The Skull Cave on Fantome Island.

The Goat Boat.

We sailed around Maggie Island in very blustery conditions, to drop anchor for the night in Horseshoe Bay, and the next morning it looked like we were due for a perfect sailing day. Which it was. Graham races Hobie cats in Perth, and was keen to take the helm. 
With a 25 knot breeze from behind us, I set the jib, and the mainsail stayed in the bag. As the day progressed, the wind backed off a little and I swapped the jib for the big Gennaker, then we just cruised comfortably past Palm Island itself and around into the bay at Fantome Island.
​(Palm Island, which had a couple of years ago been encouraging and welcoming cruising boats, was now asking them to stay away because the island was suffering extreme drought and running out of water. Aboriginal settlements still get a raw deal.)
The site of an old leper colony, Fantome still has the wreckage of the settlement, which hasn't ever been cleaned up properly and is strewn with asbestos and rubbish from the buildings. It's a beautiful little island, but a disgrace that the Queensland Government hasn't dealt with removing the mess properly. 
It's a very unique little spot, and we'd enjoyed it when Mary and I had come through in "Endurance" the previous year. (It was the site of my marathon swim sprint to retrieve our dinghy that had worked itself loose.) Needless to say, I kept a close eye on the dinghy this time.

We had a good wander around on Fantome Island, and on the north end, away from the Leper Colony ruins, came across old campsites with bleached bones lying in the sand. Okay, I was kidding about the Skull Cave. There's no Ghost Who Walks or even any masked gentlemen running around in purple lycra. There is a beach though. And there's no pirates or treasure hunters' buried remains, but goat bones. Whoever had been using the campsite, over the years, had been barbecuing goats. (Goats were introduced to many of the offshore islands during the 19th century. It was reasonably considered that they would provide food for passing sailors, and they thrived. Most of the continental islands inside the Barrier Reef still have a healthy feral goat population, despite Queensland National Parks' best efforts to eliminate the hardy little buggars.)
I found a perfectly intact goat skull, nicely bleached, and decided it would make a great boat mascot. Fantome also has lots of giant clam shells lying around and absolutely massive piles of bleached coral. But of course, it's probably illegal to take any of that.
​ 

Graham loved helming the Big Cat and is a great technical sailor.

The ruins at Orpheus. I hadn't mentioned the plague of Death Adders which inhabit those ruins to Graham.

On with the tour, and we headed a few miles north to pick up a mooring at Orpheus Island, another beautiful little spot in the Palm Group. Here there's some great coral reef, and we dinghied to the beach on the high tide, and snorkelled the reef on the low tide. 
There's a few moorings at Orpheus, and by Sundown there was a fleet of four or five cruisers....all catamarans.... settling in for the night. By now, the gale-force wind and rain had completely dissipated, and we were enjoying classic North Queensland conditions.

El Gatito visits the beach.

The luxury cruiser "My Way" is rumoured to belong to motorcycle racer Mick Doohan.

The motor-sail back to Magnetic Island into a gentle headwind was easy, highlights of the crossing being encounters with a Hammerhead shark and a banded sea snake. And the day was complete when we found a wind pocket that whooshed us through the western passage past Magnetic Island and around to the marina at Nellie Bay, with Graham at the wheel being careful to avoid the nasty reef in the middle of that passage.

The poor ol' goat's getting a workout. No Resting In Peace for him....and the final indignity has been stuffing him in my bag, bringing him home and hanging him on the wall of my study. Trophy Goat!