Magnetic Island to Airlie Beach Monday 1st June to Sunday 7th June 2026

The first week of June has seen us make the break from Townsville, south to Airlie Beach. Remarkably we had the best run south possible with winds in the northerly sector for the duration of our journey. Our tenure in the Breakwater Marina expired on Sunday 31st May do we decided to sail over to Horseshoe Bay for the night and leave from there. The budget had already maxed out on marina fees for the month. Peter set the alarm for 4am as our first stop would be Cape Upstart some 67nm away. We like to arrive in daylight so an early start was necessary. As usual when anticipating an early start the body clock runs on overdrive and we were wide awake at 2.30am, so decided to have a coffee and left Horseshoe Bay in bright moonlight, with no wind, at 3am. What a magnificent night. It was like daylight, the moon was so bright.

After passing Cape Cleveland we encountered a 10-12kt westerly breeze that took us past Cape Bowling Green, with both sails up, at a boat speed of 6-7kts. Just delightful! I have only seen Cape Bowling Green in daylight once, as we have often sailed overnight from Gloucester Passage when travelling north. The day was beautiful, so we had a good view of the longest sand spit in Australia. How long can a sandspit be? As long as Cape Bowling Green! According to Google it is a narrow, 14km long, low sand spit that forms the eastern boundary of Bowling Green Bay. There is no vehicle access and boating is difficult because of the constantly shifting sand bars and shallow water. However I can  say that it is not that interesting, except for the fact that it is long... and it was a beautiful day.

The wind dropped to 0kts after Cape Bowling Green and we completed the rest of the journey by engine.  We anchored in Shark Bay on the northern side of Cape Upstart at 4pm having sailed about half of the way and motored the rest. Two other yachts joined us and just as it was getting very dark the moon rose over the vast bulk of the mountain in front of us and bathed us in bright moonlight. Cape Upstart is the exact opposite of Bowling Green. Very rugged and mountainous. 

The second of June saw us motoring through the Port Authority control area for the Abbot Point coal loading facility. Two ships were on the jetty loading and four were anchored off waiting for their turn. After motoring on south we decided to stop in at Queens Bay off Grey's Beach, Bowen, for a lunch break. It is a very pretty bay, but affected by swell. As we ate our lunch a light northerly breeze sprang up and it was obvious that this was not a good place for an overnight stop. Up came the anchor and we set off for Gloucester Passage. As the wind was still a light northerly we decided to rent a mooring off the Cape Gloucester Resort for the night. It was comfortable there, but I'm glad the northerly remained light as it did get quite bumpy during the night. $40 per night entitled us to showers at the resort, rubbish disposal, use of swimming pool and access to the bar/restaurant.

Nara Inlet 3rd and 4th June

We were going to stay at Gloucester Passage for two nights, but the northerly breeze persisted so we decided to motor through the Passage to Nara Inlet. We had a good sail to Hook Island in the Whitsunday's where we anchored in outer Nara Bay for two nights. The wind stayed in the north for  both nights we had there.  Then it was forecast to turn SW/SE so after exploring the whole inlet we sailed over to Airlie Beach and anchored outside the mooring area off Abel Point, along with most of the other anchored boats.

Nara Inlet is beautiful. It is narrow with the steepest mountains of the Whitsundays surrounding it.  The hillsides around the bay are covered with dense forest with patches of magestic pine trees covering the them.  Luckily there was only about 30 boats in there while we were there and still plenty of room for more. It is not high tourist season here yet. That apparently that is July/August. We took the dinghy and explored the whole bay. There are some amazing weathered rocks here that take on all sorts of unusual shapes, some are like caves, some like mouths and even a couple of toadstools. Where the rock has weathered away the shapes left are pure white and look quite startling amongst the grey of the original rock and the green of the dense vegetation.

We climbed up to the Aboriginal Rock Shelter and looked at the rock paintings, mainly fish traps and some jellyfish looking things. There were plaques which explained the history of the last 9 000 years which was interesting. We saw a dugong near us and a large school of fish near the entrance of the bay. People watching is always interesting and as we were close to the entrance of the bay nearly everyone motored past us as we sat with our late afternoon drinks and watched the procession with interest.

Airlie Beach 5th June

We are now at Airlie Beach and will stay here for a few days as the forecast is for some rain and stronger winds from the S/SE. This is a reasonably good anchorage for the expected winds, some of which are forecast to be strong. Early on Saturday morning we had a gust of 30.8kts. Just a bit too strong for my liking. However not long after that the wind eased and we decided to go ashore  for some R&R.

PHOTOS WILL BE ADDED AT A LATER DATE - NEED HELP WITH DOWNLOADING FROM MY MOBILE PHONE. THERE ARE SOME NICE ONES OF NARA INLET.