Author: richwest3

Posted May 25, 2024
about September 22, 2022

Today, I felt excited and nervous as we prepared to set sail for the Whitsundays. I was excited to finally visit these islands, yet anxious about figuring out how to cruise through them in a timely manner.

The Whitsunday Island group includes dozens of islands and islets. While only a few of these islands have good anchorages, it would still be a challenge to choose the most worthwhile spots, visit them during suitable weather conditions, and manage to do so in a sensible order to avoid zig-zagging around. Last but not least, I wanted to make this excursion as enjoyable as possible for Rich.

As I mentioned in an earlier post, Rich was not much enjoying this part of Australia. If it were up to him, we would have skipped the Whitsundays entirely. But for me, this was a dream destination; skipping this area was unthinkable! Rich agreed to go for my sake, and I agreed to choose just a few anchorages and get us through this area as quickly as possible. In a sense, Rich would be like a survivor contestant suffering through an endurance trail. I would try to make this endurance trial as comfortable as possible for him. Maybe he could even enjoy it.

I’ve developed a lot of skills during our years of cruising, but my greatest superpower is getting my sometimes-wary partner to enjoy places he’s not quite convinced he’ll like.

We had one lucky happenstance: we were arriving late in the season, which meant the trade winds were dying down. These winds make many of the east and south-facing anchorages nonviable. In fact, we had entered a period of light northerlies, which would make the cruising here much easier.

Below is a map of the Whitsunday Islands. As you can see, many of the most interesting-looking bays face south or east, making them ill-suited for the trade wind season (which is also the peak cruising season). We were lucky to be here after those winds died down.

 
I had made my first choice for anchorages. The forecast called for a few days of light northerlies, so it was a perfect opportunity to visit the two large bays on the south end of Whitsunday Island: Turtle Bay and Chance Bay. They both featured white sand beaches and water in tropical shades of blue. Chance Bay also boasted a walking trail to the area’s most famous landmark, Whitehaven Beach. Below, a map.

 
I decided we should start with Turtle Bay. The trip there would take only three hours; so we could spend a relaxed afternoon exploring the area by dinghy after we arrived.

And so we set off into another misty morning, the glassy sea making a mirror reflection of the sky above. The view surrounding us was filled with island landscapes. It was difficult to tell what was what!

We marveled at the large angled peak of unusually-shaped Pentecost Island, which seemed to change its appearance from every angle. There aren’t any good anchorages there, but adventure-seekers sometimes hire a speedboat to bring them over so they can climb to the peak.

We also got a good look at Hamilton Island, which I planned for us to visit for some marina and resort time. Although Hamilton Island is considered part of the Whitsunday Islands, it’s not part of the National Park, which has allowed for quite a bit of tourism development. And it showed! The photo with the high-rises is actually from the more remote backside of the island. The other side is much more developed!

Whitsunday Island, on the other hand, is completely undeveloped, its beautiful green mountains covered with pristine forest. However, it sees quite a bit of boat traffic. Speed boats bring tourists from the mainland for afternoon jaunts, while visiting yachts crowd the anchorages. This is exacerbated by the large number of charter yachts available. Another advantage to our late arrival is that the crowds had died down, and it looked like Turtle Bay had plenty of room.

Below, photos of our approach to both Whitsunday Island and Turtle Bay.

At this point in the post I went on to talk about the issues with cruising the Whitsunday Islands. I have decided to make it a separate post, coming up next. –Cyndi

May 14, 2024

This is how we feel walking down the streets of Indonesia…

Every time we take to the streets we’re met with love and almost adulation from the locals. They often stop us to take selfies with us. We try to communicate the best we can but there’s a big language barrier. Duolingo for the past few months and Google Translate have helped somewhat with that.

“Halo Mister!” and even “I love you!” are shouted by the locals. Cyndi always wonders what we’ve done to deserve this. The locals are truly wonderful, making us feel incredibly welcome here. We’ve also been made to feel the way Taylor Swift must feel walking down a New York City street. If you want to know what fame feels like, visit Indonesia.

-Rich

Update: May 17, 2024

Imagine our surprise when we found the real deal on the street in Luwuk, Sulawesi!

May 12, 2024

… even when anchored too close to the reef!

This was a place called Luk Panenteng. This was our second time trying to anchor here. It’s either too deep (300+ feet) or too shallow (less than 3 feet). I guess we were a little desperate this time. We found a spot about 45 feet deep but too close to the reef to put out enough scope¹.

All would have been fine if not for the ripping current that runs through here. We drug anchor but fortunately, it was along the reef and not into it. We had a very tight anchor alarm zone set that woke us up at 3AM. We saw that the anchor grabbed and after a bit of watching and worrying, went back to sleep.

The picture above was taken at the change of current as the boat was turning. I was shocked to see how close to the reef we got, but I guess no harm, no foul.

-Rich
1. We usually try to anchor with about 5 or 6 to 1 anchor chain to depth ratio. That would have meant 225 feet of chain. When in deeper water, we feel like 3:1 is okay. That would mean 135 feet of chain. If we got a squall blowing us towards the reef, that would let us hit. Instead, we only put out 120 feet of chain.

If you add our 3 feet of freeboard to the 45 feet of water, that makes a ratio of 2.5:1. This is really not enough scope and that’s why our anchor drug at current change.

Posted on May  6, 2024 about
September 21 and 22, 2022

One thing we noticed while cruising through the Cumberland Islands was the stunning beauty of the sunsets. I did some research as to what makes sunsets in certain places extra special and found the key factor is good air quality. Essentially, all sunsets are amazing, but particles in the air can dull their vibrancy.

After pondering this, I realized there’s another contributing factor for the lovely sunsets here: the relatively flat landscape along the mainland coast. Aside from a few scattered low mountains further inland, the landscape is pretty flat, a vast desert that stretches from one end of the continent to the other. Combined with the longer evenings that accompany the approach of summer and Australia’s clean air, these conditions make a great recipe for painted-sky sunsets. Especially from the vantage point of an island just offshore!

The next morning, Rich was up at sunrise and decided to fly the drone. This flight beautifully captured the misty morning light so unique to these islands. I managed to whittle the resulting photos down to two, but can’t choose between them. So, here they both are:

Today we’d be saying good-bye to this part of the Cumberland Islands and heading for the actual Whitsundays (as opposed to all these islands to the south which are often mistakenly grouped under the broader label of ‘the Whitsundays’). –Cyndi

May 5, 2024

We’re heading south along the east coast of Sulawesi from almost the very top of the island to the very bottom. It’s about 450 miles as the crow flies (almost) and we are trying to do it without overnight passages. We’re making 30 to 40 mile hops every day and spending every night in a different bay.

Every day, it’s the same thing: get the anchor up around 8 AM, head out onto a mostly flat, windless sea, watch the squalls develop around mid-day, get hit by a squall or two in the afternoon, make our way into a bay to anchor at about 3 or 4 PM. It’s been an amazingly consistent routine, and not an unpleasant one, despite the squalls.

The squalls haven’t been too bad with the worst of them blowing to about 20 knots (though often on the nose). We often just miss all or most of the rain. Other than the squall wind, there hasn’t been enough wind to warrant sails, with the exception of motor-sailing with the headsail up today for about 2 hours.

Most of the places we’ve anchored in so far have been bays we spent time in on our last trip down this coast. Some have been new like this bay last night.

The last time by, we didn’t think we could get into the bay through that shallow entrance. I guess we had more confidence this time and it was no problem, with 16 feet the shallowest we saw on the way in.

There isn’t much info we’ve found about anchorages along this coast. Every time we’ve found a suitable anchorage, we’ve shared it on Zulu Waterways – a crowd-sourced anchorage guide.

Needless to say, there are no cruising boats around. Other than small, local fishing boats, there aren’t really any other boats at all. It feels like we have Indonesia’s coast to ourselves.

Tomorrow, we think we’ll have to break the routine and spend an extra day where we are now. This will give us better weather for a big 70-mile jump on Tuesday. It sounds so nice to me right now to have a day off. What will we do?!

-Rich