Cape Bowling Green to Horseshoe Bay, Magnetic Island

Around 0700 from Cape Bowling Green

Today was a perfect day for wateskiing.  Not a ripple for 12 hours.  We sort of knew it was going to be pretty calm, but we were expecting some wind.  The wind we got was the normal SW in the morning, which is always there, but never predicted.  We picked that up for about 2 hours and got about 15km, until I had to give in and start the motors.  You will see on one of the photos we were traveling at 0.0km/hr in 0.0 knots of wind.  We had to do 65 km, so we pretty well motored all the way.  We were teased a couple of times when the wind picked up to a bit more than 5knots, but after stopping the motors it quickly faded away.  After about the 5th tease, I gave up and resigned myself to motoring all the way.

I have to say that when it is that calm you do tend to see a lot of sea life.  We saw something that was very big which was air breathing and I assume a mammal, or a really large turtle, a yellow snake, which was about 1m long, about 50mm thick, but it did not have a flat tail like a normal sea snake (and it was not within sight of land), a lot of large finned fish, a shark that was about 1.5m long, maybe a little bigger, and various birds.  So excitement everywhere….

We got to Horseshoe Bay around 1400, and I decided to scrape the rudders as they were building up in slime.  It was not a big deal, but it was an ideal opportunity to do it.  We then went into the town.  It is something out of the 1970’s, with a few shops, holiday makers (it is school holidays here) and about 30 boats.  We ended up having dinner out at the pub tonight and both agree next time we only need to buy one meal between the two of us.

My observations are Cape Bowling Green is flat and green, Cape Cleveland (the next one north) is rocky and very mountainous, and Magnetic Island is as rocky as they come and showed no sign of a magnetic deviation as we got close, as Caption Cook claimed.

Tomorrow we will explore the island.  The weather is a bit more windy, but not a lot.  After that I am not sure where we will end up but will move north as far as the wind will take us.

And no sunset today as we were in the pub when that happened.

Allan and Hilary.

Morning at Cape Bowling Green

The final point of Cape Bowling Green. We anchored just inside it.

Motoring north from Cape Bowling Green

The tablet tells you the speed of the boat in km/hr (and it reads 0.0) whereas the instrument at the bottom tells you the wind speed relative to the boat in knots, and it also reads 0.0. Basically you can conclude there was not a lot of wind.

Cape Cleveland

Magnetic Island with about an hour to go.

Horseshoe Bay is just around that first point.

Some of the rocky outcrops on Magnetic Island

Horseshoe bay looking west

Horseshoe bay looking East

The main street, albeit the town centre is at the end of the picture

A pretty bird we saw

Looking north from were we are anchored at Horseshoe Bay

A panorama view of the bay

Now I am not sure why the toilets are part of the general warnings, they weren’t that bad.

The beach side park at Horseshoe Bay