Orpheus Island

02nd Aug 2010

We woke to a cloudy by generally fine day with little wind. Leaving Magnetic about 07:45 we motored and then motor/sailed uneventfully, all the way to Orpheus island, north of the Palm Group. The main island of this group is of course Palm Island, a big place’ dedicated to the Aboriginal community on its west side. While it has a number of good anchorages, landing on Palm is not permitted so the recommendation we were following was to go to Orpheus which is all national park and boast a marine research station belonging to James Cook University.

On arrival we dropped in quite deep water (11m) to avoid the coral reefs along the shore and though this meant putting out every bit of anchor cable on the boat, I was confident that we were secure. The only problem here is the possibility of damaging the coral with so much chain but there seems little option.

Although there were some boats slightly north of us, we had this spot to ourselves so it was all ours to enjoy the crystal clear water and a general vista was top class. The sea was glassy and the afternoon was near perfect so this was already on the records as another great spot!

Shortly after settling in, a small runabout from the research station came over for a G’Aye. After a time, it came up that my sweet daughter Brianna (PhD) was into marine research and it turned out that one of the folks knew of her through a mutual colleague – small world. With that we were invited to come over and have a tour of the place at our pleasure. This we did, as the photo show and then proceeded back to Pilgrim for a spot of fishing before dinner (I don’t think this is a sanctuary??). This, in fact, turned out to be successful endeavour with me quickly landing a very good sized Mangrove Jack which was soon cleaned and in the fridge as I Paul had already prepared dinner.

Tomorrow will be a late, so easy, start as I need to get the tides right for both the entry and course through the Hinchinbrook passage. Once there we have a bout a 20 nm trip inside what Lucas describes as one of the best inland routes in Australia. This will take us up near Cardwell for the night and then its onto Kent Island the next day.