SV Sunburn: Cruising the Whitsundays

Well, here we are, the Whitsundays, Charter boat capital of Queensland!! We arrived at Refuge bay in Nara Inlet. A beautiful spot and couldnt work out why there was only one boat there, turns out it is "rumoured" to be a hammerhead shark breeding ground...but we never saw one. So it was stinger suits on for a jump over the side. The whole of the Nara Inlet is a beautiful spot (we know, we ended up there twice!), there is an rock formation/cave that has aboriginal drawings in it. So we ventured forth for this leisurely hike - in fact it was a bit of a mountain climb straight up but on a well signposted path, we found the cave and the sign outside said that to date no-one really knew what the drawings symbolised. So in we go, Soph and Finn spotted the rock drawings of the jellyfish, the

hammerhead shark and the turtles - we came to two conclusions, firstly they were probably what the aborigines living there ate, (although shudder to think about eating jellyfish) and secondly; the DOC rangers should really just ask our children what things are when they dont know!

(for more photos click here)

After spending several days in Refuge bay we decided to venture to Whitehaven beach - this is world famous and is the main feature on that TV advert "where the bloody hell are you" with the blonde bombshell standing on a long stretch of white beach. Well, talk about crowded, sea planes, charter yachts with loads of people, fast boats, slow boats all along this absolutely amazingly beautiful piece of long white sand. In amongst all this activity was a large turtle swimming around us and popping his head up to say hello. We decided to anchor there for the night - that was pretty special as after 4 o'clock we had the beach to ourselves ...

nearly! The next day as the hordes arrived we decided to leave and go a whole 2 miles to a beach called chalkies just across the way. Chalkies is a very similar white beach but not nearly as long - the coral was amazing. Possibly the best we have seen to date, and the visibility was fantastic. We snorkelled and snorkelled and snorkelled and then for something else to do ... snorkelled! All of course with our beautiful stinger suits on! Finn swam very close to a turtle - major excitement, then brendan and finn swam over the top of a stingray ... they of course didnt see it hiding in the sand - but I did!!!

We stayed the night at chalkies but the swell got up so there was a bit of rock n rolling going on (by the boat - not us!) so decided to head for somewhere a little more sheltered. We made our way up to Butterfly bay, again another beautiful bay and not a boat there - well for a while anyway! There seemed to be lots of coral so decided to go for another snorkel. What we found was pretty much total devastation. There were pockets of coral that were ok, but most that we saw was majorly damaged. Since the advent of Catamarans which have very little draft and can go a lot closer to shore there has been widespread damage to the coral around the whitsundays and this was so obvious here. The charter boats just power on in, think this looks great and drop the anchor right in the middle of coral, then over night as they turn with the tides etc the chain drags all over the place and wrecks even more coral. Sophie and Finn were quite cross about it and Sophie tells everyone she see's what she thinks about people ruining the great barrier reef!! The upshot of this is that Sophie has decided she would like to be either a marine biologist or a conservationist so that she can publicly make people aware of what is going on and that we need to SAVE THE PLANET (as she keeps telling me)! Not bad for a ten year old I reckon!

After Butterfly Bay we had a rough trip around to Black Pearl Bay which is on the northern side of Hayman Island - a rather exclusive resort. Anchor down and off we go snorkelling - the sea life was simply stunning but the coral a bit disappointing, so we decided if we could combine the coral at Chalkies and the sealife at Black Pearl we would be really happy campers!! We left Black Pearl Bay to head off to another island however the weather gods were against us and it was too rough to anchor there, so we made our way back to Nara Inlet where we stopped for a few days and swam and mucked around in general...ahh this is cruising at its best really.

After a few days we decided we really needed to move or we could stay there forever, and as it was sophs birthday coming up we thought we would splash out and spend the night at Hamilton Island (the marina - not the resort), so upped anchor and off we went. Arrived at Hamilton Island to discover it was $75 a night for a berth but you could use all the resort facilities, in hindsight it was quite good value but we weren't to know that at the time. We ended up there for 2 nights due to the weather and split sophs birthday over two days - lucky sophie. We left Hamilton and made our way to Airlie, once again the weather gods were not accomodating and because we were going north they decided the wind should come from that direction too so once again bash bash bash. We were planning to anchor off Airlie beach, the bay is totally sheltered from all winds except for winds from..yep..you guessed it...the north! The boats in the bay were rocking and rolling so much that it was more than uncomfortable, it was horrible...so into the marina we rock and roll, and squeeze into a spot that amazes me to this day that we got into! Well, this is where the shock hit - $65 a night and no facilities like hamilton island had to offer - what a rip off!!! We once again ended up there for 2 nights BECAUSE OF THE WEATHER. This is murphy's law striking at its very worst one would like to think!

The birthday girl at Hamilton Island Resort