Great Keppel Island

[Kyle]From Pearl Bay, we had a long sail down the coast to Great Keppel Island (Known as GKI). After almost a week of strong south-easterlies, there was supposed to finally be enough north in the wind that we could do the bulk of the trip without having to tack. It worked out that way, for the most part, but the wind was still twenty to thirty degrees more ahead of us than the forecasts predicted. This meant that instead of sailing the direct course on a fast beam reach, we ended up close hauled, riding every wind shift and pinching as hard as we could into the wind to get around every point. It was a real nail-biter. We knew that if we had to tack, we would probably lose half an hour, which our ETA was looking like we couldn’t really afford.

There was a LOT of algae patches in the water that we've been seeing for weeks along this stretch of coast. At first I'd thought it was coral spawn, but since it's been around so long, that is clearly not the case

The wind shifted just enough to get us around the point, then the next, then the next. We made it to the big bay at Long Beach with just enough time to tidy Begonia up and have dinner before the falling darkness and our early start made our eyelids too heavy to keep open.

By the next sunrise, we’d had a full night’s sleep and were hankering for a bit of walking around. The last time we were here (back in May of 2020, we were on the completely opposite side of the island at Svendson's Beach. This time we were able to spend a whole day going up and down the island’s trails without intersecting any of the one’s we had done last time. Thus, it seemed like we were visiting a whole new island.

The COVID pandemic was in its second month back when we last visited and all of the commercial interests on the island were then shut tight. Now, things in Queensland are pretty much back to normal, so we actually had a choice of places in which to spend our lunch money. We had lunch at the resort, which was good, but it was also really busy. Most of the crowd seemed to be going for a douchey Jersey Shore vibe, which killed any motivation to linger over dessert. Instead, we went to the ‘other’ place for ice cream bars. It had a much more laid-back Polynesian atmosphere. We both immediately wished that we had held out and eaten there. Oh, Well.

Aside from finding the trash dump of the island, the walk was pleasant and with plenty of great views

A few more ups and downs got us back to Long Beach, while helping us to work off our lunch. On the way, we got a text from Jan and Richard aboard Morpheus, saying they were anchored right behind us. We have known them for years, but we always seem to be leapfrogging each other. Rare have been the days when we actually get to see each other in person. They said they were leaving tomorrow, so we decided not to risk going home and instead headed straight to Morpheus from the beach for a catch-up. Their long-term plans have changed and now they are looking at importing Morpheus to Australia so that they can either sell it or possibly just use it as a southern hemisphere vacation home (they are British).

When Jan was telling the story, I couldn’t help but notice that there was something familiar about the boat behind her. I thought about it for a minute and then realized what it was: It was the Screamers! There was not actually any screaming going on at the moment, which was strange (good). How did they get here? Keppel is several days of sailing from Keswick and the weather most of the time has not been nearly as good as it was the night they headed off at sunset to find a better anchorage. There’s NO way I would have imagined them getting this far. Perhaps the non-screaming was coming from the new owners on their new boat, enjoying their delivery cruise home. The mystery deepens…