Airlie Beach, Whitsundays to Sydney Harbour – November 2024
From Chalkie’s Beach in the Whitsundays, it was a 48 hour sail to Lady Musgrave Island on the Great Barrier Reef. Lady Musgrave’s coral reef forms a navigable lagoon, home to diverse marine life including turtles, manta rays, stingrays, reef sharks and a lone 4m tiger shark called ‘Gatekeeper’. Here we spent a couple of days diving and exploring ashore. Our visit coincided with the Green turtle mating season, and we were witness to many enthusiastic, romantic rendez-vous. The island is also a breeding ground for a large colony of white capped noddies which nest on the island’s Pisonia trees.
At dusk one evening we watched as 20+ female Green turtles hauled themselves up the beach where, over a period of several hours, they first built body pits then, using their rear flippers, dug chambers nearly a meter deep before laying several dozen eggs. Such an epic experience…
Next stop was Bundaberg Marina where we hauled Mowzer out in order to scrub her bum and apply new antifouling. A week’s hard labour ensued – scraping, sanding, painting, polishing but mostly sweating… Our Pacific friends, Chezza and Richie of Serenity Now kept us sane and entertained with card tricks and beer.
We splashed Mowzer on 13th November to continue our passage South. An overnight stop at Susan River, River Heads, then a quick dip in the jacuzzi at the Kingfisher Resort on K’gari before heading onwards to Turkey Island for the night. At dawn, we continued southwards through the Great Sandy Strait before taking a beating as our staysail jammed in a squall as we approached Inskip Point. Meanwhile friends ran aground on a sandbar in their 60ft catamaran.
The following morning we headed out across Wide Bar Bay a notoriously tricky stretch of water due to shallow depths, shifting sandbanks and unpredictable currents.
We anchored overnight at Deception Point in Morton Bay before continuing up the Brisbane River for a few nights’ R&R. In Brissy we hit the Museum of Queensland, the Maritime Museum, The Cube at the University of Technology, and the Paediatric Emergency Department…
Next up was Paradise Point, Gold Coast for a Parkrun, then on to ‘Bum Bay’ (an anchorage full of liveaboard vessels in a varying state of seaworthiness).
Our penultimate stop was in Yamba/Iluka which requires that you cross a sandbar to enter the Clarence River – smooth sailing on the way in but pretty terrifying on the way out a day later when the increased wind and swell made for an ‘exciting’ exit.
Two days later in thick fog, we sailed through Sydney Heads – 71 days and 3577 nautical miles sailed since leaving Darwin.
Sailing Mowzer 