20090602 – 20090609 (Cairns & Lizard Island)

I flew into Cairns on Tuesday after a wait in Sydney airport for a couple of hours and met Daryl and Laurel on their boat Cool Bananas. It’s a 50 ft Admiral (Catamaran) made in South Africa. My berth is in the starboard hull and is forward. I have a double bed and my own shower bathroom, it’s a bit flasher than Muir st was. It has the internet, washing machine, electric flush toilets and a Hookah (No not a pro, a dive compressor so you don’t need to dive with tanks)

Seems the cruisers have a floating neighbourhood and have been meeting the other cruisers, everyone seems to be of an older vintage and also a couple of families with young children.

Spent two nights in Cairns re stocking the boat and getting supplies, it seems a well laid out city and is laid back. Unfortunately due to stingers and salt water crocodiles or “Salties” everyone is not able to swim in the sea.

Along the water front of Cairns there is a man made lagoon which easy on the eye bikini clad back packers flock too, it’s also setup well with free BBQ’s and plenty of grass area. The main tourist attractions there are the islands and the diving so just used the days to go for a couple of runs and look around the city as I figured am on a boat and there will be no shortage of opportunities to get in the water.

On Friday we left to head to Lizard Island which is apparently one of the last good anchorages between Cairns and Darwin, it’s was a 120 mile voyage and we left on Friday morning and travelling through the night. Lost internet and phone reception, me thinks it will be back further up the coast towards Darwin.

I was on watch between 5pm and 8pm and then again between 2am and 5am, we travelled along a major shipping channel so I saw some big cargo vessels, fishing trawlers and cruise ships. We had to motor until midnight and then the wind picked and we managed to get along at 7~8 knots under sail with the wind at our tail arriving at Lizard island early on Saturday morning.

I walked up to Cooks look out which is the highest point on the island, it was where Captain Cook ventured to try and find a safe passage out of the reef which surrounds the island. (I think it was on the mainland back in the day), he named it Lizard island because of the thousands of Lizards which inhabit the island, every step there was a lizard running off the path, apparently they can get up to one metre long.

I have been for a couple of dives at Lizard Island and 3 out at the outer reefs called Cod Hole and Trixiey Bomby. (~1.5 hours away) The fish life and the coral are amazing we had perfect weather and stunning visibility at the reef, out came the hookah and away we went. Saw a pod of 12 dolphins on the way back to lizard, such awesome animals and although we couldn’t get them to jump out of the water they stayed riding the bow wave for 15 minutes. I think I could get used to this life although there are plenty of fish below the water we seem not to be able to bring any back up to the boat for dinner.

Have played and lost at numerous games of asshole and rummikub I think I need to pick up my game or I will be the dish pig for the next 4 months. Who am I kidding it that’s what I have to do to stay on the boat then it’s definitely well worth it.

There is a resort on Lizard island, one of the other cruisers asked how much it was to stay, the cheapest rooms where 2700 for two nights. Not sure what you get for that but we still managed to dump of rubbish there for a dollar, dive the same water and look at the same view so all good. Funny that everyone has waste just some people pay a crap load to do it. Pun-ny?