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| Showing Princess Emily around |
Australians have a thing for abbreviations (Aussies). Perhaps when your world revolves around the beach and surfing it doesn’t leave much time for uttering full words. We have noticed this since our first moment in November 2024 when we arrived in Bundy (short for Bundaberg) and then headed for Brizzy (Brisbane). The marina manager mentioned that the cafe across the street was great for brekky (breakfast) and the brewery opens in the arvo (afternoon). The servo (gas station) sells diesel and it is just down from the Maccas (McDonalds) but watch out for hoons hooning (essentially high school drag racers). We have adopted many of these catchy terms but didn’t expect that our sailing up the East Coast of Australia (Oz) would involve a new sailing vocabulary.
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| Kind of how we felt leaving Brizzy |
We returned to the boat in late May from an important, ultimately seven week trip to the United States. For the second year in a a row we were a bit behind in maximizing sailing in non-cyclone season. This year has been strange on a number of fronts, but from a sailing perspective it was the first time in many years that we didn’t know where we would be by Christmas. So we left Brizzy with three different marina reservations for December - Scab (Scarborough - our home away from home and where we have spent the last two cyclone seasons), Lombok Marina (in Indonesia) and Royal Langkawi (in Malaysia). It was a strange feeling sailing away from Scarborough and not knowing if we would be coming back. We loved our time in the Brizzy area and we both had a lump in our throats as it disappeared from view. The first stop heading north was again Bundy but we quickly jumped on to GKI (doesn’t really roll off the tongue but is Great Keppel Island).
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| Nice watering hole |
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| Relax- he knows what he's doing. The one way on and off GKI |
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| Another private beach for us |
Nice island and good resort restaurant but what was interesting is that the resort was swarming with kids who are students from School of the Air. Such an Australian experience- the program started in 1951 on two-way radios as a way to educate kids living at very remote cattle stations (ranches) who can be hundreds of kilometers from another town. Now it is done via videos and increasingly internet but these in person meet ups are the only time across the year that the kids actually interact in person.
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| Humpback whale- almost an everyday occurrence |
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| Manta ray checking out L'ORIENT |
We would love to stay longer but we have a booking (reservation) at Hammo (Hamilton Island) as Princess Emily is making a return visit to Oz (you know that one). Sailors aren’t the only group making an annual migration to the Whitsundays. We are vastly outnumbered by humpback whales - supposedly around 50,000 are in these waters currently and we have dodged a fair number, until we didn’t. Kirstin had just gone downstairs with me on watch at 6:30 AM. Suddenly 10 meters directly ahead of the boat I see a dorsal fin. I hoped it was a dolphin but that was just magical thinking. Suddenly a huge whale tail - 8-10 ft tall - came out of the water next to L’ORIENT. It extended over the rail, as in I could high five it. I screamed, alarming Kirstin. She knows that I only scream in the face of probable catastrophe or a Packers turnover. Miraculously, the whale did a crash dive and didn’t hit the boat (technically a yacht). Whew.
Since then, we’ve had other close encounters, whales jumping, crossing our path, etc, but it never gets passe……….suddenly being confronted by a 40+ ft whale.
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| Weekend sailors and their expensive toys |
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| Another perfect sunset on tap |
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| View from our hike |
Hammo reinforced our hot take mentioned in other blog posts that you should never travel in Australia during local school holidays. Emily, being the busy and very influential football executive that she is, had a short window to come out and it was made even shorter by an ill-timed Quantas flight cancellation. Hamilton Island Marina is a very spendy spot on a very exy island (expensive). We settled into our slip a few days early and got in some good hikes.
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| Upscale view of Hammo |
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| Our temporary Hammo home |
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| Other side of Hammo |
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| Emily in a familiar pose- we think she should use this pic in her texts announcing fines to her NFL players |
Emily settled in to lunch on the beach and had a good laugh when a clever cockatoo with high end tastes grabbed our sauce ramekin and proceeded to hold it in one claw while sticking his entire face in the sauce. Don’t rush this guy - he finished every last drop. Apparently he was also gluten free as he tried to snag Emily's special burger bun through the plastic bag.
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| Very clever thief |
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| Gloating as he dines on our dip |
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| Have you no shame, sir? |
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| Not fighting those claws for gluten free bread |
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| The girls enjoying an afternoon margarita |
The wind arrived with Emily and we had some extremely boisterous sails to go and see the Whitsunday’s biggest attraction - Whitehaven Beach. It frequently is in the top 10 list of beaches (thank you AI slop) and is perhaps most notable because no beach bars are built on it. The real key to your comfort is that the beach is unusually 100% silica so even in the hottest sun your feet stay cool walking across the sand. Fun fact - you can't say we never teach you anything.
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| Whitehaven Beach |
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| The huge tide range here creates its own art |
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| No wonder we have very few sailing friends |
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| Wish we could stay longer |
Sailing in the Whitsundays is really a dream as most islands are national park property and you anchor off just beautiful and empty beaches. Our favorite places in case you come this way were Shaw and Thomas Islands.
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| Two pots of gold ? |
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| Thomas Island - a perfect namesake |
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| Rare picture of L'ORIENT at sea taken by a fellow yachtsman |
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| Crabby, Kirstin's new paddle board, and L'ORIENT way back there |
Emily checked off a bucket list item as a whale surfaced next to the boat just as we were pulling back into the marina. Just in the nick of time. Speaking of time, we wish we had more of it in the Whitsundays but we had a date with a boatyard in early August and we need to see Maggie.
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| One more Hammo Sunset |
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| A real trooper; don't worry Em- Malaysia will be direct (from LA) |
Maggie is Magnetic Island and the draw are wild koalas - alot of them. Apparently this is not a secret as in addition to sailors the island attracts Europeans in the summer escaping their own tourist hordes and high temperatures. But back to the real attraction - 20 koalas were brought to the island in 1927 to try and save a population from rampant hunting (shooting an animal that sleeps 18-22 hours a day doesn’t really seem like a fair fight). One hundred years on there are now around 800 (who is counting) - I guess we now know what they are doing during their waking hours. The hiking on this island is top notch and we racked up 17,000 steps in a day finding koalas. This island was also a very cushy World War II posting and the remote lookout points are hiking high points.
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| Good motivation for 17,000 steps |
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| Sooo snuggly |
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| This guy was huge |
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| New crew? |
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| Observation station- observing what, exactly ? |
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| Beautiful beaches all around |
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| Choppy seas around Maggie this day |
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| No wonder all the Europeans are here - no fighting for beach space |
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| Everything is dramatic here |
Can you imagine the end of a WW2 boot camp when the drill intructor announces assignments ?
Sergeant Major Brubaker- “OK you knuckleheads, here are your duty assignments”
“Jones- Guadalcanal”
“Smith- Normandy”
“Astor- Magnetic Island, Australia”
“Carnegie- St. Barths”
Did I mention that we can beach our dinghy in front of six great waterfront restaurants. This place is a dream and neither one of us wanted to leave.
We have begun to encounter an abbreviation that is not one of our favorites. Crocs. As in Croc Country. This does not mean that Australians are fans of tacky plastic clogs (although they still are). This means that we are firmly in the land of the Saltwater Crocodile.
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| These guys hunt by stalking......very clever. Fortunately for now, behind glass |
We have seen them in wildlife sanctuaries here but realizing that they are now in the water around you gets your attention. Fun fact - salt water crocs can swim hundreds of miles in the open ocean so your scuba diving or paddle boarding just got a bit more exciting. Another fun fact…..Aussie’s dinghies in this part of the world all have oversized sides. Hmmm. Then we put it together; that extra foot of freeboard may save your life if a croc jumps at you (which apparently they do).
And that brings us to Cairns. It is pronounced like the famous film festival location (Cannes, to those of you who are not A-listers) but we aren’t looking for celebrities - we need bottom paint because we are at The Big Boat Yard.
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| River front digs - crocodile watch |
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| I don't trust anyone to touch our prop |
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| Being parked next to Noah's Ark is good motivation to get in and get out |
While in a chandlery here we are asked by another couple - do you have a Super Maramu? Turns out we met this couple in 2018 in Bonaire and then again a year later in Panama. We find ourselves out for dinner again catching up on the past eight years. These British sailors were kept away from their boat in New Zealand for almost three years during Covid (chose an unfortunate time to fly home and got stuck) and then were promptly hit by lightning on their first sail out of New Zealand and limped to Australia where they have been in a marina for the last two years rebuilding. We exchange stories and laughs - the Pacific has been an amazing and memorable adventure for all of us.
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| Every town in Australia seems to have a ferris wheel |
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| Cairns downtown and a fantastic food scene |
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Ah - the best Oz invention. The "bottle-o" (ubiquitous drive through liquor store).
Won't see this in Indo |
Cairns has been a really wonderful surprise - it has an amazing food scene that saw us have an evening run of Greek, Indian, Japanese, Nepalese and Mexican. And delivery Pizza Hut to the boat yard. Will we miss this? Yes. Cairns receives daily direct flights from Japan, Singapore and other places in Asia so the tourist mix here is quite interesting and between seeing the Great Barrier Reef and the Daintree Rainforest it is a great Oz destination.
If those internationally famous destinations don't appeal, you are in luck as Cairns also has the Southern Hemisphere's Largest Tank Museum! Tom's brother is how we found ourselves at the Australian Armour (yes Aussie spelling) & Artillery Museum. He watches their workshop videos on You Tube which show how they restore their almost 200 piece collection. Being a collector of boat spare parts and tools, I now consider Kirstin lucky that unlike some men, I don't collect tanks. Many of these monsters were purchased by the museum from collectors.
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| Not sure what a tank destroyer is doing in our blog, but it was impressive |
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| All work and no play... |
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| Field Marshall Kirstin? Or just insane from the boatyard |
So the question is now - do we turn right and proceed slowly back to Brizzy or do we turn left and head to Indo? Turning the page or reliving some of our favorite moments Down Under… time will tell, but the 920 liters of fuel on L’ORIENT are a clue we are going somewhere far from here.
