Goodbye Whitsundays, Hello Bowen

Cam enjoying the view
of Edgecumbe Bay

We have a few cruising guides on board that we refer to often to find out about places to visit (or not), how and when to get there (approaches and tides), where to anchor and what to do on shore. Generally, we've found them to be 10 years out of date but still useful. After we got into Bowen Harbour yesterday, I had to go back and look again at what the cruising guides said about Bowen. One of them, Cruising the Coral Coast by Alan Lucas, says Bowen offers "...a return to sanity and economies after the excesses of the Whitsunday-Airlie Beach area...well-recommended to those needing security surrounded by low-key, but more than adequate, facilities." In 100 Magic Miles, David Colfelt says "Bowen has an atmosphere of an unhurried and unspoilt northern Queensland town."

'Excessive' is a good word for the Whitsundays - we saw more mega-yachts at Whitehaven than at the Gold Coast last year, I reckon - but I don't know that 'low-key' and 'adequate' are accurate for Bowen. It has been invariably easy to find the information we need, including who to contact, for the marinas we've visited so far. Bowen not so. Strangely, Queensland Transport run the harbour and seem to administer the pile berths and a marina pool that was dredged at least 10 years ago for a marina development that never happened; the yacht club administers a dozen or so berths on a jetty on one side of the harbour and a seafood company administers another dozen or so on the other side. After an internet search and three or four phone calls we were eventually given a mobile number, listed in the cruising guides as emergency only, and were directed to a pile mooring. We couldn't get a marina berth for Sunday and Monday because the yacht club were holding a regatta and were full. We passed the regatta - three boats!! - on their way out as we were on our way in. After mooring to piles (for the first time ever), we visited the yacht club and had a drink. There were half a dozen blokes in there who, rather than making us feel welcome as I would have expected in an "unhurried and unspoilt northern Queensland town" made me feel like I had three heads. I say all this knowing that we have just been spoiled by the excesses of the Whitsundays and that we haven't been into the town proper yet but I really hope my impression of Bowen improves because so far I am really underwhelmed.

On a pile mooring in Bowen Harbour

I mentioned mooring on piles for the first time ever. Berthing is always fun with two short-ish crew members. Generally, we like to reverse into a pen as it means our 240V power lead is likely to reach the power pole and that I can get off the boat onto the jetty and be ready to take a bow line before the bow is in the pen. If we nose in, the bow is almost fully into the pen before I can get off and get up there. A kid, normally Cam, throws me the bow line to tie off as Shane reverses the engine to stop the boat's movement. Shane then hops off and secures the stern with a line Haydee throws to him. I take a brake line onto the jetty with me to brake the boat if needed but generally I don't use it as it tends to swing the boat the wrong way. Strong wind always makes berthing fun. I've been left on the jetty once or twice in the past because we've had to abort, go out and try again.

Mooring to piles for the first time yesterday was almost as fun as berthing. In theory, you attach long lines to your bow and stern, the helmsman sidles up to the stern pile and a crewman puts a line around it, you nudge forward to the bow pile and put your bowline around it, then you adjust both lines so your boat is centred between the piles. Like berthing, I think the hard part is the throttle control which, fortunately, is Shane's job. We were put on a mooring that had lines tied to both piles already meaning we didn't have to get too close to the piles, we just used a boat pole to pick them up. The wind was blowing us around a bit and we had to drop the stern line at one stage and try again as our bow blew too far off the bow pile, but we then got both lines on and secure and the boat now sticks out like a sore thumb in amongst the fishing trawlers and, of course, the racing fleet.