Glouchester Point
12 May 2012
May 3, 2012 When we went to bed last night our plan was to get up early and go up to the top of Hook Island to snorkel in Luncheon or Butterfly Bay. We would then see if we could visit Whitehaven Beach by sailing down the east side of Hook and Whitsunday Islands. However, when our alarm went off at 6am, we had a crew meeting and our plans were changed. We decided that the water was very turbid and murky due to the high winds we had been experiencing--not good for snorkeling. We decided to continue our trek north--on to Glouchester Island. We upped anchor and after fifteen minutes of untangling the snubber line (my fault)--we were motoring out of Nara Inlet. As soon as we were out of the inlet we had 20-25 knots of wind on the port bow with 5-6 foot wind waves crashing over the bow--white caps everywhere and spray hitting me in the face. I thought sailing up inside the Great Barrier Reef was 10-15 knot trade winds and calm seas? Once we turned north and put the wind and waves on our aft port quarter it became more tolerable. And once we moved further north--out of the Whitsunday Channel-- it actually became nice with 15-20 knot winds with minimal rocking. We were headed to Cape Glouchester, which has a passage between Glouchester Island and the cape. As we would arrive close to low tide, and the passage has some very shallow parts, we opted to go around the top of Glouchester Island--thanks to our navigator Sherry. We were anchored by 1:10 pm and had a crab salad for lunch. There is a resort here that has numerous moorings available-- but we did not like the looks of them. We trust in our own ground tackle, so we anchored in 11 ft on a sand bottom.