It was another day of motoring as we continued northwards, only being able to dispense with the engine after passing North Barnard Island shortly before sunset. We sailed through the night in a gentle breeze and reached Fitzroy Island in the orange glow of dawn. We rounded Cape Grafton, crossed Mission Bay and entered the long dredged channel leading up to Cairns, where we anchored in the river opposite Marlin Marina. Unfortunately the outboard wouldn't start, so I spent the afternoon stripping it down and cleaning out the fuel system. Next morning, with the outboard working, we took the dinghy across to the marina and stopped off for a coffee on "Almacantar", with Steve and Clare. We had arranged to meet John Cornelius, the local port officer for the Ocean Cruising Club, and he kindly drove us around to get the lie of the land. Amanda and I had both visited Cairns before in previous lives, and it has got significantly busier with tourism than we remembered, with lots of new high-rise buildings, and construction work still in progress. Afterwards we called on the Canadian boat "Haulback" to catch up on Jim's and Jan's news since we last saw them in Fiji the previous year.

I took my bike ashore the following afternoon to collect our replacement windlass motor, which had at last arrived from Italy. In the evening, Sue, Chris, Sid and Wilf of Yindee Plus came over for supper, although we weren't sure how much the boys enjoyed it as they were in for a long dinghy ride back to up river, where there just might be crocodiles. It was choppy out on the river, particularly in the mornings and late afternoons when the tripper boats were passing. To add to the disturbance, fresh winds and strong tides competed to twist the boat around, sometimes bringing us worryingly close to others. We therefore moved in to the marina for two days so that I could rebuild the windlass without the bows pitching up and down, and go up the mast to check the rigging without being tossed from side to side. We also took advantage of bounteous water to wash the decks and hardware and replenish our tanks. Cairns would be our last decent chance to shop for supplies for a long while, and we wheeled a couple of trolley loads of provisions through the streets from the supermarket. Finally we got diesel from the fuel dock in readiness for the long haul around the top of Australia. Back on the river for our last night, we joined Göran and Gudrun on board "Anniara" for evening drinks.

We left Cairns after breakfast on the 13th July - and what a relief to have an operating electric windlass again! After 35 miles we anchored on the north side of the Low Islets, surrounded on three sides by reefs. The smaller islet is rather picturesque with a red capped lighthouse poking up through the trees which are surrounded by a sandy beach. There is a small resort, and tripper boats come over during the day. The larger island is entirely covered with mangroves. As befits their name, however, they don't provide much shelter and we had a very uncomfortable night's sleep - moving to the saloon berths halfway through where the motion was marginally less jerky. The next possible anchorages were 90 miles away, which meant an overnight sail so a later start. We spent the morning taking advantage of a good data connection to send some e-mails and download BBC podcasts. We roasted a shoulder of lamb for lunch and cooked up a treacle tart and some flapjacks to keep us going for the next few days.

We set off in light rain under staysail alone with 20 to 30 knots of wind blowing, peaking at 38 knots. Sailing into the night under a full moon, we passed Cape Tribulation soon after dark and continued into Weary Bay. You get a sense of how Captain Cook was feeling trying to find his way through these then uncharted waters. At around midnight we passed Endeavour Reef which his ship struck on 10th June 1770. He was forced to dump 50 tons of gear including cannons before the ship was able to get off and limp to what became Cooktown on the Endeavour River, where she remained beached for seven weeks to effect repairs. Worrying for us was that Egret Reef was 10 miles ahead, and we couldn't relax until the "reef that had our name on" it was safely astern. We had hoped to go directly to Lizard Island, but the pilot book's description of the anchorage wasn't encouraging with its mention of violent down-drafts in strong wind conditions, so early in the morning we diverted instead to the north side of Cape Flattery, a prominent headland. It wasn't exactly comfortable in the bay, but one felt one could ride out pretty much anything. White sand dunes stretched northwards as far as the eye could see, and near to us there was a small settlement and quay serving a silica sand extraction works.

Conditions had improved by the following morning, so we sailed the 20 miles to Lizard Island, and on the way saw bottle-nosed dolphins for the first time. Captain Cook landed on the island to climb its hill, the highest for miles around, to see whether there was a route between the reefs to the open sea, which he was successful in doing. Meanwhile, his naturalist Joseph Banks spent the day studying the natural history. We anchored in Mrs. Watson's Bay. The unfortunate lady was forced to flee in 1880 with her baby and Chinese servant after being attacked by aborigines whilst her husband was away fishing for bêche-de-mer. They reached another island using a boiling tub as a make-shift boat, but later died of thirst. Nowadays this appealing island is a popular destination for Australian sailors, some of whom stay for a month or more before returning back south. There is an airstrip, a campsite and resort, the latter normally able to supply provisions. However it was currently closed for repair after suffering damage in a recent cyclone. We joined a large group ashore in the evening for 'drinks and nibbles' whilst watching the sun go down, and made an early start next morning to climb the hill on what had the prospects of being a perfect day. As we reached "Cook's Lookout" at the 359m summit, we were surprised by a puffing National Parks warden who had chased after us to tell us that we had to come straight down again. His colleagues were about to set fire to the scrub as a means of controlling invasive species. He allowed us time to take some photos and led us down. On the positive side, he was very friendly and knowledgeable, so in effect we had our own personally guided walk. As soon as we were off the beach, a team of licensed arsonists set to work with flame guns, and soon a pall of smoke began to drift across the anchorage. We stopped off at the motor yacht "Southern Star" to renew our acquaintance with to Robbie and Jojo. Per and Elisabeth from "Oda" and Peter and Heidi from "Stormvogel" also came over for a beer. The trio had been cruising in company since New Zealand and had been involved in a dramatic operation between Vanuatu and Cairns, involving bags of cement provided by a passing freighter, to prevent Stormvogel sinking after she sprung a leak through her centre-board case. In the afternoon we went snorkelling over a coral reef which has a great number of giant clams.

The flames continued burning all night, and, with everything beginning to get covered in ash, we were happy to get going again at first light the next morning. We soon left the blackened, smouldering island astern, and had to motor-sail to keep up speed throughout the morning, despite a good breeze, as we had 75 miles to cover. By the time we reached Cape Melville the wind exceeded 30 knots, and as we turned the corner we were hit by gusts of 43 knots and got quite a dousing as we punched into a steep sea. We anchored in Bathurst Bay at sunset beside a range of barren hills made of massive granite boulders.