Witness to near disaster.

15th Jul 2010


Leaving Hamilton at 10:30 we were soon under headsail in a strong 20 kts S/SE wind, heading along the passage between Hamilton and Whitsunday islands. In this narrow passage, the tide easily runs at over 2 kts and this, fortunately, was in our favour so we made good time.

Now the route to the famous Whitehaven takes us through Solway Passage, a similar narrow fast moving waterway between Whitsunday and Haslewood Islands. As we approached, we noted the seas were very confused with strong wind against current and this was further exacerbated by the need to avoid Frith Rock, a clearly obvious but potentially treacherous chunk of rock in about the middle of the Passage at its Southern entrance. Being cautious in nature, we elected to go outside the rock where as the route inside is not uncommon, particularly for power boats. One such power boat was on our port and moving fast on a course that suggested that he did indeed intend to track inside (between the rock and its associated headland). On my last glance I noted that it now appeared that he was going to go outside Frith Rock so I turned to some matter of sail trim and thought no more about our ‘stink boat’ colleague. It was about then that I heard Paul shout out “ wow, look at that!”. What he had observed was the said vessel getting very near the rock at high speed and then suddenly ( and presumably urgently) executing a very hard turn to port to avoid impact. It seemed to us that the skipper had been distracted and was lucky enough to look just in time to avoid what would have been a disaster.

Arriving a Whitehaven we dropped anchor off the beach (see left) in a stiff breeze that was to persist all through the night but the Manson 45 anchor and 45 m of 10mm chain  set on a 14mm nylon strop, did the job and held us firm. After an afternoon ashore, among the many many boats and all the tourist vessels that come to this famous beach, we returned to Pilgrim for a good night including a sing along in the cockpit before retiring to a rolly but quite acceptable night.