Practicing Relaxation

12th to 25th July, 2021
Some people may think it’s easy to relax but John and I spend a great deal of time and effort perfecting this lost art. We stayed at Horseshoe Bay for a week doing a bit of boat work, writing diaries and nasty letters to our boat company, washing, cleaning and cooking but at this time of the year the priority is always to watch the Tour de France. This requires late nights, sleep ins and of course, Fromage Friday, which we extend to other days in the spirit of the race.

This place is yachtie paradise. We counted up to 80 boats in the bay

at times. The weather was pretty good, mainly sunny, a little bit humid and the occasional rain or wind. The sunsets were spectacular. We moved the boat closer to the beach so we didn’t have to overextend ourselves on the trip in, did a tiny bit of kayaking and had long walks along the beach with Tallis. He was so indignant one day when we dropped him in the water.

We had “sundowners” with other yachties, supported local bars and restaurants with our business and did the local bus pub-crawl around the island. Strangely, the local pub shut early on the night of the State of Origin decider!

Around us the Australian and US army were having war exercises and war-ships, fighter jets and chinooks were frequently sighted. One day there was a bush fire on Maggie (nothing to do with the military).

In the real world the Delta variant had arrived and Sydney and Vietnam were in total locky-D.

As the wind was going to pick up uncomfortably in the next few days we decided to go into the marina while it was easy to tie up on the jetty. It’s a three-hour sail from Magnetic Island to Townsville so we anchored in the Duckpond just outside the marina the day before our booking. We also needed Yamaha to fix a misbehaving throttle. I have flash-backs every time an outboard needs work however this time it was easily fixed.

John did a perfect “reverse park” in our pen – he’s getting good. Tallis and I went for a really big walk along the esplanade past the outdoor art exhibition with static and live instalments - part of the Townsville Festival. The space is well used, day and night, probably because there are so many local residential high rises along the shore.

The beautiful balmy evenings were perfect for a BBQ and there were plenty picnic areas around. There were so many curlews and despite

tracking them through the park I couldn’t get a single good photo. One day we embarrassed ourselves by finding a shortcut into the CBD. Maps are apparently quite helpful.

As usual John and I tried to support local businesses. Whilst re-provisioning in the town and at Castletown we also tried out the Tap House (recommend the lunch and the beer sampler), Molly Malones (friendly atmosphere), James Squire (as usual), Townsville Brewing Co (happy hour drinks) and went to see the Cowboys get beaten by the Storm at Country Bank Stadium.

The Cowboys support in Townsville is hilarious. Just before the game there is a “stampede” from the club house in the CBD to the arena on the other side of the river. The roads are closed and I swear I heard the sounds of cowbells and whips.

We really liked the design of this stadium, very open, accessible and unusually, more than adequate numbers of female toilets. We sat next to a couple from a mining town who were lovely and invited us to visit them. They sure could teach everyone about large volume beer

drinking and excellent bladder control.

Our next little trip is to check out the Palm Islands so we sailed back to Maggie for a better sailing angle the following day.

Next: Orpheus Trip