Sailing downwind in the Whitsunday Passage,
The weather forecast said three days of North by Northeasterly winds 10 ~15 knots with a Southerly change late Tuesday afternoon. That sounded perfect as I thought we’d have a nice sail through the Whitsunday Islands and be in Mackay Marina by the time the winds swing to the south…(Tuesday was Melbourne Cup day, a huge thing here in Australia…)
The sail out of Airlie Beach started slow in very light winds but picked up about noon to make it a nice day, we anchored at Cid Harbor in the lee of Whitsunday Island one of the places with enough room for a 100 yachts and that night it had many charter boats and a few of the mega buck yachts you see in only in the Whitsundays…Sunday morning we sailed out of Cid Harbor into the Whitsunday Passage (kind of like Interstate 5 in California)…This being the channel that runs right through the center of the premier sailing grounds in Australia…A perfect Sunday afternoon and all the fancy boats were out of their marina berths in Hamilton Island for a day of sailing…Areté running downwind with all the rags up…The Whitsunday Passage is a green ( no fishing) zone so of course there were schools of Tuna and Mackerel jumping, chasing bait fish…about 4:oo pm we pulled into a heavenly anchorage ; a key hole shaped bay, that looks kind of like a canyon with cliffs on both sides and a small sand beach and pine trees growing between of the rocks…It isn’t in the cruising guides so we had it all to ourselves…
The following day Monday Nov.5th the winds started very light so we had the small spinnaker sail up and then the wind started howling and down came the spinnaker and out went a half furled headsail…just a little sail up, no main sail and Areté is going like a Boeing…I heard another yacht on the radio telling someone his wind gauge says 27 knots…We don’t have a wind gauge on Areté but that seemed about right…We had just a bit of the headie out and screaming down waves, surfing the swells of a couple meters sometimes waves doubling up into roller coaster ride quality of whooop deee dooos…. just magic…!!!!!... About 5;00pm we started wondering where we could anchor in this much wind??? We chose a North facing bay on Keswick Island and saw couple yachts already there…This bay has a huge fringing reef that comes way out so we were forced to anchor in almost 40 feet of water…( this is near Mackay with the 5 meter tides, biggest on the Queensland coast)…the wind was still blowing hard from the NE keeping Areté on a very tight anchor chain…I put the GPS anchor drag alarm on and went to bed…At 2;00am the alarm starts beeping and that officially ended the evenings, sleeping, The Southeasterly wind change came through like a freight train I spent the next four hours watching the GPS to see if we were going to be washed ashore onto huge rocks that had waves smashing into them sounding like a car wreck, the swell picked up very quickly making just standing or walking around the boat difficult. There was no moon as it’s just a couple days before the new moon…At about 6;00am the sun came up and we got outta there ASAP! It’s 16 nautical miles from there to the Mackay Marina straight into the wind direction…it was rough as guts waves stacking up and spray coming over the decks…Of course I had to put the lures out and ended up losing a good lure not sure if it was a strike or rock...We were unable to make much speed in such rough seas…so it took 5 hours to get to Mackay Marina… …when we entered the breakwater I went below deck and saw books on the floor, all the stuff on the shelves in the bathroom scattered all over the bathroom floor…stuff everywhere, shelves empty…yes it was pretty bumpy coming across from Keswick Island…we were allocated berth W-42 right in the middle of the row with boats everywhere and a 20+ knot wind causing plenty of drift and making berthing this boat a real challenge, luckily a guy on another yacht grabbed a line and we were in the pen and tied off in one shot…Surprised myself that it went so well…my heart was pounding and my legs felt like jelly but we were out of the wind and secure…with just over an hour before the Melbourne Cup started…The guy on the million dollar catamaran next to us invited me aboard to see the race and have a look at what I’d buy if I win the lottery…He explained he just bought the boat and doesn’t know much about sailing and thought we were old salts cause the way we pulled Arete into the slip with all that wind…”See, you can fool some of the people some of the time”…

Well the horse my buddy Grahame called to give me some inside information on ran third so it was a good thing I didn’t have a chance to put any money on the race…It is hard to imagine how big the Melbourne Cup horse race is here in OZ but it’s a day when the gals dress up in their best dresses and wear hats, most offices close about mid day and everyone goes to the pub to watch the race…

Now we’re settled into the Mackay Marina life we’ll spend a couple days victualling and I’ll head over to Fishing World to get a few more lures as I’ll have many chances for some great fish sailing south from here in a few days…