Up the Wild Coast of Queensland: Wonderful Sail to Indonesia, Part 1

 July 6-27, 2018

The pink track is the course we ran up the Queensland Coast. You can enlarge any photo by clicking on it.

"I’d like this cabin, please!”  I unpacked my bag in the small, forward cabin instead of the larger aft cabin, for the better ventilation it would afford in the equatorial heat.

My cabin in the port-side forward hull.

I was joining French Captain Gilles aboard Samara II, a Lagoon 39’ catamaran, for the four month long “Wonderful Sail 2 Indonesia” rally.  Over 50 yachts joined this rally from Australia, all the way through the Indonesian Archipelago, to end near Singapore, over a period of four months and over 4000 nautical miles. The rally offers expedited Customs and Immigration paperwork, special events on almost every island we visited, and the congenial company of cruisers from all around the world.

Aussie crew member Gordon arrived later, and we spent the rest of the day exploring the vibrant waterfront of Cairns, Australia. 

Festively lit fig trees line a waterfront boulevard in Cairns.
 Below, two fishing boats have been converted to a popular restaurant.

                               

The next day we drove with local friends into the cool mountains to trendy village of Kuranda, where we visited their cozy vernacular cottage on a creek, feeding wild wallabies and examining their marvelous collection of gemstones…a six inch quartz crystal egg, a rock studded with raw Kimberly diamonds, a vein of blue opal, huge blue fluorite crystals. It was a special day.

A mural in the aboriginal style.

Jan, Gilles, Gordon and our host, Paul.

Inside Paul's cottage home.

A paddymellon wallaby.
Below, a handful of Kimberly diamonds in the raw.

                            

Having a drink from the crystal clear stream behind the house.
 Still in my traveling clothes since my bag arrived three days after I did!

We did our provisioning and made preparations for the passage.  North of Cooktown, there is are few settlements on the coast; for hundreds of miles there would be wilderness. All the food and entertainment we would have would be what be brought with us.  We set sail from Cairns on a breezy clear day. A whale greeted us with a wave of her tale soon after we got under way. We met with wind gusting to 30 knots, and waves short and steep. We were running so fast downwind that the possibility of pitchpoling crossed our minds. With the wind and waves both pushing hard from behind, if the boat's bows dipped below the water, the boat could somersault...catastrophic!  We shortened sail and traveled for three hours for our first day’s run and tucked in behind Low Island for the night.

Beautiful sunset.

The next day was another brisk day’s sail, running with a shortened headsail and following winds at 25-30 knots to Cooktown.  Cooktown is a small town built along a wide boulevard which seems to beckon to future development. Here Captain James Cook brought his ship to be careened and repaired, and he surveyed the area, a place then known only to the Aboriginal people from time immemorial.

The main drag in Cooktown.

Captain Cook.

The frontier days are recalled by several old hotel taverns along the main street and the lovely old Queensland architecture.

Seagren's Inn, one of the pubs along the main drag.

Wandering through the verdant park where Cook careened his ship, we stopped for iced coffee and later, Thai food. Having just come from Thailand, I practiced my three Thai words on the hostess, who beamed from ear to ear. We shipmates were getting to know each other and telling tales, and after hearing stories about massive salt water crocs, Gilles was most reluctant to wade into the water retrieve the dinghy while Gordon and I heckled him from the safety of shore.

A monster croc...even if the people in the background are kneeling.
Needless to say, there was no swimming on this trip!

In the morning, a steady breeze swept us the 30 miles to beautiful Lizard Island, where we walked the trails past the remains of Mrs. Watson’s house. The Watsons had settled  in an aboriginal holy place to harvest sea cucumbers in the 1800s, and were attacked by tribal warriors. Mrs. Watson fled to sea with her baby and servant in a large metal vat, and died of exposure on a desert island and where their remains, and Mrs. Watson’s diary, were found. Today the ruins are part of a scenic national park. We watched the sunset from the granite dome near the resort.

                        Here's a link to the story of Mrs. Watson of Lizard Island

Lizard Island, with a granite dome on the left.
Below, the anchorage at Lizard.

                          

Climbing the granite dome for the great view...and cool breeze.

We departed Lizard in fair conditions which rapidly built to 30 knot winds and tumbling following seas.  At the end of the day we couldn’t anchor in Ninion Bay since the anchorage was too exposed to the turbulent waves. We ran another 12 miles to Bathhurst Bay, surrounded by mountains of weathered granite boulders.

The mountains of tumbled granite boulders at Bathurst Bay.  Take a closer look at those mountains by clicking on the photo.

 The wind was still ripping and dusk was gathering. We dropped anchor in a mud bottom, and it appeared to be holding. It dragged later, while I was in the shower. I quickly dressed and dashed out to take the helm while Gilles hauled in the chain. Waves bashing on the hull sprayed us with salt as we maneuvered for another attempt. Luckily the anchor held fast on the second try!

Oolala, un croissante!!

It was Bastile Day, and Gilles celebrated with one last croissant he found hidden in the oven. Vive la France! We got underway around 09:00 with wind howling at our back and waves rapidly building to nearly two meters. By late morning, the wind fell to nothing and the sea lay down, and we had to motor for most of the day. 

At the helm.

We used one motor and balanced the helm with a headsail on the other side, and thus minimized fuel consumption. We had just prepared to grill our delicious Australian grass-fed beef steaks with mushrooms, when the wind and seas came up again. Gordon was feeling seasick, and went down after only three bites of the best meal we ever had while underway.

Happy Arrrr in the saloon.

                           
Motor-sailing through the night, we arrived at beautiful Lockhart River as the sun broke through misty rain clouds late in the afternoon. This is aboriginal land, so unfortunately we couldn’t go ashore without permission from the Elders. As we anchored, the anchor windlass started slipping and making grinding sounds of distress. If it failed, we would have a challenging time raising 50 meters of chain by hand every day.

Rebuilding the windlass motor.

The next day the guys replaced the "brushes" (which are not brushes but graphite cubes) and rebuilt the windlass motor, and I cleaned the boat, read my book “Circe”, and cooked a nice ratatouille, with  the remaining steak warmed with buttery rice. Everyone happy, leftovers gone.

On to Portland Road under fine sailing conditions, where as we anchored we were surrounded by several large, attentive sharks. From my photos, my friend Captain Ric Burnup identified them as nurse sharks, looking for handouts of fish scraps, not lemon sharks as I had feared…whew!

A big ol' nurse shark.

A dense flock of seabirds swirling over a shoal of fish.
Below, the croc lurking off the starboard side.

                           

Another day’s sail to in beautiful conditions brought us to Schelbourne Bay, where we stayed the next day to let some heavy weather pass. Gordon and I dinghied ashore and hauled out on a little beach tucked in among the mangroves. Gordon, a miner, identified the glossy red-black bedrocks protruding from the sand as manganese.

Gordon as the Dinghy Admiral.
Below, on the white sand-manganese ore beach.

                        

 We continued along the pristine strand, marked with no footprints but our own…and the tracks and holes snuffled by wild pigs. We found a clutch of speckled eggs from a seabird, sitting in the soft sand near the grass.  

While keeping an eye out for crocs and pigs, we explored this lovely beach. And there, gleaming on the sun on tide-rippled sand, lay a perfect chambered nautilus shell, a gift from the ocean depths.

We departed with a tailwind and following seas, reaching the Escape River, passing the pearl farm, in the early afternoon, and anchored five miles up the river. It was silent but for the music of birdsong and the splash of fish jumping. 

The pearl farm near the mouth of the Escape River.

The only other cruising yacht we encountered since leaving Cairns was anchored far up the river from us, a pretty counterpoint to the vast wilderness.  The tides and currents were becoming increasingly important in our passage planning, so we reluctantly agreed to leave the next morning, rather than linger another day in this idyllic place. The next day we made for Cape York, with the plan to anchor it the lee and go exploring on this, the northernmost tip of continental Australia. 

Cape York , looking east. See the rock cairn a the top?

As we rounded the Cape heading west, we saw the other yacht riding at anchor there, and followed his AIS track toward the anchorage.  His boat must have a very shallow draft, because suddenly we touched bottom. What a terrible place to be grounded! We discerned that the seabed sands had shifted and the charts no longer served here.  We turned hard and retraced the track of our approach, and Gilles decided we should go on to Horn Island and Thursday Island.

An old building on Thursday Island.

An old mural inside the hotel-pub on Thursday Island.

 This was our final chance to stock up on fresh produce and meat, groceries, cooking propane, beer and wine, sweet- scented lavender oil ( a girly luxury), and whatever other luxuries of the West we would want in the weeks to come.  Here we would clear through Customs and Immigration to leave beautiful Australia, meet up with some of the other yachts participating in the rally, and begin our five-day sea voyage to Indonesia.

This first leg of the trip took eleven days, with one lay day and one overnight sail, and covered about 520 nautical miles.