turtle time
Monday, June 23, 2008Year One
Date: 22/6/2008 18:00
Weather: Clear and warm, windy
Location: Scawfell Island 20'55 77S, 149'25 66E
Author: Peter
Our pace has slowed down again and we feel a little out of routine. It wont take long and it will all feel normal again. We are now in the southern edge of the Whitsundays away from where all the charter boats are allowed to go and it is majestic. We have had turtles constantly swimming by for the last few days. 
not sure what this is, looks like eggs.. anyone know?
This is what I imagined the Whitsundays to be like. A quiet island covered in dense green bush (mainly gums), long beaches(if not a little gritty), wonderfully clear water, and coloured coral that is beautiful to snorkel over. We did not realise that giant clams had coloured lips. We saw blue, purple and green. The coral we had seen up until now had been covered in silt and what remained looked fairly forlorn, but this was just alive and bright.
Up until the 19th we were doing fairly long days so that we could meet dad at Mackey (21'06 84S, 149'13 52E). During this time we were wondering where the rest of the cruisers were as we had seen no other sail boats until we arrived at Great Keppel Island (23'09 71S, 150'57 26E) and there they all were. The coast on the way up appeared devoid of humans except around Gladstone where to our surprise there were 28 ships at anchor. Once north of Gladstone it was interesting to see how the colour of the water changed to a stunning turquoise, the same colour Kylie had put into our sign writing, and so clear it feels like you can see the bottom a mere 44 metres down. I also did not realise how many islands there are up here as we now appear to be sailing through a giant maze of them. Their rocks look mainly volcanic in nature and alot of them have pine trees.
We have finally caught up some boats that had left ahead of us. Beagle III (Tas) off Fraser island and Valhalla (Cronulla) at Mackay. We also bumped into an John Harris an old Connells Point sailor cruising up here on his new cat.
Since leaving Bustard Bay we have over-nighted at Cape Capricorn (23'28 97S 151'13 89E), Great Keppel Island, South Percy Island (21'44 22S 150'18 59E), Mackay Marina, Keswick Island - 2 nights (20'55 77S 149'25 66E) and Scawfell Island. Keswick was a little disappointing but Scawfell well and truly made up for it.
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