Island Hopping to Mackay

Well it’s been almost a month since my last post about our adventures in Keppel Bay. Since that time we’ve made our way to Mackay, which I’ll tell you about in this post and from there we spent three weeks cruising in the Whitsundays. There was not much internet or phone reception in the Whitsundays which made working on the blog difficult. Plus, it was hard to justify sitting in the cabin typing on a laptop when we were amongst such incredibly beautiful scenery!

So my apologies for the lack of updates. We are so pleased to finally hear about the lifting of those onerous restrictions that our family and friends in Victoria have been living under. We hope that you are able to get some semblence of normality back again soon. Life in the north of Australia is pretty great so get up here as soon as you can!

This blog picks up as we leave Great Keppel Island and head north to Mackay.

After another rolly night on anchor at Great Keppel Island and not much sleep, we left just after 7 am for our passage north to Port Clinton. Perfect sailing conditions, with fifteen to twenty knots of wind right off our beam, had us flying along at six to eight knots. I think we even hit nine knots at one stage!

Port Clinton

It was low tide when we arrived at the entrance to Port Clinton making for a very bumpy ride through the entrance as the seas and the swell collided, pushing our boat up and down over waves, as well as yawing from side to side. But we pushed through and motored into the southern arm to find a very quiet and peaceful anchorage. We were the only yacht in the area for several hours and we drank in the serenity. It was also dead flat, with not an ounce of swell, we would sleep well that night!!

We spent a day in this beautiful place, relaxing and exploring. Port Clinton is known to be home to many dugongs and I was determined to spot one of these elusive creatures. We took the tinny out and ventured along the creek and up some of the little arms. We spotted one dugong swimming around just under the surface, but unfortunately never got a very good look at him.

We went for a swim but the water was murky and visibility wasn’t great. From the tinny we spotted a huge turtle and a pod of dolphins and Matt jumped in to try to swim with them, but the dolphins didn’t want to play. That evening Matt caught a little gummy shark, but we threw him back. Matt also did some sculpting of his facial hair; I couldn’t look at him without laughing.

That night there was a full moon, and it was a bright orange colour. With absolutely no light pollution around, except for the anchor lights on the three yachts, the night sky was incredible, the stars so bright. Matt took some amazing photos of the full moon setting and the milky way stretching brightly across the sky.

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Pearl Bay

Very light winds the following day saw us motoring the short distance to Pearl Bay. This time we crossed the entrance to Port Clinton at high tide and it was all smooth water, a completely different experience. Pearl Bay had been hailed as one of the prettiest anchorages on the coast, so I was very keen to check it out.

It was indeed a very pretty place, with the surrounding islands and hills covered in dense forest. I took the SUP over to the little beach, had a walk and read my book lying on the sand.

Now, Port Clinton and Pearl Bay are on the mainland but from here we would be heading out to the islands and making our way north by hopping from island to island. The weather forecast was for very light winds and minimal swell for the next week. We figured this would be the perfect opportunity to experience some of the smaller islands, with potentially less sheltered anchorages.

Motoring again, as there was no wind, we found the seas to be silky smooth and it was lovely and warm. We spotted a whale cruising in the distance, a turtle, two sea snakes, and a big pod of dolphins came to play in our bow wave.

This was also where we found a kind of brown scum covering large patches of water. In some places it was green or pink. We weren’t sure what it was and hypothesised that it might be an algal bloom.

Hexham Island

Tiny little Hexham Island was our next stop and we anchored in a north facing bay in calm waters. It’s a very pretty spot and we spent two nights here. We didn’t bother getting the tinny off and just used our SUPs to get around. A short walk up the overgrown track on the hill gave us some beautiful views over the bay and surrounding islands.

There was another yacht already in the anchorage when we arrived, and we went over to say Hi and discovered that it was Paul and Julie on Camelot, who we’d first met briefly back in Bermagui in February. How long ago that seems! They invited us over for sundowners which turned into dinner and we had a lovely evening swapping stories and hearing about each others adventures. Paul had picked us up in his tinny so we didn’t have to paddle the SUPs in the dark; this turned out to be a godsend because I’m not sure how Matt would have made it back to the boat on the SUP without falling in. Maybe I would have had to tow him!

Whale Encounter

After a morning skinny dip (we were the only boat left at Hexham), we headed off to the Percys. And just off South Percy Island we had one of our most memorable whale encounters yet.

Matt spotted a whale lying on the surface several hundred metres in front of our boat. He raced to grab his camera while I slowed the boat down and began to approach, and now we could see that it was a mother and a calf. We expected the mother whale to take off when she registered that we were there. But she didn’t move. We edged closer and closer. Still no movement. She was just lying there on the surface. ‘I think it’s dead’ said Matt. ‘Oh god, what should we do?’ and we began to run through options of who we should call for help.

Our thought process didn’t last very long thankfully, as the mother sank below the surface and swam off, with both of us breathing a sigh of relief. She popped up nearby and we approached again, keeping a good distance. The whales spent a lot of time cruising on the surface and we followed them for about an hour, just soaking up the amazing experience of being so close to these majestic creatures.

They hadn’t breached or done any tail slapping or anything too active so after a while when they seemed to be starting to stay underwater for longer periods, we decided to leave them alone and continue on. ‘Well, that’s them done, I reckon’ said Matt, ‘let’s go’ and he began to turn away and lower his camera. Then, Bang!! Both the mother and calf breached simultaneously. Matt swang back around and managed to capture the end of the breach. Incredible!!

The baby breached a couple more times and then we farewelled the whales and continued on our way, marvelling at what an amazing experience we’d just had.

Middle Percy Island – Whites Bay

There were some persistent light winds from the north so we opted to go into Whites Bay on the south of Middle Percy Island, instead of the more exposed anchorages on South Percy Island that we’d originally planned.

Whites Bay was really pretty and very protected and we relished the chance to paddle our SUPs around the bay on the super still water as well as jumping in for several swims. We wandered along the sandy beach, it was an incredibly soft sand and felt beautiful under our feet.

On our first night there, I was downstairs preparing dinner when I heard Matt yell out. He had a baited fishing rod out the back of the boat and he had hooked something big. As he began to reel it in, he realised that it was not just something big, it was something massive. Something so huge that we wouldn’t be landing it in the boat, but he kept reeling it in as we wanted to see just what sort of a monster it was.

By this time it was dark, and as the mammoth fish came closer to the surface of the water, we could very clearly see a huge shadow outlined in the water. It was a very distinctive shaped shadow. It was a shark! Matt had caught a bull shark. A two metre bull shark. It was pulling and thrashing on the line and I tried to capture a photo of the shadow, but it was complete chaos on our boat and nothing came out. The massive shark got away, tearing the fishing line and escaping. I was relieved but I still would have liked a closer look!

Phew! What an adrenaline rush it was! And what a reminder to wear our shark shields and not to swim at dusk or dawn. It was several days before I ventured back into the water with any confidence.

Middle Percy Island – West Bay

Inspired by the success of another yacht who’d caught a big tuna just east of Middle Percy, we went the long way around to our next anchorage in West Bay on the other side of the island. The ‘long way’ consisted of five hours of trolling both lures and bait, up and down in the passage between Middle Percy Island and North East Island, and then right around North East Island and across to West Bay.

We had no luck at all, and by the time Matt was ready to admit defeat, I was well and truly over it. We motored into West Bay, dropped anchor and then paddled our SUPs to shore.

West Bay on Middle Percy Island is an iconic part of sailing culture and history. Sailors have been stopping here for decades (centuries??) to shelter from the weather. It is the home of the infamous Percy Island Yacht Club. The Percy Island Yacht Club has a clubhouse open to all passing sailors and it is tradition for each visiting boat to leave an item in the A-frame to mark their stay.

The A-frame is bursting at the seams with signs of all types, shapes and sizes. There are some very creative offerings. We ended up leaving a print of one of Matt’s photos of Cool Change and the two of us under the stars.

After exploring the A-frame we paddled our SUPs around and into the lagoon where several catamarans were anchored, well out of the way of the swell of West Bay. We found the cat belonging to a guy called Raf, who we’d met several weeks earlier on a bus in Yeppoon. Raf was very happy to see us and invited us on board his cat for a chat and to show us his latest project; a pizza oven made out of a 44 gallon drum.

That evening we enjoyed a spectacular sunset out over the water and the following day saw us hiking the track around the island, which had some gorgeous views from the peak. It was here that we encountered thousands and thousands of blue and black butterflies, fluttering all over the forest. The trees and the air was thick with them, it was a really amazing spectacle. Matt tried taking some photos, but they haven’t really captured the feeling of being surrounded by all these beautiful butterflies.

That second night the new lessees of the island, Robin and Annie, plus Raf and some of the other ‘locals’ hosted a pot luck dinner in the A-frame. We were invited, as well as the other yachties anchored in West Bay with us. We had a lovely night meeting and chatting with a host of new people. All super friendly, it was definitely an eccentric bunch of characters gathered together that night. And I’m including us in that definition too!

Butterflies, butterflies and more butterflies:

Curlew Island

Curlew Island was our final stop before heading to Mackay on the mainland. The seas had picked up a bit as the afternoon progressed and the anchorage was a bit rolly, so this wasn’t my favourite island.

Mackay

Mackay Marina was our home for a full week as we waited for the perfect weather to head out to the islands of the Whitsundays. We did all those things that you do when in the comfort of a marina; go out for coffee, have dinner at the Pub, do the grocery shopping and the laundry, fill the tanks and clean the boat.

And that’s where I’ll take you to in the next blog; the 100 Magic Miles of the Whitsundays.

The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes but in having new eyes.

Proust