Arriving at Mackay

We had a great sail down from Curlew Island to Mackay with the persistant south easterlies pushing us along. It had looked like rain but fortunatly the wet weather gear wasn't called for although I did wear my waterproof pants for most of the trip. They prevent the legs and knees from getting so battered and bruised whilst working around the fore deck, hoisting sails etc. As it seems the warm weather has deserted us for a while it wasn't too hot. So much for not needing any of this gear once rounding the south east corner of Australia from Bass Straight! We passed Cape Capricorn a few days earlier and so at that point we were officially in the Tropics. I have been reading the biography of Captain Cook and it has been interesting to see why many of the places we have been passed were named by him all though years ago! This included this particular Cape. He had been hopeful that better sailing times were ahead of him at that point. Little did he realise the nature of The Great Barrier Reef. At least all our charts etc should make our journey some what easier as we travel through the reef and islands.

On our sail to Mackay we passed very close to Hay Point a massive coal loading facility just south of our destination. I was busy down below reviewing the chart plotter and our approach to the marina, Roger was at the helm. The next thing I hear coming over the VHF radio (we always monitor Ch 16 the emergancy frequency) is the voice of the Captain of a large inbound cargo ship moving towards Hay Point! "Unidentified sailing yacht I need you to make a course alteration to facilitate my entry to Hay Point" Shocked I ask Roger if he can see anything? Yes he says "a large ship heading for us!" Changing frquencies I have a discusion with the Captain in which I agree to his request! How can one argue with a 112 ft ship bearing down on us? This leads to us gybing around the back of the ship! Roger felt he could have argued about the rights of sail over motor but the prospect of ending up as match sticks( if we were a wooden yacht) was enough to make us alter our course! The photographs on Picasa show how close the ship came!!

The remainder of the sail was very straight forward arriving in the new marina. It's amazing with piles the like of which I have never seen before. They are so tall. The tide here is enormous and with the possibility of a storm surge in cyclone season the floating pontoons have to remain on these piles. Hard to imagine that the water could rise this high. I will take some photographs once it stops raining on us! Have a look at the weather picture and you get an idea of why it's so wet here at the moment.

Well best actually stop now and go to bed. As Roger said I managed to fall asleep earlier still I like to think I'm just catching up on earlier lost sleep from all those rolly anchorages out in the islands. Nothing at all to do with Roger's company!