Tropical Escape – By Josh Behrendorff
There is no doubt that the Whitsundays area is a magical place. It is the picture postcard for the tropics with the white sandy beaches giving way to rainforest covered islands surrounded by corals and turquoise blue water. The idyllic location understandably brings the attention of plenty of tourists which is all well and good as it supports the community and helps gives people the opportunity to explore this tropical paradise. Unless of course you are the type of person that doesn’t like crowds and socialising, much like myself. For this reason, we choose to hire a sailing boat to explore some of the 74 islands that make up the Whitsundays. The idea of this started close to 16 years ago for my wife and I. We wanted to sail the Whitsundays for our honeymoon, this plan never eventuated and we got our first taste of sailing in paradise on our 10th anniversary.
The old man was suitably impressed with his pan sized trout that fell victim to a floating pilchard.
Previously, my wife and I have hired a vessel to sail the islands with our children, this time around I was keen to show off the area to my parents and give my father a go at some of the incredible fishing to offer. Bareboat chartering is a relatively easy process to engage into, the charter company’s website is easy to navigate and details all the inclusions of each vessel. I have found it is easy enough to negotiate a better rate by speaking to them directly after you have planned your dates and the vessel you would like to sail. The best part of a bareboat charter is that no previous experience is necessary and if you are not a person who likes the thought of sailing, that isn’t a problem as all vessels are suitably powered and can be motored around the various islands.
For me, I personally love the thought of hoisting the sails and tweaking the lines to get as much free acceleration from the vessel while trolling a couple of mackerel lines around.
It is something special to have such a large vessel underway in complete silence powered only by the wind that us fisherman usually dread. The vessel we were calling home for the week was one of my favourite sailing cats, the Seawind 1160. The Seawind’s are an awesome vessel with plenty of space for all of us, ample shade and most importantly easy to operate, easy to sail and can handle some rough weather as we found out on the tail end of the trip.
The sailing speed of the yachts is perfect trolling speed for pelagics. We lost a few, but this spotty mackerel wasn’t that lucky and soon became fresh sashimi and mackerel cutlets.
Our plan for the week was to show our parents all the iconic areas of the Whitsundays, including walking to the peak of Whitsunday island and Whitehaven Beach. The challenge was to see the sights and avoid the crowds. The first night gave us a taste of just how challenging this would be, we decided to anchor up in Cid Harbour for the evening and we were uncomfortably surrounded by vessels, some of which barely left enough swing room for each vessel. This gave us a great indication that we would need to study the charts to find safe anchorages that were less popular. For the most part, this wasn’t too hard to achieve, even when attempting to see the always busy Whitehaven Beach and Hill Inlet. It took my mad keen fisherman father right up until the second night before he decided it was time to start fishing. By this time, we had left Cid harbour and sailed around the bottom of Whitsundays Island, through Soloway passage and pulled up on a mooring line at Chalkies. Chalkies is an anchorage on the eastern side of Harold island, surrounded by reef and drops into rather deep water. As far as fishing anchorages go, this one is good and it didn’t take long for the squid to start eating the bait fish under the lights of the vessel. Within an hour we had a great feed of fresh squid onboard and also some fresh baits for later on during the trip.
Not a bad way to watch the end of another day in paradise.
Each day as we set sail we set out a couple of rods trolling lures for mackerel. On our previous trips we have had good success with Spanish mackerel, so we were rather optimistic that we would stumble across one during the trip. On day four my father hooked up to a good sized big one, only to have the hooks pull. The next strike I was quick to take the rod and surprisingly boated a good-sized spotty mackerel which made an incredible sashimi appetiser as we watched the sun set from Stonehaven anchorage with a few cold beverages. The next morning I awoke to see the old man fishing from the side of the yacht and he was quite pleased to show off his pan sized coral trout which was butterflied in preparation for dinner that evening. Stonehaven has always been one of our favourite anchorages with some incredible coral bommies to snorkel on high tide and at low tide I love taking my children for a reef walk to get up close and personal with the marine environment and some of the creatures that call this place home. It is an area that I’m happy to hang out for a few days, but this time it was different, we had a strong wind warning and an increasing number of vessels flocking to the area. We made the tough decision to go searching for a new anchorage that would give us protection from the wind and escape the crowds.
The pan sized trout was soon butterflied and slapped on the BBQ for dinner.
Punching head on into 25kn + of wind was a great test of the vessels handling. The catamaran took on the 2M waves with relative ease and never made us feel unsafe. We did find the steering positions were a very wet area to drive from, but that wasn’t too much of a concern as a fresh water hot shower was available at all times. Heading south from Hook island, we stumbled across a small sandy bay with coral fringing the island and not another boat in sight. The seclusion was enough to make this the highlight of the trip, however we soon found out that this area also held some very good reef fish to keep everyone entertained for the remainder of the trip.
Breakfast anyone?
Needless to say, we enjoyed the trip so much that we have already booked for another week on the water this year, we have however booked outside of the school holiday period to see if it is less busy. If you haven’t experienced Bareboating the Whitsundays yet, please add it to your bucket list, it is a once in a lifetime adventure, or in our case an annual holiday never to be forgotten. Until next time, stay safe and tight lines.
