Whitsundays here we come....nearly

Well nearly "Whitsundays here we come". We were waiting in Horseshoe bay for a weather window to head south (read this as waiting for the northerlies which is all we seem to do), when one morning Brendan once again utters very quietly those fateful words...Di, come and look at this - (this is when I know SOMETHING IS WRONG). He lifts up one of the floor boards and shows me horror of horrors ... WATER and a lot of it, so much that it has just about filled up the bilge to the floorboards. Noooooo I cry..have we got a hole somewhere? (this is the usual panic cry from me when we find water INSIDE the boat). It turns out that the sea water cooling pipe had rusted away from the fitting that secures it to the hull of the boat and makes it go OUTSIDE instead of INSIDE - a rather important feature that. When at anchor, we run the genset twice a day every day to keep the fridges working and had been unknowingly filling the boat with water! BIG problem, need to get water back to the outside of the boat (fast), and keep the fridge working! Anyway, over a couple of days after racking our brains as to the best way to fix it Brendan got it sorted whilst the children and I spent time ashore swimming and reading and stuff - this is what I call "staying out of the way."

Then the weather gods shone down on us and gave us a nice little window to head south in. This of course meant NO wind at all the whole way to Cape Upstart, until of course we went to anchor then the "seabreeze" (20-25knts) kicked in big time and changed direction so that our supposedly sheltered anchorage was not quite so sheltered after all! We were planning to leaving very early (this means dark) the next morning to go to Cape Gloucester which is the beginning of the whitsundays. Thankfully it was dark, brendan started the engine and looking through the cockpit floor window we could see sparks (I, in my half asleep state thought it was the moon reflecting - as usual I was on to it...not!!) Turned engine off real fast and Brendan found and sorted out the problem - we are lucky it was dark because in daylight we wouldnt have seen the sparks so it could have had a somewhat different outcome...shudder to think really. Anyway, all sorted and we left to go to Cape Gloucester - a rather nice little spot however it was VERY exposed (translation - rough), we found a very nice, little anchorage and spent the night there. Next morning up and off we go to Nara Inlet on Hook Island in THE WHITSUNDAYS...we were here - yehaaa....FINALLY!


TRYING to catch dinner at Cape Gloucester at sunset