It was 10.20p.m. when we left our berth in Mooloolaba saying good-bye to our neighbours who untied our mooring lines, and we motored out through the entrance and into a rather lumpy sea. By 10.50 we had the sails up and proceeded up the coast. The funny thing was we had timed our trip to arrive at the bar at a certain time the next morning, but found with the 18 – 20kt breeze we were sailing too fast so put two reefs in the main sail [took it down reducing the sail area by about half] and only had half the jib out, and we were still doing 7kts. Alex took first watch and I stayed up with him. He eventually went down for a sleep about 1.30a.m. as we wanted him bright eyed for the bar crossing. David then Helen were doing the next two watches but I did not wake them as they had not been feeling too well so I stayed up till about 3.45am when Helen came up to take over. It was a lovely nights sail with a full moon, and it’s funny how you get into the rhythm of the ocean even when it is a bit lumpy.
We arrived at the bottom end of Frazer Island around 8.00am, earlier than we thought. The wind had dropped off some, the seas had gone down and the tide was still running in. We were in constant contact with the local coast guard getting reports of the local conditions. We could see the waters breaking on the sand banks which run a long way out to sea. There was also a boat ahead of us going in as well, so it was sails down and engines on and in we went. Alex had done his homework and with the chart plotter programmed in with our three different way points, a couple of sets of paper charts, and visual lookout, the whole crossing only took 50 minutes. Once inside we were able to sail again up the Great Sandy Strait between Frazer Island and the main land with the wind behind us doing 7.5kts in near silence. It was a beautiful run. We anchored against Frazer at a place called Deep Creek – a disused log loading site – for lunch, and ended up staying the night there as it was so pretty and the tide was now running out. We needed another high tide to go up the Mary River to Maryborough. I got out my new fishing rod but only feed the fish!!
The next morning we were away by 7.00a.m. and tied up at the pontoon at the little Maryborough Marina by midday. It is a quaint town 19 miles up the river. Helen has a house here so she and David are spending a few nights ashore. She also has a car here, so today we all drove out to Hervey Bay for lunch and a look around. The area use to be big for growing sugar cane but light industry has taken over much of the land. We will be here till about Tuesday when we will make our way on to Bundaberg. At this stage this will be a departure point from Australia. So we are getting closer to the 'great big' trip home!!!!
The weather has been kind to us with a little rain over the last three days. Just enough to wash the salt off.
Lots of love to you all
Ann and Alex
No comments:
Post a Comment