20.32S 149.07E   Sunday 31^st August – Great, late evening on Zipadedoda last night but we still managed an early 6.00am start today and by 9.30am we were gently pulling out of Mackay Marina and motor sailing towards the Whitsunday Islands.  All the trepidation of leaving disappeared and we were blessed with a gorgeous sunny day with azure blue seas and a two knot current helping us on our way.

The Whitsunday area is a particularly beautiful and unspoilt part of the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park in the Queensland tropics.

They are actually two drowned mountain ranges cut off from the mainland by past geologic events.

Sailing through Goldsmith and Linne Islands 

Today we sailed past Brampton, through the middle of Lindeman and Shaw between Goldsmith and Linne Islands, a tiny little passage where the seas were confused and the current at its strongest in our favour, to settle for the night at the most beautiful anchorage in a cove of Thomas Island (next to Dead Dog Island).  This is surprisingly the first time we have actually sailed alone, stopped in an anchorage alone (as opposed to attaching to a buoy) and been completely alone………not another single yacht or person in sight…..and it is wondrous! We have watched the tide dropping away to reveal the Island’s reef, the birds are singing joyously in the trees at the end of their day and the white sandy beach looks pristine.  To reach Darwin by the 22^nd to give us time to clear customs and infestations before our children arrive on the 24th, we should aim to cover around 65 miles per day to avoid night sailing…….early starts should be fine and we are really looking forward now to the journey.

Our beautiful anchorage with the beach to the left

No palm trees but a rocky beauty of its own

The only slight hiccup we had was finding we had run out of gas in one bottle and finding the regulator was too damaged to use on the other!  We set up an ingenious method of transferring the full bottle to the empty by lifting it higher up, joining a reinforced hose to both, opening the valves and waiting for the heavy liquid gas to transfer itself – bingo!