15 – 20 knts  48 nautical  miles sunny

We had a lovely peaceful night up the river with no sign of crocodiles. Now its time to leave the Daintree and get further south towards Cairns before the strong winds set in.

 

We pulled the anchor up two hours before high tide to get out the river mouth before the tide turned. We did not want to have the same problems

getting over the shallow part as yesterday. With the sun in the right direction we could see the shallow areas much more easily. John kept to the channel and the depth only got down to 1.2 metres which was much preferable  to yesterday’s depths.

With the wind coming from the southeast we couldn’t sail towards our destination so we headed east  past the Low Isles then through the channel between Batt and Tongue Reefs. We were managing an average of 6.5 knots with the main and jib and the engines on  some of the times. The direction wasn’t ideal but if we tacked a few times we were able to get through the channel.

 

 

 

 

 

 

John had both lures out and was keeping an eye on them most of the time. We had both just checked the rods when we heard a noise, and turned round to see the last of the line being peeled off then snapped from one of the rods. It had been a very large fish to peel it off that fast and snap it. John was not happy, his vocab was very colourful for some time after. The worse thing is you never find out what it was. I just kept saying it was a large shark.

Not long after we had something that fought well on the other rod. When John got it in we were disappointed to see it was a Turrum, not unsimilar to a Giant Trevally. No good to eat though so we let him go.( That should keep Paul from Moor R & R happy)

Once we reached the end of the channel between the two reefs we turned on a course of 190 degrees and headed for the coast. O’vive romped along between 8 and 10 knots with the wind getting up to 25 knots at times. By the time we reached Yorkeys Knob marina the wind was becoming quite strong and the ocean very choppy. It was good to reach the relatively calm waters of the marina.

After tying up in an 18 metre pen( what a luxury) we made a few phone calls and attended to emails, then paid our fees and collected the gate keys.

The marina is very reasonably priced at $62 per night or $360 per week. We have decide to stay here for the week while we wait for Mick and Ros.