Airlie Beach

7^th March 2012 – Airlie Beach

We dropped anchor at 6am about 1.5nm off Pioneer Point (or about 4nm from the Abel Point Marina) to ensure enough depth for a vessel of this size. To get to our anchorage, we had to pass to starboard of Hook Island, passing around the top of Hayman Island and then South back down to Pioneer Bay.

Sea Princess at Anchor

There was lots of activity early, with tenders being lowered into the water to ferry passengers ashore to the marina, and large motor catamarans coming alongside to pick up passengers who had booked tours to the outer reef, Whitehaven beach or Daydream Island.

                               
                                                      Reef Cruise Cat coming alongside

Tender waiting to approach boarding platform

We decided to wait till a bit after 10am to go ashore, hoping that by then the queues for the tenders would have died down. Despite the Sea Princess hiring two large motor cats to help supplement their tenders, it was a slow process. We eventually stepped ashore at Abel Point at around 11am.

                                             
                                                            Airlie Beach 

Today is another strange weather day, with intermittent rain, periods of sunshine, but mostly cloudy all day.

We walked around to the village, did a few laps of the main street, had lunch at the pub, bought some supplies at the bottle shop and had seen it all by about  1.30pm. It is not as if we haven’t been here before. 

The main Street

New Marina arm and "Boathouse " Apartments

Unfortunately, many other passengers appeared to be on our time schedule, so when we got back to the marina to get a tender back to the boat, most of the rest of the passengers were there lined up waiting.

Eventually we were back on board at around 3pm. The last passengers were on board at 5.30pm.


The anchor was raised at 6pm and we set sail for Darwin.