(Written 27 November but published a day later when we realised we could get 4G by half climbing the mast and holding the phone up at arm’s length).
It’s day ten aboard the Wanderer, currently anchored at Cape Upstart (Budgenerra). The sunset is already a warm gold, and will fast progress to a radiant glow, which will be picked up in the wispy clouds around. Thorpie, Wanderer’s owner and our skipper, is tapping away fixing a port light (living out his own saying that sailing is doing boat maintenance in beautiful places). Ben and Alice are downstairs preparing vege lasagne in the kitchen (which is a feat, given the kitchen is really too small for two people). Dan’s reading on deck with me, bathed in the aforementioned sunset gold. And I’m struggling to work out how to sum up so many beautiful moments in ten same-ish days without leaving out something important.
Our journey so far has taken far longer than we’d imagined. The plan was Orpheus on day one, and Magnetic on day two. The wind’s supreme unhelpfulness has meant that we made Orpheus on day three and Magnetic on day six. It’s a stately pace, and a lot of our progress has been made by motorsailing. When we have sailed it’s often been at a rakish angle – the deck might be at 40 degrees or so – which the boat is comfortable with, but it’s taken me some getting used to.
Let me do my best to introduce you to Wanderer (I’m still very new to all things nautical, so this is a layperson’s description). She’s a 50-foot (or so) monohull yacht with a beautiful teak deck and two cabins at each end (with other convertible beds). Half the deck is covered, so we can generally find shade during the day, and at the moment she’s holding a lifetime worth of adventure gear – gliders, kite surfing gear, supps, snorkeling and spear fishing gear, the list goes on. There’s a zippy tender that gets us from the anchored boat to shore, and is used every few days for skurfing (wake boarding with a surfboard).
Things I love about boat life include: how much love is poured into each meal that we make for each other; accessing the deck from the hatch in our room; the company of my fellow seafarers; generally having at least a nap a day (or sometimes six); reading voraciously (just finished my fourth book – Treasure Island, fittingly); the gentle rocking of the boat at a gentle anchorage; exploring islands and national parks; getting creative with food as we get through our stocks of fresh food; playing cards; playing corn hole; enjoying raw and cooked fresh fish; hours and hours while sailing spent enjoying the shape of the clouds; learning how to control the sails and how to tie useful knots.
I’m not going to attempt to describe each day and each scene that’s touched me in detail, so here’s just a few tasty morsels.
We’ve done fairly well for fish. Dan caught a giant queen off the back of the boat on the first day, a spotted mackerel two days later, and Ben spearfished a sea brim the day after. Since it’s now been a few days, Dan’s been fishing with increasing intensity. Today, that intensity peaked as we’ve been anchored on a bay with wild schools of bait fish being chased by wild schools of tuna being chased by dive-bombing sea birds. Dan, Ben and I spent a number of hours careening around in the tender in a comedy skit worth of errors trying to reel in a tuna – I dropped the handreel in the sea creating the greatest knotted lines of this century; Dan fell overboard and Ben lost the spear from his speargun trying to use it from the boat. Undeterred, Dan spent another hour or so in the afternoon chasing tuna. He caught a big one, but it got away, taking the lure with it. (Dan, reading a draft of this post, rightly commented how that last sentence doesn’t come anywhere near capturing the emotion and energy of the whole experience. You’ll have to use your imagination.)
We’ve snorkelled in some pretty divine reefs. The giant clam garden at Orpheus stands out. It wasn’t just a few – it was hundreds, in all their different colours.
Of all the places we’ve been so far – Gould, Hinchinbrook, Orpheus, Palm, Magnetic, Cape Bowling Green – where we are now at Cape Upstart stands out as a favourite. This mountainous, rocky land is lined by a community of shacks. We explored the sea cliffs to the north, and they were exceptional. It would be great to see if we could come back and rock climb sometime (when I’m much more skilled). From high up on the cliffs, the ocean was clear enough to spot large fish and sharks. The sunsets have been tip top.
Unless the northerlies gain some consistency and strength, we’ll probably keep heading south at our current pace and dock north of Brisbane so Dan, Alice and I can get down in time for Christmas festivities.
Until then, there’s a whole range of beautiful islands and coastlines to explore, a whole lot of fish to catch, and a sizeable stack of boat books for me to devour.
VREPS
[Cape Upstart]
The Two Swords 