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This will be my last article about the sailing trip I just went on in – sailing on the yacht Kioni.

Of course navigation was a huge part of what we were doing. As this was the skippers 16th trip down the east coast he was very experienced with bot the conditions and the navigational aspects including the hundres of islands and shoals we had to avoid. We had plenty of charts, a plotter, depth gauges and so on as well as a hand held GPS unit that Hylton brought with him. We used this for night time navigation and also instant navigation on deck without having to go down to the plotter or charts below.

Hylton kindly gave me the GPX track files from the GPS which I converted to Google Earth KMZ files using the GPS Visualiser website.

I have loaded the results into Google Earth and then screen shot using One Note the various legs as well as the whole trip.

For those who want to do this themselves I have included the KMZ files here as attachments. Note there is a little bit missing from one day as we left Yeppoon and also the last little bit into Southport. Total distance sailed was around 680 nautical miles.

My last day sailing on Kioni was spent mostly not sailing. The wind was 5-9 knots and most of the time we motored on this leg. I did a lot of helm work while others caught up on sleep or reading. I also managed to shoot some whales and tried to get dolphins but they proved too fast. We also saw a sea turtle but by the time I got my camera up it was gone.

One of the funniest photos was this first one of the rocks outside Mooloolaba – there was a boat up on the rocks.

The last bit of the trip into Mooloolaba was interesting as we crossed a bar with some good surf running as we came into the Southport channel. Then it was down to the dock and tying up before heading to the Palazzo Versace where I had a room booked and my wife waiting for me!

The next morning we headed back to the boat as we were doing a photo shoot with Cheryl and Courtney to promote Kioni as well as get some great shots.

We spent 56 odd hours on this leg on Kioni

The wind was too strong to leave Yeppoon as scheduled so we had an extra 12 hours layover waiting for the tide so we could leave the marina. We walked around, ate lots of food, drank lots of coffee and took lots of photos.

The marina at Mackay was nice and we were able to get a excellent coffee in the morning after negotiating all the locked gates into and out of the facility without a key.

The plan was to sail to Percy Island. The wind said that was a bad plan. We sailed through the night on a 28 hour voyage covering 240 nautical miles. There was quite a bit of tacking involved and there was also a lot more wind than was forecast.

On the way out of Mackay we sailed out through a massive ship car park. There must have been over 30 bulk carriers sitting empty at anchor out to sea – some well out of sight of the land. I got an aerial shot of some of the boats as we flew over on the way into Hamilton Island the other day.