CAIRNS

We have now been in Cairns for four days & once again, have been able to catch up on all the little things that need attention once you have the mainland at your disposal. Cairns is a beautiful, layed back city attracting throngs of tourists & backpackers from around the world so every convenience is at hand & very accessible , especially for the visiting yachtie. Although we've had our push bikes to get around on, most of the shops we've needed have been within easy walking distance & with the densely vegetated gardens, the walking, as well as being much needed exercise, has been very pleasant.

We've been anchored outside the break wall of the Marlin Marina, an extremely busy place where all the tour boats depart for their various reef trips. However, even if you don't take a berth at the marina, they've made it user friendly by providing half a finger just for dinghy tie-up, so that when we do go ashore, we have easy access without the worries of where we're going to safely store the tender.

We had a fantastic sail from Mourilyn Harbour to Cairns but unfortunately, with "Kinetic Energy" taking a detour into Innisfail, we didn't have anyone to race. However, once we'd left the harbour & spotted a yacht in the far distance with another about 20 minutes behind us, it gave us the incentive to get "Windy Spirit" up & sailing to the best of her ability. We had light SE winds of 10-15 knots apparent, ideal conditions for the spinnaker, so it didn't take us long to have that huge sail billowing in front of us where we were then able to virtually do wind speed. With the sun shining we sat back & relaxed, letting the autopilot & wind do all the work, mowing down the miles very quickly with constant boat speeds of 9-11 knots. It wasn't until we hit 13.5 knots that we realised that the wind had increased & that we should probably get the spinnaker down while we still could, but by that time, we'd passed that distant yacht & the one behind us was nothing more than a pimple on the horizon! Yes!!! What a great sail it'd been!!!