Gypsy Cruising

6 August

Upstart Bay to Bowling Green Bay

The wind was particularly strong and steady throughout last night.  This made it a little noisy but otherwise the anchorage was good.  Some of the other boats anchored slightly to the east of us complained about a succession of bullets through the night, essentially random powerful spikes in the wind that can hit a boat with substantial force.  We didn't suffer from this.

The other boats have 70 miles to cover today, making it all the way from Upstart Bay to Magnetic Island.  As a result they're up and off very early.  We're planning on only covering about 40 miles to Bowling Green Bay.  Our later departure meant we were really just solo sailing up the coast.  With no deadline or particular speed to maintain we sailed with a poled-out headsail rather than the spinnaker.  This was simpler but somewhat slower than yesterday.

The valley opening out onto last night's  anchorage in Upstart Bay

Sailing with poled-out headsail

There's not really anything to comment about on the coastal passage.  It was a good sail in fair winds and took over six hours to complete.  The last little bit, back into the lee of Cape Bowling Green was notable for the fast and powerful reaching it gave us.  Celeste was on the wheel for the whole of that section and got quite a blast out of the experience.

Our joint initial impression of the Bay was very underwhelming.  It's a massive, open and very flat bay with nothing ashore to see.  The word "flat" really is the operative word here.  The bottom shoaled so gradually that we were forced to anchor over two miles from the shore, in only 3 meters of water, making us feel like we were really out in the middle of nowhere.  However I must say I had something of a change of heart while cooking our BBQ dinner.  As the sun set the sense grew that this was really one of Australia's great big wide open spaces.  We were alone in this emptiness, with not a boat or anyone else in view all the way to the horizon.  We'd left the busyness of the Whitsundays and other populated southern places behind us and now we were stepping out into the wilderness.  This was truly exciting.

Cooking dinner in the flatness and space of Bowling Green Bay