Bowling Green Bay to Magnetic Island
Today we'll catch the rest of the fleet up. We had the anchor up before 7am to let us make the trip to Magnetic Island by around midday. By way of one last unexpected gift the Bay gave us a beautiful sunrise, complete with red-lit clouds on our way out.
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| A red sunrise as we were leaving Bowling Green Bay |
The wind started out at quite reasonable levels out of the south, and I had the spinnaker up for much of the distance. As we approached the final turn on the approach to Magnetic Island, around Cape Cleveland, the wind died away to almost nothing and we were forced to essentially motor the last 14 miles of the trip.
Just inside our final anchorage of Horseshoe Bay, we found a group of dolphins playing quite happily. We were able to watch for perhaps 15 minutes, reeling of a huge number of photos. I've shown some of the better ones here.
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| A group of dolphins at play inside Horseshoe Bay |
This will be the final night "in the wild" for this leg of the cruise. Tomorrow we'll head into the marina at Townsville in readiness for Celeste's return to Sydney. However, tonight will also be this leg's official cruise rendezvous dinner. In line with cultural norms, we all got the bus into the small village of Arcadia and then headed to the local tavern for a bar dinner, followed by the regular Wednesday night cane toad racing. We took part in the pre-race toad auctions (raising money for the local surf life saving club) but we couldn't pick ourselves a winner. In any case, this proved to be a lot of fun, and a good way to end the cruise with the rest of the guys.
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| The island is covered with these amazing granite rock formations, caused by hot lava splitting the rock followed by years of erosion |
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| Cane toad racing in action - the starting barrier and the winning toad |
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