With windy weather returning, we knew our days at the reef were numbered and we decided to slowly hop back towards Cairns. We set ourselves a challenge: stop at new spots along the way to make the trip more interesting.

Let’s back track a bit. After heavenly days at Kelso and Duncan which restored our hope for reef recovery, we ended our time with our friends on Bossa Nova at Walker Reef.

Walker Reef

We had all been there several times before, so it does not count as a new spot. However it was an easy, stress free, spacious anchorage and as it turned out we had it to ourselves. There is a cay there which generally breaks the surface at low tide (the light patch on the left in the aerial), but this time it did not! Some cays, particularly unvegetated ones, are shy and ephemeral, appearing and disappearing at the whim of the currents and weather.

The reef at Walker is not in the best of conditions, but we still enjoyed a couple of snorkels and a fish. Here are a few shots taken with the iphone in the SportDiver housing.

From Walker, Bossa went south, Anui went due west… to Ramsay Bay at Hinchinbrook Island. Why? To check on the abandoned dinghy. Remember that big Highfield we told you about? We thought if it is still there, we will claim it. We had marked the spot on the GPS so headed straight for it and anchored in 2.5m of water.

But to quote Wade: ‘some bastard stole our dinghy’! Bugger! While we were galivanting around beautiful reefs in the calm weather, somebody else had their eye on it and salvaged it. We did scavenge the cavitation plates off the wrecked dinghy engine at least! They will come in handy for ours. Oh, and we collected a whole lot of midge bites… double bugger!

Brook Islands

We did not stay anchored at Ramsay beach and instead headed to the nearby Brook Islands. This ribbon of islets just east of Cape Richards has a public mooring at its northern end. It can get a little jiggly at the change of tide, but it is a pretty spot. If you are quick and time your visit well, you can walk all the way along the islets at low tide as the three are connected by shallow sandbanks. But the beach is all you can get to. The islets have restricted access to protect the roosting and breeding birds, in particular the Imperial Pigeons.

Although we had been there before, we had not seen the islets from the air. So that sort of counts as a new experience. Here are two drone shots that show what it looks like.

The wonderful backdrop of the islands and the mainland ranges looked stunning at sunset.

Otter Reef

The next day after a beach walk and bread making duties, we went back east to the reef, a beautiful sail to a string of reef patches called Otter Reef, 20 nm offshore.

We anchored at a different patch to the one we visited last time, so it counts as a new find! There is not a lot of protection, but in 15-18 knots the anchorage was fine. We were in 4.5m of water at high tide over sand. The intention was to snorkel at low tide the next morning, but we had not counted on rain! Snorkeling in these conditions was not appealing. So we only have a drone shot to show for our visit.

Barnard Group of Islands

With grey, overcast, showery weather, we changed our plan. We skipped the dive at Otter and had a nice screecher sail to another new spot: the Barnard group of Islands, making water underway and catching a spotted mackerel on the trawling line. Little did we know that this would be the last screecher sail for a while. More on this later!

With rain falling on and off, we sat in the soggy cockpit, sticking our head out from time to me to check we weren’t going to hit anything, particularly as we crossed the ‘zone of death’ as Wade calls the shipping lanes!

We eventually reached our afternoon destination. The North Barnard islets look a bit like a group of plum puddings: rounded rocky outcrops, covered in rainforest. We anchored at Kent Island in 8 meters of water over coral rubble and sand. The holding was not wonderful and quite honestly we would not stop there again. Anui was dancing around in rotor in unpredictable ways. Although the islets would have been moody and spectacular from the air, we did not fly the drone as it was drizzling and the boat was getting buffeted in the downdrafts, making both flight and landing way too risky!

Here are two images, one as we were approaching the islets, the other as we left early the next morning!

It was a slow wet sail from Kent Island. We really dislike sailing in the rain, it is the pits… but we needed to get to a sheltered spot before the strong wind started over the weekend.

We stopped at Fitzroy Island, hopeful for a mooring, however there were all taken and we were not inclined to anchor there. We dropped the pick at Turtle Bay just around the corner thinking we would take Bengie for a beach walk the next morning, but it was far too rolly, so we upped anchor and pushed on to Cairns.

Tales of woes in Cairns

During our passage from Kent Island to Cairns, we managed to destroy our screecher! We were going under main and jib and thought the wind was light enough to swap the jib for the screecher. As we were unfurling it, Chris spotted a tear. It was coming apart along a big seam. We hurriedly furled the sail back. Our screecher gets a lot of use and was a bit ragged out, but it looked like the coup de grâce had been struck!

We are now back anchored in Trinity Inlet. We took the screecher ashore, rolled it out on the grass and inspected the damage. Unfortunately not only have we got two big tears right across the sail along the large seams, but the cloth is delaminating everywhere. It is beyond the quick fix option of sticky back strips! With no sailmaker available in Cairns or Port Douglas, we talked to Mike Sabin, our semi-retired sailmaker on the Gold Coast. We sent pictures and Mike confirmed the screecher is rooted, stuffed, defunct. We suspect the damage was initiated two years ago when the furling drum snapped, the screecher got dragged in the water and ended up under one hull. 110sqm sail in the water is heavy to pull out and the cloth would have been weakened severely then, this traumatic event sealing its early demise!

So we are up for a new screecher, which thankfully Mike has agreed to make for us and in the same laminated cloth as he used for the original. It is our best option for performance and durability.

We were spotted cutting through our shredded sail to salvage the torsion cable, an expensive bit of kit. Mike will be able to use this for the replacement. We left the shredded sail at the skip bins! 😞

We will do without a screecher till the new sail is ready. Might have to use the old spinnaker instead – also on its last leg! That actually was the sail we expected to blow out, not the screecher! Let’s just hope we don’t soon have two sails to replace!

We feel rather dejected. The money we are spending on Anui is insane. But as Wade puts it: “Do you want to keep sailing and living this life? If you do, then we get a new sail and whatever else we have to.” I do, we both do, we want to keep going… so we grin and bear it and fork out the dough.

As you well know, there is not a week when we don’t need to deal with maintenance issues. Apart from the sail, we also had problems with our dinghy. The engine suddenly stopped when we were at Duncan Reef, then again at Walker Reef… We eventually realised the fuel line was leaking. It had perished in the sun. The short term fix was a whole lot of Gaffer tape along the fuel line after we had rowed back to Anui from our snorkeling sites – just as well we were not too far away and it was dead calm! It was an easy replacement once back at Cairns, and we now have some spare fuel line on board.

But wait there’s more! The winch to lift the dinghy onto the davits gave up the ghost after a period of making awful sounds. Man, does it ever stop? Fortunately we had bought a spare a little while back. So Wade was kept amused refitting and rewiring the larger replacement!

Apart from all this, there are the fuel tanks to top up, the gas bottles to refill, the prescription sunglasses to pick up, the laundry, boat clean up, re-provisioning… the usual chores after weeks of being on the move and the preparation before heading off again. We have been busy! The upside: plenty of opportunities for daily walks ashore, ice creams on the esplanade at Mooz, fresh fruit and vegies at Rusty’s Market, interesting sunsets…

We have had days of persistent 30 knot winds, 28°C heat and showers and there is more to come. Once the wind eases, there are a few weeks of tropical reef and island hopping left before we start turning back. We tried unsuccessfully to line up guests for the last bit of the journey north. We haven’t had any luck with friends or family on board this year, but in a way it makes it easier for us, particularly when it involves several weeks away from civilisation. We will enjoy having only ourselves to care for during the next phase of our voyage, as we cruise between Cairns and Lizard Island.

Talk to you next week and remember to give us a like or better, leave a comment if you enjoy our posts!