Sunrise delight – Sunset utopia

07th Jul 2010


Please indulge me as I (Once again) start at the end of today and try to paint you the scene we found at Middel Percy Island (64nm off Mackay):

In the background is the music of Mark Knoffler porting from the I‘Phone to the boats sound system. To the East, above the dark silhouette of Middle Percy Island, is a display of stars, the likes of which many folk will never see. To the West is a fading sunset of picture perfect beauty, framed by the outer islands of the Percy group. Pilgrim is rolling gently on a small tide driven swell and the smell of dinner cooking below is drifting across the deck. Now the only thing ‘disturbing’ all this all this, is the sound of bait fish all around the boat, leaping clear of the water so as to avoid the unseen predators that are chasing them. Not bad at all! ............... Middle Percy by the way is a Mecca for boaties and has been for many many years, probably brought about by the hospitality of the original inhabitants from about the 1920s, that has continued to this day. But its time to go back to the start of the day, which also had its high points:

The day started with the statement; “The weather is all over the place! “ Yesterday was meant to be sunny and still yet turned out to be overcast, lumpy and drizzly. Today was said to be wet yet we woke to a beautiful sunrise against clear blue skies. We motored out of Pearl Bay into the dark blue waters of Shoalwater Bay in company with Windstormer but being more of a purest than I he had his motor off shortly after departure where as we ‘Yanmar’ed” ahead for several hours.

One justification for this lack of sailing purity was that I knew we would have trouble with tides and lack of wind. The tides in this place are among the highest in the east coast. Mackay get the most for entirely local reasons but Shoalwater Bay is know for its massive tidal flows. Today’s tide is some 5 meters and current up to 2.5 knots can be experienced. For this reasons a lot of planning focuses on tide times and I, wrongly it seems, suspected that and outgoing tide would be right but as I type we are pushing about 1 kts of contrary tide. Never the les the trip to Percy was ‘ all good’ and on arrival, the ominous looking clouds that had been sitting over the island seemed to move on cue to give us a great afternoon exploring the beach and the famous A frame.

Now this A frame (probably like grand father axe) has been here for years and supports the tradition of leaving some item of memorabilia from your vessel when you pass through. Some of these items date back to the 50’s so the tradition is long established and we were not about to break it. Leaving a small “PILGRIM” sign with names and dates, we walked the beach and returned in the dingy to Pilgrim just on dark and that’s where this blog began.