Gypsy Cruising

13 July

Whitehaven Beach to Hamilton Island

I remember the days when I first started coming here, when I’d take the yachts’ dinghies for rows every morning.  In those days the dinghies were good old-fashioned tinnies – heavy but solid rowers.  I’ve previously only owned flimsy dinghies that defied being rowed.  However my new dinghy is a RIB, aluminium hull with inflated pontoons around its sides.  It rows just fine and early this morning I took it rowing three quarters of a mile, down to the very end of the beach.  Yet another way to indulge in the old pleasures.

On a different note, I’m having trouble with photographic equipment.  My new camera seems to react harshly to its polarising filter, producing photos with excessive contrast, overly vibrant colours and being apparently underexposed.  I’m having to learn how to correct for all of those issues by manipulating the Raw image files it’s saving with each photo.  Judge for yourself how I’m doing.  I think the longer term solution will be to adjust the camera settings.  I also put the drone up for a flight this morning.  After three seconds of filming it asked if I wanted to switch over to using its internal memory rather than its now full memory card, but it stopped filming anyway and my 10 minute flight up and down Whitehaven ended up producing nothing.  Well, there are too many boats and people here to do justice to the location anyway, and I’ll be back several more times this cruise.  Lots of opportunities to get some good flying in.

One thing I notice here is the devastation that’s been caused to the island by Cyclone Debbie back in March 2017.  It’s as if entire swathes of trees have been clear felled all along the beach and well back into the fringing bush, and then been piled up by some massive earth moving machine.  I know the beach itself was badly affected but my memory of it isn’t precise enough to tell how much sand remains missing.  New growth is returning but it’s going to take many more years before it returns to its former self.  Amazingly, the southern end of the beach looks almost untouched, and this is where we head for the day’s bushwalk.

Whitehaven gets its own special sign, down at its apparently lightly damaged southern end

Looking northwards along the beach

Looking back out from just inside the line of bush

David and Anne ready for our bushwalk

One of the locals - I saw some overseas visitors putting their fingers very close to this guy's mouth

The walk we do is relatively short, about 45 minutes each way to the beach at Chance Bay plus a short side trip up to a rock lookout.  A very nice stroll.

David and Anne at a lookout facing southwards

Closeup of Pentecost Island 

Chance Bay at the end of the walk

The BoM is predicting winds of up to 30 knots for tonight and into tomorrow.  The rest of the fleet is heading to Cid Harbour to ride it out, which is an excellent anchorage.  We’ve decided to break away and go into Hamilton Island’s marina since we wanted to spend a night there at some stage anyway.  The forecast seems to make tonight a good opportunity.  It’s not far around to Hammo, so we make it there in time to have a quick walk around the marina and resort. 

My primary objective is to buy a mango smoothie from the excellent ice creamery on the harboursie.  By the end of the day my phone told me I’d walked a total of 13km, made up of the bushwalk from Whitehaven and general sightseeing around Hammo.  Combined with my rowing earlier in the day this has probably been my most active day of the trip.

We saw a number of these wallabies on Hamilton Island

Dinner tonight is booked at Romano’s restaurant, which I’ve never previously been able to get into (lack of sufficient planning on my or anyone else’s part!), preceded by cocktails at the Hammo Yacht Club.