Whiporwills on the island sing us an evening song. That was today in a nutshell. We knew we had to make the 62 nautical miles to Scawfell Island today as there was really no alternative, so onward we pushed. Unfortunately the winds were mostly around 10 knots from behind and that is not enough to push Windbird forward in a timely manner. Actually the motoring
wasn’t bad, however, as it helped to stabilize the boat a bit. I have felt a bit queasy the past couple of days from all of the rocking and rolling, so today was a bit better. We had thought about spending an extra day here, but we have decided to move on. We don’t have to leave as early tomorrow as we only have about 40 miles to go. That will then put us to within 40 miles of our destination in the Whitsunday Islands where we can finally go snorkeling. Can’t wait.

We have met a number of sailors from England and from Australia who all call the bathroom the “loo.” When I ask them why it is called a “loo” they don’t know, but they are quick to tell me that “bathroom” is certainly not the correct label unless there is a bathtub. They continue to tell me that “restroom” is not correct unless you are going to rest. Toilet is the only term we can agree on. While in New Mexico I was sharing this bit of information with our daughter-in-law who is from England.
When I asked about the origin of “loo”, she did not know either. Last night I received an email from her with the explanation. So now, thanks to my daughter-in-law Jo, I can properly inform my British friends. I love it.

“So, this is the reason we Brits call the john the loo . . . 18th century England, poor sanitation, crowded streets, assumption that saying something in French made it a little more polite (from back in the days when French was the language of the royal court…).
People would empty the chamber pot out the window and onto the street below (often very narrow streets, already littered with horse poo and rats and smelly people…).
As they threw the pot out, so as not to get the content all over passers-by, the thrower of the pot contents would shout ‘gardey-loo’ which was an awful English pronunciation and bastardization of the French ‘garde a l’eau'(guard a low)… this later became was shortened to just ‘loo.’

So there you go… just comes from old school manners when throwing poop!!”

Thanks, Jo.

080515 Day 6 Percy to Scawfell