The (mis)adventures in the Whitsundays begins – Dec 26
With Christmas barely in our rearview mirror, my family and I set off Sydney to fly to Hamilton Island for 8 nights of cruising around the Whitsunday Islands on a private yacht. I count my self very lucky to not just have this opportunity but to have had this twice before.
Landing at the Great Barrier Reef Airport, we were greeted with the familiar heat and humidity that the tropics is known for. It’s just a short ride to where the cruiser is moored at the Hamilton Island Marina and it did not take us long to pick up where we left off last time. But alas, our first issue was about to strike within an hour of us boarding. As we went to leave on a weeklong adventure, the starboard engine would cut out immediately.
I’m not sure how much you know about boats, but the engine is a fairly critical component of its movement through the water.
We had planned to leave as close to 2 pm as possible and do a grocery shop over at Airlie Beach, but by the time a kind neighbour had fiddled, prodded, and eventually assured us it was good to go, the time was after 4 and the day was getting on.
We opted instead to stay moored at Hamilton Island for the night. You know, life must be pretty good where your fall back option is to stay on Hamilton Island. We went for a swim in the pool, before returning to the boat for the first of many happy hours on the back deck, ready to try again tomorrow.
Adrift on the Great Barrier Reef (27 Dec)
Our new mate from yesterday, let’s call him Paul, because that was his name, also happened to be a whiz at understanding the conditions, especially wind. This was mainly because he had an app that told him exactly what it was going to do this week. Apparently, today is likely to be the calmest day for the week: A perfect opportunity to visit the outer reef.
By outer reef, I am in fact talking about the actual Great Barrier Reef. In the middle of the ocean; the land just a faint haze in the distance. Our selected Reef was called Bait Reef and is one of the closer ones to the Whitsunday Islands. There was just one other boat out there with us.
We jumped out and had a snorkel and I was SO disappointed that my GoPro decided not the charge. I wouldn’t figure out that the battery was faulty for about 5 days. So no photos but we saw such a diverse range of tropical fish and colourful coral.
After we were done with the coral the fun didn’t stop back at the boat as we were joined by a huge Maori wrasse, which named for the markings on their heads looking like Maori.
There were also about 6 other big black fish swimming around our swim up platform. These fish had to be about 1.5 metres but were actually so placid.
Since we were already out we navigated the coral and motored out to another spot 20 minutes away. It was pretty daunting knowing that we were so far away from anything and of course had to always be on the look out for the reef. For this reason we always had one person driving the tender, following the snorkelers in case they get in to trouble.
This time, we got about 400 metres from the cruiser, about to jump out of the tender and the engine cut out and we started to drift.
In an instant I had a vision of what it must feel like to be stranded in a life raft in the middle of the ocean. Drifting.
Thankfully we had paddles and it only took about 5 minutes to row back to the cruiser. Safe and sound.
Sadly though, this spelt the end of our snorkelling for the day as the coral was too far away to swim to – even with flippers.
So we packed away the tender and got ready to head back into the security of the islands.
We started reeling in the anchor and we immediately knew there was another problem: rather than the motor pulling the chain up, it lost its grip and it started falling out further.
Not exactly what you want in the middle of the ocean.
The chain was getting caught, coming free and going out further. We had no choice but to try and do it manually. Two guys, my dad and I pulling in tons of chain while my mum, who never drives the boat continually tried to keep the boat above the anchor to make it easier. Needless to say, this was hard work and we definitely earned our happy hour beers that day.
We have a guy that we call when stuff like this goes wrong. Let’s call him Tom, because that’s his name. Unfortunately, there are no mobile phone towers out in the ocean but we would later learn from Tom that the anchor just needed to be tightened. Had we known that at the time, we could have saved ourselves a lot of hard work.
Once the motor was up it was finally back to the safety of the islands. We stayed at Stonehaven Bay, a protected bay off Hook Island.
Hiking in the Whitsundays, Hayman Island (28 Dec)
Since our snorkelling was cut short yesterday we motored north around Hook Island to Pinnacle Bay. There are quite a number of bays on this island and we chose this one solely because it had a free buoy for us to tie up to. We did not yet trust the anchor. Well, we trusted that it would hold us, that wasn’t the problem, it held fine. I just didn’t feel like hauling it up with my muscly muscles again.
Pinnacle Bay was probably actually some of the best snorkelling we found. Better yet we didn’t need the tender so we could just jump off the back of the boat and swim. There were loads of fish and I even saw a starfish living amongst the coral.
Last time I was in the Whitsundays (even just being able to say that makes me feel abundantly fortunate) we did this incredible walk up Hayman Island and doing it again this time was high on my to-do list.
Hayman Island Resort is one of the most exclusive resorts in the Whitsundays, second to perhaps only qualia on Hamilton Island. Or first. I’m not sure I haven’t stayed at either. Either way, we, of course, weren’t able to dock at their marina, as that may arouse suspicion. But you are quite welcome to moor on the other side as much of the island is still a national park.
We pulled in to Blue Pearl Bay on the north of Hayman Island and as we saw no free buoys here reluctantly began to drop anchor.
It wasn’t as seamless as we had hoped but as we got it out we saw one boat leaving a buoy.
“Quick”, someone called, “the buoy is free”.
Thankfully the anchor did start coming up fairly easily and as it did so, a sailboat had appeared from out of nowhere, clearly approaching the same buoy.
By now is was a race against the clock. Our small anchor motor vs their small boat motor.
They were getting closer and all of a sudden our anchor was in. Our captain immediately forced down on the thrusters and headed toward the buoy which was only about 30 meters away, cutting off the sail boat in the process.
“Sorry”, we called to them, “is it okay if we take this buoy? Our anchor is broken.” Not intending in any way to give it up.
Over the course of the next 2 hours this sail boat continued to monitor up and down the bay, looking for a buoy, and I still don’t know why he didn’t use his own anchor.
While this guy was doing mainies up and down Blue Pearl Bay, Daddyo and I tendered into the beach to climb Hayman Island. It’s a reasonably quick walk, maybe 45 minutes to the summit, and even in the 35 degree (Celcius) heat the hike was so worth it. The colours of the water around the islands are so varied and as we started to close in on the top, a dark cloud started to close in on us.
This made for some pretty epic photography.
The track up the mountain zigs and zags across the hill back and forth along the same side. The way down was actually much quicker, mainly because we just cut straight down. Down over the loose leaves. Down over the loose rocks and sticks.
It wasn’t the most fun you’ve ever had but it was very effective. Though, it was probably just as much work as walking up.
We tendered back to the cruiser and motored over to Cid Harbour, also off Hook Island, not far from Hayman Island. Having spent all our energy we soaked up the serenity and relaxed again with our books, games, swims and sun (and clouds).
Visiting the mainland, Airlie Beach (29 Dec)
On Monday morning we had planned to take the tender ashore and do a short walk – about 15 minutes – from one nearby beach to another nearby beach. I have done this walk before and it didn’t really excite me at the time so I volunteered to pick the others up at the beach on the tender (and hoon around in the meantime).
As we were getting the tender out it started to rain. And I mean really started to rain. Damn tropics, you can never pick it!
When it’s not out hooning, the tender lives inside a hatch at the back of the cruiser and is held up by a single hydraulic arm. Daddyo was fiddling with something on the tender with it half sitting out of the hatch when BOOM: the entire hatch came crashing down on his head.
All the Kings horses and all the Kings men couldn’t put the hatch arm back together again – it had broken completely away from the wall. And I reckon Daddyo was lucky to escape with his consciousness.
It took 4 of us to finish getting the tender out, 2 to hold the hatch and 2 to actually pull it out of the hatch enclosure. But the rain kept coming – in patches at least – and it became apparent that the walk was not going to happen.
More importantly, I was looking forward to zooming around on a small inflatable boat with a 15 horsepower motor. With 3 people it is sluggish. With 5 people you wonder if you might capsize. But with 1 you wonder if you might flip.
We opted to just have a relaxing morning instead so thankfully I brought plenty of books. The great thing about this holiday is that you don’t have to go anywhere to have a good time. Reading a book with a fantastic view is a quite legitimate way to spend a morning.
After lunch and a very cruisey morning (pun most definitely intended) and we headed back to the mainland at Airlie Beach. We actually booked a night at Abel Point Marina. No beds here, but plenty of docking space.
Airlie Beach is known to be a bit of backpacker mecca and seems to have a very transient feel to it. While pretty touristy, it’s very welcoming, and it’s easy enough to still find some seclusion.
There is one main strip of shops and restaurants, and large outdoor bars – most of which are attached to hostels, and across the road is a very large free public swimming pool. Airlie Beach Lagoon. It is split into 2 large sections and holds about 4,000,000 litres of water.
We were hungry so we headed straight to lunch at Capers, which also doubles as a James Squire ‘craft beer’ bar (don’t get me started). I had a pizza and all the food looked excellent so if you are visiting Airlie Beach it’s worth a stop. And really, the beers are decent too, Squires isn’t my favourite but it still beats yellow fizzy swill.
We needed to stock the boat up with food and the marina actually provide a brilliant service in lending us a loan car for a few hours. On the way I stopped at a fantastic second hand book shop. Seriously I could not get enough of it, they have all my favourite authors, generally in pretty good condition and at amazing prices. I settled for 3 and was on my way.
Ok. Because the word count is getting away from me I’m going to take a brief intermission. Come back next week to read more misadventures, how to spend New Years on Hamilton Island, and arguably Australia’s best beach and lookout.
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