Cape York

Jessie
A couple of years back, friends of ours caught a boat from Cairns to Seisia, and then a return trip to Cairns with a 4X4 bus tour, and highly recommended it.
Due to the conditions of the road at that time, they were glad they did it the way they did, said they would have saved damage to their vehicle.

Cheers
Baz

We are doing the Bus tour up to the cape and boat return in June.Cairns to Cairns.

Seems like a great idea to me.

Hi Scout
We did the trip on the Trinity Bay about ten years ago. We did the trip both ways and enjoyed it. It takes a max of about 32 passengers and has a chef and hostess for them. The ship leaves on Fri at noon. On the way North we stopped at Lockhart River community (early am Sat) and offloaded various items to a barge. Next stop was docking at Horn Is (early am Sun) where you can do an Island Tour. Then across to Thursday Is and a tour there (Sun afternoon). Then down to Seisia (Mon am) to offload those starting tour back to Cairns by road, a tour to the Tip for us then back to ship and load new pax who had driven up and were shipping back. (Mon PM) The only stop on the way back was to offload some more gear for Lockhart River community. The trip up to Seisia takes 3 nights and the return to Cairns is 2 nights. (Cairns Wed early pm)
Notes:
The primary purpose of the ship is to provide fuel to Horn Is, Thursday Is and Seisia, secondary is cargo and lastly is passengers.
Time and tide wait for no man.
If you choose the trip up and do not do the tour at each place, you will stay on the ship as it only stops loading/unloading once for the tour group to leave and again for them to come back on board. We did all three trips and enjoyed them.
Due to the SE trade winds, the trip up is more comfortable and you will do a bit of rocking and rolling on the way home South. The bar is open any time that the ship is not in port and the hostess not otherwise occupied helping prepare meals. The stable ride on the way up made for more convivial use of the bar and being on deck than on the trip home.
Hope this helps.

am doing the trip 17 of feb on the trinity bay cairns to the top and return to cairns looking forward to it bye barry

As far as the direction of travel:

Most traffic appears to be south to north on the OTL itself; we did it both ways on three occasions, and heading south was a bit of a problem against the traffic in school holidays

But not too much of a worry if you have other reasons dictating your direction of travel, and if you are outside of school holidays it would not matter.

Something to consider perhaps

Cheers, enjoy