Jasmine's cut is still clean and healing but she won't be able to get it wet.
After breakfast we upped our anchor. We have decided to head off today to Whitehaven beach. It should be a trip of approx. 2 hours. The wind is a bit stronger today, approx. 20knots and climbing. There is a shallow spot north of Cid Harbour, so we have to make a detour around this to Hook Passage between Whitsunday Island and Hook Island.
As we were approaching Hook Passage, Daddy's phone went into the water, sank and was lost. Unfortunately this means we can't answer messages for the time being from that phone, lost all the photos from the climb up the mountain and have no contact details. All the backups with contact details of friends, family and work colleagues from the phone are on the home computer which is inaccessible. Therefore even if we got a new phone, we can't update these contacts until we get home.
We arrived off beautiful Whitehaven beach and anchored in 6m of water surrounded by 12 other vessels, 8 of which were large tourist vessels, and one sea plane up next to the beach at the southern end. There was a small steady swell, which means we will probably head back around to a more sheltered anchorage for tonight. We had lunch and then launched our tender, put Jasmine's foot into a waterproof bag, and headed for the beach for a play and swim.
It was absolutely wonderful!
Daddy and Nicholas swam, played catch with a Nerf dart ball in he water and Mummy came later and joined in the fun. Jasmine made sand castles on the beach, unfortunately she couldn't swim as we needed to keep the cut clean and dry. We all helped Jasmine make a good castle.
Tourist vessels, sea planes their passengers and crew came and went during the day. Best estimate is there were about 50-150 people at different times at the end of the beach and on boats. A very popular beach. We were about 100m to the north of most of them and they were no trouble.
At 3.30pm we decided we needed to leave. Most of the tourist vessels were also packing to head back, most likely to Airlie Beach or to Hamilton Island. The wind was picking up and once away from the comparative shelter of the beach where waves were now approaching half a metre, the waves were about 1.5m. The wind continued to pick-up and dark clouds came over with a storm.
We passed through Hook Passage in the dusk and then into Macona Inlet for the night. We were able to get a reasonably good anchorage point in 4m of water under the keel and only 50m from the end of the rock drop off where it shallowed into sand and mud flats. There was only a few small waves entering the inlet but as we approached the wind picked up further. Although the anchorage was sheltered from waves, as we approached the anchorage and while anchored, the wind blew over the surrounding hills and was over 25knots with gusts over 30knots. Once again we were faced with very strong winds. There were 5 other bareboat sailing cats anchored around us.
We all showered, had dinner and settled down for the night to watch "The Flash" tv series with the wind howling outside.
Tomorrow we will try for Cid Harbour again which should be more protected from the South East winds and we can swim off the stern and at the beach.