We were supposed to have one more full day on the boat today and then head back to Shute Harbour tomorrow. However, Michael spoke to me in the morning about how stressed he was feeling because of the strong winds we were getting and how much it rocked the boat around whenever we were outside a sheltered bay or inlet. The marine forecast for today was much the same, and the winds were to get even stronger tomorrow. He hadn’t sailed in such conditions before and was concerned for the children. I must admit, I didn’t like it much when we were in the exposed parts of the ocean. It had been lovely on that first day – the winds were 5-10 knots, but since then they had picked up to 15-20knots, and it wasn’t so pleasant. It made me think about people like the early explorers who sailed the oceans and were so much at the mercy of the wind and weather. It also made me realise sailing around the world solo, like Jessica Watson, was not for me. Apparently she was ‘knocked down’ several times. I’m not sure how much of a tilt our boat got to, but it was enough to make me quite nervous.
We discussed it with the kids and they understood that it was not going to be enjoyable to continue when Dad was stressed and we were nervous. We decided before leaving the shelter of Cid Harbour, we would go and have a snorkel at Denhams Beach while it was high tide. Hannah especially, was keen to try snorkelling. We all went over in the dinghy, and Lauren, Hannah and I went for a snorkel. We saw a bit of interesting coral, and Hannah did really well with picking up how to snorkel. I’m sure there were better areas for snorkelling, but we at least gave it a go.
We went back to the yacht and got ready to make the sail across the Whitsunday Passage back to Shute Harbour. We made sure everything was latched down. We decided just to motor across and not even put he sail up because of the winds. As soon as we got out of the shelter of the harbour, the boat definitely started to rock and roll. It took about 40mins to get across the passage into a more protected area again, and if I had had misgivings about finishing up early, they were gone after that 40mins – I really didn’t like how much we were rolling.
We’d radioed the guys at Whitsunday Rent-a-Yachts to let them know of our plans and they came out to meet us just as we came into Shute Harbour (as was their practice). They took us back to the berth. We had to do the reverse of our packing onto the boat 4 days earlier – everything into bags to go on trolleys back up the jetty and back to the caravan. Then sorting it all back into its places back in the van. We had decided we would just stay somewhere in Airlie Beach that night, so we stayed at a Big 4 caravan park, and the kids had a swim in the pool (even though it was freezing cold – southern kids!). Michael was able to de-stress for the rest of the day. It was strange how we all had that feeling of ‘ah, it’s nice to be home’, even though we were living in a caravan, and not our house. It’s all perspective. We all slept well that night and slept in the next morning:).