Location Report - Flinders Group of Islands - Owen Channel
Sea Mist > Sold to New Owners July 2016
John and Cheryl Ellsworth
Thu 21 Jun 2012 10:08
We are anchored in this very comfortable channel anchorage with 3 other sailing vessels: our regular friends S/V Kilkea and S/V Imagine.....and new sailing friends from Brisbane....Robin and Fergus of S/V Y Knot.
Wel,l the simple one-word description of today's 83 nm sail.....wonderful! No complaints.....worked through a number of sail configurations that all worked well....... mainly, wing-on-wing and pole-out / broad-reaching...most of the time averaging over 8.5 kts with some top speeds on the swells of over 11 kts.
We sailed virtually from when we lifted the anchor until we were within a couple of hundred meters from our anchor drop at the destination anchorage of Flinders.
The last day at Lizard was a good one: Cheryl and I, joined by Kilkea and Paikea Mist ( 2 other Canadian Boats), went on a cross island hike.....Kilkea and us went to Blue Lagoon....a gorgeous beach with a few interesting artifacts representing both Mother Nature's creativity as well as the creativity of cruising sailors who have passed this way before us. Hopefully we will soon get an internet connection that will enable us to upload some photos for you to share our experience in some small way.
Cheryl decided it was too cold/windy to snorkel the reef so she settled for my experience and photo record.
It was an early morning start today.,.,alarm set for 4:30 am and we were underway by 5:30 ...well before dark....on this first day of WINTER in this part of the world. I noticed the water temp had dropped back one degree to 25 C/77 F ...just to make sure we would not ignore the season change to WINTER. ( Cheryl and I reflected on our experience in the Toronto area last December 21st when winter began in the Northern Hemisphere.....we definitely prefer the TROPICS version of season shift.
That's all folks....no internet in these REMOGE areas of Oz....no people / no technology...just us crazy sailors heading north.....and, from what we hear, a few fishermen/pearl farmers in some of the rivers/inlets...heavily populated by "BIG SALTIES"...Australia's world famous salt water crocodiles.
CYL....J&C
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