Nothing nice to photo on brash Hamilton Island so here is a photo of Lyn beachombing on Goldsmith.

During the night on Goldsmith the wind picked up. We set off with one reef in the mainsail, only the second time on the whole east coast we had to reef the mainsail. As we set off the wind just got stronger. The weather report said 15-20 knots, however we were soon travelling at 10 knots with the wind behind us showing 20 knots on the guage, meaning we were in 30 knots of wind. The waves were building (no swell) and at first it was a lot of fun catching these small steep waves, in fact we set a record at 11.5 knots at one stage.

After an hour the wind seemed to be increasing still - so much so we thought we should add a second reef to the mainsail, so we looked for somewhere out of the wind to reef and decided to gybe across to the lee of Shaw Island. After the gybe we were sailing across the wind (i.e. 90 deg to the wind), it was then hitting us with the full 30 knots, and across the waves with much more action, occassional spray coming over the top etc. I think we were all a bit relieved when we made it to Shaw Island. Its good to know the boat is fine with one reef at 25 - 30 knots, the manual indicates we should be reefing from 1 reef - 2nd reef in 24 knots.
This was also only the second time on ther whole journey I was hand steering - the other time was through the Wide Bay Bar. We normally never hand steer, we always use the automatic pilot which is quite sophisticated and never gets tired. Often we are all sitting in at the settee out of the cold weather while Otto (nickname form Automatic pilot) keeps us going where we want to go, but normally someone is outside 'on lookout'. The reason for hand steering this time was that we didn't want to be caught out by a rogue wave and bad gust at the same time, even though these were small waves they had steep faces{click here} to see Andamon in 25-30 knots
After a quick discussion we decided to drop the mainsail altogether and go to Hamilton Island on motors and jib alone - much more relaxed.

Hamilton Island itself is an affront to the senses and to the wallet. The most expensive berthing ($85 per night - more than twice the cost of all other marinas), the facililities are filthy, and there are too many people. However, it was our fairwell to Howard who has to go back to Sydney the next day so we had a nice meal in a classy restaurant.

Next day we toured the Island on a buggy, farewelled Howard at the airport and started to prepare for the final leg to Airlie Beach.