Airlie Beach (pronounced Air-lee) is the coastal town that serves as the jump-off point for the Whitsundays. It’s the budget town to Hamilton Island’s luxury, and it’s targeted more for backpackers. Marina & Anchorage The Whitsundays have dozens of charter boats available through GlobeSailor for sailing vacations, and most of them are based in Airlie…
The Whitsunday Islands are mostly empty, with a few resorts here and there, with the exception of it’s main hub: Hamilton Island. Hamilton Island is owned by the Oatley family (as in Bob Oatley) and is leased by the Australian government. It’s mostly a holiday spot, with only 1,200 residents living on the island, but…
As our time traveling up the coast of Australia is coming to a close, we’re limited in how much time we can spend along the way. But for 6 nights, we enjoyed two completely different bays on Whitsunday Island. About the Whitsundays The Whitsundays are a group of 74 islands in the Great Barrier Reef,…
Our next stop after Great Keppel Island was Middle Percy Island (sometimes called Middle Island, in the Percy Island group).  Middle Percy is the largest island around, and only has one small anchorage that serves as protection from the prevailing winds – West Bay. West Bay was empty when we arrived on June _.  It’s…
Departing Fraser Island we had strong southeasterly winds. We left Fraser around 8 am aiming for the Keppels. We played with the sails a little bit throughout the day, but by nighttime, we’d taken down our mainsail and just powered along with our genoa. The winds were that strong! Keppel Bay Marina We made it…
Wide Bay Bar Crossing WBB has a pretty gnarly reputation. Australians also call it the Mad Mile. This bar entrance has a lot of shifting sands and is completely open to the ocean, unlike Mooloolaba which had a headland. Timing the crossing is challenging. You need to meet these conditions: Enter in the morning or…
When we departed Scarborough we had hoped to go back to Tangalooma, but damn that Tangalooma roll sucks. Instead of stopping, we decided to just hightail it out of Moreton Bay and head to our next destination – Mooloolaba on the Sunshine Coast. The Sunshine Coast is the area just north of Brisbane up to…
Departing the Boat Works was only the second time EVER that one of us moved the boat without the other. I was still at the WWSA Gathering on the Bay. David invited our friends Mark and Susan to join him while launching the boat and motoring back to their dock. We identified a few problems in…