( After nearly a week we finally have a couple of bars of 3G, see delayed post below. )

Flinders Islands

Monday 9th July 2018

We are anchored with three other boats off an incredibly beautiful, remote group of islands, the Flinders Islands. As far as we can tell there are no other people or buildings for a hundred or so miles in any direction, just a little band of yachts sheltering from the brisk winds as they sail north to set off for Indonesia. We did get a visit from the Australian border forces plane however, requesting over the radio the registration and cruising route from each of the boats, security seems tight on these northern extremes of the Australian Coast.

We know all the boats here, cruisers we have met all through our trip, so it’s very sociable and as there isn’t a phone or internet signal, invaluable, as we swap notes on weather and tides from our various satellite and long range radio connections. I am feeling particularly information bereft as my trusty and much used Navionics App for some reason will not allow me to use my downloaded maps offline. I am missing it’s clear presentation and tidal and current data, but there seems nothing I can do without a network connection.

The sun did, mostly, come out for our last day in Cairns and we set off for Lizard Island some 140nm north in good winds and blue skies. We had rigged the pole for the downwind trip and it felt so good to have the engine off for the whole journey. It did rain a bit during the night but generally it was a very pleasant sail.

Downwind sail rig whisking us at 8kts northwards

Mrs Watson’s Bay on the north east coast of Lizard was full of boats, with, finally, a functioning island resort sitting to one-side. The beach is of fine white sand and the water clear, a track leads up to the highest point of the island about 350m above us. This lookout is famous as the spot where Captain Cook, having already gone aground just off Cape Tribulation, climbed to try to find a channel through the hundreds of reefs to open sea. Due to his meticulous note keeping, his trip up the Australian Coast is well documented and celebrated at many of the stops we have made, plaques and statues abound as each community claims their connections to the great man.

It would have been easy to spend a couple days, unfortunately Lizard Island has a reputation for bullets of wind, extreme gusts that scream between the hills and straight into the anchorage. With winds building we needed to find a more protected spot, we only had time for a quick walk, the next morning before sunrise we headed to the Flinders Islands in the lea of Cape Melville.

The Barrier Reef runs for over a thousand miles parallel to the mainland, creating a passage all the way up the Queensland coast. This may have trapped Captain Cook but produces a low swell haven for us, the sailing over the last couple of days has been amongst the best we have experienced in Australia.

Flinders Island also has a history from Cooks time, fresh water springs, during the rainy season, bubble up between the boulders at the far end of the beach to the west of Aapa Spit. They have provided precious fresh water for thousands of years to the indigenous visitors and more recently to the British ships that were charting this coast. Graffiti left by the sailors still adorns the rocks nearby.

200 yr old graffiti, no luck deciphering it however

It made for a pleasant walk down a sandy corridor with the mangroves that line the shoreline on one side and the rust coloured boulders and cliffs on the other.

Graffiti walk on Flinders Island

Pretty yellow flowers and bright green fruit hung from what otherwise looked, being devoid of a single leaf, like dead trees and creeping along the sand were the purple pink flowers of bind weed. We could hear a few birds but the island appeared strangely free from animal life.

Beautiful flowering trees

We had spotted more activity in the water, seeing turtles and what we thought might be dugongs, in our pole light off the stern, one evening we saw a sea snake, the boat next to us saw a strange white coloured shark and the mangroves looked like a perfect home for crocodiles. Despite the welcome increase in temperature our travels north have found, nobody has seemed game for a swim.