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The Reef proper · 7 nights · Cairns to Lizard Island
The Low Isles, the Agincourt reefs, the Ribbon Reefs and Cod Hole, ending at Lizard Island with a flight out from its own strip
Best months
June - October
How long
8 Days / 7 Nights
Start and finish
Cairns to Lizard Island
Planned by
The Ahoy Club charter team
The idea of the week
The Whitsundays are where the fleet winters; this is where the Reef is at its best. Fly into Cairns, board, and spend a week working north along the outer reef: the Low Isles and Port Douglas, the Agincourt system, then the Ribbon Reefs with their walls and Cod Hole, where potato cod the size of a person meet the divers. It ends at Lizard Island, one island with one resort and an airstrip, which means you fly home from the anchorage.
It is a week for the water: diving and snorkelling every day, the best visibility of the year, and almost no other boats once you are past Port Douglas. Superyacht charters start on any day of the week, so the route stands on its own. Legs are approximate, at a steady ten knots, and the captain adjusts them for the weather and the swell on the day.
The route
What the crew arrange along the way
Diving the outer reef
The yacht carries the gear and, where she has one, the instructor. Bait Reef and Hardy Reef from the Whitsundays; the Ribbon Reefs, Cod Hole and the Agincourt system from Port Douglas and Lizard Island, the best diving in the country.
The beach picnic
The crew land a table, chairs, umbrellas and a kitchen on a beach with nobody on it and cook lunch there, with the yacht in view. Store Beach in the Harbour, The Basin in Pittwater, Whitehaven at low tide: Australia has more of these beaches than anywhere we go.
The toys, every day
Jetskis, seabobs, paddleboards, wakeboards and the slide if the yacht has one, in the water by the time breakfast is cleared. In the Whitsundays and on the Reef the snorkelling gear matters more; in the Kimberley the tenders do the work.
Day by day
Low Isles, off Port Douglas · Board · 34 nm · 3.5 h · Board and go, the first reef by afternoon
Board at the Cairns marina after a morning flight and head straight north. The Low Isles are a coral cay with a lighthouse and a lagoon an hour off Port Douglas: the first snorkel, turtles in the seagrass, and a sunset the day boats never stay for.
9 nm · 1 h · Four Mile Beach, and the Daintree if you want it
Into Port Douglas for the morning: Four Mile Beach, the Sunday market if the day falls right, and a long lunch at one of the tables on Macrossan Street that we book for you. The afternoon is a choice between the Daintree rainforest by car and the pool deck.
Agincourt Reef · 40 nm · 4 h · The outer reef proper
Out to the edge of the continental shelf. The Agincourt reefs are the ribbon of coral where the Reef meets the deep, and the visibility is the best on the coast: diving and snorkelling off the back of the boat all afternoon, and the night at anchor behind the reef with nothing but the Coral Sea beyond it.
Ribbon Reefs · 38 nm · 4 h · Walls and a pinnacle
North along the Ribbon Reefs, ten long reefs in a line with a few boats a season between them. Steve's Bommie is the famous pinnacle, a tower of coral rising from thirty metres with everything on the Reef living on it. Two dives, or the snorkel over the top for the rest of the group.
Ribbon Reef Ten, Cod Hole · 42 nm · 4.5 h · The dive everyone comes for
Cod Hole at the top of Ribbon Reef Ten, where the potato cod have met divers for forty years and come to the mask. Giant clams, white-tip reef sharks, and in June and July the dwarf minke whales that visit nowhere else on earth so reliably. Lizard Island is on the horizon by evening.
Watson's Bay, Lizard Island · 14 nm · 1.5 h · Watson's Bay, the Clam Gardens, Cook's Look
Into Watson's Bay. The Clam Gardens are a snorkel off the beach, the Blue Lagoon on the other side of the island is the swim, and the walk up to Cook's Look, where Cook climbed to find a way out through the reef in 1770, is the view. Dinner at the resort if the group wants a night off the boat; it is the one table on the island and we hold it.
Blue Lagoon, Lizard Island · Stay · tender days · The last full day
The Blue Lagoon by tender for the morning, a beach picnic on one of the twenty-four beaches with nobody on it, the research station if anyone is curious, and the last dinner on board with the island black against the stars.
Lizard Island airstrip · Tender · 10 min · The strip is ten minutes from the anchorage
A last swim, then the tender to the strip and the one-hour flight to Cairns for your connection. The yacht stays north or begins her run back down the Reef.
Make this week yours
This is a sample week, planned by the Ahoy Club charter team from trips we have run before. Every stop moves with the weather, the tide and the group. We reshape it around your yacht and your dates, book the tables and quote the rate.
Australia
+61 (02) 9327 3333
Europe
+33 4 9367 3735
USA
+1 561 813 7511
ahoyclub.com · charter@ahoyclub.com
https://ahoyclub.com/charter/itinerary/cairns-lizard-island-1-week
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