Whitehaven Beach

Tuesday 18^th July 2017

Looking forward to heading back out of the marina, there is a 10-15 knot SE breeze this morning, ideal for a trip across the Molle Channel and Whitsunday passage . We plan to sail to Whitehaven Beach, realizing that after we pass through the Hook Passage, we will probably motor the rest of the way, as the wind will be light and on the nose.

We have a great sail across from Airlie and manage to sail almost all of the way through the Hook Passage before we approach the overfalls on the eastern side and pull in the headsail and motor through the unpredictable eddies.

As we then turn south towards Whitehaven, we are directly into the wind and there are too many shallow shoals on the way down to even think about tacking our way south to Whitehaven , so we drop the main and motor the rest of the way, very happy that we have had such a good sail this morning.

Bettys Beach at the North side of the entrance to Hill Inlet

We passed Kite Runner on our approach to Whitehaven. Phil has kindly lent his boat to some of his racing crew, (whilst he and Wendy are in Sydney), who were very conservatively heading north from Whitehaven with a single reef in the main in around 12 knots of following breeze.

Approaching Whitehaven

A seaplane is leaving just after we anchored

Whitehaven is very busy with lots of yachts and commercial boats at anchor, ferrying people ashore. We anchor a fair way out to keep our distance, and put the dinghy in the water at around 3pm, and motor in to the beach.

The destruction that Cyclone Debbie has caused is incredible. For those familiar with Whitehaven the change to the beach structure and the destruction of the vegetation along the shore is testimony to just how destructive this cyclone was. The more we see, the more we realize that the Whitsundays have born the brunt of the cyclone damage. What we saw in Bowen was minor compared to the damage here.

Despite all of that, it is still an amazing place , perhaps lacking a little of its previous natural beauty.  I am  sure it will recover in the years to come. Nevertheless it is pretty sad to see it in its current state.

The tourists have not been deterred, and the beach was full of people of all nationalities enjoying their daytrip to this special place.

We walked up to the Chance Bay lookout, along the well established National Parks trail, and the devastation along the trail was just more of what we saw on the beachfront. At the top of the lookout, there is a slim chance of getting a mobile phone connection, as on  the eastern side of the islands in the Whitsundays there is no reliable mobile of wifi service.

We are trying to make contact with Mark and Janet on Koonya who have finally made it this far, but have headed to Hamilton Island today to do laundry, get supplies and dump their rubbish. With a bit of luck we will catch up with them before we head back to Sydney for a few weeks.

Sitting in the cockpit having sundowners we were treated to a very low airforce flyover which gave everyone a bit of a fright. I rushed for the camera, but only managed to capture them flying away towards Border Island.