Day Cruising to Magnetic Island

I have been sailing a bit lately on a Catalina 400 named Freya, and have even crewed for Magnetic Island Race Week, a week-long yacht regatta based on Magnetic Island. 

Freya’s owner sails over to Magnetic Island most Sundays, and I was invited to go this Sunday. And so myself and another Freya regular, my new mountain biking friend from yesterday, joined the owner to help him sail over to Magnetic Island. I have visited this beautiful place a few times now, but had previously always got there by ferry. It would be fun to get there by wind power.

After leaving the harbour and getting all the sails up and set, the skipper passed the helm over to me – meaning I got to steer the yacht. It was my first time doing this on a yacht, and I was surprised at how difficult it was. You are constantly having to make adjustments to your steering to compensate for the fact that the slight gusting or dropping off of the wind, and the changes in waves and currents, all constantly influence the direction the yacht is heading. You have to compensate for all of these factors to maintain the direction you want to head in, and to make the sails power the boat effectively. Hence the look of serious concentration on my face!

We sailed north out of Townsville, and around the east side of Magnetic Island. We rounded the island anticlockwise, and after sailing as far around as Horseshoe Bay on the northern side of the island, we changed direction and headed back to Radical Bay (with the red label) to drop anchor for a while.

It was a pretty windy day so we were all working to do this – the skipper had taken back the helm by this point, and Owen and I were working hard on the winches to manage the sails.

Radical Bay was relatively sheltered, with just a small swell, and we anchored up for lunch and leisure. While the skipper stayed on board to just enjoy being on his boat, us crew jumped into the sea for some swimming and cooling down. It was so pleasant to float about in a bay on a tropical island, admiring the scenery and enjoying the beautiful day. 

I swam around getting a few pictures of Freya before getting out to dry off ready for lunch.

From the boat, we could see these fish hanging around hoping for a snack.

Fish weren’t the only ones hoping for a snack – the resident Brahminy Kites also know how to work the yachty crowd for food. They weren’t disappointed, as our skipper had brought along some meat specially for them. 

I mostly don’t condone feeding wild animals, but these kites are mainly scavengers and weren’t coming too close to humans (and even then were only approaching the yachts) so I don’t think that it’s a big problem. It was certainly fantastic to watch them circling round the yacht, and see them catching their lunch in mid-air!

During our own lunch, I managed to stub my little toe really hard against the side of the yacht's cabin. I was only walking slowly along, but the swaying of the boat at anchor was just enough to alter my balance enough that I kicked the side - really hard!! My toe bruised and swelled up straightaway, that's gonna hurt for a while...  The swaying at anchor also made me a little seasick, but such is the price we pay for adventure :)

We sailed back to Townsville after lunch, and despite sickness and injury I felt I'd had a great a day :)


On later investigation, it turned out I had banged my toe so hard I had dislocated it - no wonder it hurt so much!