Day 16 - Great Keppel Island

Well folks - it finally feels like we have arrived in Tropical Queensland with swaying palm trees, coconuts and wide sandy beaches. It has been an 'interesting' trip so far and we cannot wait to get to the Whitsundays where we hope to slow down and get into 'Island Time'. We still have a few miles to go before that can happen....

Today was spent tidying up the boat and going ashore to show Pete the sights of Leeke's Beach (the main anchorage on the north side of the island). Cath and I visited here during our Rocky stay so already knew the layout.

Double Fun looking very small.

It looks like everyone else decided to re-start their trips yesterday as the anchorage has been slowly filling up all day with boats arriving from the south. An English gentleman solo sailing a junk rigged schooner arrived six hours after us despite leaving Bundy about an hour after us so we feel that we made good time! I guess it is no surprise that the majority of the boats here are cats.

Anchorage at Great Keppel - Cat City!

As previously mentioned, the autopilot is now working much better but it still does chew up some power (along with the nav lights, AIS transponder, multiple computer/phone chargers etc etc). Suffice to say we were down to 80% capacity this morning (ht lowest i have ever seen it) so I ran the Kipor petrol generator for an hour to top things up. It was really nice to see 42 amps flowing into the bank.

We are going to try a bit of day sailing from here on. By leaving early tomorrow we should be able to get to Port Clinton or Pearl Bay in daylight which should be nice - a sit down dinner and a few red wines would be very nice.

Not sure what the weather is going to do - it was meant to moderate today but is still honking from the south. I am also not sure whether we will have phone or internet access for the next few days so things might go quiet for a while.

View from our back verandah.