Pirates of Hinchinbrook Island - Lucinda to Sunken Reef

Tuesday 26th July - Lucinda to Sunken Reef a 10.5km day in easy conditions.

We were up early for a 7am pickup, Jamie from Mission Link Bus Services collected us. A quick drive down to Coral Sea Kayaks at Mission Beach to hitch up the trailer, a quick catchup with James and then we were off to Lucinda where our journey starts. Along the way we stopped off at Cardwell for a quick breakfast, coffee and pickup some last minute supplies. Back in the bus we headed off to Lucinda where we were to start our 7 day adventure on the Coral Sea.

Our launch site was on the beach at Lucinda next to the Lucinda pier. At 5.78km in length it is the longest pier in the Southern Hemisphere. It is operated by the Lucinda Bulk Sugar terminal. It is a truly massive structure.

Packing our boats, getting fresh water, as we were unsure if there was fresh water at Sunken Reef (we later found out there was lost of water up at Mullagan falls) we finally were all on the water at about 10.45am - about 45 minutes later than we wanted as we needed get across the sandbar at Georges Point before the tide has gone too far out. At low tide the sandbar is about .5 of a meter above the water.

Peter, JB, Derek, Cam and Jason were all happy in singles with Ian and Ulysses in the double - the mothership. The double was labelled the Pearl - suitably named for our pirate theme.

We headed out in light conditions with almost no swell, very light winds under an overcast sky.

The plan was to head directly to Hinchinbrook Island then follow the coast and trying to put as much distance as we could between ourselves and the Hinchinbrook Channel that separates QLD mainland from Hinchinbrook Island - the channel is known for crocs.

The tide has gone out further than we would have liked as we committed ourselves to cross the sandbar finding out that part of the sandbar were above water. As it was we found a small channel that had enough water to paddle and float our boats until we got to deeper water. The options if we got stuck would be to wait it out, portage our boats - a right pain given how loaded our boats were, or avoid the situation and paddle many extra kilometers around the sand bar that would have added about an extra 1 to 1.5 hours to our trip.

We paddles for a couple of hours and after getting across the sandbar we pulled up on a sandy beach for lunch.

We met a group of 5 hikers as they were finishing the Thorsburne trail. After lunch we launched our boats making our way to our camp for the night - Sunken Reef.

We had the camp site to ourselves - James called the beach a bit of a "catch can", meaning that the prevailing winds would blow any flotsam onto the beach - well that was certainly the case. After setting camp we made our way to Mulligans falls. We explored around and had a nice swim is fairly warm water.

Back at camp we had Chilli Tuna avec Cous Cous all washed down with a great red wine. On the beach that night the sky was super clear showing one of the spirals arms of the Milky Way - we even saw some shooting stars. We too a walk along the creek that emptied out into the Coral Sea and to our great dismay we saw heaps and heaps of Cane Toads.