Tiare Taporo III at Mourilyan Harbour Lat. 17 degrees 36.4' S Long. 146 degrees 07.5' E

We left Missionary Bay on the northern end of Hinchinbrook Is. at 0800 in a light SW and 100% overcast with intermittent light drizzle. We motorsailed the whole way with just the main because no wind to speak of and we had to get there!! A miserable day but the forecast is for 25-30 knots from the SE in a day or so. Therefore necessary to get moving before that develops because it's bad enough having the wind dead astern but at that strength with the associated sea it's pretty much untenable. And there are very few bolt holes on this coast. As we've often said, on an ocean passage you would just adjust your course but doing a coastal passage with a daily ETA deadline, that is usually not an option. We'd originally thought we might spend a night at Dunk Is. (about halfway) but the resort was totally destroyed in January 2011 by Cyclone Yasi and the rebuilding has still not been completed. God knows what their insurance premiums will be. Of course all these things put costs and prices up and with the high Aussie dollar together with a depressed world economic situation at present it's no wonder that Queensland tourism is in the doldrums with many recent business failures.
Dunk is 20 miles north of Hinchinbrook and the anchorage is only ho-hum so we decided to press on for Mourilyan. Further north we passed the south and north Barnard Group outside as it's a bit shallow to go inside and then altered course to 320 T for the Mourilyan entrance 5 miles on. This is where one needs to have absolute faith in the chartplotter (and plotting positions on the paper chart) because the entrance was invisible from the south until almost abeam. The entrance is only 190 metres wide with a 90 metre wide dredged entrance channel - very like Tutukaka, although it felt narrower.
Mourilyan is a sugar port with a substantial wharf and huge storage shed on its northern side. No ship in here at present but one would need good nerves to bring a bulk carrier in here. Establishing the correct line of approach would be crucial because there would be no going back. We found it taxing enough coming in on our 38' yacht!! After transiting the entrance we turned hard to port to follow the channel through 2 lines of pile moorings watching the depth sounder all the while like a hawk. It was difficult to find a spot to anchor due to all the permanent moorings upstream but we eventually decided to drop the anchor; however, as the tide turned we swung with it and were getting perilously close to a mudbank with only 2' under our keel. So we weighed anchor and moved only about 20 metres further into the channel where we dropped it again. Now we've got 16-19' which is much better although we're closer to 2 moored fishing boats which isn't ideal. However, we think we'll be ok. Might have to get up during the night to check on things from time to time.
We're not sure what's happening tomorrow. It will all depend on the weather although it would be nice to finally get to Cairns. We've travelled 43 miles today (7 hrs) and Cairns is a further 62 miles. However, there is a good anchorage at Mission Bay 12 miles this side of Cairns. We don't want to stay here tomorrow because if we do we'll probably be weatherbound here for 3 days so we'll be up at dawn to assess the weather and if it looks anywhere near OK we'll go.
Lots of love from us and keep reading the blogs!!............
www.tiaretaporo3.blogspot.com

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