Lindeman Island, Whitsundays

Anchored at Lindeman Island
Whitsunday Islands, Queensland
Australia
20'26.2S/149'01.6E

Happy Cinco De Mayo from Lindeman Island! We are having margaritas and fish tacos tonight... probably the only ones in Australia celebrating this holiday.

We had a 25 mile motor-sail from Bramton Island to where we are anchored now. We did not leave until 10am in order to catch the outgoing tide. The tides here give us a couple extra knots of speed when they are going. When the tides are going out, the tidal current flows north. And when the tide is coming in, it flows to the south.

For some reason the alternator on the motor decided to start working again, about half way through our trip. We think it needs to see a doctor soon! When we pulled up the anchor when we left Bramton Island, we ran the generator without the engine running, then sailed out of the anchorage. When the anchor windlass is running it draws more than 50 amps, which is a lot of power to be draining straight from the batteries without the alternator putting some power back in.

Lindman Island is another island covered with tall trees. It is attached by a shallow channel , which dries out, to Little Lindman Island. The only buildings on the island are the Club Med Resort on the south end of the island.

We woke up on Saturday morning and realized that we have been a day off all week. We thought it was Friday! I was wondering why the tides were off by an hour!

We rowed ashore the along with a couple that we had met back in Mackey. They had they had just dropped anchor. They are also doing the rally to Indonesia. They have been cruising since the early 80's, and they are on their second boat.

Lindman Island is part of a national park and is a World Heritage site. It has nice trails circling the island. We hiked around till 1pm, seeing more butterflies and our second snake. There are lots of white Cockatoos and Brush Turkeys.

After all this fun, we rowed back out to Sandpiper, since we needed to catch the tide to make the 15 mile run to Molle Island.

We listened in again on VHF channel 81 today as another charter boat checked in with their charter company. The boat name was "Awesome". Every time he called in, he said "This is Awesome. This is Awesome. This is Awesome."

Tom and Amy