On the move again
26 November 2012
Catherine
I can't believe we have been in Cairns so long. We've really loved our time there, but it's time to move on. Things we will miss about Cairns;
-the free fitness classes; from yoga to volleyball, from pilates to bootcamp, we tried just about all of them and enjoyed them all too. A huge thumbs up to the Cairns city council for an amazing initiative that has so many takers.
-the lagoon. The kids because they will miss cooling off free from jellies and crocs, the parents because they probably won't get such eye candy for a while, with all the young fit backpackers in various states of skimpy swimsuits!
-the library. We loved Cairns library. We have probably never read so much in a 6 week period, visiting almost daily for book renewal and sanity renewal in the air conditioning as summer kicks in.
-the marina (especially the showers!!) and the other marina dwellers. Especially Meg and Dave from Karma. I think I've mentioned them already but they made our stay in Cairns so worthwhile, so a huge goodbye to them :-(
-the visits from other boatie friends, Luna and Samba. Such a joy to meet up with some boat families after a long period of not seeing them. A mutual understanding of why we are doing this goes a long way sometimes....
- the eclipse. OK, so that didn't have much to do with Cairns except the fact that it happened here, Don't visit Cairns hoping to see an eclipse every day, but wow! A memorable experience.
-the free BBQs in the park. We became BBQ connoisseurs by the end, making bread, stir fries, you name it. It was great not to have to rush back to the boat for dinner each night.
-the 80c icecreams at MacDonalds introduced to us by Luna. Why didn't we know about this before?!
-dinghy sailing for the kids. A Saturday treat, well for Mia anyway. Lochy suffered under duress!
So you can see now why it was hard to leave. But leave we have. No northerly winds to speak of, but we enjoyed a motor sail round the corner to Fitzroy Is, then on to Kent Is and now we are on an overnighter to Townsville, enjoying a close reach and not having had our engines on all day. We first motored out to Ellison Reef so we could test drive our new stinger suits that we bought in Cairns. Not the best reef in the world, but we still got to see a white tipped reef shark and a plethora of fish, beche de mer and truly giant clams.
It's back to sailmail for the time being as we are out of signal on the phone/internet. I wonder if I will remember how to do it!!