December 17, 2004
To Our Sea Diver Friends,
It is so weird experiencing Christmas during the dead of
summer! Santas here usually wear bathing suits, or if
traditionally dressed can only exist in well air conditioned
malls. And all those recipes for baked and roasted things can be
trashed. The average temperature this month has been around 78
degrees or so, the only reason it is lower than mid eighties is
due to several days of rain when it probably gets down to 74 or
so. We do love it here, the weather is just about the best in
the world, and there are more things to do/see than we will ever
have time for.
We spent the beginning of the year hiding out from the tourists
that descend on to all tourist beachs in Australia during the
kids summer vacation in January. By February, we had family
visits with Tom's brother Bill and his wife Jan, followed by
Tom's son Tom. We did all the tourist type stuff like the
Australia Zoo, shopping in the hinterland town of Montville,
shopping in Noosa, the Currumbin Zoo on the Gold Coast, a car
trip to Murwullimbah on the New South Wales Coast, plus lots of
hikes. The zoos are amazing - you can pet baby koalas, sit with
kangaroos and watch the joeys climb in and out of their mom's
pouch, watch crocs go for Steve Irwin, and see some of the most
beautiful birds in the world.
We took our first road trip to Sydney, which is about 600 miles
south, through mostly empty and mostly beautiful country - this
place is huge! Sydney is a very cosmopolitan city where walking
is a much easier way to see things than trying to drive. Like
all big cities, the traffic is awful. We spent a week on a
sister ship to Toujours, Cest Assez, with good friends Julie and
Glenn Bradley and saw almost everything (with the required photo
of the Sydney Opera House). After that exhausting week we hooked
up with our good friends John and Pam Robinson on Crusoe and
spent a very relaxing week cruising the Pittwater. This is a
huge cruising area about 50 miles north of Sydney.
We took our annual trip home in May, hoping to be there in time
for the emergence of our sixth grandchild, and of course missed
the event by a couple of days. Proud parents Kristy and Brooke
welcomed beautiful Olivia. That makes 4 granddaughters and 2
grandsons - certainly a full house by any standard! We were able
to spend lots of time with all our family and some friends, and
had the wonderful experience of being strip searched every time
we got on a plane between Orange County, Lake Tahoe, and
Monterey. Can hardly wait to do that again.
Once back in Australia, we finished provisioning and were off to
see tropical Australia (with the boat, of course). One of the
very big benefits of cruising in Australia is that you really do
not need to ever do any overnight passages -Yayyyy! Our first
little adventure took us up the infamous Sandy Strait, which is
the protected route between Frasier Island and the coast.
Infamous because it is so shallow, which, much to our dismay and
our 7 foot draft, is typical of almost all Australia cruising!
Didn't take long to bump and fortunately it is very muddy, so no
damage was done. We were soon joined by our friends Pam and John
on Crusoe, and got to watch them bump (and they have a
re-tractable keel)! As it was July, we were cold and wanting to
get north as fast as possible. Fortunately the prevailing wind
is from the south east (this will come up again) so we were able
to travel fast. We did get slowed down a little bit by a wee
fire in the engine room and had to spend a week at the Great
Keppel marina. Lucky for us, almost no damage was done and we
were soon on our way.
At the Whitsundays, Crusoe left as they were expecting lots of
company and were planning to spend most of the season cruising
that area. It looked beautiful, but we were still not warm
enough so kept going on to Townsville. At last we were warm.
This is one of the jumping off spots for the Great Barrier Reef,
but is not a true tourist town as there are lots of agriculture,
mining, and some industry. I especially like the marina as I
could walk to the local pool. After an enjoyable week we were
off to Cairns. This took only 2 days, we arrived on the third
day into tourist heaven, or whatever, depending on your point of
view. We later found out that approximately 5000 people a day
got out to the reef from here. There is a boat station just like
a train station to handle all the people. You can imagine that
this is not good for the reef, and the tour operators have asked
for new areas on the reef to anchor(or ruin). Fortunately for
the rest of us, this mob of people is pretty contained, so they
do not wonder off into pristine areas. If you really want to see
the best parts of the reef you need to go out on a multi day
charter boat, or take your own boat.
After a week of madness, we got underway to the Ribbon Reefs,
about 100 miles north of Cairns. Even with the very good Aussie
charts, we found reefs not marked on the charts - you must
travel during the day, with a person on the bow. We reached
Ribbon Reefs 1 to 3 and did some general snorkeling to check out
the area. Very pretty, the coral was especially prolific altho I
would have liked to have seen more fish. We anchored at Ribbon
Reef 2 which was protected altho it was very weird to be
literally parked out in the middle of nowhere with water as far
as the eye could see. There were no other boats which made it
even stranger. We ended up staying there for 2 days hoping that
a 25 knot wind would die down. When the forecast was for another
5 days of strong wind, we decided it was time to go. We spent
another 5 days at Hope Island; the reefs looked very healthy but
the visibility was a good 5 feet which kind of killed our
enthusiasm for snorkeling. This is a regular problem with the
closer, inshore reefs. Visibility is greatly affected by runoff,
especially from the sugar cane farms. After the wind stopped, we
went into Port Douglas, a very upscale resort about 50 miles
north of Cairns. The marina is part of the Mirage Resort, which
meant that there was a very upscale shopping center attached,
what a wonderful way to dry your clothes - shopping!
It was finally time to turn around, remember that South East
prevailing wind?? Now we had to head directly into it so the
strategy is to go like a little bat out of hell during a
northerly, then stop when the wind changes. And the time to do
that is for six weeks starting October 1st. We had no problems
getting back to Townsville, and then another easy trip to the Whitsundays. We finally spent some time there, enough to know
that we will definitely return next year and spend at least 2
months in this wonderful cruising area of 50 islands. We
returned to Mooloolaba in mid November, having a pretty easy
trip most of the time. Alas, our slip fees were increased 50
percent (even higher for smaller slips), so after a week we
brought the boat to Newport Waterways Marina in Scarborough. We
are now about 20 miles north of Brisbane where we will remain
until March. Our plans next year include cruising 2 months in
the Louisiades, part of Papua New Guinea, about a five day
trip. We will cruise the Whitsundays, as well, and also hope to
spend a good two months at Lizard Island, about 200 miles north
of Cairns. It will be a very full year.
We hope you are all well and enjoying the holidays. We miss all
of you, if you are coming our way please let us know. We would
love to see you!!
Cheers, Bonnie and Tom
