Third Time's a Charm - Marlin Marina, Cairns, Queensland, Australia

Harmonie
Don and Anne Myers
Sun 11 Jul 2010 01:17
16:55.106S  145:46.913E
 
Ok.  Finally.  As promised, here's the gory details of our sail up and over the top of Australia.  Starting with Cairns.
 
We arrived in Cairns (pronounced 'Cans') waaaay back when on June 4th and stayed four days - just long enough to stock up on food, fuel and wine, see the sights, and get the generator exhaust system 'sorted' (translation from Aussie-talk: fixed or figured out).  Correction: long enough for Don to get the generator exhaust system sorted and for me to see the sights.  The only sights Don saw during our four-day Cairns stay were the inside of two restaurants and two chandleries, and the inside of the engine compartment.  We found Cairns and the Marlin Marina to be much nicer, more vibrant and more beautiful than we expected, and would have stayed longer, but after assessing our sailing-progress-to-Darwin situation, we decided we had better get a move on.  At that point, we still had 1300 miles to go and only three weeks to do it in.  This, after taking a very leisurely seven weeks to sail the 700 miles from Brisbane to Cairns.  The speed at which time slips by while cruising around on a sailboat never ceases to amaze us.  Occasionally though, reality pokes through the happy haze in which we live, and we realize it's time to stop lollygagging about and get serious about this sailing thing.
 
So.  Cairns.  According to the Lonely Planet, Cairns has a population of 120,000, whereas Mackay, the previous city-port we visited, is reported as having only 80,000.  Both are growing cities, but each in its own way.  Mackay is all about mining.  Cairns is all about tourism.  Mackay is gritty, with people on a mission bustling through its 4-by-4 grid of streets lined with 3-story Victorian buildings complete with iron lace lined balconies.  Downtown Cairns has a 7x7 grid of streets, and is glitzy with modern hotels and a casino rising well above street level.  Mackay is the gateway to the Whitsunday Islands, whereas Cairns is the gateway to the Great Barrier Reef.  While it's true the Great Barrier Reef stretches down the coast to a point slightly south of Mackay, it's angled, so as you move north up the coast, the reef gets closer and closer to the mainland.  By the time you reach Cairns, the reef is a short 15 miles away.  For the tourist, Cairns is a lovely spot with mountains spiraling up a short distance inland and the reef only a short distance out to sea.  For the cruising sailor, Cairns is a lovely spot with the marina only a block away from the heart of the city and a boardwalk lined with restaurants two steps away from the docks.  Most importantly, there was a very good ice cream shop about ten paces away from the end of our dock and a hairdresser within three blocks.  Oh yeah, and the welder needed to fix our generator's exhaust system was only a short drive away.
 
Cairns was the first place we'd been along the Australian east coast where lots of foreign boats like us were gathered.  It's just about the last stop in civilization before the long slog up and over the top of Australia to Darwin, so boaters like us tend to stop here for a while to bask in the glow of as many cabin lights as we please since there is no need to worry about sucking up battery power when plugged into the land power grid.  Tied to docks floating in extremely calm water also has its appeal to those who are weary of midnight washing machine episodes caused by severe wind against tide phenomena in certain anchorages. 
 
In Cairns we caught up with friends we hadn't seen in a long time and met other boaters headed for Indonesia.  Don and I were working on boat jobs one day at the marina when we heard a woman say, "Harmonie!  Are you the same Harmonie that was in the World ARC rally?".  We popped our heads out of the cabin and there she was, a blast from the World ARC past, Jean.  Jean, who was a crew member for much of the trek across the Pacific on rally boat Graptolite, owned by Martin Pickup, the retired British geologist best known for his half-naked appearance at the Bora Bora farewell party in the Society Islands of French Polynesia.  The last time we saw Jean was two years ago in the anchorage just outside of the Musket Cove Marina in Fiji.  We were just leaving for Tanna, Vanuatu (that fateful, rollicking trip that still holds our record for the longest period of sustained winds over 35 knots), and Jean was just arriving on a boat in the rival Bluewater rally (she had jumped ship from Graptolite in Tonga or Fiji).  So, just like that, two years and several thousand miles later, a boater from the past pops up again.  This slowly rotating brother and sisterhood of circumnavigating sailors has a way of continuously surprising us.  Which means the age-old traveling adage, "Don't worry, you'll never see these people again." is most definitely not true in our case. 
 
Now, about the welder and our generator's exhaust system.  We arrived at the Marlin Marina in Cairns on a Friday morning, and Don was thrilled when he spoke to a local welder who agreed to fix the offending part for us that day.  True to his word, the re-welded part was delivered to Don by sunset that night (6pm in these tropical parts) for a mere $60 (chicken feed in the world of marine repairs).  We celebrated over dinner.  The next morning, Don attempted to re-fit the part into the exhaust system and discovered that the new weld was ok, but the stainless steel plate that the tube was welded to was cracked.  Back to the welder Don went.  This time, it was decided that the steel plate had to be replaced.  The welder agreed to fabricate a new plate and weld it to the tube.  The newly fabricated and welded part was back in Don's hands on Sunday for a mere $450 (slightly more than chicken feed in the world of marine repairs).  We celebrated over dinner.  The next day, Don re-fitted the part only to discover that one of the welds was bad.  On Monday, back to the welder Don went.  The welder agreed to fix the weld.  Tuesday morning, Don went to the welder, inspected the part when it was finished, deemed it okey-dokey, paid $0, and brought it back to the boat where he installed it.  By 11:20 that morning we were on our way.  We celebrated over lunch.  In this case, the age-old adage, "Third time's a charm!" was true.
 
While Don was traipsing back and forth to the welder and climbing in and out of the engine compartment, I was romping around the countryside with Sue, Annette and Tony.  Below are pictures.
 
Picture 1 -  Anchorage just outside the Cairns approach channel with the Great Dividing Range in the background.
 
Picture 2 -  Approaching the marina on the right and passing one of the fast-cat tourist boats headed to the barrier reef. 
 
Pictures 1 and 2 were taken by Helen, who is one-half of the third set of Storyteller guests.  Ray and Helen arrived in Cairns about the same time that Annette and Tony left for New Zealand. Ray and Helen spent time on Storyteller last year in Vanuatu and New Caledonia, and also hosted us along with John and Sue in their Flinders country home during our Australian land tour earlier this year.  These pictures are two of many I borrowed from Helen's far superior collection of Cairns-to-Darwin pictures.
 
Picture 3 - The Kuranda Scenic Railway.  Tony, Annette, Sue and I, along with Dave and Jan from the American boat Baraka, rode the train up into the mountains to the historic town of Kuranda.  Kuranda existed as a booming mining town and drove the development of Cairns as the most convenient port back in the late 1800's.  Over the last century, Kuranda has been reduced to a quaint tourist town, while Cairns has taken over as the main attraction.
 
Picture 4 - The Barron Falls.  The winter here (June, July and August) is also the dry season, so the flow over the 265 meter falls drop isn't spectacular, but the Barron Gorge is still pretty.  The train to Kuranda winds along the side of the gorge, and the views were excellent out the open window as long as you didn't mind the steep ascent, the creaking wooden railcars or the frequent plunges into darkness as the train muscled through the fifteen small, hand-hewn tunnels.
 
Picture 5 - Tony, quite happy to have a sun conure bird perched on his head at Birdworld, one of the tourist attractions in Kuranda.  Annette and I opted to employ umbrellas to ward off potential perching and pooping.  Sue pooh-poohed the umbrellas and persevered through Birdworld with no perching or pooping protection.  In the end, she happily emerged unscathed.
 
Picture 6 - The Rainforest Cableway.  Up in the train, down in the gondola, skimming the tops of the rainforest canopy.  Everyone was happy in our 6-person gondola until it stopped and creaked up and down over a river known to be a home for crocodiles.  We had visions of a mid-air rescue when an announcement came over the PA system declaring the cableway was experiencing a 'technical problem'.  Ten or fifteen minutes later and lots of deep breathing on Annette's part, and we were underway again.  Good thing too because Dave was threatening to unpack his newly purchased didgeridoo (Aboriginal musical instrument made from a hollowed out tree limb that if played well, emits a twanging, vibrating, haunting, base sound often heard in movies depicting Australian scenes) and serenade us.
 
More on our whirlwind Cairns-to-Darwin expedition later.
 
Anne

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