We returned the buggy, cleaned up, and went to dinner at the fine-dining restaurant in the yacht club called Bommie.  It was okay, but like many fine dining restaurants in Queensland, it seems like the abstract idea of what someone who hasn’t eaten in many true fine dining restaurants imagines a fine dining restaurant to be like.  The yacht club is a beautiful building with fantastic views, I like the design aesthetic of the restaurant, and the service was excellent (if a bit obsequious).  Not much else to report however, except a quite hefty tariff.

If the Whitsundays are the Bahamas of Australia, Hamilton Island is supposed to be the Hamptons.  I guess I could see it.  It’s definitely expensive here.  There’s a variety of resorts and restaurants and water-based activities to suit any taste in the higher end budgets, but there’s just not much to it.

All in all, Hamilton Island feels very sterile and master-planned in a kind of Potemkin-like way.

It’s 9:00 a.m. now.  Hamilton Island Marina has a “check out” time like a hotel – 11:00 a.m.  Luckily this vaguely corresponds with the tidal chart, but the first hour or so of our 3-hour jaunt to Airlie Beach will be against the current.  Abel Point Marina suggested that we arrive around 2:00 p.m. to be safe on depth.  I’m headed out to the bakery for a couple of pies and sandwiches for the afternoon.

Yesterday, we walked around the marina complex area and visited the yacht club.  Andy had a couple of business logistics to take care of so we set off to find an Internet café with a printer and some lunch.  The Reef View Hotel promised a serviceable business center, and Sails Restaurant provided a serviceable lunch.  Afterward, we visited the ice cream parlor and walked the docks looking for familiar boats to no avail.  We took an afternoon rest, cleaned up, went to the yacht club for a sundowner, and hit the Manta Ray Café for a pretty tasty pizza complete with possums sniffing our feet and begging for crusts.

Spectacle at the Hamilton Island Marina

Our 6-hour trip to Hamilton Island was pretty uneventful except for an amazing whale sighting – probably the best we’ve ever had with countless full breaches, full fluke, fin slaps, the whole kit and caboodle.  Absolutely amazing. 

The marina is located on the west side of the island in a channel about 1-mile wide flanked by Dent Island to the west.  As we passed Lindeman Island and Pentecost Island to starboard, some strong and strange swirling currents bounced us around a bit as we approached the channel between Hamilton and Dent Islands, but it quickly subsided.  We announced our arrival, and the marina warned us to stay at least 300 meters away from the edge of the airport runway which seemed like really good advice. 

Instead of just telling us our slip assignment, the marina sends out a guy in a dinghy to “welcome” us and “escort” us to the slip.  I guess that’s considered really good service or something, but our escort was late and we were annoyed.  We loitered in the turning basin waiting for someone to show up while stressing about low-tide and other boat traffic.  Why can’t they just give us the slip number so we can get out of the way?  The guy finally showed up and said he was waylaid by a migrating whale.  Okay, whatever.  The tide was way low, and we were surprised that we didn’t have some bumps along the bottom along the way.  The neighbors came out to help with lines, and invited us over for some beers and conviviality which was fun.  We went out for mediocre Italian and retired early in anticipation of exploring the island tomorrow.

Captain James Cook discovered the islands while sailing up the coast of eastern Australia in June of 1770.  Cook named the actual islands the “Cumberlands” after Henry Frederick, Duke of Cumberland and younger brother of George III.  Cook named the stretch of ocean now referred to as “Whitsunday Passage” in the mistaken belief that it was discovered on Whitsunday.  However, later research of Cook’s Journals showed that the date was actually June 4, 1770, or Whit Monday, due to a time-keeping error. 

And yes, I had to look it up.  A contraction of white and Sunday, Whitsun is a summer baptismal festival originating as a response to the ancient pagan celebration called Summer’s Day.  Later incorporated into the Christian liturgical calendar, Whitsunday is most often associated with Pentecost which is celebrated 7 weeks after Easter Sunday, which is the tenth day after Ascension Thursday.  Pentecost commemorates the descent of the Holy Spirit upon Christ’s disciples as described in the New Testament, Acts of the Apostles 2:1-31.  Whit Monday is also known as Monday of the Holy Spirit, second day of Pentecost, Second Whitsunday, or Holy Day of Obligation to Roman Catholics in Germany.  Whit Monday remains a public holiday in many Commonwealth countries. 

Captain Cook encountered Australia’s indigenous population for the first time while in this area.  The Whitsunday Islands were seasonally inhabited by the Ngaro people from about 7000 BC until 1870 when the Australian Native Police forcibly removed the remaining population and relocated them to a settlement on Palm Island and work camps on Brampton Island.  The word, Ngaro, means “vanishing” in Maori and Tahitian, a name which is unsettling in its appropriateness.   

Whitsunday Island is the largest in the group of islands which are organized by region:  the Sir James Smith Group (including Brampton Island to the south), the Anchor Islands (southwest), the Lindeman Group (the further north end), and the Whitsunday Group (east of Airlie Beach).  Whitsunday Island is home to national parks, campgrounds, the Cid Harbor anchorage, the Gulnare Inlet, and the enormously popular and unbelievably beautiful Whitehaven Beach.  The Whitsundays enjoy over 700,000 visitors annually.  Humpback whales are common from July through September as they migrate from Antarctica to breed and give birth in tropical and subtropical waters.

The bus drops off at Caneland which is a fairly large mall complete with food court, Australia Post, Target, Woolworths (a typical grocery store), and a mish-mash of discount stores.  It’s a madhouse – troubled youths, morbidly obese, teenage mothers, and crass consumerism of made-in-China crap that nobody needs and few can truly afford.  Not a pleasant experience.

I did, however, enjoy my kebab from the food court.  The concept of the kebab is very popular in Australia … as ubiquitous as Subway, but rarely ever a chain.  Of course, with the accent, it’s pronounced Kuh-BABB (rhymes with “cab”).  Kebab restaurants can be Arabic, Greek, or Turkish themed, but the kebabs are usually very similar.  The one I had today reminded me a lot of Los Angeles’ much beloved Zankou Chicken … so delicious.

We also decided to grocery shop since we’ll be here through the weekend at least – depending on how quickly we can get the insurance rider for Airlie Beach and how quickly Hamilton Island can sort out their computer problems.  Plus, provisioning will only get more expensive between here and Cairns so better to stock up now.  After that decision, we knew we would need a taxi back to the marina, so we decided to hit the bottle shop as well.  Beer is really expensive in Australia, especially the Tasmanian varieties that I prefer – Cascade and James Boag’s – so when we saw some good prices at the Mackay Dan Murphy’s, we decided to really stock up with about 5 cases!  Oh yeah!

The respective stores held our purchases (refrigerated even, how nice) while we headed out for a walk to take care of some other errands and catch an early dinner.  The nearest Internet café with a printer and fax machine was located in the back room of a really nice bike shop.  Andy took care of some business items while I browsed the store.  I would love to get into cycling, but bike storage on the boat would be challenging … especially if I bought one of these bikes!  I would definitely not spend some AUS$1000 on a bike that would rust out while strapped to the side of my boat exposed to the corrosive marine elements.  Seriously, I don’t even want the outside of my boat on the outside of my boat much less an expensive bike! 

Chores completed, we sat down to an early dinner at an Indian restaurant next door to the bike shop/Internet café.  It was nice but could’ve been spicier. 

We walked back to the grocery store, picked up the groceries, loaded up a taxi, drove to Dan Murphy’s, picked up the booze, and headed back to the marina.  Of course, there were no trolleys to borrow so I walked the docks until I found one, and of course, it had a busted wheel.  With so much stuff and a compromised trolley, we had to make several trips to our berth in the most Siberian portion of the marina, so Andy took batch number one and I babysat the rest of the stuff.  The process took every bit of an hour.

Australians are very chatty and friendly and outgoing.  Even strangers on the street are always good for a cheery greeting and a clever quip of some kind.  A stand-offish Australian is rare, and I like that.  As you can probably imagine, I made a lot of friends standing there with 5 cases of beer!  “I wanna party with you, mate!”  “Now there’s the right kind of provisioning, mate!”  “Ah thanks, mate, but what’ll you be having?”  You name it, I heard it!

I called my insurance agent again to request a rider to bump me up to AUS$10 million for one month.  Unfortunately, the actual insurer is Allianz UK which is located in London.  New Zealand is 11 hours ahead of London, and today is Thursday, so the rider cannot be processed before the weekend.

With this delay, I started looking into other possibilities.  I’m not willing to skip Airlie Beach as I want to see it … plus, our buddy James is there and we would like to spend some time with him. 

Hamilton Island is a playground for the rich and famous, but it’s a little closer and might be a good intermittent stop.  I called Hamilton Island Marina to make a berth reservation, but their computerized reservation system was down and they couldn’t confirm availability one way or the other.  This strikes me as totally ridiculous … can’t back up the computer with a white board like everybody else?  Don’t they even have a baseline understanding of the marina’s activity to predict availability?  On the upside, my insurance is good there.

In any event, it looks like Monday at the earliest … and there’s a front coming through.

The marina is quite nice as well … professional and organized.  It also has a fantastic Laundromat – a bit expensive, but I’m willing to pay a premium for the big industrial machines.  Another thing I like is that there’s music in the ablutions building … it’s kinda nice and feels homey to be singin’ in the shower! 

Besides the Sports Bar with its typical Queensland pub grub menu, the marina complex includes an Italian food restaurant (really hit or miss, inedible lasagna, pretty good vegetable primavera), a decent steak house, a seriously over-priced tapas joint run by people who have obviously never been to Spain, a passable Thai restaurant with super convenient take-out, and of course, the “Children of the Corn Café.”

The correct pronunciation of the name Mackay is Muh-kai, as in rhymes with ‘sky’.  This unique pronunciation has been a subject of some good-natured controversy.  However, the Scottish descendants of John himself officially ended the discussion by chiming in:  the Gaelic name, Mackay, ends in ‘kai’ not ‘kay’.

On January 21, 1918, one of the most destructive cyclones to strike a populated center in Australia to this day touched down in Mackay.  Every structure in town was damaged, and communication lines were completely destroyed – a full five days passed before the outside world knew of Mackay’s fate.  The accompanying storm surge and 55.55 inches of precipitation caused unprecedented flooding and witnesses reported 6-foot-high breaking waves down Main Street.  

Mackay is nicknamed the sugar capital of Australia.  In the region, sugar cane agriculture covers 86,000 hectares producing up to 6.5 million tons of raw cane for processing.  Mackay Harbor is home to one of the world’s largest bulk-sugar loading terminals.  Unfortunately, the sugar industry has fallen on hard times as the worldwide price of sugar fluctuates, but mining continues to boom.  The nearby Bowen Basin contains the single largest coal reserve in all of Australia with annual extractions of 100 million tons.  Even so, business owners understand the potential fragility of both of these industries and continue heavily investing in tourism infrastructure.  Mackay is well-located as a jumping off point to visit the Whitsunday Islands.  Halfway between Brisbane and Cairns, Mackay is a good stopping off point for yachts in transit as well.

The alarm went off at 3:45 a.m. and I hit the snooze.  Andy got up to connect to the Internet and check the weather forecast one last time.  We heard movement outside (voices, engines firing up, etc.) so it was obvious our buddy boats were a go.  Andy went to assist our neighbor to shove off out of their slip, and I started the final preparations and the last-minute stowage.  Shallow water at night is freaky and a bit disconcerting, but the channel is well-marked so no panic attacks or tense moments or anything like that.

And wow, they were so right about that favorable current!  We were zooming right along at a great clip even with very light wind.  Andy slept most of the afternoon in preparation for some slightly tricky navigation through the night.  Around 2:00 a.m., it became clear that the following current was so favorable and helpful, that we may arrive before sun-up.  That’s when he noticed some strange lights in the distance that looked like land.  He checked the navigation, and realized it couldn’t be land.  He turned on the radar and quickly realized what it was – a huge anchorage for container ships outside of the industrial port of Mackay.  And when I say huge, I mean at least 50 container ships – a bigger array than at the entrance to the Panama Canal.

We entered the outer harbor at about 7:00 a.m.  A guy walking his dog on the dock motioned to us to pull in to a slip.  He caught our lines and loaned us the gate key so we could go have some breakfast before the marina office opened at 8:30 a.m.

We headed over to the only place open that early for breakfast.  An eleven-year-old girl (with multiple facial piercings) took our order, and then a 12-year-old girl made our coffees, and then a 13-year-old girl delivered our plates.  I don’t remember the name of this café, but to us, it will forever be called the “Children of the Corn Café.”  Are there no child labor laws in Mackay?  Sheesh.

Evidently, the World ARC is expected any day, so the marina made us move out to Siberia … out by the crazy trimaran that nobody ever takes care of (it’s the same in every marina)!  In a gigantic marina with 500 berths, we are literally the farthest possible location from the main gate (and presumably, the wifi signal).  Argh.  At first glance, though, there seems to be lots to do in the marina complex.

Spectacle happily tied to the dock at the very nice Keppel Bay Marina in Rosslyn Bay.

The Rosslyn Bay resort is just down the road situated on the very picturesque Kemp Beach.  I’ve had the entire beach to myself several times this week.  The resort has a restaurant with pretty good wood-fired pizzas. 

Andy went to switch over the propane tanks and found a bigger problem than a mere empty tank.  It’s clear there a leaky hose/connection in or around the place where the tank connects to the boat.  Unfortunately, I just bought a ton of groceries, many of which are perishable and require stovetop preparation. 

We are thinking of getting a hotel room at the Rosslyn Bay Resort to watch the U.S. versus Algeria match.  Access to the kitchenette is another argument in favor of that otherwise frivolous plan.  I mean really, who gets a hotel room down the street from their house to watch television?  I just hate throwing food away … such a waste.  But we’ll watch the match, cook dinner, Tupperware some meals for later this week, boil the eggs, swim in the pool, etc.

But the best part of this marina is that the restaurant is fantastic!  The Waterline Café wins all kinds of restaurant awards, which, frankly, isn’t saying much here in Queensland, but at least it shows some effort and pride.  Between the culinary wasteland of Scarborough and the busted propane line rendering the stovetop useless, we really appreciate the Waterline Café!  Poached eggs and grilled toast for breakfast, chef’s special Panini for lunch, and braised short ribs for dinner … lovely!

Yesterday, we jumped on the ferry to Great Keppel Island which was a fun daytrip.  An easy 45-minute hike deposited us at one of the most beautiful beaches I’ve ever seen.  We sat there all day completely by ourselves … a fantastic afternoon.

One of the many gorgeous and secluded beaches on Great Keppel Island.