Cairns

Cairns

Before we knew it we realised we'd be arriving in Cairns the next morning. So time to frantically read about how to arrive in Cairns the next morning. It's a gorgeous city to approach from the sea, it was moody and showery but with beautiful shafts of sun on the very green, tropical hills. We may have slightly cursed the moody showers every time they wrecked the visibility as we were trying to pick out the next marker on the way up the channel but we did sail (without engine) an impressive distance up the channel before succumbing to power. And then actually came into a strange dock and tied up unharmed! A miracle on our first attempt. Well, there may have been a little assistance from the lovely marina staff member who came to welcome us in.

Where is that next channel marker? And also note the snazzy new straps holding that rolled up clear over my head.

And then feeling a bit weird at clearly being a tourist in a new (we've spent a half day here before) city but where we've got our home with us. And also a bit proud at having gotten Grainne this far. And very grateful to Grainne and Rover for having gotten us this far.

And down our dock we found another Grainnuaile!

We tied up at the dock at 0900 and by 1200 were installed at the local microbrewery, Hemmingway's, enjoying a very lovely West Coast IPA. They have free Wifi so we're doing the backpacker thing of hanging out (we're here right now as I write this!) with all our devices downloading and uploading and updating.

Cairns seems an interesting city. Green and lush and wet. It rains like Ireland, just when you're about to head out to do something (even when it's supposed to be the dry season!). Big, wide streets with some old buildings that suggest prosperity in the 19th century but now doesn't seem to have quite enough stuff to fill it all. Huge tourist industry with backpackers', dive shops and pubs with free pool all over town. On the edge of town (where we are) there's the fancy schmancy Shangri-La and Hilton hotels, the expensive restaurants and the wharf from where the million tourist boats leave each morning to head out to the reef. We went to our local Woolies (the closest supermarket) which is the least intuitively laid out supermarket in the world ever and to make things worse the aisles were full of tourists all just as lost and confused as we were. I suspect the rate of items bought here is about one per person per half hour. The longer cycle to the Coles, where real people shop, is worth it.

We've been working through our to-do list. The "shakedown" trip from Mooloolaba to here has been very successful in shaking a tear in the mainsail, shaking the last bit of life from our batteries and shaking one of our bow rollers (the very important things that hold the anchor) off the bow.

Yup, that's definitely torn.

Karl getting the new batteries in, 30kg each. Better than a Crossfit session.

Karl's attempt at making the bicycle basket look manly - fill it with coolant and autopilot gear and wear a singlet. In fairness, he didn't get beaten up making his way through uber-manly tradie-central on his little bike with the basket on the back so he must be doing something right.


We've been on our little folding bikes cycling all over to procure the various items required. Our lovely dock neighbours (Shari & Gary on Anastasia) have been able to point us in the right direction and Cairns-ites in general have been so friendly and helpful and, of course, laid back that it's been pretty easy to get everything organised.

It's a bike in a bag!


I've become a regular at the supermarket in an attempt to reprovision for the next few weeks. Every morning I head off with my pannier bags and a backpack, cycle through town to the shopping centre, estimate how much food I can fit in the bags I have, slightly overestimate and curse my lack of spatial ability, cram everything into the bags and cycle (more slowly and unsteadily) back to the boat to unpack.

Other excursions (organised by Karl) have even managed to take in Bunnings. Luckily, the Cairns Cruising Yacht Squadron is down around the industrial area so we had a good excuse to have lunch there, and very pleasant it was too.

Been trying to do a few normal things while we're in civilisation too. I started going for runs - there's a really good esplanade route that's completely flat, not a hill in sight. But my calves have started to protest loudly and painfully that I can't expect them to just start working again after a couple of weeks of rest. We went out to one of the Pint of Science events (scientific talks in pubs) to hear about some local reef research. Excitingly our first night out since leaving Mooloolaba, must be what new parents feel like when they finally get a babysitter. I learned some new stuff. Coral gets about 90% of it's nutrition from symbiotic microalgae that inhabit it. Those algae give it its colour. When the water temperature rises the algae (to different extents and at different temperatures depending on the species) start to produce less CO2 and more O2. This stresses the coral and it becomes fluorescent. Eventually the coral will expel the algae leaving it looking white - this is coral bleaching. Embarrassingly I did not know exactly what coral bleaching was (apart from that it was bad) until now. If the water temperature drops the algae come back and all is good but if not the coral dies. We heard some interesting research looking at how to use the more resistant algae species to assist coral reproduction in an effort to maintain as much of the reef as possible while (optimistically) awaiting a reversal of the sea temperature rises.

 Which would you choose? This was a Bunnings, not a global warming, dilemma.

 Karl did manage to find a German bar with 1L beers (that's big, not just close).

On our evenings in, Karl has been allowed cook (he has his galley licence, just not his advanced certificate of galley-use-in-washing-machine-movement-mode) and I've been "doing a Karl" and sitting at the nav desk with my feet up, glass of wine in hand, watching him. Bliss.

Karl voted that we stay here to celebrate his birthday on Monday so we kicked it off on Sunday afternoon with a visit to a proper Irish pub. We had expected just another generic Oirish Bar but this turned out to be a real pub. With a real session. The kind of pub where they don't serve food, where a tin whistle solo will silence the place temporarily and where the owner (who has been playing in the session) notices that you're new and comes over to talk to you.

He's a lovely Australian with Scottish roots who basically opened the pub to have somewhere to play music. He's thinking about opening another in West End so if a McGinty's pops up on Boundary Street please go along and have a pint and join in the session.

So we're pretty much finishing up our time in Cairns. Feeling enough like locals that I'm almost pronouncing it "Cans" and calling people "buddy". A visit to the local markets to stock up on fresh fruit and veg, a trip to the laundry and a "film night" (watched on the laptop in the cockpit but Karl has a gizillion gigs of data to use up before he ditches Telstra) and we're set to go. Onwards northwards.

How much can we fit on board?

Karl trying to look local. Ute kindly donated to assist in our shopping by our wonderful dock neighbours Gary and Shari on Anastasia.

A birthday dose of culture at The Tanks (former World War II...well...tanks, of the storage variety) exhibition venue. It's pretty cool and they have performance venues too in some of the tanks. Bring the mozzie repellant though.