A swim at Balding Bay

Monday 17^th August 2015

The good weather continues. Today there is little breeze in the morning and Koonya needs to put their new sail numbers on their sail before Magnetic Island Race Week. We have planned to go to Horseshoe Bay and then walk to Balding Bay for a swim at high tide.

Mark and Janet currently have friends visiting and there is insufficient time to do anything about the sail  numbers. So we headed off for our swim, and they went out on Koonya with their visitors a bit later.

Given the current weather forecast we have extended our marina booking for 2 days, now planning to leave on the 22nd August, and sail around to Horseshoe Bay. From there we will head back to Cape Upstart on Sunday or Monday, depending on the forecast.

The bus got us to Horseshoe Bay by 10.30 am and the walk to Balding Bay is 1.5 km each way, and a bit steep. The hardest climb was getting up to the top of headland that separates Horseshoe and Balding Bay, and the track down a bit more rugged than most tracks. Once at Balding Bay, It was all worth it. It is one of the best swimming bays on the island, and isolated enough that it is not overly popular, to the general public. We did find that because of this, it was quite popular with the nudist 
bathers.

An interesting dinghy modification at Horseshoe Bay

Balding Bay

After a very refreshing swim at a lovely beach, we climbed back up the hill and back down to Horseshoe Bay for lunch at the Marlin Bar. 

We can see Horseshoe Bay as we wind our way back down the trail 

The food was good and we caught the bus back to Nelly Bay after lunch, settling in to our new routine of a relaxing afternoon.

Koonya came back to the marina at around 5pm, having motored around to Radical Bay to show their visitors one of the most popular bays on the island, with great swimming and a great beach. It is only 200 m further down the track from Balding bay, if we had continued along the walking track from  Horseshoe and not decided to go down to Balding Bay.