This story comes from Jesse, the older of the two boys. My work in this has been to nudge his story into shape here and there, getting some of the gaps filled in, setting his photos & captions into the text, adding some notes about places they visited, yet always allowing the 14 year old Jesse's style to remain. It is the things that are significant to Jesse that you read about here. This is not the captain's log of a major voyage, it is a teenager enthusing about a major adventure. I hope you are inspired by this journey as much as I continue to be.

There is a map of the journey at the bottom of the page. It is a large file and will take some time to download. So have a read of the story, then look up the map.

At places in the story there are links. These take you to the notes at the bottom of the page. You can read the note and another link will return you to your place in the story.

I have also interviewed Jesse and his brother and Dad about their trip. You can see that interview here.
Jesse is also planning something much bigger than this trip. You can read about it here.
 

We all looked around and concluded that it must have been a reflection. Being out on an open 14 foot catamaran for long hours of the day tends to tamper with one's vision. Then about a minute later one of us spotted it and we knew what it was immediately. A 12 foot tiger shark was swiftly gliding through the water only 15 feet away from us. From then on, until we reached our stop, we were all glued to the centre of the boat with our eyes peeled!!

Hey. Wait on. You don’t even know who we are. I’m Jesse Martin and am 14 years old. My brother over there is Beau, he’s 12. And that’s our Dad, Kon. We’re on our 14 foot Caper Cat somewhere near the Howick Group of islands out in the Great Barrier Reef on the north-east coast of Australia. In the twin hulls of the boat is all the gear necessary for a thousand kilometre journey in some of the best sailing water of the world.

We had no idea of the excitement and adventure that we were in for when we humbly left the small local beach on Alexandra Bay, above Cairns in Queensland. The breeze on that first day was so light that it took us five hours to reach our first stop.

Leaving Cooktown was even worse! We were on a downwind run with the breeze coming down the river. When we passed the shelter of the headland we were greeted abruptly by the sea wind that was hurtling by and we were caught off side. One hull slowly left the water and kept rising until Dad, through the sudden chaos, uncleated the main sheet and the hull splashed back into place. We'd been up on one hull before, so what was the problem here? Well we were in the mouth of a major water system that led to where the notorious salt water crocodile happens to live. This was no place to be invited to breakfast by a crocodile.
 

Our days were spent swinging in the hammocks and playing with the Aboriginal children that lived on the beach. During the day the women would go to the waters edge during low tide and fish for a few hours. They would come back with enough fish to feed the whole family. Their huts were no more than a frame made of poles with a corrugated tin roof and portable sides that were put up when it got windy. On the ground they had foam mattresses which they slept on.

We were invited back to their yacht for some dessert after dinner and by the time we left it was dark. It was about a 100 meters to the shore and we sailed off trying to adjust our eyes to the little flame marking our camp.
"Hey dad. A kid told me today that there is a four meter croc that lives" around here.
We’d better move the camp back from the water a bit."
" Really ? In that case we’d better..."    CRUNCH!
" Beau, Jess. Move up the front " Dad said in great anxiety. This wasn't a time to say please. “We've got to get the rudders off the bottom!" The boat came to a grinding halt as the fibre glass boat wedged itself upon a coral shelf.
" What now?" Someone murmured.
I kept my eye on the water as Dad leaned over to set the little outboard motor into life and tore our belly out, or at least that's what it felt like, until we reached the freedom of deep water and a long way round back to camp.

The subject that my Dad was a builder came up. So was Roy, the owner, and they were even familiar with each other’s work and Anna, Roy's wife, worked as a cook where Dad used to live. This opened up the opportunity for Dad to help Roy with the work which was burdening him down. We stayed there for a week, with great pleasure might I add, and learnt how to look for and catch crayfish.

We had come, at last, to the very top of Australia. Now all we had to do was find the real Cape York, something like finding the real North Pole. Where is that marker post?
"There it is !"
"No it's not, that's it. Or maybe that's it."

When we found the sign which marks that actual point of Cape York we got a photo and rounded the tip. We had made it to the top, now where to?

What an Adventure !!!

Lizard Island
The spectacular Lizard Island, 240km north of Cairns, was named by Captain Cook in August 1770. It is in the Coral Sea surrounded by coral reefs. It is a continental island, not a coral cay, with dry stony and mountainous interior. The 24 beaches are superb with some of the best scuba diving, snorkelling and gamefishing in the world. Much of the island is national park with camping permitted in limited numbers.
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