The Great White Hunter Returns

Rob and Henma on Easy Rider

Wayne and Barbara on Casper

We finally left Seisia on 11 Nov on a small good weather window.  Casper, Easy Rider and 2 others left the day before to get a couple of hours start from Cape York.  






















We sailed day and night and caught up with them the following evening at Shelbourne Bay.

The following morning we left for Portland Roads at 3 a.m.  Not good sailing that day.  We tacked 24 times into head winds, and covered 82nm to do 45nm.  We made it into Portland Roads 18 hours later and amazingly, all four yachts made it within minutes of each other.

Bougainvillea

Portland Roads is a small settlement of shacks and homes with a permanent population of 8.  It has no shops or facilities except for a small restaurant which caters for the tourist trade during the dry season.  We all had a delicious meal there which was as good as any you could hope for in any city. Rob and Henma shared their beer and wine with the rest of us who had all ran out. 

Thanks Rob and Henma!

Hibiscus

Flowers grew in abundance creating cascades of colour.


We spent almost a week there waiting for the next favourable weather window.  Once again, we waited behind for another day after the others had set sail which was just as well.  The toilet decided to block that day.  I'll spare you the details of the unblocking. . .  you don't want to know :(

The weather had turned for the better and we had a great sail to Morris Is, then to Cape Melville where we met up with Easy Rider again.

Cape Melville

The coast was spectacular with boulder cloaked mountains, multicoloured foothills, brilliant green mangroves and golden beaches.


At first light  it was off again as we continued to take advantage of the weather window.




We set off on glorious calm seas, tinted with the rosy glow of early morning sunrise.


Crazily balanced rocks formed small islands off the end of the cape.





















Fish, dolphins and birds were all gorging themselves on the schools of bait fish passing through.  I had a happy morning with my camera and made the most of the calm conditions and early morning light.

The Great White Hunter made the most of the conditions and set the rod.   

I made a short movie.

This movie uses 27.7mb and goes for 1:41s.  

Next stop was at Cape Bedford where we had anchored on our way up.  We had an electrical storm that night which continued till early the next morning. Winkali got a much needed fresh water wash.

I was looking forward to the next stop which was Hope Isles.  We arrived there early in the afternoon and unlike the stop on the way up, the seas were friendly and sparkly.  

We launched the dinghy for the short trip to the island. On the way up from Cairns we had been moored off the island for 4 days and only ventured there once because of the windy conditions.  Since then, we have had anchorages which have been over a mile from the shore, due to shallow waters, and had to cross in all sorts of winds.  Now when we looked at the ridiculously short distance to the island, we couldn't believe that we hadn't gone over more often on the first stay.


The tide was high so I didn't get the variety of birds which feed on the sand reefs at low tide but I was rewarded with Terns feeding over a reef close by.

"You dive in and grab a fish like this, junior"

 I managed to capture this sequence of photos of a Crested Tern (the one with the fish) teaching its offspring to fish.

"now I hope you are watching"

"Because now I'll drop it so you can get it yourself"

Along comes a pesky seagull, in for a free feed as they do.

Tern jumps in to rescue the meal before seagull gets it. Junior observes.

Tern and seagull fight.  Junior observes.

Fish gets away while Tern and seagull fight.  Junior observes.

Seagull starts to fight dirty.  Junior is watching and learning.

Junior comes in for a closer look as Seagull takes a chomp at Tern's wi

The weather held up once again and the following morning we left on our final leg to Port Douglas.

This is the final chapter of this Winkali trip.

We didn't do the voyage we set out to do.  No we don't regret that.  We were running out of time for the west coast and even if we had continued, we would have been too rushed to have enjoyed the experience.  

We have met some great people on our return trip who have been mentioned in this blog and we hope to stay in touch and maybe sail along side them again in future travels.

We will now try to find some work as we spent a lot more money than we expected to and there are a few repairs that need doing to Winkali before we set off again . . . . like locating and repairing a couple of leaks which dampened our enthusiasm on more than one occasion.

We've gained experience and learnt a lot, not only about sailing either.  

I've learnt how to do a blog! It's taken many hours, usually in trying to make the text and photos go where I want them - they do have a mind of their own.

See you soon.