Start Loc: Fitzroy Island (16o 55.95'S, 145o 59.12'E)
Narrative: We spent yesterday at Fitzroy Island. While the kids did their school work I put on my fins and goggles and scrubbed the keel, the rudder and the prop clean. The kids joined me in the water and scrubbed the hull either side of the rudder for me. I will finish scrubbing the hull in a few installments over the next couple of weeks. The kids played on the floating trampoline, and then we went ashore, had lunch, and did two of the walks on the island; to "The Hidden Garden" and to "Nudey Beach". All in all, not a bad day.
We decided to see if we could get in to Cairns and get groceries done today, as there is a fair bit we would like to achieve while we are there. We lifted the anchor at 8:25am and sailed NW towards Cape Grafton. The winds were SE at 10kts, so it was one of those frustrating sails where the faster we went the less the apparent wind strength became and the more the sails flapped. 10kts of true wind on a run will give us about 3kts through the water. That would take us over 5 hours to get to Cairns instead of 3; too long. So we helped the sails by motoring. Motor sailing at 5kts reduced the apparent wind strength to 5kts, which is not enough to fill the sails. I ended up putting all sail away and motoring figuring it would be better once we got around Cape Grafton and were on a broad to beam reach sailing west across Mission Bay.
Fortunately it did get better. The lay of the land brought the wind from the south, still at about 10kts, so we sailed across Mission Bay and past False Cape to the channel on a mostly beam reach at about 5kts. We dropped sail before the shipping channel, motored down to the marina, and were tied up in our berth by 11:45am. After finally finding the marina office and checking in, we had lunch on the waterfront and then followed a recommendation to go to "Rusty's Market" to get fruit and veg. It was certainly cheaper than the supermarkets.
Tomorrow we will do groceries and get some other things we need, including at least 1L of oil so we have enough to do the 200 hour service on the engine. Doing the service will be Sunday's job.
End Loc: Cairns (16o 55.21'S, 145o 46.90'E)
Distance run: 17nm (cumulative: 1604nm)
Engine hours: 2 hr, 10 min (cumulative: 194 hr 37 min)