Totsiens Pegasos - until 2018

We sailed from Cairns to Green Island on choppy seas and into the wind. It was a bumpy ride but it felt good to sail again after a week at anchorage in Trinity Inlet. Pegasos managed 7 knots in 13 knot wind. Robert was very happy - he had all three sails out, fishing lines out and he swung down the keel too. Unfortunately, no fish this time although something sizeable bit clean through a lure leaving a little piece of hard lure on the line.

We were lucky enough to see the only buoy for us being vacated just as we arrived and picked it up immediately - we're getting good at this. So nice to see such clear water after the pea soup in Cairns. The choppy sea settled during the night and the next day we dinghied ashore to snorkel and walk around the island.

The snorkeling was possibly the best we've done so far. The water was warm and clear and lots of tropical fish were everywhere - all sorts and colours and sizes. They seem unperturbed by people in the water and swam around us doing their thing - which is mostly eating.

We had a picnic lunch next to the beach fending off the Banded Rail bird - initially friendly birds keen to come up to us which quickly became annoying pests as one jumped up and pecked off some of Robert's wrap as he was eating it. It became a stand-off with us flapping a towel at it while it attempted several stealth techniques.
  

 
The birds who are really sweet and who have been close to the boat throughout our trip are the Welcome Swallows. Apparently they were named Welcome Swallows as early sailors used to know land was close by when these birds appeared on the ships. They often visited Pegasos - usually Mr and Mrs, sitting on the side railing discussing a possible nesting site under our canopy and often a flying recce under the canopy and even into the galley. They would dart about the front of the boat while we were sailing and catch a ride on the rails.

The second night at Green Island was not great. The wind started at about 2.30 a.m. and got steadily stronger and the mooring became bouncier. We decided to leave earlier than planned and set off after breakfast for our final anchorage at Bluewater Marina at Yorkey's Knob slightly north of Cairns.

We sailed with the front sail only with the wind gusting up to 20 knots and a rather rough sea. It was Pegasos' last sail until we return next year.

The entrance to the inlet past Yorkey's Knob is narrow and shallow. Although it is dredged, we read 1.3 meters on the depth gauge before low tide. We narrowly passed a large catamaran along the entrance - well if it can get out, we can get in. And we did, inching along slowly with the now familiar sight of mangroves on both sides of the narrow inlet.

A half submerged boat didn't inspire much confidence.

We turned a corner and appearing out of the mangroves was a pretty marina with many boats and nice houses surrounding it and jungle covered hills in the background. Most of the houses have their own jetty at the water's edge and all kinds of boats line the edge.

 

Our allocated berth at the end of a finger required a 180 degree turn in a very narrow space. Something Pegasos can't do. So we inched past to a gap and Robert started to turn the boat. There was much manoeuvering forward and reversing in little increments while a mild panic set in for me. We attracted the attention of the owner of the nearest catamaran, Pelagic, who suggested we tie on to the outside of his finger berth until the wind dropped and he kindly came out to assist us by taking a rope I passed down and tying us on. It turns out he recognized us from Fitzroy Island when we were anchored nearby. Soon afterwards with the help from the marina manager and the kind man from Pelagic, we squeezed Pegasos into her berth.

On the way in Robert caught a fish, a Ribbon Fish. It was a bit bony and not very big but it tasted quite good and it was just enough for a light supper.

That evening we joined a group of other people on the marina for drinks and a chat. Australians are generally very friendly and outgoing and this bunch were no exception. We enjoyed the company and their stories and insight about the reefs. The next day Robert set about taking down the sails and taking off the anchor and the start of many things to pack away on the boat. We are leaving the boat for about six months in a hot and humid climate which is also cyclone season. There are lots of things to organize on the boat.

A few days later we collected our hired car and first stop for Robert was Whitworths for more fenders and Bunnings for pool salt to put in the storage hulls and small dehumidifier pots - an attempt to reduce the build up of mould in the closed up boat which is inevitable in this hot, humid and wet summer season. Following a tip from someone's blog, I wrapped linen and duvets in plastic cling wrap and hope it works to keep mould off the linen.

In sorting through the storage areas, we found more stuff to throw out. We became quite ruthless in tossing out things we initially kept thinking it may come in useful. Quite liberating. Our suppers became interesting creative combinations as we used up the remaining items in the grocery cupboard. The last few days passed very quickly as we worked our way through "battening down the hatches." We spent the last three nights in a nearby B&B as our bed on the boat became a storage area. The weather was already hot and humid, nowhere near as hot and humid as it's going to get, we were assured.

On the last day Pegasos looked strangely different with the covers off.

Goodbye Pegasos, we will be back next year, hopefully in March. We are looking forward to the next adventure already.

Around Cairns

Sunday 3rd September found us in Mission Bay just a stone's throw from Cairns, which is where we are going to leave Pegasos while we fly home for the summer. Not much to do here except admire the view.

This is aboriginal land so we're not allowed to go ashore without permission. It's full of crocodiles so we wouldn't really want to go ashore and it has a shallow muddy bay so we probably would not be able to get the dinghy ashore anyway. After only one night we moved on to Green Island.

Green Island will be the last island that we will visit on this trip. It is a pretty place with a healthy coral reef. It's also heavily infested with big fast ferries and tourist enterprises of the sort that aims at herding vast hordes of bewildered Asians thorough tourist experiences.

On Green Island there's snorkeling experience (with buoys and ropes partitioning off a safe zone) and coral island beach walking experience.

And of course these always going to be gift-shopping experience with lots of overpriced tacky crap that was probably made in China in the first place. But beyond the shop stalls there's a lovely board-walk path through the dense thicket of scrub-forest that gives Green Island its name.

The snorkeling was good. The coral is extensive and the water is the clearest we've seen on this trip.

It is very difficult to anchor here. It took a long time but eventually we found our Goldilocks anchorage: Not too deep; not too shallow; far enough from ferry traffic but not too far off the island; the bottom must be sand and not coral nor sea-grass and the clearing must be big enough for us to to place the anchor and swing around without bumping into bommies (coral covered boulders). In the end we landed up being quite far off the island, and hence not very well protected from the uncomfortable rolling and bumping of irregular steep choppy waves and so we only spent only one night there. Unfortunately the dinghy engine was still playing up. The carburettor blocked again. We had to row back from the island. Quite exhausting! Buried deep in the storage space of one of the side hulls is a weenie little old two-horsepower two-stroke engine, which I dug out, cleaned up, pulled the starter cord and Hey Presto! It works! So now I’ve installed it as a backup.

Our final destination for the season is Bluewater Marina a bit north of Cairns at Yorkies Knob. These Aussie names! I can’t say that last one without getting a disturbing mental image of some horrible randy pooch trying to hump everything that moves. Anyway, after a rough night of bouncing at Green Island we sailed on Tuesday 5^th to Trinity Inlet, the vast protected waterway adjacent to the Cairns CBD. It was a fairly short sail of only 15 miles and the sea was quite bumpy but it was still a very enjoyable sail. We were on a beam reach with all three sails out, genoa, staysail and mainsail, and sustained 6 to 7 knots with just over 10 knots of wind.

In Cairns we anchored across the waterway from the ritzy Marlin Marina quite close to extensive mangroves. For the third night in a row we’ve had some of the mackerel that I had caught for supper. It’s getting a bit boring now and so we tossed the rest overboard into the dark and murky water of Trinity Inlet. There were lots of crunching and clicking noises from crabs and things under the boat that night!

The waterway between where we’ve anchored Pegasos and where we need to land the dinghy when we go ashore is busy. Apart from all the tourist ferries racing each other and the armada of local fishing boats there’s navy ships, cargo ships, other yachts and even cruise ships to avoid.

Although I now have two engines on the back of the dinghy, neither is very reliable and I really don’t want to have to row out of the way of one of these giant ships! So our first mission on shore was to go to the Mercury agent for fuel filters and spark plugs. Next up was laundry, groceries and ice-cream, and only once we had sorted these urgent priorities could we play at being tourists. And Cairns is a great town for tourists. We started with a long stroll along the shore-front esplanade

Visiting botanic gardens is always on our must-do list, and the Cairns gardens are a real treat with spectacular examples of the wonderful extravagant vegetation of the wet tropics and rainforest.

There's no beach at Cairns. The coastline along the mainland is all mud and mangroves. Water visibility is about 3cm, ideal for saltwater crocodiles and bull sharks, but not for swimming. And so just a few meters above the seaside mud flats they've built a very pleasant swimming lagoon with clean, clear, warm water, a sandy beach, sunbathing lawns and shady trees and picnic facilities. And hot showers in the change rooms - a real boon for us. All bathing that we do on Pegasos is in water that I have to collect in jerry cans.

Its baby bat season in Cairns! All about the city are big sprawling fig trees, home to thousands of pigeon-sized bats (spectacled flying foxes) nesting, squeaking, peeing on pedestrians (including Marcelle) and giving birth to baby bats.

On the weekend we went to the colourful Rusty’s market.

The Cairns war memorial St Monica's Cathedral has superb stained glass windows with scenes of volcanoes, coral reefs and undersea wrecks of war-planes.

It’s been windy over the past week but now the forecast is that we should be getting a few calm days and so if all goes well we plan to leave Cairns and sail back to Green Island tomorrow.

Rivers, Islands and Jungles

The sea was the flatest we had ever seen as we motored from Kent Island to Mourilyan Harbour. So smooth that it was only our hull making ripples on the surface.

It was like gliding across a vast mirror.

 
We saw several dolphins close by on both sides of the boat and ahead.

It was over 100 years after Cook had first sailed past here that the English colonialists eventually discover Mourilyan Harbour and the Moresby river. It's easy to appreciate why it took so long. The forested hills along the coastline blend together as one until you get very close and then quite suddenly two hills open up to reveal the narrow gap of an entrance. One would normally just sail by without realising it is there unless really scouring every meter of the shoreline. It was only discovered by Europeans in 1872 when the captain after whom the river is named was searching for survivors of a shipwreck.

Beyond the narrow gap is the very wide, shallow, protected estuary of the Moresby River.

Mourilyan Harbour has a pretty landscape on the south side with moored boats and green hills

And a rather ugly commercial north side with a long storage shed and wharf for exporting sugar and molasses.

We went ashore for a walk but there is not much to see and no shops. We located a tap and Robert did a water run with jerry cans to fill up our water tanks. Unfortunately no chocolate top up.

Keen to do some fishing, Robert set off in the late afternoon to troll a lure behind the dinghy. The dinghy puttered off with Robert across the wide estuary lined with mangroves. As it got darker, I started worrying - this is croc country and it's a rubber dinghy. Fending off mosquitoes I peered through binoculars to the far side and in the gloom I could just make out a dinghy being rowed. It was very far away but luckily the water was smooth as a mirror. It took ages for Robert to row back. The engine had mysteriously died and wouldn't restart. He had abandoned fishing in case a croc was attracted to a fishy smelling slow moving rubber dinghy.

The next morning we moved on to Innisfail, a small town up the Johnstone River. We timed our departure to reach the mouth of Johnstone River at high tide to cross the sandbar. In fact, it was shallow all across the entrance and up the river. We motored very slowly watching the depth guage carefully. The river has green murky water and is lined with mangroves. When the town comes into view, boats and jetties line the bank.

Occasionally we would see boats half hidden and stuck in the mangroves. Not sure if this was a result of a cyclone or preparation for a cyclone if the owner was leaving a boat for a while or an accident.

 

Innisfail has a charm of its own, peaceful and slow. We walked along the short main road lined with single storey shops. When last have you seen a butcher shop on the main road with a greengrocer next door? Innisfail reminds me of the shops of my childhood before the advent of malls. There was a mall on the main road, but no shops were no in it, save for a quiet clothing store and a lonely fast food eatery.

There is an Italian feel to some parts of Innisfail in its architecture such as this magnificent church

There is also a memorial to Italians who worked on the sugar plantations in the late 1800's. Italian immigrants who arrived to work as sugar cane cutters eventually settled and bought properties and established businesses and became a major political influence in the area.

There is an interesting collection of homes along the riverbank from the shabby chic to the grand mansion.

We stayed only one night, Friday night and it seemed to be busy ashore with music and lights.

The next morning we got up early to get provisions and motored slowly back down the river while the tide was high. We needed to wait for the next high tide to cross the sandbar so we spent the night anchored close to the entrance near a place known as Flying Fish Point.  We used the waiting time to view and book airbnb accommodation in Cairns and Sydney - sadly, plans for our departure must be put in place with only 5 weeks left of our adventure.

The next high tide to cross the sandbar would be mid afternoon and the shortest day hop would be 20 nautical miles (about 3 hours), so Robert did his sums and calculated we would have enough height after 11.00am. We set off very slowly over the bouncy swells following the opposite direction of our exact route inwards recorded by the navigation program. It worked - our depth guage touched 1,2m at shallowest point, just enough for our keel and a small clearance, but we made it. Whew!

The next group of Islands is the Frankland Islands group. Tiny specks in the ocean best suited for anchoring in only calm conditions. We picked up a mooring buoy at Russell Island, a nice looking island with apparently good snorkeling amongst corals. It was too choppy to put the dinghy in the water and the swells built up. We had one of the bounciest nights of our trip, thanks to the swells rolling around the island. 

We couldn't wait to get going the next morning to our next anchorage, Fitzroy Island, close to Cairns. It was a longish sail of over 5 hours in light wind and Robert put up the spinnaker in the last hour. It was a very pleasant sail, sadly it is probably our last long sail along the coastline as after Fitzroy we plan to head for Cairns and our berth in the marina.

Fitzroy is a delightful island, long sandy beach, easy snorkeling, nice walks and a functioning resort. Ferry boats from Cairns bring day trippers several times a day. Its a favorite anchorage for many cruising boats in its protected Welcome Bay.  And it looked very welcoming as we rounded the corner into the bay.

We picked up the last available mooring buoy and went ashore to stretch our legs and enjoyed some snorkeling off the beach. Most of the coral close to the beach is broken and dead, but there are lots of tropical fish and much of the coral further off shore is still alive. One of the highlights advertised to visitors is the snorkeling but I can't help thinking that other islands have so much better coral but I suppose its quicker and cheaper for tour operators to offload visitors at Fitzroy instead of say the Family Group.

The island has a few walking trails so the next day we set off for the Summit walk. About two and a half hours for the circuit up to the highest point then round to the lighthouse and back down a different route. It started off in interesting rainforest vegetation which opened up a bit as we got higher to acacia and eucalyptus and stunted trees.

There were signs of recent fires near the top of the hill. Management of bush-land in eastern Australia is not easy. They regularly arrange controlled burns of small areas on cooler damp winter days so as to get gentle ground-level fires that burn only the dead plants and fallen dry branches that accumulate at the forest floor leaving the bigger trees undamaged. People have been burning Australian bush-land and forests since they first got here tens of thousands of years ago, but those were big wild uncontrolled fires that burned everything. This particular island was burned by Aboriginal people quite regularly until as recently as fifty years ago. These intense fires completely changed the nature of Australian vegetation. The original hardwood rain-forests were replaced by Acacia and Eucalyptus savannas. What we think of as typical Australian bush-land, dominated by those fire loving plants like the Black Wattles and Port Jacksons that have become such an invasive nuisance in South Africa, were originally quite rare in Australia. Now with careful management the rain-forests are slowly returning and expanding. On our walks we notice the very distinct transitions from hardwood rain forests lower in the valleys to the Acacia and Eucalyptus scrub-land on higher and drier land. The latter though is not unattractive, containing as it does a rich mosaic of different plant species not just the few that form the horrible thickets of aliens in South Africa.

There is a wooden lookout platform at the top.

The view from the lookout was spectacular, not only across the sea to the mainland, but also out over the ocean to the distant outer reefs.

We followed the path towards the lighthouse. On this rather windswept side of the island the vegetation is sparser with drier bushes and grasses. The lighthouse is perched on the north eastern point and rather bland as lighthouses go.

We followed a steep track downwards built for 4 wheel drive vehicles accessing the lighthouse. Parts of it is very steep and kudos to the driver who passed us waving as her little vehicle roared up the incline.

We went snorkeling in the afternoon and as I turned back towards the beach I saw a large Green turtle munching some stuff below me. I paused hoping not to scare it away and two other snorkelers arrived on the scene. The turtle seemed quite unconcerned with the audience following it and lazily swam about munching away. I saw Robert walking back on shore and waved frantically at him to join us. He was as chuffed as me to spend some time following the turtle. What a fabulous experience!

Day three on Fitzroy and we did the Secret Garden walk through lovely cool rainforest.

One of my favorite trees has these high lateral roots that grow sideways from the tree to add support in shallow ground. Apparently boomerangs were made from roots such as these which already had the right curved shape.

We then followed the short track to Nudey Beach. It is a pretty secluded beach, but no nudes on Nudey Beach.

We spent a week at Fitzroy Island, which was enough time for us to do the Summit walk again, occasional visit to Foxy's pub, try our hand at stand-up paddle boarding and kayaking and of course, more snorkeling. On the walks we saw many skinks scuttling away underfoot but we were really impressed with the monitor lizard at the edge of the beach which walked about staring up into the trees, probably for small birds. They can grow up to 1,2m, this one was more than about half a metre long.

On Sunday, our last day at Fitzroy Island, Robert went ashore for the usual water top up, we had lunch at the end of the beach and watched a new batch of boat departures and arrivals in the pretty bay. Time for us to move on too.

Robert put two lines in the water and after about only 20 minutes, he hooked this large fish. A mackerel of 80 cm.

We had originally planned a short sail to overnight at Turtle Bay on the mainland, but the swells seemed quite large so we sailed past to the more protected Mission Bay. It's Aboriginal land and requires permission to land. But we are content to stay on the boat and enjoy Robert's catch of the day for dinner.