Keswick, St. Bees, Brampton

Maia in Australia continues to find opportunities to blog only in marinas, both from a standpoint of not finding much wifi and there is typically not enough electricity on the boat, unless we are at a marina. The problem is that the marinas are busy places where we are making repairs, shopping, showering, making internet phone calls, then leaving as soon as we can. When we're on the hook, reading, hiking ashore, cooking better meals, with much more time, the captain (me) is reluctant to use up the power to run the computer to write. So there is some limits to the connectivity we can get with you all.

Yesterday (August 4) we departed MacKay for some islands 15 miles away but there was no wind, so we pulled a 'cruiser move' and rather than motor for hours we anchored just a few miles from the marina off a nearby beach. Today there still was no wind, so we gave in and motored from Slade Pt. to Brampton Island, for many hours. This leaves our batteries topped up, and the solar panel is covering the computer just fine. In fact, we need to make sure the panel doesn't turn out too much power, so this is a golden opportunity to dash off a quick note to our small internet audience.

As cruisers go, we're very short term, and very full of "plans," which primarily involve how to leave Australia. Well those plans are starting to change again. We sent our passports off to Brisbane to get permission to go to PNG. Well, that was two weeks ago and they haven't come back. The PNG consulate has not returned any of our phone calls, and has responded with just a cryptic one-line e-mail message that they sent them back to us. They will likely show up at the MacKay marina eventually, but after spending another week 'waiting' we're heading North again. Our pace is much slower now, however.

While hanging about MacKay we left for a few days to visit nearby islands, of Keswick and St. Bees. There are a few private houses accessed primarily by small planes on a landing strip. We saw locals snorkeling in a trip they made to the beach in their golf cart. We motored the dinghy over to St. Bees for a picnic lunch on the beach. We found goats and goat skeletons on the island, and Dave found a number of fresh water pools in the steep hills nearby. Craig got a first brief and cold chance to snorkel and see many new types of fish - no names, but it was a different reef. The rowing dinghy also came off the deck for the first time for some rowing fun. After a couple days hanging about, we had a slow sail back to the MacKay Marina to get in touch with the world again.

Craig's mom has arrived in Sydney, and will rendez-vous with the boat at Hamilton Island August 8. By that time we will be in the heart of the Whitsundays - supposed to be amazingly pretty but also a tourist zone with charter boats. We have seen some really wild and great stretches of coast here, but we are looking forward to more for the time we have left. Yes, that's right, we are actively planning our trip back to California.

Craig and Evvy also took a side trip to spend their first night off the boat for the entire trip. We'll tell you more about that in a separate message, our next installment of the trip.