Gulnare Inlet

[Kyle]After two whole days with no internet, we sailed south to Gulnare Inlet, on the south side of Whitsunday Island. Our main reason for doing this was to intercept our friends Caitlin and Nick on Mahana. Caitlin works from the boat and both she and Nick are trying very hard to get flights to their home country of New Zealand. Their main problem is getting one of the very limited slots for quarantine when they get there. They are allocated via lottery and the online queues take hours. Thus, Mahana REALLY wanted to be where there is good internet. Gulnare Inlet looks out on Hamilton Island, with its posh resorts and good 4G, so it may be just about the best spot around for this.

Now poor Maryanne has something to do. She can dig back into her lists and hopefully stop keeping herself up at night worrying about not being able to help with Mom’s estate. She couldn’t seriously have thought Darren had finished everything and needed more to do, but she does want to be helpful.

Kyle hoisting the main so we can go sailing

The sail to Gulnare from Butterfly Bay was a good mix of just about everything. We had strong winds, no wind, fast currents with us, fast currents against us. All of this was while weaving our way through a gorgeous landscape of pine-topped islands indented with secluded little bays. We both agreed that this area reminds us very much of the Maine coast, only a lot warmer.

We stowed the sails just as we rounded the corner into twenty-five knot gusts funneling down the valley. There were several boats tucked way in, but we stopped early, where we and Mahana would have line-of-sight to Hamilton Island. It seems that as soon as we were secure, all of the other boats saw us and decided we must be where the anchorage is. Within half an hour we were surrounded. Mahana was on the way and we were hoping our out-of-the-way spot would make it easy for them to anchor close. Now it looked like they were going to be three or four layers back.

Luckily for both of us, the guy on the racing boat who took the spot I had wanted for them started dragging anchor as they were stowing their sails. They weren’t looking at us and they were too far to shout to over the wind noise. Since they had plenty of safe space to drag along into we just watched them make the slow trip downwind to Hamilton wondering when they'd work it out, and with a plan to call them on the radio if it wasn't soon. Mahana approached, passed them, warned by Maryanne that they were dragging, and took their old spot. Brilliant!

Once they had dragged about 1/4 mile, the racers figured out what happened and tried another unsuccessful attempt at anchoring on the other side of Mahana. When that didn’t work, they just put up their sails and left the area altogether.

Mahana had offered to make a dinner of comfort food for us, but our fridge was so overfull that we convinced them to let us do the cooking. They offered to supply nibbles, drinks and ice cream, which sounded like a pretty good deal to me. We started with a champagne toast to Mom and then spent the evening with a good mix of talking about her and talking about other things to distract us before Maryanne and I got too weepy. It was just what our hearts needed.

Mahana left in the morning just as we were thinking about stirring. We asked how the quarantine slots went and Nick shouted back that they had made it to #11,000 in the queue (for 3,000 rooms) before the window closed, and hadn't won in the lottery this try. We wish them better luck next week!