Great Keppel Island to Cleveland

Sunday, 26 October to Friday, 14 November 2014
We spent 5 days at GKI including 4 days at beautiful Long Beach with over 20 other cruisers.

We had strong northerlies and we elected to wait for them to ease before heading out to the Bunker Group. It was our first stay at Long Beach and we loved the clear water and white sand. Walks and swims filled in the day as well as a bit of baking.

Finally on Wednesday, 29 October we sailed east to North West Island in a 15-20 northwesterly. While it sounds like it should, unfortunately NW island did not have a good anchorage in this breeze so we sailed on to nearby Tryon Island. After motoring around for over an hour looking for a sandy patch amongst the reef to drop the anchor we gave up and sailed back to Pancake Creek, arriving at 2300 after 108nm. On Thursday, we motorsailed back to Lady Musgrave Island where we spent 2 nights.

Morning calm at Lady Musgrave Island

There were not as many cruisers here as we expected and no tourist boats on a Friday. We saw several lots of tracks in the sand made by turtles coming ashore to lay their eggs.

Snorkelling was good as can be seen in a short video I made with footage from here and other spots we visited this trip.

On Saturday, 1 November we left Lady Musgrave at 0600 in a 15 knot northerly. We set the spinnaker and carried it until just before dark - Warren glad we had the new spinnaker made with heavier cloth so we could keep it up as the wind strengthened in the afternoon to 20 knots. Half an hour after dropping the spinnaker the wind was even stronger and we put the first reef in. We anchored behind Bookar Island in the Sandy Straits at 2300 after 120nm and reaching a top speed of 14.8knots!

We had 4 days in the Sandy Straits including lunch at Kingfisher Bay Resort for Melbourne Cup. On Thursday we sailed to Mooloolaba where we spent a week in the marina enjoying walks on the beach, surfs and fresh seafood.

Dawn reflections in the Mooloola River

On Friday, 14 November we sailed the last leg to Raby Bay after 114 days away. Mum was of course there to greet us and Warren blew the airhorn to signify the end of the trip.