Start Loc: Shaw Island (20o 30.27'S, 149o 03.12'E)
Narrative: Yesterday was spent at anchor at Shaw Island. The kids did their schoolwork and then I set a swing up off the side of the boat and they had a play and a swim. We ran the engine for 17 minutes to give us hot water.
We decided that today it was time to move on and start heading for a marina. Today is our twelfth day out; we have run out of bread, we are on to our last litre of long life milk, we are starting to run low on other provisions, we have one empty gas bottle, we are on the aft tank and hence starting to get low on water, and we need to send the solar regulator back for replacement. So it is time to head for a marina. We will need to go up to Airlie Beach and into Abel Point Marina (I think we will be in and out of there probably three times as we take our time exploring the Whitsundays). Hence, we decided we would move to Long Island today and then into the marina tomorrow. We tried to radio Palm Bay Resort on Long Island to see if we could take a mooring in their lagoon (stern line to a palm tree on the shore - for a fee of course), but we didn't get an answer. A web site told us they were closed from Jan 2011 until further notice. Wondering if they had gone the same way as Brampton and Great Keppel, we decided we drop in and see.
We raised anchor at Shaw Island at 10:45am, giving us about two hours left of the outgoing tide. The winds were SSE at 15-20kts, so our heading of 280 degrees magnetic (with tide and wind taken into account to have a course made good of 290 degrees mag) had us on a broad reach. We sailed very comfortably (with initially two but then one reef in the main and the head sail furled to 100%) at 5.5 to 6.5kts boat speed, and the favourable tide gave us another 1.0 to 1.5kts. Our course brought us to the north of Three Fathom Patch and then we ran wing on wing (one sail out each side) up the passage between Long Island and the mainland. We lost the favourable tide as we sailed through the narrowest part of the passage ("The Narrows"), half a mile short of Palm Bay.
The resort looked fairly deserted less a few people lazing on the beach and the fact there were two boats and furniture visible. We took up one of the mooring buoys outside the lagoon at 1:15pm, had lunch, and then took the dingy in to find out what the go was. We spoke to the caretakers who told us that the resort is not functioning as a resort anymore, and it was "house guests only". The bar and restaurant etc are all closed up and only the owners of the bungalows are allowed. We weren't even allowed to use a mooring buoy.
We decided we would go up around the corner to Happy Bay off the Long Island Resort. They have ten or so mooring buoys that you can pick up for a fee, but it is a big bay so at 3:20pm we dropped anchor for free.
End Loc: Happy Bay, Long Island (20o 19.75'S, 148o 50.80'E)
Distance run: 17nm (cumulative: 837nm)
Engine hours: 1 hr, 09 min (cumulative: 93 hr 53 min)