Keppel Island Road Trip, Australia

19. May. 2016
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Australia
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1 Comment

Author: Pete

Location: Queensland, Australia

Miranda and I made sure Tayrona was being looked after and then flew north to Rockhampton to meet up with my parents. With favorable winds the trip would’ve taken us just under a week of day-sailing to get up there, but we made it in an hour and a half. God bless jet engines. Then next morning we took a speedy ferry ten miles offshore to Great Keppel Island for a couple of days on the beach, decompressing from our whirlwind week. Finally got to meet an Australian possum face to face. Where North American opossums look like shaggy, overfed rats, these svelte tree-dwellers might be the love-child of a house cat and a chinchilla. Inquisitive critters…

Great Keppel Island is a sleepy, sandy spit with gorgeous beaches interconnected with trails through the wooded interior. We spent a couple of days exploring the reefs off several of the beaches. The snorkeling was pretty good, the coral was pretty good, and the water clarity was pretty good. Geeze, what aquatic snobs we’ve become, pooh-poohing the Great Barrier Reef. The fish, though, were fat and plentiful, with walls of silver fingerlings, rays, and turtles.

There was some coral dieback that we’ve been hearing about, but nothing too bad. On the topic of dying marine life, it appears that my wetsuit has contracted leprosy or is dating Edward Scissor-Hands. Or both. Man, salt and sun is an evil combination! This’ll undoubtedly be its swan song trip.

After a few days crisping on Keppel’s beaches we headed slowly south back to Brisbane, stopping in little towns along the way. We passed through Montville with steep, shady streets and pressed on to nearby Mary Cairncross Scenic Reserve which has a great rainforest hike with oozing vines, rowdy bats, and pademelons nosing about. Pademelons are tiny wallabies, which in turn are tiny kangaroos. So pademelons are tiny-tiny kangaroos. We even saw one with a joey sticking out of her pouch! Joeys are not only baby kangaroos, but any baby marsupial, including koalas, wombats, possums, opossums, bandicoots, and Tasmanian devils. Okay, fine, I’ll stop nerding-out now.

I shouldn’t speak for the group, but I got a good gravitational hiding the next day hiking Mount Ngungun. It’s one of the volcanic plugs popping out of the flatlands that makes up the Glasshouse Mountains. It’s a great trek to the top and a killer view of all the other mesa-like monoliths and the Tasman sea beyond.

The eco-lodge we stayed in that night recycles rain water, grows its own fruit, and is accessed through fields of pineapples. We made sure to erase any benefits of our day’s physical exertion by playing cards, mowing pizza, and smoking Cuban cigars just for good measure.

Also along the way south, Eumundi’s busy market was a hit, as well as Noosa Head’s riverside park in the evening as the bats streaked overhead. Eventually we made it back to Brisbane. Miranda and I shanghaied the car to check on Tayrona in Coomera before we headed to Sydney the following day.

We found her with ‘flash’ new bottom paint and buffed out hull so shiny it reflected the jealously of the other boats in the yard. It’s odd to find your boat in a different spot from where you left it. After doing some work on Tay-Tay, The Boat Works guys had placed her in a prime location in the show yard, ready to be scooped up by a good sailor looking for a worthy vessel.

Sawa-I-Lau and Vomo, Yasawas, Fiji

20. Oct. 2015
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Fiji
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3 Comments

Author: Pete

Location: Sawa-I-Lau and Vomo, Yasawas, Fiji

Despite the overcast we were happy sailing north from the Blue Lagoon. We had been there for about a week, waiting for an ugly spat of weather to clear so having the sails out an moving felt great. Even caught a Bluefin Trevally on the way!

Sawa-I-Lau is a high, limestone island in a cove just south of Yasawa Island, the northernmost of the island chain. We pulled in, made friends with the locals in the village, and set about finding the treasure hidden on the island…

The island is renowned for its caves. A set of cracking cement stairs have been built into the rock up from the beach to the cavern entrance. The first cavernous room has an open cathedral ceiling with the sun pouring in, lighting up the clear water. A few fat eels basked in the glow and made us a touch hesitant to jump right in. At the far end of the grotto, a few feet below the water gaped an huge swim-through to another cave. Armed with goggles and fins, along with a memorized map of the cave system courtesy of our friends on another boat, Family Circus, we ducked under the water and swam into the black. Since there was much natural light in the first cavern our underwater torches did little initially to punch through the black, but our eyes adjusted rapidly and the inverted image of the next room could be seen in the reflection of the placid water.

It was a short, easy swim-through and then we explored the next cavern in the green glow from the light oozing in through the underwater passage. The cave is oddly shaped, but there’s no place to get lost. The sheer walls are brown limestone that blazes brightly under a torch, even below water. The bottom is black rock, so even though it’s only ten feet down in places, the light beam appears to be swallowed by the abyss. In some places you could swim down and see the bottom. A dive in other spots revealed no bottom at all. The last room could only be accessed by a fairly long, underwater swim. The passage through was hidden in the corner of the second chamber about six feet below the water surface. It was mostly straight, about eight feet wide, then came to a quick turn at the end. No dead ends, no spurs off to get lost in, and smooth rock walls. After the initial paralyzing fear of swimming into a black tunnel underwater, the passage was really beautiful, like flying at the top of a cathedral, albeit with eels popping up here and there. It’s okay, they’re friendly, but it reaffirms Miranda’s hold as most courageous person I know. The third cavern is completely cut off from outside light. The place echoed like thunder when we popped up and cleared our snorkels. It was even difficult to talk because of the reverberation. The place was fantastical, with drippy salt stalactites and strangely organic architecture. We braved the pathways into darkness again the next day just to be back in the middle of an aquatic Dr. Seuss illustration.

Stars filled the clear skies for a few calm nights, one of which we made a bonfire on the beach. Nice to have a little connection to the terrestrial, to come back to the boat smoky and sandy. It’s amazing how many consecutive days we go without touching land even though we’re island hopping.

Tucked in a coral minefield between the Yasawas and Viti Levu is Vomo Island. As we sailed east, the island’s protective reef could be seen shining bright yellow in the sun. We weaseled our way in and dropped anchor in twenty feet of glittering sand. We didn’t know anything about the place before we showed up and some exploring revealed incredible underwater topography.

The coral reefs were chest deep at the top and sixty feet deep one step away. The vertical wall drew big and small fish alike and soft corals waved. The water in the south here seems clearer than north in the Yasawas. It made our deep free dives even more spectacular. There’s a diver in the last two shots here. Can you find them?

Then it was back to Viti Levu to prep, provision, and wait for a weather window to sail south to New Zealand! Back to the high seas!

Makemo, Tuamotus

23. May. 2015
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French Polynesia
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No Comments

Author: Pete

Location: 1632.116S’ 14412.192W’

Date: May 17 – 22, 2015

May 17: Ran under the spinnaker to within a mile of Makemo before dousing the sail and motoring through the pass. There was a little rage going on, and we were a few hours early for slack tide, but current seemed minimal and we only encountered one knot against us as we muscled through. In the anchorage we floated our chain to avoid coral snags which plague boats in this region, attaching fenders at 10, 20, and 30 meters on 40 meters of chain in 13 meters of water. Being Sunday, nothing was open in town, so we snorkeled the lagoon and found significantly fewer sharks than in Raroia.

May 18: Spent the day snorkeling in the lagoon and went for a long run on the island. My legs haven’t been asked to walk more than 10 meters at any given point so they voiced their objections about an hour and a half run loudly. The town is cute, with people biking all over on trikes, mothers riding around with one naked baby standing on the crossbar and an infant swaddled in blankets in the basket in the back. Found some internet at the post office in front of the harbor. Later than night had our friends Martin and Lexi over for drinks. We met them in Galapagos, and they were on our Tangaroa radio net on the big crossing, but we missed them in our Marquesian island hopping.

May 19: Snorkeled outer reef and the pass. The undulating coral bed off the island was fantastic. In the pass a wall made for excellent snorkel drifting too. Went over to Martin and Lexi’s boat, Pao Hana for dinner and drinks again.

May 20: Haircuts in morning. Liza busted out the trimmers and scissors and gave Felix, Martin, and I all haircuts. It took a good deal of the morning and when we finally weighed anchor to sail north in the afternoon, the glare off the lagoon was terrible. You couldn’t see the coral heads coming, so we made it about ten miles north, then pulled into a nice beach and set anchor again. Along the trip we caught a 50 cm Green Jobfish, which turned out to be really tasty. We made a bonfire on the beach that night and cooked the fillets in the coals with potatoes, carrots, onions, and old bay. Heaven.

May 21: Flew the spinnaker on our morning sail to north anchorage. We pulled in and were immediately welcomed by our friends on Georgia, Continuum, and Free Spirit, but also the gray-green serpentine forms of black tip reef sharks. Dozens and dozens of them. I’d go so far as to say ‘shark infested.’ Apparently the two local guys up from the town in south Makemo had harpooned and cleaned a mahimahi in the anchorage.

To their credit they invited everyone in the anchorage to a seafood bonanza at the copra shack they were using for a week as their fishing camp. Vaienui and Jonah were in their late 20’s, local boys excited about showing off their culture and fishing prowess. When we showed up in the afternoon they had great green slabs of mahi grilling on chicken wire over oil barrels with palm wood blazing. On the grill they threw a dozen blue lobster and a local chicken they macheted on the spot. To top it off they caught a dozen coconut crabs the size and disposition of snapping turtles, a delicacy in the area and in Tahiti. They were bright blue and orange, really beautiful crustaceans. Several of them went into boiling pots of water. The cruisers brought side dishes, desserts, and lots of booze to add to the feast. The boys didn’t have plates or forks, so we brought some. They encouraged us to go for the local style and crack the crab legs with the back of a machete, split and de-vein lobster by hand, and dug into the steaming mahi with our fingers. It was awesome. They showed us how to tear open the coconut crab abdomen and scoop out the gray goop they they likened to foi gras. It was a massacre. Shells, legs, bodies strewn across the rough table and weaved palm table mat the boys had made. Everyone had a ball. We left the treats and booze for the boys and gave them some money for the amazing spread. They insisted that they couldn’t accept the money, that the food and firewood was free, but we wore them down and they seemed pleased with the gesture. We all sat on the dock under the starry moonless sky and talked in broken French and English. It’s a lot tougher to communicate at night when gestures are removed from one’s arsenal of translation.

May 22: Left Makemo Atoll today at what was supposed to be slack tide. The northern pass has a constant ripping current that we watched for three days before attacking. I lined up the boat with the two green navigation cans, unfurled some main, and ran into the melee with the engines roaring to keep some traction on the ripping water with the rudders. Deep swirling vortices pulled the bow this way and that. At some point we were making 13 knots. Weaved and staggered through the eddies until the pass spit us out like being shot from a cannon into a moderate rage. It was all very exciting.

Now we’re heading toward Fakarava under spinnaker, another atoll with some surfing potential. Should be there tomorrow morning after a quick overnight sail.