Category Archives: Cruising East Coast

Our 2023 sailing season has come to end. We are back on the Gold Coast where we have packed up The Bossa and hit the road to return home.

I’ve been wanting to snorkel the Lady Elliot reef for a long time. I finally have! It’s such an exposed island with little shelter and only two public moorings, so it’s really not an overnight stop. Anchoring is difficult due to the depths, but its really about picking a day that’s calm with little swell… Read More »

We found a way!  Yes, one last snorkel for the season … well, actually … four! 

After our wonderful week with family on board in the Whitsundays it was time to think about heading south.

We’ve just spent a week cruising around the Whitsundays with family. Tim, Kaycee and our two-year-old granddaughter Ava jumped on board.  It was a whirlwind visit with lots of activity.  We had a 2 year old to entertain!

Duncan Reef is 25 nm north of Kelso, approx’ a 4-hour motor. We decided on an 8.30 am departure. Late enough to see our way out of Kelso with the sun and following our entrance track, but also early enough to arrive at Duncan Reef for an early afternoon snorkel of course.

Back to the reef! We anchored in Radical Bay, Magnetic Island, when we returned from our first reef adventure with Vivacious and Chances. The wind arrived with rage during the early hours of the morning. After an aborted attempt to move around to Horseshoe Bay, we spent the morning at Radical Bay instead, watching the… Read More »

After two very enjoyable days at Faith Reef we dropped anchor in 5 metres of crystal clear water at the nearby Darley Reef.  We were deep inside Darley Reef and while it was technically not a lagoon, we did feel we were surrounded by reef, giving us the comfort of plenty of shelter. 

After sitting out a rather long and unpleasant SE blow in the Whitsundays, we finally set sail north … via the outer reef. Yay! 

We left Keppel Bay Marina in the company of Chances and Vivacious. That’s three boats! Once the wind eased after a few days in the marina, there was a ‘conga line’ of yachts heading north, not just our three. Our plan was to sail three long days through the Percy islands to the Whitsundays before… Read More »

Two weeks with the Walsh’s on board!  And we are all still talking.  What’s that saying? “Guests, like fish, begin to smell after three days!” Not the Walsh’s. We did let them shower of course and we had so much fun.

It’s 2023 and our sailing season on The Bossa has begun. After our special time at Wakatobi I am now looking forward to returning to the Great Barrier Reef and playing with my cameras in the Queensland waters. This will be our ninth year on the water, eight cruising the Queensland coast (New Caledonia and… Read More »

We have returned to The Boatworks. It does seem to have been a long season this year. Perhaps that’s because we arrived in May and we’re leaving in late November. It has also been a challenging one too at times. But as always, it’s the good times we’ll remember!

There has to be a last snorkel so the Southern Reef is always on our list travelling south.  Fortunately, the weather finally obliged for a visit out to Lady Musgrave.

We’ve visited Yellow Patch a few times over the years.  It is a special place and it never disappoints even in 20+ knot howling winds and this time we had it all to ourselves!

One of my favourite spots is Monkey Beach on Great Keppel Island. It’s a small bay and if you’re lucky you can tuck in close, right next to the small fringing reef.

Family, friends, fix-its and of course, weather!  This pretty much covers the last month … a whirlwind of emotions … the good, the bad and the ugly!

We’ve spent the last few weeks wandering around the Whitsunday islands, and enjoying the best weather!  We’ve also had guests aboard for a week.  They told us they ticked every box on the ‘brochure’ and I think maybe we just we nailed it … apart from the sailing box (no wind!). We’ve spent the last… Read More »

It had been three weeks since we’d seen a shop or laundry so after a quick visit to Townsville to reprovision and visit a laundry (3 weeks’ worth of washing is big), and some unexpected socialising with Lukim Yu and Pacific Dreams, we dropped by Maggie for our last stopover for this season. It had… Read More »

I’m writing this blog post while anchored in Seventh Creek on Hinchinbrook Island and I’m listening to the pouring rain outside. It’s our fifth day here which is a long time to spend in the mangroves.

Since our last visit to the outer reef we’ve visited Townsville and spent some relaxing time at Magnetic Island with friends. And, we’ve snuck out to the outer reef again!

Yay!! We had a calm weather window in sight so we decided to sail north from the Whitsundays and spend these rare calm days out at the Great Barrier Reef, between the Whitsundays and Townsville.

We have made the Whitsunday islands.  Lots of photos in this post both from above and below. We are often greeted by a big blow when we reach the Whitsundays. Sure enough wind and heavy rain were forecast.

We call it ‘crossing the paddock’.  This is the stretch of water between Great Keppel Island and the Whitsundays.  There are limited mainland anchorages, pretty much island hops.

After two cancelled flights, we did manage to return to a rather cold Melbourne to celebrate our little Ava’s first birthday, and it was well worth the ‘detour’.  First birthdays are special!

Yes we are back on The Bossa, our home away from home. While it hasn’t exactly been a “sunny” Queensland with endless days of rain in the workyard and now a gale warning on the water, there is always much anticipation returning to our home on the water.

Another great sailing season has come to an end. We have been very fortunate getting to our boat again this year.  We left Victoria back in July crossing the NSW and Qld borders, but little did we know Victoria and NSW would experience more Covid lockdowns and that there would be more border closures.

There has to be a last snorkel! Sitting at the Gladstone Marina for nearly a week, waiting for strong SE weather to pass through, we had plenty of time to plan a Lady Musgrave visit but I think we must have exhausted the alphabet with the number of plans we came up with.  Tides, winds… Read More »

We have visited Monkey Beach on Great Keppel Island many many times and I’ve snorkeled here most of those visits.  But this time we scored the perfect anchorage. My ‘dream’ anchorage is one that lets me snorkel straight from The Bossa. There’s no need for Neville to hang about in the dinghy. He can return to the… Read More »

The strong northerlies have been blowing forever and with daily thunderstorm warnings we decided to stay in the Port Of Airlie Marina for a few nights (no anchoring off Airlie in northerlies). We were also waiting on two packages, one being our new screecher which we had been missing big time since our old one… Read More »

After a brief visit back to the mainland where we met up with Waterfront, we then both continued to hop down the outer reef via Britomart, Walker and Kelso Reefs.

What a wonderful 10-days we’ve had, all because of a perfect weather forecast – gentle northerlies!  Yes, they take us south, but it also meant we could reef-hop south from Cairns to Magnetic Island rather than via the familiar mainland anchorages.

What a game!  What a game!  What a game! What a great time we had in Cairns.  Nearly two weeks of catching up with Leanne and Steve who now live in Cairns. We met these two five years ago on their Fusion cat Easy Tiger.  Easy Tiger has a new owner but our friendship has… Read More »

I could call this post ‘Dumped at Dunk’ I suppose, but no, I’ll stick with Beaver Reef for the moment. The ‘Dumped at Dunk’ story … you’ll just have to wait!

Phone and internet at last! We have been enjoying the sights of Hinchinbrook Island for over a week now, primarily due to weather constraints, but there has also been an eagerness to enjoy and explore the natural beauty of this island.

Oh the strong SE trade winds!  They have been relentless since arriving in the tropics.  But, we did manage to sneak in a few days out at John Brewer Reef with a welcomed calm forecast recently.

Last season we only managed to get as far north as the Whitsundays due to our late start with Covid restricting our annual migration to Queensland in 2020.  This season we have made it to Magnetic Island and we are about to venture even further north via some outer reef stopovers.

Sometimes when you least expect it, long passages can be fun and full of surprises. We have crossed the “paddock” many times in The Bossa.  It’s the stretch of water between Great Keppel Island and the Whitsundays. No mainland anchorages, all remote and most are uninhabited islands.

Monkey Beach is a small bay on the western side of Great Keppel Island.  It has a fringing reef that attracts day visitors from Yeppoon, along with us yachties who want a quick snorkel.  In recent years this reef has looked a bit sad with algae growth,

It seems so long ago that I was in the water with my cameras and at Lady Musgrave, but here we are again in 2021. Having said that, it doesn’t take long to feel like it was yesterday either.

We’re back! I think we managed to navigate the arrival our newest crew member, baby Ava and Covid-19 remarkably well. Yes, we are grandparents and we now look forward to family visits on The Bossa with an eager young one to share our travels with.

Our 2020 season has come to an end and it will be a year we will remember for a variety of reasons, but particularly for the world-wide Covid pandemic. It has been a year of mixed emotions – unfulfilled

There was something special about this visit to Lady Musgrave. The weather window was perfect, the company great, the snorkeling fun and it was just so very picturesque. Perhaps it was just that. We entered the channel on a very low tide so the reef was exposed all around us and with the sun overhead,… Read More »

Yellow Patch is it! We have just spent a wonderful five days at our favourite Yellow Patch. Yellow Patch is so named because of its unusual long orange sandhill, not quite “yellow” but close enough. It serves as a very scenic backdrop to extensive white sand flats,

After our catchup with Waterfront we have now officially headed south. With a lift booked for the 25th November and with a few planned stop-offs along the way, it was time to take the timely northerlies. Our first stop was Thomas Island.  I think the little bay on the southern side of Thomas is everyone’s favourite including… Read More »

While the Little Black lagoon offered various reef locations to snorkel and to fish, we decided to explore the neighbouring Block Reef by dinghy.  Block Reef is on the northern side of the channel that separates the two reefs. After exploring a

That reef window came!  In fact, even though we have returned to the islands, the winds are still light and I can’t believe I’m saying this, but I think I might be a tad snorkeled out!!

On the northern side of Hook Island are several bays – Pinnacle Bay, Manta Ray Bay, Luncheon Bay, Maureen’s Cove and Butterfly Bay where we picked up our favourite mooring buoy. These northern bays are good protection from the SE trade

Revisiting the Whitsundays region is a bit different from our other destinations.  It’s familiar, it’s always social because many cruisers spend time here, it’s relatively compact with short passages between islands, it’s close to the outer reef and it has two

It was a big four days of sailing to get to the Whitsundays … then one more to get to the outer reef.  But it was worth it! When we’ve been out of phone range for days and the phone suddenly starts beeping, we can’t wait.  Oh how dependent we