After breakfast and topping off our water tanks we called the Marina office to get a booking for diesel. This is the only place so far on the trip where you have to book in for fuel. We were told the earliest we could get some was 1pm which was too late so we decided to head off with a half tank (although if we needed any more, we still had the three 20L jerry cans and the 120L in the soft pack, so we would have sufficient, only accessing these is far more inconvenient).
Daddy and Nicholas checked the oil in the engine and identified that the oil level was far too low. We were not able to easily find the spare oil and decided instead to get another batch. Daddy walked to the end of the Marina to a Diesel Mechanic and was able to purchase 5L of Yanmar Diesel oil; Perfect! Nicholas and Daddy then put approx. 2L of additional oil into the engine bringing the oil back within the minimum and maximum safe levels. The engine has been running quite a bit on the trip so far and we must have burt a small amount of oil. Something to keep an eye on for the trip back to Sydney.
It was a beautiful day, about 10-15knots of wind, the seas were very flat (waves less than half a metre) and we headed off to Cid Harbour on the back (Western side) of Whitsunday Island. It was a lovely trip of about 2 hours, and we were able to see several resorts on the horizon. A number of cruising yachts (mostly sailing catamarans) were about, we spotted about 14 on the trip over heading in various directions around the Whitsundays. It is clear that the perfect boat for around this area would probably be a catamaran as it is not only large, comfortable, shallow draft, but very stable in small swells/waves. This is the preferred vessel for most of the bare boat charter companies. The marina has many of them tied up and for hire. Daddy can't help eyeing them off.
We decided to anchor in a slightly different place, closer to a beach which has a couple of walks which we can explore tomorrow.