Just a girl who loves the ocean and did some sailing as a child. Now in adult years I am realizing the joy of sailing with my husband. Started by chartering quite a few catamarans in the Caribbean, then several times in French Polynesia and now purchased our 46’ Dolphin Cat named OCEAN. Currently we are building our knowledge of her by enjoying some coastal sailing & cruising anywhere from New Zealand to Tonga, Fiji and eventually to Australia and beyond…
14 July 2026 at 10:59
Lovely calm day sailing DDW with the ParaSailor out. Picked up a mooring for the night.
Whitsunday Group to Pinnacle Point, Australia
13 July 2026 at 07:53
Nice motor sail on calm water. LOTS of whales and dolphins. Lovely day. Picked up a mooring and it’s beer O’Clock!
Coastal Waters Of Great Barrier Reef to Esk Island, Australia
12 July 2026 at 10:16
Motor sail. Minimal wind. Lots of humpback whales!
Butterfly Bay to Coastal Waters Of Great Barrier Reef, Australia
11 July 2026 at 11:49
Lovely sail! Beam to broad reach on flat seas with 7-11 knots true wind with gusts to 13. First time not reefed in 2 months! Code 0 out, making 7-8.5 over ground with light gusts taking us into the 9’s. No effort, sailing under clear skies at 73°. Ahh! BTW, I’m not sure how SailTies gets its wind and boat speed info, but it’s not particularly accurate. Also, we started in Airlie Beach and sailed for ~2 1/2 hours and covered close to 20 miles. Weird!
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Coastal Waters Of Great Barrier Reef to Hayman Island, Australia
2 July 2026 at 07:00
Nice downwind run to Airlie Beach. Parked in the (very nice) Coral Sea Marina. Flat seas. Wind 150-180° @ 9-16 knots.
Maryport Bay to Airlie Beach, Australia
1 July 2026 at 11:41
Nice downwind sail, mostly deep reach to DDW. Anchored off Carlisle Island in ~30’ on sand. Minimal wind and negligable waves. Head out early for Airlie Beach. Rigged the ParaSailor hoping for a good day for it tomorrow. Forecast is favorable, but we’ll see… How can a professional be wrong so much and still have a job? If my diagnoses for my animal patients were wrong as often as the meteorologists’ predictions are I certainly wouldn’t be able to make a living as a veterinarian!
Slade Island to Maryport Bay, Australia
26 June 2026 at 08:07
Weather report lied. Not 12-15 knots at 110-130°TWA. Instead 18-22 knots at 45-60° TWA. Double reefed because of passing squalls and gusts to 28 knots. Still made pretty good time. Tricky entry into the marina berth. We only had ~1.5 meters of wiggle room between us and the other boat in the shared slip, with the crosswind blowing 20-25 knots.
Coastal Waters Of Great Barrier Reef to Mackay Harbour, Australia
20 June 2026 at 07:13
Day sail (motor sail) to Scawfell Island. Picked up a mooring. Beautiful place!
Coastal Waters Of Great Barrier Reef to Refuge Bay, Australia
16 June 2026 at 09:27
Wind SE @ 20-25 knots. Confused seas with ~ 2m waves at 5 seconds. Not the most pleasant😂 Anchored in 25’ at low tide (will be 40’ at high tide) in clean sand. Dove the anchor- visibility is less than 10’! Disappointing because we really planned to dive here. Wind is lessening some, so maybe it will clear?
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Mackay Harbour to Pelican Island, Australia
4 June 2026 at 12:59
Motored around thunderstorms leaving Vanuatu, then pretty calm for 2 days. Reasonably good sailing, though a bit bumpy. We double reefed the main and triple reefed the jib to make a smoother ride. Still made around 8 knots for a couple of days. Caught the tide race wrong coming in via Hydrographers Passage through the Barrier Reef. At one point, we had the engines at full throttle and were making 1.7 knots SOG! Water speed was 8.5 knots. That’s some tidal flow! The border control folks laughed about it and said a lot of folks don’t know about it and get caught out like we did. They said that it’s not in any of the usual reference materials, charts, etc and you don’t find out unless you look for it specifically. Then laughed again. I guess it’s some kind of rite of passage (pun intended). Had one of the PFDs deploy at 4 in the morning! We left it on the bench in the cockpit and it got submerged when we had a wave break over the side and flood the cockpit. Good to see it deployed correctly. It needed to be serviced next month anyway, so no harm done, and we got a few good laughs! Tied up in Mackay watching the tide come in- today is about 14’ from low to high tide. Which explains the amount of tidal flow we experienced.
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