The Whitsundays · aboard SV Due West · 14–20 October 2026
The Boat
A Lagoon 380 out of Coral Sea Marina — the crew's guide to her spaces, her kit and her ground.
Coral Sea Marina, Airlie Beach · Lagoon 380 · 3 cabins
SV Due West, both sails up, somewhere in the Whitsundays.
Eleven and a half metres of catamaran, three cabins, one week, and a crew of two who own her for the duration.
Due West is a Lagoon 380 — the sailing catamaran the whole world bought, once, and then kept buying, until it was the most common cruising cat on the water. Twin hulls, so she sits flat where a yacht would lean; a saloon the full width of her; a cockpit at the back that is really an outdoor dining room with a barbecue on the stern rail. She lives at Coral Sea Marina in Airlie Beach with the Portland Roads fleet, who say she is the easiest boat they have to handle, drive or sail, and who admit to a collective soft spot for her.
She sleeps six in three double cabins. This week she carries two, which is the number the fleet says one couple can sail her with — "a romantic get-away", in their words, and their words are the reason this page exists before a single photograph of the trip does.
Three private double cabins, each with reading lights and a fan; a wet-head bathroom and a dry-head bathroom; a galley with a ship's oven, a two-burner gas stove, a microwave and — the fleet is careful to mention — a Nespresso machine with a frother. One deep bar-sized fridge, a refrigerated deck cooler, and a 200-can esky on the stern, which for a week in the tropics is the specification that matters.
The saloon table and the cockpit table are hand-carved timber, both seating six. Bose sound bar inside, a Pioneer touchscreen outside, a smart TV with Apple TV and a hard drive of films for the one night it rains. No air-conditioning: the hatches and the trade wind do that.
A six-person tender with a four-stroke outboard for the beach landings; a swim ladder and an outdoor shower at the stern; six deck chairs. Chart plotter, autopilot, depth and wind, VHF, a satellite phone, and an electric anchor winch — the thing you are most grateful for at five in the afternoon with the pick fouled. Inverter power for the phones, which is where this log's photographs come from.
Portland Roads run their boats under a non-fishing charter in the Marine Park — no lines, no spear guns, no SUPs or inflatables aboard. The reef gets the week off too.
Seventy-four islands in the Ngaro Sea Country, most of them national park, and a bareboat is free to go where the weather and the tide table allow. Boarding is from five the evening before; the night is spent in the marina, the morning is the briefing, and then the week is theirs. The route draws itself on the chart as the days are sailed, and every day has a page waiting.
The frames on this page are the charter fleet's own, from Due West's listing with Portland Roads Sailing and Whitsunday Yacht Charters, reproduced here in a private, unindexed log so the crew can meet their boat before they step aboard. They stand in until Kaija and Pete's own photographs of her land — and then this page is rebuilt from theirs.
She is waiting at the marina. The rest is the week.