Start Loc: Haycock Island, Hinchinbrook Passage (18o 28.25'S, 146o 13.22'E)
Narrative: It was a calm anchorage last night, and insect free, so we all got a good night's sleep. I put the crab pots in this morning, one with fish and one with cat food as bait. I also tried some lure fishing around the mangroves without success. After 'skyping' with both sides of the family we had lunch, and then I pulled the pots - nothing. I will try and pick up some of the local knowledge while we are in Cardwell tomorrow. We left Haycock Island at 2:13pm and sailed / motor sailed further up the passage.
On our walk through the forest at Zoe Bay yesterday, we noticed plenty of trees on the forest floor (Cyclone Yasi damage), but the remainder of the vegetation and canopy seemed to be in pretty good nick. After a cyclone, a lot of the trees are totally stripped of vegetation and the effect is that a forest looks like a bunch of clean white sticks. As we came up the west side of the island, the clean white stick effect was still obvious, but there was a lot of vegetation regrowth as well. Hinchinbrook seems to be recovering from Yasi well enough.
We were originally thinking we would anchor around Gayundah Creek tonight as it is one of the last 'protected' anchorages. Given the calm weather we have at the moment, we decided we did not need protection from developed trade winds and that we could anchor pretty well anywhere in the channel. We settled on Scraggy Point on the west side of Hinchinbrook Island. It juts out enough that you can tuck in away from any NE swell, and is one of the few spots on the west side with easy land access - it has a beach. We anchored at Scraggy Point at 5:00pm in 4m of water and good holding mud.
Tomorrow we will have a quick look at the Hinchinbrook Marina to see if the economical environment is recovering from Yasi as well as the natural environment of Hinchinbrook Island. Hinchinbrook Marina is the one that provided the footage of all the boats piled up in the SW corner of the marina after all the pontoons floated off their piles (the piles were not too high so they didn't ruin the views from the multimillion dollar apartments, and obviously a little too short for the storm surge). We will then use the morning high tide to come alongside the public jetty at Cardwell. The least depth the chart shows is 0.6m LAT so I need 1.1m of tide, but I will take the safe option and wait until at least 8:25am when I have 1.7m of tide (I'm tipping it will be more like 10:30am!). It doesn't drop back down to 1.7m again until 4:35pm and we will be long gone by that stage. We will fill up our water at the jetty, and I want to fill up our ULP jerry as well and get some bread and milk. We will then make our way into Missionary Bay for the night, anchoring down in one of the creeks.
End Loc: Scraggy Point, Hinchinbrook Island (18o 17.43'S, 146o 06.24'E)
Distance run: 14nm (cumulative: 1469nm)
Engine hours: 1 hr, 22 min (cumulative: 181 hr 41 min)