Altair Cruising Log

Greetings from Down Under!!!

Port Douglas, Queensland, Australia

We last wrote from Brisbane and are now in Port Douglas, the last major city on the East Coast, and we are 1,000 miles further up the coast of this big island! From here it will be day hops up to Cape York at the very top, keeping a careful lookout for reefs, then probably directly across the top to Darwin.

We stopped for a week in Mooloolaba on the Sunshine Coast to visit with friends that are heading home or moving on in different directions. We started each day with a walk along the beach in the company of Rich and Elaine from Windarra (also from Seattle) ending with a stop at the local Starbucks for a coffee. There were lots of people enjoying the beautiful beach, as Mooloolaba is a resort town like Surfers Paradise further south. Bit more relaxed and not as many high rises so more enjoyable than the Gold Coast. There are several camp grounds right off the beach making this a great holiday spot whether staying in a hotel, condo or tent.

With several marine stores nearby it also gave us the chance to stock up on marine supplies needed for our annual haul out to apply new bottom paint. As a foreign yacht, when spending more than $300, you can get things without the Australian GST (goods and services tax). But just to reassure some of you, we do pay GST on most items we buy so are contributing to the local infrastructures as well as contributing a bit to Uncle Sam back home via the IRS. So while our lifestyle is bit different and we are not living in the US, there seems to be no way of escaping taxes.

We had an excellent haul out further north at Rosslyn Bay near Yeppon, which is outside of Rockhampton for those following on your atlas. This was planned to be able to have more time to visit with our good friends Michael Harte and Katie Stewart plus meeting their almost five-year-old son Ben. Great kid and looks a great deal like his dad, you can easily see they are related! The marina was beautiful, all went well with the haul out and it was the most stunning setting we have ever hauled out in. It was great fun to visit with Mike Katie again and catch up as we had visited with them on our first trip to Australia in 1995, lots of fun to reminisce. Katie took Suzette shopping at the excellent Saturday morning market and came home with all sorts of wonderful produce from huge $1 pineapples to small, palm sized red papayas which made the perfect snack size serving.

After the haul out and getting a few more miles up the coast, we took a bit of time to explore the Whitsunday Islands, one of Australia’s premier cruising grounds. It's a bit like the San Juan Islands in the Pacific NW except that the water is a pretty aqua color, warm enough to swim in and there is great snorkeling. We had two weeks visiting a diversity of anchorages from white sandy beaches to deep fjord like inlets and everything weather wise from brilliant sunny days to days where it rained all day. A bit like home actually.

We took fantastic hikes on South Molle Island with a tremendous diversity of vegetation from grasslands with kangaroo tails to groves of eucalyptus with the sun making a dappled pattern through the leaves onto the paths. Huge flocks of lorikeets zipped around like deranged fighter pilots that have been dipped in multi-colored paint. A delight to watch and something we never tire of. We walked the full length of the famed 6 km / 3.7 mile Whitehaven Beach with it’s pure white sand dazzling in the sun. Okay we admit that we split the 7.5 mile round trip length into two hikes over as many days. We had two days of calm weather and brilliant sun and used them to good advantage to snorkel Blue Pearl Bay on Hayman Island and several bays on nearby Hook Island. Lots of fish, great soft corals and huge maori wrasse about three feet in length.

For years we have known that old IOR race boats go to "Jurassic Park" in Vancouver B.C. and have now discovered that ex-maxi boats (80 feet long for those non-sailors) migrate to the Whitsundays and become crewed charter boats. We were a bit surprised when we sailed into our first anchorage and found three boats with 100 foot masts and five spreader rigs at anchor -- Matador and Boomerang -- and have since seen The Card, British Defender, and Anaconda II. Some we recognize and are familiar with and others are new to us. It's been a fun game to guess their designs and eras. Most were “Round the World” race boats in their day.

The maxis take loads of guests out to experience the islands, generally for “three days and two magical nights” with stops for snorkeling/diving, hikes and lounging on the beach. We learned later that most of the maxis are “backpacker types” and were surprised to find they fit up to 24 guests down below at night in converted pipe berths. With memories of the stale air down below after long distance sailboat races, it makes us wonder how “magical” the nights are when it’s rainy so the hatches are closed and the lucky two-person crew that gets to sleep on deck! Despite the cramped conditions, everyone we talked with seemed to have a great time.

Besides the ex-maxis and bare boat charter fleets here, there are also all manner of sailing craft ranging from the sleek to "interesting" that look like something out of the movie “Captain Ron”. The variety is a bit mind-boggling. We never minded sharing anchorages with the various boats as it was always fun to watch “the show” as they load and unload their guests shuttling them back and forth with the dinghy between the boat, shore and snorkeling/diving locations. The outboards certainly get a work out.

On a rainy morning in Nara Inlet we had a sulphur-crested cockatoo stop by for a visit. He/She perched on the radar arch and "inquired" in a rather loud voice about breakfast. Friends had given us a heads up so we had some raw almonds to share. We spent five minutes or so feeding the bird but as it was raining so we went back to making our own breakfast. The cockatoo then switched to the life lines and looked in the ports to see if we could be persuaded to hand out a few more nuts. Not shy in the least!

We stopped for a return visit at Magnetic Island outside of Townsville which we had visited in 1995. The island is covered with huge boulders that make for a dramatic landscape and although it was much as we remembered, there did seem to be more buildings and tourist infrastructure. We had been told that there was the possibility to see koalas in the wild on here in the late afternoon, so off on a bear hunt we went! You needed to look carefully in the trees for “motionless bundles of gray fur.” Koalas are not the most energetic of animals; they sleep 20 hours per day due to their diet of eucalyptus leaves not being the most nutritious. We were reward with the sighting of not one but two koalas!! And one male even moved around and changed from one branch to another, quite energetic for a koala. So a successful koala-sighting outing and another Australian experience to check off the list.

We had a wonderful stop at Dunk Island, wandered through the nicely done P&O Resort and explored the island on their 13 km/8 miles of fantastic walking tracks through coastal rainforest. Dunk Island is noted for it’s prolific bird life and butterflies, especially the iridescent blue Ulysses. Although we saw many butterflies the famous Ulysses evaded us which was disappointing. One great thing about Australia is even on islands such as Dunk with their exclusive resorts, there is frequently national park land easily accessible and with campgrounds for those who cannot afford the resorts. Our final night at anchor here we packed up a sunset picnic and dinghied over to small Purtaboi Island just off shore. We had a great view of Dunk Island in the golden glow of sunset while the sky then turned majestic colors of pink to dark purple. It gave us a different perspective from Altair at anchor while we enjoyed a stunning sunset; this was a nice change from dinner onboard.

We provisioned in Cairns and were a bit surprised at how much we enjoyed the city. We had only driven through the industrial/strip mall outskirts when we were here in 1995 and did not have high expectations plus having heard the anchorage was a bit industrial. The anchorage was quite enjoyable with a nice view of the downtown area and surrounding mountains and the center of Cairns was quite enjoyable with all it’s tourist hustle and bustle. They have recently completed a new marina and large, terminal for all the boats doing trips out to the Great Barrier Reef. The first morning we had motored down the long, dredged channel while over 15 large boats paraded out for the day’s reef excursions. Cairns has also recently completed a wonderful Esplanade with outdoor pool and shore-side promenade, which made for a lovely evening stroll after all of our errands were completed.

We have spent the last week in Port Douglas visiting and exploring with Paul cousins from Alaska - Chris, Lauri and 11-year-old Allison. We have greatly enjoyed catching up while doing day trips to Cape Tribulation, Mossman Gorge and a day sail on Altair out to the Low Islets about 8 miles off shore. Port Douglas has “grown” since we were last here in 1995 and very much so since Chris and Lauri’s trip in 1990. The road to Cape Trib is now paved instead of the dirt tract they drove 14 years ago with the addition of a rainforest interpretation center, parking lots and several great boardwalks through the rainforest. We even saw small sports cars making the trip, an unthinkable idea before the road was paved. We were rewarded on our trip to Cape Trib with the sight of several Azure butterflies! Or at least that is what we think they were, but hard to tell when they are 25-50 feet away. They are the most incredible, iridescent blue and can be spotted quite far away, a really amazing sight as you see this amazing blue bit flittering around. The Daintree Rainforest and Cape Tribulation is one of only two rainforests in the world that meets the ocean and perhaps the only one in the Wet Tropics. It’s was declared a World Heritage Site in 1993.

For those of you who have wondered, the writing of these logs is a combined effort. Suzette tends to get off track and write too much, Paul writes too little and the combined effort seems to be just right. It’s the “Goldilocks and the Three Bears” approach. Please feel free to email questions if you are wondering about any parts of our lives here on the water.

We are off now on the final 500 miles up to Cape York at the northern tip of the East Coast of Australia. As it is all inside the “Great Barrier Reef” there are many hazards in the area, we will be making this next leg entirely as day hops, stopping each night to anchor. There are a few places we would like to explore, like Lizard Island, and so will spend a few days here and there to break up the travel but the swimming is finished for the time being as the rest of Australia is Crocodile country. From Cape York we are planning to sail the roughly 900 miles directly across the top of Australia to Darwin, capital of the Northern Territories. This will be the jumping off point for the next leg of our adventure – crossing the Indian Ocean arriving on the East Coast of South Africa by the beginning of November.

Hope this finds all of you well. Cheers – Paul, Suzette and the Yacht Altair