Hinchenbrook to Cairns (12th August)

After spending some time at Orpheus Island in the Palm Group we departed from the anchorage at Little Pioneer Bay early on the morning of the 27th July in order to meet the high tide at Lucinda.  As with a lot of the east coast of Queensland the water is shallow and the entrance at Lucinda is even shallower than most so it is prudent to make your entrance at the end of the flooding tide.  The sugar wharf at Lucinda would have to be one of the longest in the world being 5.6kms in length and dipping 1.2mts over its length as it follows the curvature of the earth!

As per our earlier posts this trip we had plenty of calm weather so were very lucky to be able to explore the eastern side of the Hinchinbrook and now we are heading up into the Hinchinbrook Channel.  Our first stop is as Haycock Island which is very pretty.  The Hinchinbrook Channel has a bit of a reputation for having a good supply of crocs in the mangrove creeks however this didn't seem to deter some locals who spent most of the afternoon wake boarding around our yacht.

On the 28th (which I believe was a Monday) we motored up to the township of Cardwell and went ashore for a few supplies.  Again this whole area is shallow so we had to anchor Big Sally around 1.5NM off the pier and take the trip in on Little Sal - glad that we now have a 15HP motor on the back which meant the trip was a breeze.  Back in 2011 Cardwell, as with most of this area, was hit badly when Cyclone Yasi went through and it was great to see that the town is going through a bit of a re-build and looking really good again and thriving with plenty of the grey nomads passing through as the town is on the Bruce Highway.

 After the shop we head back south to anchor up in one of those croc infested mangrove creeks - the one we picked doesn't seem to have a name but provided a very calm anchorage and no crocs to be seen.

Muggy Muggy beach

On Tuesday it is up early as we are off to one of our favourite spots - Dunk Island.   Dunk was also badly damaged with Yasi and it was great to see that it is also recovering well 3 years later.  The resort has now been bought by a miner who has started doing some work round the place although to what level it will be developed to is still a bit unknown however, we were thrilled to see that the Beach Bar is back and open on weekends & public holidays and the walking tracks are all cleared again.

View from Mt Kootaloo

We stopped at Dunk for about four nights which included a Friday so that we could enjoy lunch at the Beach Bar - the best prawns ever!!! We also did the walk around the island including the trek to the lookout at Mt. Kootaloo, which has some great views, and lunch at Muggy Muggy Beach .

The Best Prawns!

Unfortunately the calm weather is about to end after around 4weeks (we can't really complain) so we figure it is time to start heading towards Cairns.  We dropped in at Mourilyan Harbour for the night which is always an interesting stop although there is not a lot there apart from the sugar loading wharf.   On the 3rd of August we headed into Cairns which will be Sally's home until the end of August when we continue the trek north to Lizard Island.

We are stopping at Cairns for a while as we are heading back south for a week (all the way to Hobart - Brrrrr) to attend my nephews wedding on the 23rd. 

There is plenty to do in Cairns and the place is really going off with plenty of tourists in town.  There are also plenty of international yachts in the marina including a number of yachts participating in the ARC Around the World Rally. Our stop in Cairns has also allowed us to get a few jobs done - one of the messy ones

was cleaning the BBQ - never a fun job although there were plenty of yacht owners that were very keen to employ my BBQ cleaning skills!   The other main job was to sort out the anchor winch which has been on suicide watch for the last few weeks.  We arranged a new solenoid switch however, this didn't seem to do much at all and after finding out that a new motor would be around 10weeks in the making we decided to remove the offending motor and take it up to the local auto electricians to see if he would fix the beast. Luckily it looks like we only had dirty brushes which were easily cleaned - unfortunately the re-installation of the offending unit was not quite so easy and Mark spent many hours stuck up in our anchor locker - not fun!


We are currently on board waiting for our Coles On Line delivery which is the big stock up before our trip to LI.  Tomorrow we are hiring a car for a few days and heading down to Mourilyan to catch up with some old cane cocky friends and also do a bit of sight seeing on the way.  We are flying out on Tuesday and will be back on board on the 26th.  Leapy Lynda is then joining us on the 27th and we will be heading off shortly after that for our first stop which will be either Yorkey's Knob or Port Douglas.