Palm Islands cruise - Day2, Orpheus Island (trip #13)

Sailed across a narrow straight and was soon motor-sailing along the lee (west)  coast of Orpheus Island (map). It is mostly a boat-accessed National Park and has no roads.

Arriving at Orpheus Island, (Perlorus Island behind) 

Orpheus is 11 km long N-S and about 1-2km wide, The area is about 13 km2 so it's a fair sized island and it was hard to see another boat anywhere. Much of the island has a fringing coral reef so skirted this and stopped for lunch at a small mangrove creek bay on the NW side. The tide was high , though falling, so motored over the reef fringe and anchored on a rock ledge bottom in about 1.5m deep water with a 1-2 knot current coming out of the small creek.

Orpheus Island - Mangrove creek 

Mangrove creek

Rocky Headland

The peace was soon interrupted by March Fly attack. They are about 1cm long and like to "bite" peoples limbs. At first nothing is felt then a sudden jab of the proboscis into skin soon makes you jump. The mosquito coils didn't deter them so had to resort to swat without mercy, Luckily they are slower than household flies, the cap brim came in handy. The survivor of the "dirty dozen" survived to hopefully tell the others onshore of the danger.

March Fly

Bought a folding camping chair out for the first time. The type i had just fit the width of the cockpit and it increased the luxury star rating of the Teria considerably. It could also be set up on the cabin floor.

Camper chair in the cockpit - Armchair sailing

Got away before the tide went down too far and headed south for  Pioneer Bay (map). It has a National Park camp ground. Picked up a public mooring in the deserted bay. The rope was huge and heavy about 2" (40mm) diameter, so tied on with Terias 1/2" (12mm) mooring rope.

It was the inshore one of 3 blue mooring buoys , there are also white fringe reef marker buoys, all to minimize damage to coral bombies on the sea floor from boat anchor chains. The light yellow sandy beach of the camp ground beaconed.

Pioneer Bay camp ground beach

Pioneer Bay is actually 2 bays in one. The north one has the camp ground beach and the south bay has the James Cook University Research Station about 1 km away.

A look at my chart, it covered a large area so doesn't have too much detail. The 6 km long wharf at Lucinda gives an idea of the scale. Navigating in close relies on looking out carefully and going slow with the centre-plate down.

It was getting very hot about 33 C plus humid (70%) , so rested until about 3 pm in the shade and breeze funnelling through the forward facing fore-hatch. I was going to call the posts "summer cruise" but this doesn't match the reality "hot sea sauna " would be closer.

This year the regular wet season has been stunted by a Super-el Nino event..it's the second year of this here. About a quarter of the usual 1100 mm or so rainfall fell in Townsville in 2015, it was below 300 mm probably a (bad) record.  Queensland has a severe drought, some were relieved by some recent rain. But any rains are usually just patchy cells, not the broad drenching monsoonal type of rain (Dam filling rain). Luckily the rain showers have been happening for about 2 months to date which has certainly greened the landscape again.