Start Loc: Whitehaven Beach, Whitsunday Island (20o 17.48'S, 149o 03.05'E)
Narrative: We spent Sunday 11th September and Monday 12th September anchored off Whitehaven Beach. We rolled a little bit on the swell at times, but for the most part it was a comfortable anchorage with good hold in clean, fine sand. And of course the scenery and the weather were spectacular. We ran the engine for 16 minutes and 20 minutes Sunday and Monday respectively, for hot showers at the end of each day.
We decided that today was time to move on. We raised anchor at 10:20am and motored away from the beach. We started down Solway Passage so we could get mobile reception, and when we did phoned Brett at Hamilton Island to see how he was going with the 5hp. It was done, so we decided we would head to Hamilton to get it straight away. As we came past Frith Rock and south of Whitsunday Island, we were no longer protected a bit from the SE winds by Teague Island. We found 20-25kts with seas of about 2m and swell about 1.5m, all from the SE. We had to go largely SW to Fitzalan Passage so we would beam on to all this for a couple of hours. We decided the 5hp wasn’t that urgent and it could wait for a few days, and turned back up Solway Passage.
We ran wing on wing NNE back past Whitehaven Beach on the east side of French Shoal. Here we crossed a bit of a deep hole, with the sounder showing 132m of water at one stage. It was strange being in so much water when French Shoal 300m west of us dries at low water springs, and Chalkies Beach (Haslewood Island) was 800m east of us. The 18kt wind was pushing us at 6kts, and we had 2kts of favourable tide so we made good time.
We altered course NW and crossed French Shoal in 8m of water just south of Esk Island, and sailed around Tongue Point into Tongue Bay. We anchored in 4.5m of water about one third of the way through the ebb tide. After lunch we took the dinghy ashore and did the walk to the Tongue Point lookout (looking over Hill Inlet down to Whitehaven Beach) and down to Lookout Beach.
End Loc: Tongue Bay, Whitsunday Island (20o 14.40'S, 149o 01.09'E)
Distance run: 10nm (cumulative: 895nm)
Engine hours: 1 hr, 19 min (cumulative: 100 hr 20 min)