Start Loc: Horseshoe Bay, Magnetic Island (19o 06.64'S, 146o 51.62'E)
Narrative: After the engine hours we clocked today, you would doubt we are on a sail boat. We left Horseshoe Bay at 8:45am in winds of less than 5kts, so we ended up motoring all the way to Ross River. Once we were upstream of the new bridge works (about 10:40am) we picked up a vacant mooring buoy and the kids and I took the dinghy up the river to collect the charts. It didn't take long and we had the dinghy back on the davits and dropped the mooring at around 11:15am.
During the passage to Ross River, we got a phone call from Yacht Club telling us some mail had come in for us that morning. There is no way the mail run had been already, and yet they "didn't have any" for us when we rang them again yesterday afternoon. Mail has probably been one of the hardest things to work through. Holding mail is not a service marinas can charge for hence none of the them really care. Some will try to do the right thing and phone when they stumble across it, but none of them really appear to have a system in place for boats that are passing through. We are sure we have lost several items of mail.
Anyway, the Yacht Club phoned and said they had some mail, so we motored from Ross River to Ross Creek and stopped off at the yacht club to pick up the mail. Obviously that didn't take long either and we cast off around 12:15pm and motored back down the creek.
The plan was to go back to the small craft mooring area just inside the offshore breakwater, anchor, have lunch, and take the kids in to the water park for another quick play before heading off again. We had lunch and then remembered the water park is closed on Tuesdays and Wednesdays for cleaning and maintenance. The kids were very disappointed.
We raised the anchor at 1:30pm and motored north into wind (now N at 10-15kts) up the east side of Magnetic Island. We stopped in picturesque Florence Bay to check it out, but it was too exposed for an overnight anchorage. As we rounded the north east corner of the island, we were finally able to get some sail out and give the motor a rest. We sailed 2nm or so under full head sail (no main) back to Horseshoe Bay, and dropped anchor 3:55pm.
On the way in, the kids saw a floating tomato sauce bottle with some fishing line attached. Once we were anchored they took the dinghy to pick up the "rubbish". It turned out the fishing line was connected to the curved part of a large D-shackle. It would appear that someone was marking something by using the shackle as a weight and the sauce bottle as a float. Too bad for them as it is now all rubbish and not in a position to foul someone's prop (or to kill turtles, as was the kids' concern)!
Tomorrow we will sail the 35nm or so to Little Pioneer Bay at Orpheus Island. The only thing we need to be wary of is the RAAF doing flare drops at Rattlesnake Island in Halifax Bay. We haven't received a Notice to Mariners, but got the details of the 5nm exclusion zone over the VHF today.
End Loc: Horseshoe Bay, Magnetic Island (19o 06.74'S, 146o 51.67'E)
Distance run: 33nm (cumulative: 1380nm)
Engine hours: 5 hr, 21 min (cumulative: 169 hr 59 min)