Sailing Around Australia; Super, Super

7/8/2014 Super, Super

During our break in Cairns from our sailing around Australia adventures in Cairns, we had the opportunity to go out around the harbour on a super yacht’s super tender.

Our son, Luke works on the super luxury white boat. It’s 50 metres long on has a full time crew of 12 people, including a chef, 3 stewardesses and our son is the full time on board scuba diving instructor.

The opulence of the boat is matched by it’s super 35ft Jupiter tender. We were really fortunate that Luke’s boss had said it was okay to take us out in the tender.

Our sailing around Australia adventures will bring us to Cairns probably around this time next year. So we are “casing” out possible mooring and accommodation for Easy Tiger. So the opportunity to have a look from a boat was, well, super.

In the Cairns area there are three marinas, pylon type moorings, standard moorings and a river for anchoring.

The Cairns city marina has a super location, right on the boardwalk at the end of the town esplanade. A vast array of restaurants, cafés, bars and entertainment spots is right at the end of the jetty. Also a short walk to the end of the marina is where the commercial ferries operate. These offer an assortment of day trips to the Great Barrier Reef. Unfortunately, proximity to this playground is super expensive, so we crossed it off our list of possibilities.

While we were in the super yachts super tender, we cruised over to the pylon moorings which seem to be both a cheap and popular method of mooring a boat in Cairns. Unfortunately on closer inspection, we found the pylon moorings to be quite run down and not offering a lot of stability. Most boats tied in between the pylons had two ropes crossed over front and back, and if there was any swell or wake from passing boats there was a lot of jerking on and jostling.

As the super yachts tender effortlessly cruised us around at 25 to 30 knots we went and had a good look up the small creeks and waterways that run off the Baron river near the Cairns harbour.

On arrival back at the marina, we were informed by Luke that as we had used the super tender, we had to put it back as we found it and make sure it was ready for it’s next use. Little did we realize that this meant chamois and mop and polishing rags divided out and the next hour and a half spent cleaning the boat that we had just used for an hour.

“There you go”, said Luke, "now you know what it is like to be super yacht crew". “I didn’t really want that experience”, I said, “ I want to experience life as the owner!”

That afternoon, we visited Half moon bay Marina at Yorkey’s Knob, which seemed a good possibility although a little exposed to the weather. Then to Bluewater marina, where fellow Fusion 40 owners, Fud and Faye Mackenzie have their own pen.

After discussions with Rod at Bluewater, we did put some thought into purchasing a pen that they had for sale. Unfortunately for us the numbers didn’t stack up and we are not sure that we want to be tied to one spot (excuse the pun).

It seems the best option for us for an extended stay in Cairns would be to put a mooring down. This can be done for around $2000 which is not even half the cost of being in a marina for six months.