Cairns-capital of the north...

Cairns-first sight

After leaving Mourilian Harbour we made a pleasant sail to a lovely spot Fitzroy Island with coral beach and anchored there for the night just outside of the quite impressive new resort. Cairns was just another 4 hours away an easy trip.After accomplishing our first sailing goal Cairns we started to get ready for the next 1800 km+ long passage to Darwin. This included getting the UV strip for the head sail (a bit of an exercise to transport it to land),fitting that"switch" which finally arrived to the generator and spending many,many hours establishing what was and still is wrong with our auto pilot "Michelle".She is happier now unfortunately only cooperating one way.She will be visited by technician on board tomorrow.It is still very hot,humid and rains most of the time which slows us incredibly not to mention 2 public holidays.Slow slow slow everything takes so much longer

Waterfalls at Kuranda

We rented a small car as we are anchored in the river on the outskirts of the city so we can move around freely and were able to take 3 very grounding trips.One to a well known area outside Cairns with great views and shopping another to Port Douglas to celebrate Tinkers very important birthday and finally 6 hours long and eventful trip to Camp David at Palmer River to catch up with friend David, his dad and to finish birthday celebrations also see their organic papaya and passion fruit plantation.

 Camp David scenery

Beautiful crop of passion fruit

Happy Birthday Tinker

Oh, we finally found and bought a new TV that fits perfectly,this has been a long saga really. TV is still not working so we know no news and we can have video nights :))
Our to do list is still rather long and is getting shorter every day.We have worked out a more detailed trip plan from here to Darwin.It seems that we have 45 days in which to complete our journey to Darwin and need at least 50 days...Neptune and all other sea gods please be kind!!!
Tomorrow is a very important day.The boat will get pulled out of water and placed on ground(on hard) for maintenance skin fittings replacement (these are the major water inlets to the boat-super important) as well as anti foul paint to stop growth under water line.Apparently this process is a very delicate one for larger boats. We will keep you posted and will take a few pictures.