The Highs and Lows of Sailing

View from Whitsunday Peak with Hook Island in the far background

The Highs

From Shaw Is we went to Whitsunday Island where there was good shelter from the swell and partial shelter from the wind.

The wind tends to play weird games in the Whitsundays as it funnels around and over the islands.  One minute it would be dead still, the next you could get a gust of 25kn which would last about 10 seconds, then it would be still again.

We anchored at Sawmill Bay, so named because they used to harvest Hoop Pines from this area in the late 1800s.  It was abandoned when they decided there weren't many Hoop Pines left here and there were more at Townsville.

There is still the remnants of a dam built on the creek  which runs into the bay.

They Pines seem to have recovered and are commonly seen on most of the islands on the Great Barrier Reef.

Whitsunday Island has a few walking tracks, one of them starting at Sawmill Bay and going to Whitsunday Peak, at a height of 407m. 

An excellent view of the surrounding islands was the reward for taking the trek. 

The view of the other side showing Hamilton Island in the background

I was a bit dubious about my fitness as we don't do a lot of foot mileage on the boat, however, the well maintained track wound back and forth through tropical rainforest in a very civilised manner and we got to the top quite easily.

I nearly didn't attempt the walk, as the sign at the bottom said one had to be very fit for the walk and it involved  climbing over boulders through gullies to get there.  The truth was, there was a couple of small boulders at one creek crossing. 

 

As we climbed higher, these millipedes appeared on and around the path.  Ian was brave enough to pick some up.  This gave me the advantage of having a group of them together as well as them being nicely curled up.  If you look closely, you can see that they appear to have wet patches on them.  After Ian had arranged them so nicely, he found he had an orange liquid on his hands which had a strong smell of iodine.  It must be a defence reaction of the millipedes.  We thought of collecting some millipedes and adding them to our First Aid Kit.

Another shorter walk took us to nearby Dugong Bay which claims to have the occasional dugong, although, we didn't see any and we are expert dugong spotters by now.

There are clearings here for campers with picnic tables, shelters and toilets.  Access is only by boat.  We continued to be impressed with how tidy and well maintained the area was.

One thing the rangers missed though was a new crop of stinging trees emerging on the side of the walking track.  A few meters in the forest were the parents trees, looking healthy and ready to sting.  These are related to stinging nettles, only they're a thousand times worse.  Covered with fine silica hairs, they attach themselves to the skin of unwary passers by and break off.  A neurotoxin is transferred into the victim via the hollow silica hairs which causes *excruciating pain which can last for weeks or even months. There is no true and tested pain relief and the best one can do is to place sticking plaster or wax strip over the affected area and try to remove as many as possible without breaking them off at skin level.

*Ian disagrees with the word excruciating and thinks I should modify it to 'excruciating if you're  a girl'.  To him it's just a mild pain.  I feel there may be a lot of girls out there.

The Lows

We've been keeping a close watch on a low pressure system that has been almost stationary in the Coral Sea for several weeks now. 

At this time of the year, there is always the chance it could form into a cyclone. 

We had been waiting in the Whitsunday area for over a week now to see what was going to happen with this particular low. 

As it started to slowly move our way, we made contingency plans.  Abell Point Marina at Airlie Beach was only two hours sail away, so on Thu 6 March, with strong wind warnings and an approaching low, we made our way there.  Lucky for us, they had a special on at the moment, which meant we could stay for 10 days for the price of 5. 

A good place to sit out the predicted 40kn winds over the weekend. 
A good place to sit out whatever the low brings.
Airlie Beach residents have started preparing for what might be a cyclone.

Find out what happens over the next few days in the next exciting episode of 'Winkali'.