Port Douglas is a real cafe-latté town. Lots of fashionable restaurants, shops and apartments, but with a small town feel. While we were berthed at the Marina Mirage and watched the constant procession of people heading out for reef cruises. We decided to have a day out and hired a car and drove up to Mossman Gorge, Daintree and Cape Tribulation for the day which was, once again a nice change. The girls enjoyed the beach at Port Douglas as well. 
After a week of waiting around and doing jobs on the boat, we went out to the Low Isles, about 8 miles away, to have a break from the marina. This turned out to be a wonderful little side trip. It's a nice little island and waiting in an anchorage is much better than a marina. The island has a ranger who came out to say hello. We had a few nice trips on to the beach and walking round the island. The girls discovered these weird sucker fish called Remoras, which look like a small sharks with a thong on their heads. We had a few nice days here and also found that out in open waters our email system finally worked well.
We went back in to Port Douglas and refitted the autopilot. The wind this time of year (July/August) blows hard from the SE most of the time and strong wind warnings are more often than not. The closeness of the barrier reef makes the seas stay down so we found ourselves taking off in 25 knots of wind - not something we've done before. The first few hours as we went out east to get clear of the mainland was a bit rough but once we were running downwind it wasn't bad. And the boat flew along. We did an overnight run to get to Lizard Island and we charged along well reefed down with the wind holding over 25 knots for the trip. This gave everything a good test and we felt confident the boat was ready.
Lizard Island is a large island, famous for it's upmarket resort, but is mostly National Park and has a camping ground. The beach and anchorage are lovely and we could see why many yachts come here and end up staying months. When the wind is down there is lot's of excellent reef around to discover and fish. We had two trips over to the research station on the island. Courtney often says that she wants to be a marine biologist so this was a great chance to see what they do.
On the beach we met people from several other boats who were mostly heading north. The discussion mainly was whether the wind was likely to drop or do we just go. Consensus was that the weather wasn't going to change. We left after five days with the wind up and all our reefs in. With just the cutter sail and a double reefed main we, took off and we found the running good as we had a good angle. The route up the inside of the Great Barrier Reef is very busy with commercial shipping. The charts define a shipping lane that the big ships stay in (mostly) We did our best to hug the edge of the road and stay out of their way. Inevitably as we'd round a headland and as we would a ship would appear and own our version of the tortoise scuttling across the road.The way we plot a course is to create a route on the computer charting system we use, then load the turning points called waypoints into the GPS. Then as we go along the GPS tells us the direction and course and then as we arrive at each waypoint we aim for the next one. Between Lizard Is and Cape York we had 33 waypoints or turns to do. Lots of watching to do, watching for ships, watching we were our on track, watching for reefs and watching the GPS to see how far to the next way point.
We did a 48 hour run, covering 330 miles, and found ourselves at the northern most point of the mainland - Cape York. We sailed up past and anchored in the bay on Mount Aldophus Island, a wide open anchorage but calm enough for good night's sleep. We stayed the one night and then sailed the twenty miles on to Thursday Island. The best anchorage for Thursday Island is off Horn Island. With four knots of current underneath us and eight knots of boat speed, we shot along and were anchored there in no time.
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