Start Loc: Sawmill Beach, Cid Harbour, Whitsunday Island (20o 15.35'S, 148o 56.83'E)
Narrative: As planned, we spent yesterday at anchor off Sawmill Beach. The walk up Whitsunday Peak was about 2.5km each way and took us just under an hour to get up and 45 minutes back down, but the view from the top was spectacular and worth the walk. We ran the engine for 22 minutes.
We raised the anchor at 9:02am this morning and motored west past the top end of Cid Island. The forecast for today was S/SE winds at 10-15kts. We raised full main sail inside Cid Island in 6kts of true wind. As we got just west of Cid Island we started to get some clean wind at about 12kts, so we let out full head sail as well and started sailing. We had not yet turned off the motor when the wind jumped to 18kts and we were overpowered and had to reduce canvas. We furled the head sail, turned into wind and put a reef in the main, came back off and let out 100% (reduced) head sail. It was then a comfortable sail on a broad reach at 6kts in 15-18kts of wind.
I decided to take a slightly different route again and sailed through Unsafe Passage (which is safe enough for yachts) between North Molle and Mid Molle Islands. Once through the passage, we saw humpback whales (mother and calf) swimming SE along the coast of North Molle, with the calf practicing its jumping out of the water. Shortly after, we spotted another three humpback whales playing in Molle Channel, also moving SE. An adult whale decided to give us a demonstration of its breaching ability, but unfortunately we did not quite have the cameras ready and we were probably a bit far off anyway.
We sailed past Pioneer Rocks and into Pioneer Bay, finally dropping anchor amongst the hundred or so other boats moored and anchored in Airlie Bay at 12:05pm. We took the dinghy ashore and had lunch, and took the opportunity to restock some grog. After updating the log and our position, we will go ashore again and have a swim and a barbecue dinner at the lagoon (similar to Southbank).
End Loc: Airlie Bay, Airlie Beach (20o 15.81'S, 148o 43.17'E)
Distance run: 16nm (cumulative: 952nm)
Engine hours: 1 hr, 31 min (cumulative: 107 hr 03 min)