Larkabout 2009 The Larkin's World "Tantrum" tour 2008/2009.

Left Clump Point and Nellie who came to see me off 28 Sept and arrived Cairns that night at about 8. We had 5 days in Cairns sorting last minute stuff as much as one can, and had a really pleasant time catching up with Ray and Christine who had moved up in the meantime and settled onto their boat. Caught up with Terry too, who looked really well and seemed to be making headway with sorting some contacts for mine work and some other options. Including Robbie, whom he met at our going away party…Took Jack and Christine’s granddaughter Ashley to see “Stepbrothers” and had secretly enjoyable time. Oh, and did some provisioning for the boat. Did you know that it is illegal to buy cask wine before 4pm in Cairns?  
First stop out of Cairns on 3 Oct was the Low Isles off Port Douglas for the night then on to Hope Is en route to Lizard the next day. Hung out there for a week – bit longer than anticipated but we waited a handful of days extra for a new battery for the anchor winch because it wouldn’t pull the skin off your custard. The anchorage had beautiful water with damselfish that bite you on the shin (or perhaps it was just me) and nice snorkeling and was full on windy as we had about 20 – 25kn anyway and we got hammered by the wind bullets coming off the hills there. Weee. We got terribly excited and did the walk to the top of the hill where James Cook stood and looked for a passage out past the reefs (known inevitably as Cook’s Look). Jack signed the visitor’s book. He said “my cat’s breath smells of cat food. Jack Larkin, 13, Mission Beach”. We had oranges and water and came back down again.
Lizard has a terribly expensive and exclusive (though a bit run down and dated) resort on it which normal people are not able to infiltrate, not even with a floppy hat and Italian sandals and a ridiculous tan, we are however allowed to use the staff bar which at the time was hosting the annual marlin fishing competition and which had very cold beer and surprisingly good pizza and sold phone cards. So there we were in the anchorage, along with about a couple of dozen or so other sailing boats and about 50 big power boats. It was like a city at night, big generators flood lighting all the expensive decks and powering those really cool electric blue underwater lights that the flash gits have but which look amazing and we’d like some too. Funnily enough we didn’t see any of the marlin fishermen ashore – it may have been something to do with the fact that there was police boat stationed at the anchorage (50 miles offshore) for the duration of the tournament, the occupants of which spent their waking hours inspecting people’s boat licenses and registration and making sure no one had a beer. Happily they didn’t get around to us.
The yachties who were already there had a curious nightly ritual whereby they dinghyed to the beach every night at 5 and had pot luck dinners. All of them. Every night. I guess they all knew each other from previous years, or just knew to participate. We were invited over and went that night, and talked to a few interesting people, but it was weirdly cliquey.
While we were there we took the boat out to the “Cod Hole” at the edge of the outer reef and Jack and I had a dive and we all had a snorkel. Just amazing. It is so called because of the enormous resident cod there which I understand are fed by the dive operators,  but which were not apparent the day we went. We did however see some other huge fish, fish I’d never seen before and just well, fish galore. Breathtaking.
And so on up the road. We day sailed up to Thursday Island, leaving Lizard 14 Oct and arriving at Horn Island /Thursday Island 19th, depart 22nd.