Day 24, Year 3: Cairns to Double Island
Date: Monday, June 2, 2008
Weather: Beautiful, Warm Day, But No Wind
Latitude: 16 degrees 43.652 minutes S
Longitude: 145 degrees 40.528 degrees E
Location: Double Island, Queensland, Australia

Ready or not, we moved on today. We still had many things we wanted to do in Cairns, but we were just too cheap to pay for another night in the marina. And unfortunately, anchoring out in Cairns is not safe because of the strong tides. So on we went. We made a last minute run into town to buy another bag of onions. Windbird can’t sail without onions onboard and since we are four to six weeks from the next store when we reach Darwin, we thought it best to buy more “just in case.” We had a 9:30
am appointment at the fuel dock and that was certainly an interesting experience. Donna and Gerry on Scot Free had a 9:00 am appointment and they called us to give us the heads up that no one would be on the fuel dock to take our lines. This is very unusual. In fact, we have never come to a fuel dock when someone wasn’t there to take our lines. And with the currents here, docking of any sort is very tricky. It took us a few tries, but we did get tied up and filled our center tank. We have three
fuel tanks and two are still full from our last fill-up in New Caledonia last season. We probably won’t need a lot of fuel from here to Darwin, but we were afraid to head into such a long run without full tanks. The cost was almost $8.00 a gallon, so just filling one tank cost over $400.00. Fuel in Indonesia will be much cheaper, so we don’t plan on getting fuel again until Kupang in West Timor. So after the harrowing experience of docking and the shock due to the price of fuel, we were ready
for a hassle-free day. But just as we pulled away from the dock, our steering went haywire. This is not a good thing to happen in a very busy harbor with high speed ferries and tourists boats zipping about everywhere and very shallow water just a few inches beyond the buoys. We could steer, but the wheel was so loose that we had to turn it very far to get it to react. We quickly turned on the auto pilot and Mark went below to figure out the problem. He came back fairly quickly with good news.
The steering cable had just slipped off the quadrant and needed to be put back in place and tightened up.

We motored the twelve or so miles to little Double Island and anchored by early afternoon. Donna and Gerry wanted to try out their new dinghy motor, so they launched their dinghy and came over to visit. While we were talking, we realized that we had not downloaded important tide information that we will need when we go “over the top” of Cape York and head toward Darwin. That led us to do a little group research into that phase of our journey and I think we all got just a little nervous at the
lack of information that we do have. We have some books and Donna and Gerry have others, but between us we still don’t have everything that we need. And, of course, Cairns was our last chance to get anything. Aqua Magic is still in Cairns, so we might have to contact them to ask them to pick up a few things for us.

But the afternoon was not all route planning. We did go out in Scot Free’s dinghy to help with the new engine break-in process and we went over to a fishing boat anchored near-by. We saw two men working on one of the “wings” or outriggers and asked what kind of fish they catch. They explained that the boats we see here that look like they have wings are all shrimp or prawn boats. They look identical to the ones in the Gulf of Mexico in Florida. So I guess some things are the same the world over.

080602 Day 24 Cairns to Double Island

Day 25, Year 3: Double Island to Low Isles
Date: Tuesday, June 3, 2008
Weather: Another Windless Day; Sunny Early, Overcast Late Afternoon
Latitude: 16 degrees 22.855 minutes S
Longitude: 145 degrees 33.844 degrees E
Location: Low Isles, Queensland, Australia

We are finally one-third of the way to Darwin. We have traveled 750 miles from Bundaberg to here, but we still have about 500 miles to go to get around the top of Cape York and then another 800 from there to Darwin. So the voyage continues.

Australia is the world’s only country that is also a stand-alone continent and it is a land of extremes. From penguins to crocodiles, from desert to snow-capped mountains, and from marsupials to fantastic reef life, it has it all. But it is impossible for us to see it all in the limited time we have. We are really skirting the edges, but even that is most enjoyable. Today we arrived in the Low Isles. These are two little islands surrounded by reef. West Island has a light house that once required
a lighthouse keeper. But today, the light is run by computer and the University of Queensland Research Station operates out of here. East Island is covered with trees with mangroves all around. At low tide, there is a huge amount of reef that is exposed around both islands, but especially around East Island making it look like the plains of Africa. At high tide, however, you simply see two little green islands-one with a sand beach surrounding it and the other green down to the sea. We are still
very close to Cairns and to Port Douglas and there are lots of tourist boats that come here for the day and another load of reef boats that pass by here in the evening on their way home from a day on the outer rim of the Great Barrier Reef which is only eight miles away. But the real attraction here is the turtles. Many Green and Hawksbill turtles call this home and they are everywhere in the water. Soon after arriving, Scot Free II picked us up once again in their dinghy with the new motor, and
we went to shore. We walked around tiny little West Island, did some bird watching, and then got back in the dinghy and puttered around the coral heads surrounding West Island. This is where the turtles hang out and we so enjoyed watching them fly by us underwater and then surface for air. We could see the bommies just under us, but strangely, we saw no fish. When we got back to Windbird after our dinghy tour, I was considering getting into the water to swim with the turtles, but something kept
telling me to keep out of the water. When evening came and Donna and Gerry arrived for dinner, I saw that “something” that kept me out the water. In addition to beautiful turtles, there are also lots of little sharks here. There are even a few middle-sized ones and none that I would like to encounter face to face.

There was one other attraction here worth mentioning. The young couple from Cairns who are moored next to us prefer not to wear clothes. So we had a great “view” from where we are moored. And we were moored, not anchored. The Great Barrier Reef National Park has three mooring balls here and we were lucky enough to pick one of those when we arrived. Tomorrow we are on to the Hope Islands. These are the very low islands close to where Captain Cook ran his beloved Endeavor on the reef. Once off
the reef, the Endeavor headed for the mainland but she was leaking profusely. The Endeavor had passed some low islands on their way to the reef and Captain Cook writes that he really hoped to see those little islands once again. He did see them on his way to Cooktown and they have been the Hope Islands ever since.

080603 Day 25 Double Island to Low Isles

Day 26, Year 3: Low Isles to Hope Isles
Date: Wednesday, June 4, 2008
Weather: Overcast Morning, Partly Sunny Afternoon; Winds SSE 18-20 in Afternoon
Latitude: 15 degrees 43.833 minutes S
Longitude: 145 degrees 27.276 degrees E
Location: Hope Isles, Queensland, Australia

Beautiful, beautiful, beautiful. We arrived in the Hope Isles in mid-afternoon at low tide and although it was a little scary maneuvering around the reefs to get in here, it was worth it. There are two islands here, both uninhabited. West Hope is the larger of the two and the closest to the mainland. East Hope is a tiny little sand cay with lush jungle-like greenery in its middle and a little sandy beach encircling it. But at low tide, you can see the reef stretching north, east, and south almost
as far as you can see. We entered between the two islands and then went a little north of East Hope and then headed south to anchor on her west side where the reef does not extend out from the island. We knew there were two National Park mooring balls here, and as we entered good friends that we haven’t seen since last season called us and pointed out that the one of the mooring balls was available. The friend that called was Runae of Blue Marlin (Norway). He was on the beach with one of the
twins, Hetta. Idunne and the other twin, Maretta, were on Blue Marin as Maretta has a bad cold. Runae had his handheld VHF and it was so funny to see him emerge onto the beach from the jungle in the middle while talking to us on the radio. Blue Marlin has often traveled with Cam and Arnie and their two girls on Jade (Hong Kong). But Cam and Arnie are headed to New Caledonia this year and Blue Marlin is traveling north with Marianne and Kay on Nabob (Sweden). The other boat we know from Sweden,
Christina, is getting ready to cross the Gulf of Carpentaria and will spend six weeks sailing Australia’s north Kimberly Coast before heading across the Indian Ocean and around South Africa. We had hoped to see Christina and Jan in Darwin, but they will be long gone by the time we get there. We wish them well in their journey home.

I’ll regress a bit to the beginning of the day before I get back to singing the praises of the Hope Isles. The sailing today was the same as many other days recently. There was very little wind in the morning, so we motor sailed. Then around noon, the wind piped up to 15 to 20 knots out of the SSE. We already had our headsail poled out to starboard, so we pulled the staysail out to port and sailed downwind wing and wing for the next three hours. We put a fishing line out early this morning and
had one nibble but lost that fish. Just before we started our run between the two islands, however, I heard the fishing line whirring away. We landed a 28-inch spotted mackerel (according to Runae). We have all sorts of fish identification guides onboard, but none are for game fish. This fish looked incredibly like the 54-inch wahoo we caught in Fiji last year. So is a wahoo really a mackerel? If anyone knows, please let us know. The one thing I do know is that we just finished eating some
of the fish for dinner, and it sure tastes good. The other thing that happened that was a little different today is that we were sailing in the shipping lanes for the first time. We had a bit of traffic in the morning, but the afternoon was quiet. The only activity happened when we caught the fish and then almost immediately entered the deep channel between the two Hope Islands. Once we reached our destination and attached Windbird to the National Park mooring ball, Mark hurriedly filleted the
fish and put it in the freezer. We then launched our dinghy and headed to shore. We could see from the anchorage that island is home to hundreds of birds, so I was anxious to get to shore to say hello to Runae and Hetta and to get some photos of those birds. We got ashore and talked with Runae and Marianne and Kay of Nabob. Hetta showed us her “pet” sea stars before she put them back in the water and then Mark went out to get Donna and Gerry of Scot Free II. It was our turn to do the dinghy
transport on this island.

Blue Marlin and Nabob are headed to Cooktown in the morning and we discussed the difficulties of getting into the Endeavor River there. You are only supposed to enter on a rising tide because of a very shallow sandbar, but there is no rising tide during daylight hours this week. Blue Marlin and Nabob are leaving here very early in the morning and plan to enter the river at high tide in the morning. We are going to stay here for tomorrow and Runae is going to email us and let us know the situation
once he is in Cooktown. If all seems okay, we will head over the next morning. There is a festival this weekend marking the anniversary of the date when Captain James Cook brought his damaged ship, the Endeavor, into the river at Cooktown for repairs in 1770. I don’t have the exact date, but I think he must have arrived in Cooktown between June 10 and June 12 of that year. I’m looking forward to visiting Cooktown, so I hope it works out for us to make this stop.

We walked all around West Hope late this afternoon and watched all the wonderful birds coming in to roost for the night. This island is an important nesting site for pied imperial-pigeons and we did see two different varieties of pigeons roosting. We are going to assume one of them was the pied imperial. Tomorrow we will have more time for bird watching, so I’ll give a more detailed bird report in tomorrow’s log.

080604 Day 26 Low Isles to Hope Isles

Day 27, Year 3: A Day at East Hope Island Date: Thursday, June 5, 2008 Weather: A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood Location: Hope Isles, Queensland, Australia We have had an absolutely wonderful time playing on this little island. It is so tiny that you can walk around it in ten minutes, but you can wander about on the reef at low tide for hours looking at all the little creatures or sit for hours just watching the bird and butterfly show. We divided our day between work and play. I did laundry this morning and Mark defrosted the freezer-just in time. He defrosted it since he had to rearrange everything anyway to make room for the fish we caught yesterday. This evening, he and Gerry struck a deal with the “resident” prawn (shrimp) boat here and traded eight beers and a Cadbury chocolate bar for five kilos of the most beautiful and the biggest shrimp I have ever seen. The shrimp or prawns were already frozen, so we divided them between Scot Free and Windbird and will keep them frozen until we get to Lizard Island. We hope to enjoy them there with some of the other cruisers that we are meeting as we make our way. On the beach late today we met two Australian couples that are headed to Darwin for the Sail Indonesia Rally. And another boat that overheard our conversations with Scot Free on the VHF radio called to say hello and to tell us that they are also headed to Darwin for the Rally. However, all of these boats are stopping at Lizard Island for about a week before traveling on, as are we, so we will have a chance to get to know them there. But first we have to get safely into Cooktown and enjoy that bit of Australia. As the Australians we met today said, Cooktown is one place in Australia that has a bit of history. They say that most of Australia does not. I might disagree with that, but it is true that when Captain Cook brought his damaged Endeavor into the Endeavor River at wat is now Cooktown, he was the first European to arrive there. Other Europeans followed some fifty years later, but it wasn’t until gold was discovered in the 1870′s that the aboriginal Gangaarr was renamed Cooktown. Unfortunately the aboriginals were virtually exterminated from the area during the gold rush years. Cooktown became the wealthiest town in Australia and it became Australia’s second busiest port. We received an email this evening from Runae and Idunne on Blue Marlin saying that they safely arrived in Cooktown today and telling us that it seems safe enough to enter and that there is room to anchor. So that is our goal for tomorrow.

080605 Day 27 East Hope Island

Day 28, Year 3: East Hope Island to Cooktown
Date: Friday, June 6, 2008
Weather: Another Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood; Winds SE 20
Latitude: 15 degrees 27.853 minutes S
Longitude: 145 degrees 14.585 minutes E
Location: Cooktown, Queensland, Australia

We arrived safely in Cooktown, but it was a little nerve wracking getting in here. The directions we had for entering from an up-to-date guide book we have were very helpful and the newest version of C-Maps was right on. We did go over the sandbar and the lowest depth we recorded was 9 feet. This gave us about 3 feet under the keel, but we came in on high tide and it was an exceptional high tide. Getting back out is another matter, but we’ll worry about that on Sunday or Monday. We will be fine
as long as we leave just before or right at high tide. They really mean it when they tell you not to enter or leave here unless you are on a rising tide, so we will obey.

Cooktown is a cute little outpost town. This is the weekend of their Discovery Festival. Just after we arrived, we went into town to check it out. We walked from one end to the other and gathered information. Unfortunately, the only internet caf� was closing this afternoon and won’t reopen until Tuesday, but we might find internet at one of the hotels. Because this is the “June Long Weekend” some things will be closed, but then there are many things that we will get to experience that only happen
on this weekend once a year. The official opening of the festival was tonight. We listened to the usual political speeches and stayed for a light-hearted play, “Farewell James, My Darling.” This was at the James Cook Museum. The number of people in period dress was most impressive and the play had a great ending with James Cook returning to his wife Elizabeth in England very much an Aussie. He had simply spent too much time exploring the “southern continent.” Most everything this weekend has
to do with Captain James Cook, but there is a replica of Dutch Tall ship at the wharf, the Duyfken. This ship is about 70 feet long and sailed in these waters in the 1500′s, long before James Cook. We plan to enjoy the festivities this weekend and will probably leave here on Monday. On Sunday morning there is a re-enactment performance of Captain James Cook and the crew of the Endeavor landing here in 1770. This is the 49th year of the re-enactment and we think it will be great fun.

080606 Day 28 East Hope Island to Cooktown

Day 29, Year 3: To Our Daughter-in-Law, Jo–Happy Gallery Opening
Date: Saturday, June 7, 2008
Weather: Windy Day at Anchor, SE 20-30 Knots
Location: Cooktown, Queensland, Australia

The last time we talked to our son and his wife, Jo, they said that Jo was having the grand opening of her art gallery on June 7th. We haven’t heard differently, so we are assuming this is happening. So to Jo, congratulations! We’ll be anxious to see gallery opening photos when we reach Darwin.

We had a day jam-packed with activities, all interesting. In a nutshell, we visited the James Cook Museum, did our grocery shopping and brought those things back to the boat, watched the Discovery 2008 parade, enjoyed lunch in town and then watched the truck pulling contest, walked quite a distance to the cemetery for an hour-long guided tour and history of some interesting characters, and then walked all the way back to town and further in another direction to the Botanical Gardens for another
hour-long guided tour, came back to Windbird to write and send this log, and then headed back to town for dinner with live jazz music on the waterfront. Whew! We even wear ourselves out when we write down what we have done. I have a nice little blister on one toe to prove I walked long distances today but we had great fun and learned a lot about Cooktown’s history. The cemetery walk sounds morbid, but actually it was very interesting. During the 1873 to 1890 period of time there was a gold rush
here and the population of Cooktown grew to 30,000 people. Almost 20,000 of those people were Chinese. Seeing how people were segregated for burial and how they were buried was fascinating. I’ll write some of the detail and put it in tomorrow’s log. The Botanical Garden tour was a little disappointing as there were just too many people and the guide had a very soft voice so it was hard to hear. So we made up for this by buying a “Plants of Tropical Queensland” book and “The Endeavor Journal
of Joseph Banks.” Hopefully between the two, I will be able to identify many of the plants and trees we are seeing in northern Queensland.

Tides have never been something that we have had to worry too much about in our voyage to this point, but all of a sudden, it is all about tides. Tides here do not follow what we think of as the normal six hours to high, then six hours to low, and then the repeat of that. Here you can have a low tide at 6 am in the morning and a high tide at 9 am. And the tides can be huge. We have had to learn about neap tides and spring tides and tidal streams. And this is going to be more and more important
as we head further north and over to Darwin. But for the moment, the importance of this is that we are going to have to leave here tomorrow by 1:00 in the afternoon. Otherwise, we are pretty much stuck here until Wednesday and we are too anxious to get to Lizard Island to enjoy the snorkeling and walks there to stay here. So we will go in for the landing of the Endeavor re-enactment in the morning and then hurriedly get back to Windbird and head out of here right at high tide. We will travel
about 20 nautical miles to Cape Bedford for tomorrow night and will be at Lizard Island by Monday evening. We are going to have PLENTY of wind, but it will be behind us so that is okay with us. So on we go.

080607 Day 29 Cooktown Parade Day

Day 30, Year 3: Cooktown to Cape Bedford
Date: Sunday, June 8, 2008
Weather: Partly Sunny Day; SE 25-30 Knots
Latitude: 15 degrees 13.958 minutes S
Longitude: 145 degrees 19.347 minutes E
Location: Cape Bedford, Queensland, Australia

The most important news of the day is that we made it safely out of the Endeavor River. A sailboat with a deeper keel than ours left around noon and we watched them as they successfully made it out of the shallow harbor, so we followed right behind. We did have less water under the keel than we did coming in, but we always maintained two feet of clearance. It is enough to make you hold your breath, and then celebrate once you are out. Of course, in addition to having to worry about the shallow
depths, we also had 30 knots of wind on the beam to contend with as we exited the harbor. But we made it and we had a fast trip north to our next anchorage at Cape Bedford. From here to Darwin, it is more usual than not to have 25 to 30 knot winds, so we might as well get used to it. Windbird seems to do some of her best sailing in these conditions, so once again we are so happy to be on this boat.

The re-enactment of Captain Cook’s arrival in 1770 in what is now Cooktown was fun to watch. The period costumes were great and the historical commentary was good. There is certainly lots of history in Cooktown’s past and we felt very fortunate to be there this weekend. Immediately after the re-enactment, we returned to Windbird and prepared to leave. Aqua Magic and Blue Marlin are staying in Cooktown for a few more days, but we are anxious to get to Lizard Island, so we took the mid-day high
tide opportunity to “get out of Dodge.” And actually Cooktown of today is a little like Dodge of yesteryear. I said in yesterday’s log that I would add some of the history we learned in our tours to today’s log. I’m going to put that off one more day and try to work it into tomorrow’s log.

We got a couple of delightful emails from our daughter Heather today. Her husband, Jed, is in France for a conference for nine days so she is trying her hand a being a single mom. Her first couple of days have gone great. That grand baby Sam seems to be keeping her (and us via email) fully entertained. We just hope the next seven days go as smoothly as the first two.

When we arrived in Cooktown we went to the internet caf to get a copy of the latest weather report. The young woman there said we didn’t need to download the weather. She already had the report. “Thirty knots of wind for the next six months followed by four months of rain.” We’ll keep taking advantage of the 30 knots of wind to push us further and further north. Tomorrow’s destination is the long awaited Lizard Island.

080608 Day 30 Cooktown to Cape Bedford

Day 31, Year 3: Cape Bedford to Lizard Island
Date: Monday, June 9, 2008
Weather: Beautiful Day; Winds ESE 25-30 Knots
Air and Water Temperature: 74 degrees F
Latitude: 14 degrees 39.693 minutes S
Longitude: 145 degrees 27.122 minutes E
Location: Watson Bay, Lizard Island, Queensland, Australia

What a great day! We had a romping six-hour sail from Cape Bedford to Lizard Island with 25 to 30 knot winds and two-meter seas. It should have been a downwind run, but the winds were actually coming a little more from the east so we were on a beam reach most of the day. We sailed with a double-reefed headsail and the full staysail. This is when Windbird performs her best. She is steady in the heavy winds and we made great time. We were actually anchored in Lizard before one o’clock. This
is a small island with one very exclusive resort and a research station run by the Australian Museum. No one lives here other than those running the resort and the research station. But it is famous as a great anchorage. It is always windy here, getting the nickname of Blizzard Island because of the wind gusts that rage through the anchorage, but the water is always calm. Certainly Cape Bedford last night was not a calm anchorage, but Lizard is absolutely flat even with the gusts of wind.

After having lunch, we launched the dinghy and explored the bay. We met the folks on the boat next door, Katane, out of England. They had helped us find a good anchoring spot when we arrived and they were very helpful in telling us about the island. They had a map of the island that they had gotten from the resort here and they gave that to us since they are leaving in the morning. They then outlined the way for us to explore the bay. There is a huge reef area in the middle of the anchorage
with what we are told are VERY LARGE giant clams. We couldn’t see the clams from the dinghy, but we could see lots of coral. We then explored the north side of the anchorage where there is a fringing reef that is supposed to have lots of sea life. We will be in the water early in the morning and have a better report on what is under the water at that point.

After doing our survey of the bay, we went ashore. We were greeted by Natasha and Matthew. These two youngsters, probably ten and eight years old, with Natasha being the oldest, invited us to see their “clubhouse.” Just behind the beach, these guys have made a “secret” path leading to the clubhouse hidden under beach bushes. They have gathered old wood on the beach and put shelves in the clubhouse for their shell collection. Natasha talked her father out of an empty aluminum bag that once held
wine and they use that for a mirror. In the bush next door to the clubhouse, they have used old pieces of wood to fashion a toilet. It was all very cute and we really enjoyed meeting the children. We went on for a walk on the island, but we promised that we would return and meet their parents later in the afternoon.

There are a number of great walks on this island, but we just took the shortest one for starters. This took us by the remains of a stone building that was built to store and dry beche-de-mer (sea cucumbers) in 1860. This industry did not survive, but in 1879 Robert Watson and his wife Mary from Cooktown moved to Lizard Island and remodeled the stone storage building as their home. A year later their son was born, but soon tragedy struck. Robert was away on a hunting trip when a group of Dingaal
aboriginals came to the cottage. This island is sacred ground for the Dingaals, so they were not happy with the Watsons for moving in. Mary saw them kill one of the Chinese servants, so she and her son, and another of the Chinese servants, crawled into an iron boiling tank left from the days of the beche-de-mer industry and floated away. Mary kept a diary which tells us of this story. She and her son died of dehydration when the tank they were in floated up on a nearby island. They were later
found and are buried in the cemetery in Cooktown that we visited this weekend. This is one of the stories that I wanted to share from our cemetery trip in Cooktown. There were other stories, and I will incorporate them in future logs as they apply. But now I will go back to talk about our walk today. After we walked past the stone structure, we came to a boardwalk that has been built over the mangroves here. It winds around the mangroves and then ends, but the walk continues. We walked through
wetlands and ended up in an area that looks like an African savannah with pandanus trees growing throughout. The path leading here had informational markers all along the way, and we found it most informative. We wanted to keep walking, but it was getting late so we made it back to the beach and met Natasha and Matthew’s parents, David and Allison. They have been here two weeks now, and they have “built” the Lizard Island Yacht Club. This is just a patch of sand under the trees, but they have
fashioned a sign and invited yachties to go find a cuttlefish bone and decorate it with the yacht’s name to hang in the tree. This evening the “yacht club” was hosting Happy Hour on the beach and we met most everyone in the anchorage. Most everyone here is traveling to Darwin for the Sail Indonesia Rally, so in addition to having fun here in Lizard with snorkeling and walking, we are getting connected with some great folks that we will be traveling with for the next few months. Can’t think of a better way to spend the next few days.

080609 Day 31 Cape Bedford to Lizard Island

Day 32, Year 3: Beautiful Lizard Island
Date: Tuesday, June 10, 2008
Weather: Partly Cloudy Day with AM Sprinkles; Winds ESE 20-25
Location: Watson’s Bay, Lizard Island, Queensland, Australia

Lizard Island is truly one of Australia’s gems. The Whitsunday Islands were nice, and we have visited some wonderful towns along the coast, but this island is a little slice of paradise. The snorkeling here is fantastic. The coral is not the best we have seen in the South Pacific but the GIANT clams are phenomenal, and there are just loads of fish. We only thought we had seen giant clams in the Vanuatu. The clams here are a good four feet in length, maybe more, and when you find an empty shell
where a clam once lived, I’m sure either Mark or I could crawl down inside the shell. In fact, I might try that tomorrow. And aside from being big, they are beautiful. We went snorkeling twice today, once in the middle of the bay and again on the north side of the anchorage. Both places were fantastic and we will snorkel in both places at least a couple of more times before leaving here. When we went snorkeling in the morning, the sun was not shining brightly, so the underwater photos didn’t
capture the real beauty of the clams. And when we were snorkeling in the afternoon, the sun was shining but our underwater camera gave us a problem once again. It keeps telling us that that the battery door is open which would allow sea water into the camera. When that happens, we immediately stop using it, but then we never find water in the camera. We are going to have to play with this during the next couple of days, but if the problem isn’t solved, we will have to get another camera before
heading to Indonesia.

This afternoon there was a birthday party on the beach for Jay on Makani Kai. He was twenty-eight today. It is scary when your fellow cruisers are younger than your own children! We have met some wonderful people here that we will be traveling with this season. This afternoon, a few of us formed a “grandmother’s club.” Jeanette on Reflection and Pattie on This Way Up, both Australian catamarans, love cruising but find it very difficult to be away from the grandchildren. Jeanette is flying home
from Darwin to visit before heading to Indonesia even though the grandchildren visited while she was in Cairns last week. But then home for her is not far away. Pattie has eight grandchildren, two of which live in Vancouver, Canada, so she has more experience in dealing with the long periods of time between visits. I just can’t wait to get to Darwin so I can see Sam via Skype once more. Pattie and Jeanette both think we will have internet in Indonesia more often than I have been expecting, so
I hope they are right about that. Mark has also been meeting lots of other captains and learning lots about sailing from here to Darwin. Dave and Pattie on This Way Up have been over the top of Cape York five times, so they are a wealth of information. Many of the boats we have met here are leaving tomorrow, but we will be staying for a few more days and will meet new cruisers that we expect will arrive tomorrow. So we will learn as much as we can from others while enjoying one of the most fantastic places we have been on the Voyage of Windbird.

080610 Day 32 Lizard Island Birthday Party

Day 33, Year 3: Captain Cook and Football
Date: Wednesday, June 11, 2008
Weather: Beautiful, Clear Day; Winds ESE 25-30
Location: Watson’s Bay, Lizard Island, Queensland, Australia

The earlier part of today was all about following in the footsteps of Captain Cook and the end of the day was all about “footie.” I’ll start with the latter and work my way back. Scot Free II, Rendezvous Cay, and Windbird had decided to visit the Marlin Bar at the resort on this island for Happy Hour this evening. What we didn’t know was that tonight was Game 2 of 3 of the State of Origin. I still don’t get the title, but the best of the best of New South Wales rugby players were playing the best of the best of Queensland players on television tonight and the bar at the resort was projecting this on a big screen. What we also didn’t know was that the son of Maureen on Munyana here in the anchorage is player #10 on the New South Wales team. So we were in the bar and we decided that we needed to stay for the game in order to experience one of Australia’s major cultural events. Because of Maureen, I felt bad that I wasn’t supporting the “blue team”-New South Wales, but here I am in Queensland and I had to support the “maroon team”-Queensland. New South Wales won game one in the series, but tonight Queensland won 30-0. So on July 2, the third and final game will be played and the champion will be decided. I think this is sort of the Australian version of the Super Bowl, but whatever, we got into the spirit and enjoyed it tonight. There were a number of college-aged kids at the bar from the Research Station here. These kids were all visiting from the University of Texas, but it made
me think back to the time when our daughter Heather was attending James Cook University in Townsville and came to Lizard Island to do some diving for pay. She would do shallow dives six times a day to count fish and get paid for it. Not a bad way to spend your college days!

Now back to the earlier part of the day. When we got up for the 7:30 am weather and 8:00 am radio net, we discovered that the anchorage had been basically abandoned. Seven boats left early this morning and that left just a few of us. Mark and I had decided to walk to the top of Mount Cook today, so after putting a laundry in to soak, we headed to shore and started the 2.25 kilometer hike to the top. After the Endeavor had been repaired in Cooktown, Captain Cook sailed her north to Cape Flattery and then took a small boat the “five leagues” out here to Lizard Island to see if he could view an exit passage through the Great Barrier Reef. It took us almost two hours to reach the summit and another hour and a half to descend. It was a tough climb, but it was definitely worth it. The views on the way up were spectacular and it was a good feeling to leave a rock we had carried from the beach below to the top to add to the stones left by so many others that have made the climb. We didn’t get to see the golden orchids that bloom here in the spring, but we did see a couple of spectacularly colored bird. One was bright yellow and the other had an iridescent green back and tail.

When we finally got back to Windbird, I completed the laundry I had started earlier and we went for an afternoon snorkel over the clam beds in the middle of the anchorage. This is our last chance to get in the water until we reach Indonesia, so we want to take every opportunity to dive in. After snorkeling I worked on doing a little cleaning on the bottom of the boat (Shhh! Bottom cleaning is not allowed in Australian waters.). And then it was time for Happy Hour. It was a great day and we look forward to more adventure tomorrow.

Note: Aqua Magic, Blue Marlin, and Nabob arrived today, along with three small cruise ships. There’s plenty of room for all of us, but we are selfishly hoping the cruise ships will be gone by tomorrow morning.

080611 Day 33 Climb to Summit of Mount Cook