Day 4. Lucinda and roadtrip to Townsville

 Fri 31/7/26

On the downwind sail back to Lucinda, a humpback whale suddenly surfaced for air about 150m ahead of Teria with its huge tail flukes lifting out as it dived. Wow! The unexpected event only lasted a few seconds, and it remained submerged. 

Later on (another?) whales' spout mist was fleetingly spotted about 200m astern. 

I reached the Lucinda sugar jetty about 0900, and the wind shifted to the south off the land, so motor-mainsailed into it. The high tide of 2.49m was at 0930, so could cut across the sand bars/shoals following a big power cats path. The minimum depth was around 10 ft (3m).

Followed the shipping lead ("leed") line/lights, first on my GPS chartplotter. Then ahead you see a modern ?laser lead light system about 1/3 the way out on the jetty, visible in the day. It gives a white flash when ok, it turns red when you drift to port and green when you drift to starboard of the lead line (course). It's an update from my old 1980's edition, "Cruising the coral coast" maine guide book and my 1980's paper charts onboard.

The two big red can bouys mark the channel close in by the old mollases wharves. Pass between the wharves and the red bouys. (It's a bit confusing for smallcraft entering from the south, as the channel markers are setup for old big ships to enter from the other direction, via the deeper Hinchinbrook channel.)

The Enterprise channel entrance to Dungeness harbor was harder to find, (no more "local" marker bouys) just one big yellow (danger?) one, the sandbars here must shift around allot. I had 6 to 12 foot depths going over them at high tide. My kickup centerboard is always lowered to 4ft draft in shoal draft waters, as a final warning/ grounding alert system but it never scraped the bottom.

Motored up estuary and anchored in a small south branch creek among mangroves. Had some food, rest and washed the decks down with remaining fresh water (30 kgs lighter)

The haul out at the ramp went ok. There were allot of tinnies also hauling out, everyone was good.

A quick hose down, then derigged Teria up the back of the huge car-trailer park. 

Friday afternoon road trip

It's about 130 kilometers back to Townsville. 

Waited for a sugar cane train at Halifax about 10km from the ramp, then crossed the Herbert river bridge and took the "Northern road" back to the Bruce Higway, about 10 km north of Ingham. Not the best way to go in retrospect. It's busy traffic and has a very uneven/lumpy pothole repaired surface. Crossed the Herbert river again on a higway bridge. It felt like a longtime to reach Ingham even at 90 km/hr.

(The "middle road" is the recomended road, it stays south of the Herbert river (no bridges) quiet backroads (past the hotel in the cane fields) and extits to the Bruce Highway about 500m north of Ingham township urban area)

Stopped for a trailer bearings heat/ tiedowns/couplings etc check 2 km south of Ingham and another 2km north of Rollingstone. Usual heavy Friday arvo traffic encountered after Deeragun (Townsville Northern suburbs) but got home ok. 

My street is a narrow one, and a car was parked diagonally opposite to restrict my final driveway turn-in access from the south. So drove past and u-turned at a roundabout to enter our street from the other direction (north end) which had no parked cars blocking my boat trailers' turning radius.