Australia - Pacific Crossing Notes: A Sailor's Guide to the Coconut Milk Run - page 448

The Cumberland Islands
With the coast finally clear, we were eager to press on to the real highlight of our cruise,
the Cumberland Islands. After a brief re-provisioning stop in nearby Keppel Bay (the only
such stop during the five-week trip), we slipped back into passage-making mode and made
a quick thirty-six hour run to Scawfell Island. Another night of stars, another day to con-
template our futures. We savored every moment, in no rush to leave our comfortable home
and the quiet sailing life.
Or the quiet motorsailing life, as things turned out, given light, fluky wind from the east.
Now inside the Great Barrier Reef, we had an easy time staying clear of shipping, which
followed a well-defined lane that we paralleled at a safe distance. After so many miles of
following a relatively bland coast, it was a joy to sail among islands and islets again. We
counted one after another until the following sunset, when Namani slipped into the anchor-
age at Scawfell Island and settled in for the first of two nights. The orange light of Mars
rose over the hulk of the island, the Southern Cross hung tenuously between the hooves of
the Centaur, and Scorpio crashed the party, too, climbing high into the sky along with the
flash of a shooting star.
Over the next week, we switched back to day-hopping mode. Short daylight hours in these
tropical latitudes kept us on our toes as we planned a route that would take us from Scaw-
fell and Shaw Islands in the less-frequented southern Cumberland Islands to the Whit-
sundays farther north. Though small in area, the Whitsundays are the most frequented
cruising grounds in Australia. The anchorages were packed with dozens of boats as a peri-
od of troughy weather settled over the area. We sat it out in Cid Harbor, where pines carpet
the hillsides and sea eagles pluck fish straight from the water. Two fjord-like bays on Hook
Island offer good protection, as well. At lovely Nara Inlet, we hiked a short path to a cave
with Aboriginal rock art, then moved over to Macona Inlet for a little more solitude from
the Easter vacation crowds. Having visited the gorgeous white sands of Whitehaven Beach
some years earlier while chartering, we decided to give it a miss this time around and con-
centrate on our next overnight trip to places off the beaten path.