Tuesday 5th to Monday 18th January
Cairns to Townsville
Tuesday 5th - Thursday 7th, Cairns to Fitzroy Island, 16 miles approx
   The new flexible coupling for the prop shaft duly arrived and was fitted and everything seemed to be in order. We left Wednesday morning to go just 15 miles to Fitzroy Island just south of Cairns.  The island seemed to be pretty deserted when we got there although we understood that there was a resort there. We discovered that the resort had either been redeveloped or a new one was being built. It looked almost finished and we found some apparently disused buildings further along the beach so it was having a pretty fancy facelift.
   The anchorage wasn't bad, there was a little bit of a swell and in anything more than 10 - 15 knots of wind we thought it could get pretty uncomfortable. We'd almost decided to spend another day there when we heard the forecast. Friday was ok but the forecast for Saturday was for 20 - 30 knots of wind in the afternoon. It would be very uncomfortable to stay where we were and we didn't want to go back into Cairns so Friday morning we headed south.
Anchor position - 16° 55.6' S 145° 59.3' E - sand 

Friday 8th - Tuesday 12th January, Fitzroy Island to Mourilyan Harbour, 40 miles approx
    The reachable sheltered options south were either the Johnstone River or Mourilyan Harbour. The town of Innisfail is about 3 miles up the Johnstone River but the bar across the entrance is too shallow for us to get over unless we do it right at the top of the tide. There's nowhere close by to anchor to wait for the tide so we decided to give it a miss and go to Mourilyan Harbour a few miles further on. Mourilyan Harbour is a sugar port where sugar is loaded onto bulk carriers for transport elsewhere so it has an all-tide albeit narrow entrance. The harbour has a large dredged basin for the big ships but smaller boats like us anchor in a shallow channel on one side of the bay. The problem was the channel was full of moorings so we had to find ourselves a gap with enough swinging space. It isn't the sugar season at the moment so the bay was very quiet and apart from the wharf at one end was surrounded by mangroves. We'll just sit here for a day or two until the bad weather has gone through.
   The forecast was for 20 - 25 knots until Tuesday so we plan to leave on Wednesday. It's pretty quiet here, there are no other cruising boats (apparently people don't cruise this coast at this time of year). We went ashore to have a look round but there's really only the sugar loading wharf here. Their claim to fame is that they have the largest sugar storage shed in Australia so can store vast quantities of raw sugar.
Anchor position - 17° 36.2' S 147° 07.5' E - sandy mud

Wednesday 13th January, Mourilyan Harbour to Hinchinbrook Channel, 54 miles approx
   We had about 10 - 15 knots of wind so sailed all the way. The original plan was to stop at Dunk Island but it was quite early when we got there so we carried on and arrived at Scraggy Point in the Hinchinbrook Channel just before dark. The Hinchinbrook Channel runs between Hinchinbrook Island and the mainland and is about 25 miles long. To go around Hinchinbrook Island is about 40 miles so it saves quite a bit of distance.
    We noticed that we still had some vibration from the propeller after hitting the reef so we are now heading for Townsville and will have the boat lifted so that we can rectify the problem. We've either damaged the propeller or bent the prop shaft so we need to check it out. At the moment we can't motor at more than 3 - 4 knots without serious vibration.
Anchor position - 18° 16.9' S 146° 05.6' E - sandy mud 

Thursday 14th January, Hinchinbrook Channel to Palm Island, 37 miles approx
    Hinchinbrook Channel is very sheltered so we had one of the quietest nights we've had for a long time. We spent the day motoring slowly southwards through the channel. There's plenty of water throughout and it's very clearly buoyed so no trouble finding the way. There is no development so all we could see on each side were green hills. At the southern end of the channel is Lucinda which is another sugar port. This one has a 3 mile sugar conveyor jetty going out to the deeper water. There is a shallow sand bar across the southern end of the channel so the sugar ships pick up their cargo at the end of the jetty. We left the channel at about half tide and had a minimum of 1 metre under the keel over the sand bar. Again there are some very prominent leading lights to show the route over the bar.
   Once in the open sea we sailed to Palm Island. This is a group of islands although only two have viable anchorages, one at Orpheus Island and the other at Palm Island. There is an aboriginal community on Palm Island and landing is by permission only. We were quite happy to stay onboard Carillon.
Anchor position - 18° 44.9' S 146° 34.1' E - sandy mud 

Friday 15th to Sunday 17th January, Palm Island to Magnetic Island, 30 miles approx
   Another early start today to sail to Magnetic Island which is just off Townsville. It was dead upwind so took us until midafternoon to get there. Compared to the other islands we've been to this is quite developed. There is accommodation, a beach bar, restaurants and even a small store. There are lots of toys for hire on the beach such as jet skis, a sailing boat, little paddle boats, etc.
    Carillon is booked into the boatyard in Townsville on Monday afternoon and since it's only 16 miles or so we don't need to leave until Monday morning.
   We took a walk up one of the hills to see the remains of the fortifications built during the war to repel the Japanese. There wasn't much left but the view from the top was pretty good. The command centre was right on the top of the hill so would have had an excellent view of any invaders. No shots were ever fired against invaders apart from at a US warship which strayed into the area without warning.
Anchor position - 19° 06.9' S 146° 51.5' E - mud

Monday 18th to Wednesday 27th January, Rossmarine Boatyard, Townsville
   We motored into the Ross River and anchored just off the boatyard. We had arranged to be lifted at 1:00 p.m. but there had been delays earlier so we were not actually lifted until 2:30. The lift went smoothly and the boatyard guys were doing the usual thing of jetwashing the bottom of the boat in preparation for anti-fouling when we realised that it was not only the dirt and loose antifouling that was coming off but all the paint layers back to the original gelcoat. That wasn't in the original plan so instead of just painting on another layer of antifouling we found ourselves back to square one needing to apply basecoats as well as antifouling. I guess it had to done sometime. Meanwhile engineers from the boatyard took out the prop shaft to have a look. Well it didn't need any fancy machinery to check whether it was straight or not - there was a very obvious bend at the propeller end so we need a new one.
   We booked ourselves into a small self-contained unit in the Coral Lodge B&B in the middle of town so we'd have somewhere clean and comfortable to go back to each evening. With a new prop shaft on order we set about sanding down the remainder of the old antifouling in preparation for repainting. Labour costs in Australia are quite high so we decided to do all the repainting work ourselves and only employ the boatyard to sort out the propeller shaft. By Sunday we'd done most of the painting including repainting the white line on the topsides and the propeller shaft was ready to be fitted. Sunday evening Cyclone Olga, which had been forming off Cairns, crossed the coast just south of Cairns and left torrential rainfall along the whole of the North Queensland coast in it's wake. Well that messed up the painting schedule a bit. We managed to finish the white and blue lines on the topsides between showers but the finish wasn't brilliant. Monday afternoon the boat went into the slings ready to be put in the water on Wednesday. Tuesday was Australia Day so was a public holiday so we had the whole day to patch in the antifouling where the supporting chocks had been, again dashing out between showers to do it. Wednesday the rain stopped long enough for us to be launched. We'd planned to go to the Townsville Motor Boat & Yacht Club Marina in Ross Creek for a couple of days to clean the boat and provision for the next stage.

Wednesday 27th January to Monday 1st February, Townsville Motor Boat & Yacht Club Marina
    Our couple of days turned into nearly a week. The cyclone was downgraded to a tropical storm and went across the Cape York Peninsula into the Gulf of Carpentaria then started to reform and head back to Queensland. There was torrential rain and flooding in many places and in Townsville it rained pretty much continuously the whole time. Winds were forecast from the north at up to 30 knots so we didn't want to just head south in the rain. It is supposed to be fun after all.
   After doing the inside jobs about all we could do was watch Australia play Pakistan at cricket and the Australian Open Tennis Tournament on television.

Monday 1st to Tuesday 2nd January
Townsville to Bowen - 109 miles approx
    By Monday the rain had stopped and the winds were more manageable so we left. The winds are still from the North and there are no suitable anchorages for northerly winds between Townsville and Bowen so we left late morning intending to sail overnight. First we stopped at Breakwater Marina at the mouth of Ross Creek to fill up with diesel as there is no fuel dock at the Townsville Motor Boat and Yacht Club Marina.
   We set off for Bowen late morning with just the headsail up and were making 6 - 7 knots down the coast. All was very comfortable until late evening when a gusty squall hit which blew us around for a bit then went away taking all the wind with it. We motored the last few hours and reached Bowen about 4:30 a.m. which was a bit earlier than we'd anticipated. The entrance was straightforward and both the charts and buoyage are reliable so we were comfortable with going into the harbour in the dark. There is a large sheltered area inside the harbour so we found ourselves a spot, dropped the anchor and caught a few hours sleep.
   We were pleasantly surprised by Bowen, the harbour is sheltered from almost everywhere and is surrounded by green hillsides. We had expected it to be more industrial. There is an inner harbour with a few pontoons for the local yacht club but it's mainly pile berths  (pile berths are a series of piles to which you tie up fore and aft but without pontoons). The town is fairly sleepy but is quite attractive and has two well stocked supermarkets.
Anchor position - 20° 01.5' S 148° 15.6' E - sandy mud 

Wednesday 3rd February to Friday 19th March
Whitsunday Islands
    It's about 40 miles to the Whitsundays and the first part of the trip takes us through a narrow channel between Gloucester Island and the mainland. The tide runs quite quickly through here so we timed it to have the tide with us to go through. We passed a group of cormorants standing sentinel on the first channel marker. Once through we had a gentle sail to Nara Inlet on Hook Island. This inlet is 3 miles long and is sheltered from everywhere. We really enjoyed being in a totally swell free anchorage for a change. We stayed a day or two taking time out to have a look at some aboriginal painting on the hillside then moored at the mouth of Nara Inlet to do some snorkelling.
    After a few days we motorsailed the 10 miles or so to Airlie Beach. Airlie Beach is the closest town on the mainland to the Whitsunday Islands. It's a big centre for backpackers and is full of restaurants, places to stay, and travel agents offering  trips to the islands on a variety of different boats including pensioned off racing boats. The local sailing club is very welcoming and for a nominal fee will give you temporary membership which includes the use of the club facilities and the dinghy dock. There is a marina here but we're told it's expensive compared to marinas elsewhere on the coast and they require you to have fully comprehensive insurance.
   Having stocked up we went back to Hook Island this time going round to the west coast where we picked up a visitors mooring in Stonehaven Bay and spent an idle hour or so watching the parks rangers checking and maintaining the other moorings. There are numerous visitors moorings in the Whitsundays but they have a two hour time limit up to 5 p.m. (then you can stay overnight). At this time of year there are few boats around so there's no problem but in the main season they'd get pretty full.
   The Whitsundays consist of over a 100 islands and islets stretching from Bowen in the north to Mackay in the south (that's about latitude 20°S to 21°S). The two biggest islands - Whitsunday Island and Hook Island are a few miles from Airlie Beach on the mainland. Hamilton Island just south of Whitsunday Island and Hayman Island just north of Hook Island are the main resort islands although there are smaller resorts on many of the other islands. There are anchorages to suit almost any wind conditions and the busiest of them have public moorings. On the east side of Whitsunday Island is Whitehaven Beach, a 5 kilometre stretch of soft white sand very popular with visitors, around the islands are numerous snorkelling spots although if you wanted to go diving it's better to go to the outer reefs.
   We have friends coming to sail with us at Easter so we have plenty of time to explore the islands.

    At the beginning of March we thought we'd explore the southern islands then pop into Mackay Marina for a day or so and fill up with fuel. (Fuel at Abel Marina (Airlie Beach) is very expensive). There are four or five island groups on the way down to Mackay with sheltered anchorages about 10 to 15 miles apart so the plan was to hop down slowly. We'd reached our third anchorage when the weather forecast was predicting 20 - 25 knot winds from the SE in a day or two so we abandoned the last two anchorages and headed straight for Mackay. A week later we were still there with 30 - 35 knot winds blowing outside and a cyclone hovering off the coast trying to make up it's mind what to do. We'll stay here until the cyclone has gone (and hope it doesn't come this way) then head back up the coast to Airlie Beach to meet our friends.

Saturday 20th to Sunday 21st March
Cyclone Ului
    The centre of Cyclone Ului crossed the coast over the Whitsunday Islands and Airlie Beach about 2 a.m. Sunday morning. It was a category 3 cyclone packing 200 kph winds at the centre. Many of the boats anchored off Airlie beach broke their moorings and were washed onto the rocks. Others disappeared presumably sunk on their moorings. Our friends Russ and Deb and their boat Lady Anne in the marina at Abel Point were ok but were advised by the police not to stay on board. It would have been pretty terrifying. There were still many places without power two days later and the cleanup will be going on for some time.
   Sixty miles south in Mackay Marina, we'd tied the boat down securely, taken everything moveable off the decks and stowed it downstairs then stayed in a hotel for the night. I don't know how strong the winds were but you could feel the building shudder every time a gust hit and the noise of the wind was unbelievable. In the morning Carillon was fine as were most of the boats in the marina. The only damage we could see was to a few awnings that had been left in place.
   Inland there was little damage to property and no loss off life but power lines were down and lots of trees had either had branches blown off or been blown down completely.

Monday 22nd to Thursday 25th March
Back to the Whitsundays
   Now it's all over we're going back to the Whitsundays to meet our friends Bill and Barbara who are coming sailing with us over Easter. Monday was shopping day so into town on the bus to stock up for a week or so. The schools were closed because of the cyclone so the shopping centre was full of children.
   Tuesday morning we left the marina and with a forecast of 20 - 25 knots from the SE we put the headsail up and ran back up the coast as far as Shaw Island. This is a well protected anchorage so we might just stay here a few days until the winds go down to 15 - 20 knots.
   The best laid plans - Wednesday evening one of our fridges died, the fault appeared to be in the motor that runs the compressor so it's not something Steve can fix. With our friends arriving in just over a week we need to get it working so instead of a few leisurely days at Shaw Island, on Thursday morning we ran back to Airlie Beach to find an electrical mechanic. Had a splendid sail with 25 knots from behind so with just the headsail up we were creaming along at 8 - 10 knots. Hopefully the motor can be fixed in a day or two.