On to Magnetic Island

Friday 11^th August 2017

We left Cape Upstart bright and early at 5.45am, the last of our touring group to leave. Anchors started coming up before 5am, with Imagine first out followed by Dalwhinnie and Jo De 7.

Whilst it was still before sunrise, there was a full moon and visibility was very good. The wind was already building, but insufficient to get us going, resulted in us motoring for the first 2 hours (and charging our batteries), before we turned the engine off and sailed all the rest of the way. It is overcast, with some possibility of rain.

The seas are still a bit lumpy and the wind shifts regularly, but we had a good sail with the main and headsail up all of the way to Cape Bowling Green, and on turning towards Cape Cleveland, the wind was right behind us so we furled in the headsail and sailed on the main the rest of the way.

Passing Cape Bowling Green, the whales put on quite a performance for us for about 15 minutes regularly breeching near the tip of the Cape.

Whales playing off Cape Bowling Green

The trip took us a little less than 11 hours, and getting the sail down outside the marina was challenging as it was blowing 18 knots from the east generating some healthy wind waves.

Rounding Cape Cleveland

All settled in our  berth and paperwork done before the marina office closed at 5pm, we joined our other colleagues who sailed up with us, and mark and Janet from Koonya who were already here, for a drink on Dalwhinnie.

We decided we would go to the Picnic Bay Hotel for dinner, so all quickly tidied up and were on the 6.30 bus around to Picnic Bay. Getting a table for 12 was a bit of a challenge but we found one and enjoyed our meal and a bit of relaxation before catching the 8.10pm bus back to Nellie Bay for an early night. Everyone is pretty tired.