Marinas in Queensland Australia

[Seas the Day]

I suggest you use the Abell Point Marina in Airlie Beach. As long as you are insured you can leave it there any time of the year as I do. You can get cheap flights from Proserpine (30km from Airlie) to Sydney, Brisbane and Cairns and likely more. Proserpine to Cairns is about 90 minutes from memory.

[Mike Banks]

If you intend to come to Cairns, one can anchor in the estuary free of charge.

However, the cyclone season is at its worst late in the season. The air begins to cool but the sea is still hot--so convection and the spin of the earth do their thing.

About an hour south of Cairns is the town of Innisfail--there is a marina there, and a bus service runs to Cairns. Also rail once a day, but I would go with the bus.

Innisfail is about 10 KM upstream from the river mouth, and if your boat draws a couple of metres you will have to time the tide to get over the Johnstone River bar. Easiest way in is to follow a trawler if one is around. If a cyclone happens, the cyclone hole in Nind's Creek is about the best there is, but get in there early, as the trawlers use it too--and they rope across the creek from one side to the other..once they think no one else is coming in.

[Nikki S]

Leaving the boat unattended in cairns between May & November shouldn’t be an issue. But further south is less windy in general

[billgewater]

Many visitors to Cairns anchor opposite Marlin Marina and commute via dingy to the marina to access the copious diverse delights of Cairns. (You need to arrange this dingy tie up with the marina). Marlin Marina is bang in the middle of the city tourist area. There is a small Cairns Yacht Club there inside the marina as well, which may rent out berths. Probably the most expensive rents in Cairns. Gated security. Marlin Marina mainly serves the charter vessels that take tourists to the reef. You will see some monster boats there. The marina is owned and operated by the local Port Authority.

The mooring area east and generally opposite Marlin Marina is locally referred to as Skid Row, not because of the itinerants but rather the poor holding ground. Good ground tackle needed.
You can anchor further up Trinity Inlet nearer the Cruising Yacht Squadron club house. There are lift out facilities (travel lifts) and chandlers in abundance and a bus trip or a push bike will get you into town. See Portsmith (industrial area) and Smiths Creek on Google Earth.
The local Cairns Port Authority has some fore and aft pole moorings and you would need to contact them re availability and costs. They occur as a line formation on Google Earth.
When a cyclone lingers, locals head up Trinity Inlet ASAP.

Cairns is a tourist mecca mainly due to the reef. It also has the tablelands immediately behind. The towns on the tablelands, Kurunda, to Millaa Millaa, are very popular tourist destinations. The tablelands are also generally cooler and wetter than the coast.

There is really nothing at all on the immediate southern side of Trinity Inlet except for mangroves and a few slipways. Coconut slipways, a long way up Trinity Inlet, are locally very well regarded, but commuting there is a major task. It is not unusual to have a boat craned off the slip way onto the ground at Coconut slipway. Expensive lift, but cheaper rent.

If a cat 4 cyclone arrives then none of the marinas would be really safe, particularly Bluewater. Bluewater and Yorkey's are a good long boat trip, 3 hours at least, to the upper reaches of Trinity Inlet, so you would have to be on the ball. Having said that, big cyclones are really not all that common in the area. But .....

Yorkey's has a great club house, but virtually no other facilities except fueling (chandlers, lift out, hardstand etc.). Bluewater marina has zero facilities except some really remote toilets and a shared (with a local hotel) unsecured car park, but some do leave their boats there for the wet season.
Both Bluewater and Yorkey's Knob (no other part of Yorkey's anatomy made it onto the maps) marinas are reasonably close to Smithfield shopping centre and major hardware shops (Bunnings). Both are about 15 km from the Airport. Good bus services.

But essentially, all the boating maintenance facilities are off Tingara Street or nearby Portsmith, not north of there.

Re Port Douglas. Not a bad marina but with high exposure to cyclone weather. No chandlers, no travel lift. The sail loft recently closed down. Port Douglas is full of retirees and tourists. Not a youngsters town. IMHO. In a cyclone, you can presumably go up the river. Check on Google Earth to see just how popular this is. This marina also serves the large wave piercing catamarans that take tourists out to the adjacent reefs. The car park is usually half full of tourist buses. There is a yacht club house there as well for local advice.

Cooktown, even less, facility wise. No marina, but a fascinating place. Often described as the largest outdoor asylum in Australia. There is a regional airport at Cooktown that can drop you at Cairns International airport if needed and a bus service as well (to Cairns). The Endeavour river (named after Capt. Cook's boat) affords cyclone protection if you go upstream. Cooktown actually has a small slipway. Contact local harbour master.

Cooktown and Port Douglas are nearby the oldest surviving intact rain forest in the world. The Daintree. Starts at Cape Tribulation nearby where Capt. Cook struck a reef!). This Daintree rainforest actually comes right down to the ocean edge. Over-run with tourists.

If visiting any Australian marina, ensure you can live aboard. Generally this is OK. All marinas require that you have insurance that protects the marina and other vessels.

If your boat is over 15 m there is a requirement unique to Queensland that you have specific insurance to cover wreck removal and oil pollution clean up (ostensibly to protect the Great Barrier Reef - which is in real serious trouble from climate change). There is presumably a grace period for visiting boats but you should check this out with MSQ (Maritime Safety Queensland). Many international comprehensive policies won't include cover for these two very specific issues, so check.

Another local option is to have your boat lifted out at the Yacht Squadron (see Tingara Street on Google) and left on the hard while you are away. You may be able to negotiate a good deal if you try. Contact "Norships". (Or The Big Boat Shed).Possibly cheaper than a marina berth, particularly if you want to do hull work. At this lift out area you are surrounded by the boat industry so everything is available.

For the international cruising lot, intending further travel, it is common to head straight for Darwin (trade wind sailing), avoiding Queensland completely. Darwin has an international airport, four cat. 5 cyclone rated marinas and all sorts of boaty type facilities. Darwin, during the dry season is, simply, hedonistic. It has a genuinely internationally famous Dinah Beach Yacht Club. The population is seriously cosmopolitan with people from all over the world. A major component of the international cruising fraternity meet and mix there and visit the Kimberly's then clear Australia from Darwin. The four marinas are all lock gated marinas which gets around the 7 m tides in Darwin. i.e. the water level remains fairly constant within the marinas. The "Duck Pond" marina (Fishing Boat Harbour) is essentially reserved for commercial vessels, tugs, trawlers, rig tenders etc. leaving three others. However if you have a fishing or charter licence they may let you in. It's definitely cheaper. In Darwin the airport is about 15 minutes max. from anywhere. Same with Cairns. Darwin is "warm" to put it mildly. Basically two seasons. The Wet, when it crashes down amid great tropical storms and the Dry, when no rain occurs at all.

If you are considering flying to the US from Australia, you should check out flights out of Cairns. Although Cairns is Australia's seventh most busy airport, you may still have to transfer to Brisbane or transfer out of Japan. This may make going further south more attractive. See other comments about luggage restrictions on commuter flights.
Bon voyage

[RaymondR]

And, in addition to it being rarely visited by cyclones and having lots of facilities, leaving your boat in southern Queensland S of 25 degrees south will allow you to cruise up the Queensland coast which in itself is a pretty fantastic cruising grounds.

[Tbonem17]

I could be wrong but I have always thought being in Cairns in the cyclone season was a pretty safe place to be. I've just done a quick google and as far as I can see the last cyclone to directly affect Cairns was in 1927. Whether it's the topography of the ranges behind Cairns causing cyclones to veer off or bounce off I don't really know. This is just Cairns I'm talking about (I wouldn't include Pt. Douglas in this) as to the immediate north Cooktown and Cape Tribulation regularly get smashed. To the immediate south Innisfail also gets regularly smashed. Cairns seems to escape the damaging winds but you can certainly expect the deluge of rain from nearby cyclones. For my mind a safe port would be Cairns itself or somewhere south of Bundaberg as everywhere else is liable to get hit. Has anyone else ever thought along these lines?

[MickB]

There is a hell of a lot of good information in this thread. As a NQ local I'll throw my two cents worth in. If flying back to the States you will 99% of the time route through Brisbane or Sydney to LAX anyway so whether you stick with Cairns or go further south doesn't really matter. Tbonem17 comment about no cyclones hitting Cairns since 1927 is technically correct. It's probably the mountain range behind Cairns that deflects them(?), but the Marlin Marina has been cleared a number of times due to the effects of cyclones further south (Yasi did a lot of damage as she passed) or unnamed tropical storms. I had a mono moored at Yorkeys for a couple of years and it didn't come to any harm through a few of these although if a Cat 4/5 hit directly I'm pretty certain the scene would be similar to when Yasi hit Port Hinchinbrook (Which has never re-opened). Billgewater suggested leaving your boat on the dry at the "Big Boat Shed", I have done this myself and highly recommend it. I believe you can put it on the hard at the Yacht Squadron as well but I'm not aware of eye bolts to strap the boats down if a blow comes. Townsville has three excellent marinas, two on the mainland and a small one on Magnetic Island which is the cheapest of the three, check for yourself but I believe all three are rated for Cat 4-5 blows. Townsville hasn't had a direct hit by a cyclone since the early 70's and I think it was only a Cat 2 but like Cairns has had damage from near-by major storms like Debbie which almost blew Airlie Beach off the map in 2017 and unnamed tropical storms. After that the best would be Airlie Beach where you are spoilt for choice of marinas and beautiful if crowded cruising grounds, the town itself is a bit of a mini Cairns in some aspects. Although I've been further south I don't have much experience to comment on locations

[JPA Cate]

The flight to the US depends on whether or not you try to do it all in one go. If you're happy to have a hotel room (or similar) and leave the next day, then leaving from the far north isn't too bad. But if you're booked through to Boston (on the East coast of the US), and flying from Gladstone, the Gladstone-Sydney leg added about 6-1/2 hrs, before the flight to SFO, and on through Denver via Chicago, to Boston. We saw 3 separate flight crews, the total time spent, with all the waiting in airports was over 30 hrs., and then we had to drive for a couple of hours to find a motel. Today, we'd arrange for an air BNB, but, weren't savvy enough when we did it. Not a trip from hell, but eminently exhausting. Would now have to schedule a layover.

It would really depend, for Jacquie O, on where they want to go, then think about arranging it.

We are among those who summer much farther south in Oz, but always south of the tropic of Capricorn, in any event.

Ann

[Tbonem17]

Originally Posted by MickB

There is a hell of a lot of good information in this thread. As a NQ local I'll throw my two cents worth in. If flying back to the States you will 99% of the time route through Brisbane or Sydney to LAX anyway so whether you stick with Cairns or go further south doesn't really matter. Tbonem17 comment about no cyclones hitting Cairns since 1927 is technically correct. It's probably the mountain range behind Cairns that deflects them(?), but the Marlin Marina has been cleared a number of times due to the effects of cyclones further south (Yasi did a lot of damage as she passed) or unnamed tropical storms. I had a mono moored at Yorkeys for a couple of years and it didn't come to any harm through a few of these although if a Cat 4/5 hit directly I'm pretty certain the scene would be similar to when Yasi hit Port Hinchinbrook (Which has never re-opened). Billgewater suggested leaving your boat on the dry at the "Big Boat Shed", I have done this myself and highly recommend it. I believe you can put it on the hard at the Yacht Squadron as well but I'm not aware of eye bolts to strap the boats down if a blow comes. Townsville has three excellent marinas, two on the mainland and a small one on Magnetic Island which is the cheapest of the three, check for yourself but I believe all three are rated for Cat 4-5 blows. Townsville hasn't had a direct hit by a cyclone since the early 70's and I think it was only a Cat 2 but like Cairns has had damage from near-by major storms like Debbie which almost blew Airlie Beach off the map in 2017 and unnamed tropical storms. After that the best would be Airlie Beach where you are spoilt for choice of marinas and beautiful if crowded cruising grounds, the town itself is a bit of a mini Cairns in some aspects. Although I've been further south I don't have much experience to comment on locations

In the interest of being technically correct what damage did Yasi do to Cairns? Any fool can google and work out that is a wild statement. You worry about a Cat 4 or 5 hitting Cairns when it hasn't happened in the last 92 years. Or a Cat 1,2 or 3. A great deal of damage done to Queensland marinas from cyclones is due to the cheap nasty pricks who build them with too short a piles so the docks float up off the top of them due to storm surges which is exactly what happened at Hinchinbrook. Yeah it was a pretty bad cyclone helped out by some really bad builders.
The closest cyclone Debbie got to Cairns was about 700km so I don't know what you're talking about there.

[MickB]

Originally Posted by Tbonem17

In the interest of being technically correct what damage did Yasi do to Cairns? Any fool can google and work out that is a wild statement. You worry about a Cat 4 or 5 hitting Cairns when it hasn't happened in the last 92 years. Or a Cat 1,2 or 3. A great deal of damage done to Queensland marinas from cyclones is due to the cheap nasty pricks who build them with too short a piles so the docks float up off the top of them due to storm surges which is exactly what happened at Hinchinbrook. Yeah it was a pretty bad cyclone helped out by some really bad builders.
The closest cyclone Debbie got to Cairns was about 700km so I don't know what you're talking about there.

OK Mate don't take offense, my comment about a Cat 4 hitting the Half Moon Bay Marina at Yorkeys Knob was based on my memory of watching the waves crashing over the rock wall as I was re-doubling the lines to my boat and that was a tropical depression not a cyclone it is not protected well at all but still better than the Marlin. Comparatively speaking Yasi didn't do a great deal of damage to Cairns but there were still many trees and power lines down plus flooding in the southern suburbs, power was out in many areas for up to 3 days. I was working at a mine at Mt Garnet on the Western side of the Atherton Table Lands and living outside Ravenshoe, Yasi passed well south of us but still managed to blow down many trees and knocked the power out for five days but that's why everyone living in NQ owns a generator. Those working at the mine but resident in Cairns could not get up the hill for 4-5 days due to road wash outs and debris on the road. My reference to Debbie doing damage was relative to Townsville not Cairns although it was much more superficial, Townsville does not seem to get the level of damage that Cairns gets from similar strength storms. Your reference to the poor quality of construction in the marinas is unfortunately probably correct, I don't know but I would like to think there is legislation similar to the Queensland building codes which are based on the Australian Standards, but in the past I realise a lot of suspect construction went on.

[Tbonem17]

I used to pump yabbies in the mouth of the creek at Yorkeys Knob in the days when it only had the boat ramp. I also spent a year at anchor in Trinity Inlet and the automatic place to go in the event of a blow would have been right up the inlet amongst the mangroves. Never needed to do it. I guess some deeper draught boats might've struggled getting in but it only had the worst imaginable gooey black mud bottom to run aground on. It's a long time ago now but I guess there was room for every boat that wanted to get in and then some. Back in the day the yacht club had a small beach in the inlet directly in front of the club where members could leave their dingys. Cairns was a brilliant place to be as nothing was more than a 5 minutes walk from the Inlet. From memory Cairns was the home of the biggest fishing fleet on the east coast of Queensland or was it the Australian east coast. Doesn't matter except the fishermen pick the best ports for good reason.

[MickB]

My earliest memory of Cairns was a bike trip via The Curry and Normanton from Mt Isa in the 70's, almost 1000k's of dirt on a '68 Bonneville I think I spent almost as much time bolting bits back on to the bike as I did riding it (Including Loctite), which gave my two Jap bike riding mates no end of laughs. Once we made it to Cairns I remember going to the Marlin Bar; but not leaving it. Lee Marvin was not in attendance but there were a number of photos with him and some big marlin in them, apparently the Cairns version of Hemingway.



I was thinking about Cairns not being hit by a cyclone for 92 years, I recall an ABC article about Yasi that stated the previous cyclone to hit Cardwell was in 1890 which would be 121 years, it was thought to be safe tucked in behind Hinchenbrook Island.



With roughly 2000k's of higher potential cyclone coast from Bundaberg to Cape York and an average of 3 named cyclones per year the chances of a direct hit twice in the same spot are extremely low, unless you are Ayr or Homehill in the late 70's early 80's they seemed to attract them regularly.

[Wotname]

Originally Posted by Tbonem17

.........From memory Cairns was the home of the biggest fishing fleet on the east coast of Queensland or was it the Australian east coast. Doesn't matter except the fishermen pick the best ports for good reason.

And from memory, in the 70s, Cairns had the biggest Marlin and no traffic lights (except for the railway crossing on Musgrave Road (or Sheffield St????)).

[Wotname]

Originally Posted by MickB

My earliest memory of Cairns was a bike trip via The Curry and Normanton from Mt The Isa in the 70's, almost 1000k's of dirt on a '68 Bonneville..........

There you go, I fixed up your memory for you.

Yes, Cairns was a frontier town before the 70s and there wasn't much glass in the pub windows on the old waterfront (nicknamed Barbary Coast) . You couldn't find a soul in Port Douglas except on pension day

Thanks for the memories!

[JacquieO]

First off.... thank you guys for all your input...
It is really appreciated.

In light of the cyclones it's been decided to put the sailing back a few months until end of May/June. Appreciate may still come across the odd cyclone but here's hoping not...

Thanks again!!