Minor flashback!! Fraser Island - Part two - we didn't resort to the Resort

Fraser Island - Kingfisher Resort Anchorage
We arrived at Fraser Island's Kingfisher Resort at around lunch time after spending a quiet night at South Whitecliffs (a pit-stop from Garry's Anchorage). It was a busy place, with ferries chugging to and from the mainland, and quite a lot of boats anchored in the bay but the anchorage is so big, there was room for many more.

Venture's big brother.

These ferries from the mainland were fairly constant

Kingfisher Resort on Fraser Island is just that.... a resort, filled with holiday makers staying in their hotel rooms, or cabins, or eco accommodation. There are swimming pools and bars, tennis courts, restaurants and shops and lots of things to do as long as you can pay for it... and very little of it interested us. About the only thing I would have liked to have done was segue (or segway if you prefer) riding on the beach but we decided that our money was better spent elsewhere (but hey, if I get back to Fraser, it'll be me, the segue and the beach, baby!!).

Speed signs for those who feel that they need to speed

Segue tracks on the beach.

These little soldier crabs covered the beach and disappeared in a flash beneath the wet sand.

We did take a wander along to the shop for a loaf of bread and a map of the island, and I did buy myself a new top (like I TOTALLY needed it!! No... really... I did!) but apart from that, the resort itself (apart from the Sand Bar, where there were showers and awesome pizza) had no appeal to us whatsoever so we looked at walking trails, of which there are many, in all different lengths, directions and difficulty.

The next morning we landed on the beach and dragged the dinghy up what felt like a kilometre of beach so that we were near the high tide mark, and tied off to an old tree. It was tough work but I think I'm actually getting biceps! We chatted to a couple of our-age blokes whose dinghy was also nearby and whose wives had gone resorting. After about 15 minutes of friendly chat, the men dragged their dinghy towards the water then headed back towards us to collect their portable engine, shoes and other bits and pieces. They chatted with us a bit more until one of them glanced back towards their dinghy. Suddenly it was panic stations as he, and then the other guy realised that the tide had come up more suddenly than they realised and their boat was slowly floating out to the open water. The first guy took off and stripped down to his undies as he raced towards the shoreline and then he plunged into the water. The trouble is, the floater had gone too far and out of safe depths, and he had to come back. They watched as their boat bobbed further out to sea. At that point Dave came to the rescue as he knew what he had to do! I raced along the beach and grabbed some young lads to help take our dinghy back down the beach. Then Dave and the second guy jumped into our dinghy and took off after the errant escapee. They finally caught up with it about half a mile off shore and brought it back in. Phew.... my hero!

Awesome pizza at the Sand Bar

The big dinghy rescue.

After all of that excitement we finally decided on the walk that took us from the Sand Bar up to a lookout and then a long ramble around the back of the resort area (which was fully fenced off to keep the dingoes out). At one stage we did leave the enclosed area (where there are much longer walks) but one look at the steepness of path, the angle of the dangles and the knee jolting roughness of the rocks changed my mind so back inside the gate we went.

View from the lookout at the beginning of Beerillbee track

The Beerillbee trail.

The walk we did take was meant to be a longish short walk along the Beerillbee trail but somehow turned into a longish long walk filled with twists and turns, ups and downs, a few birds, some awesome views and a variety of paths from well marked to rocky ruts. In the end we wound up back at the resort and it was decided that we'd burned off enough calories to have a drink and an ice cream, so it was Coke and Magnums all round. Oh yeah! We strolled out of the resort towards the beach along the road that was flanked along its full length by vehicles filled with outgoing holiday makers who were waiting around for the ferries to take them back to their workaday lives. 

Pied Butcherbird

Varied Triller

Grey Fantail

Back at the boat, and after a nap, we also planned our next move. Next stop, after a 6am start (ugh!), Bundaberg and ever closer to the Whitsundays. :)

Location: Fraser Island, Queensland, Australia
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Fraser Island - Part 1 - Dingo Daze

Curlews on a sand bar.

Fraser Island - Garry's Anchorage. 5th July - 7th July

After another calm and pleasant night in Pelican Bay, we made a late start and slowly made our way along the 18 nautical miles to Garry's Anchorage on the west coast of Fraser Island. This meant we were totally getting warmer and hopefully socks and cardigans could soon make way for T-shirts and shorts (yeah... in my dreams right now). Unfortunately my legs are so white I could blind people if the sun inadvertently shone on them. I have determined that it may be time for the fake tan on them just in case. I'd hate to be mistaken for a beacon.

The 'Garry' of Garry's Anchorage.

Garry's Anchorage at Fraser Island.

Garry's anchorage is a peaceful haven and with only a few other boats around, it felt like our own little piece of paradise but rather than just sit about on the boat, and because the day was pretty much perfect, we dropped the dinghy and went ashore where we were greeted on the beach by a bloke who could have easily talked the hind leg off of a camel and still had more chat left for the hump. Even as we left him (luckily an unsuspecting couple of blokes had arrived, the perfect distraction for a hasty getaway) I don't think he took a breath before regaling the newcomers with another tale. Apart from telling us about the track he had gone down (the one we also decided to take) we had no clue what he was talking about.

The long track, now closed to vehicles, but a lovely walk.

Just a lovely tree.

Once again the warning signs were out for possible crocodile activity so we decided that the trek inland was definitely a sensible move. The track was an old 4 wheel drive track but was closed due to a weakened bridge further along, and so we pushed past the barriers and wandered down the wheel ruts looking out for birds or any other creature that might show itself.

Fraser Island is renowned for its dingoes but because of the size of the island, we had hopes but no real expectations of actually seeing one. When we had gone about a kilometre or so along the corridor, and with not a sound around us, I jokingly said to Dave "For all we know, there could be an entire pack of dingoes behind us and we'd never know". At that, Dave spun around and bugger me.... there was a dingo not 100 metres behind us! It was awesome! We stopped dead and whipped out the cameras as it trotted slowly towards us, watching us as warily as we watched him. He was a beauty and with no ear tags, he was an unknown quantity. He came another 30 metres closer before he decided that it was time to do a disappearing act, and with that, he veered right and vanished into the bush. It was a most fantastic experience. We're fairly sure that he may have trailed us for some distance from his camouflaged position. We saw nothing but the feeling that we weren't alone was strong for a while. We walked on just past the damaged bridge before the decision was made to go back and try the other way. We didn't see any more dingoes but it didn't matter one little bit.

An absolutely unexpected sight. What a handsome boy!

Back in the clearing near the beach, we took advantage of the fact that some sensible person had decided that tables and benches under the trees were a good idea.... yay that person! It was whilst we were sitting and having a bite to eat that I noticed several huge bugs under the table. After my initial "Oh my god, oh my god get it away!!" reaction, I noticed that they weren't moving and so I didn't panic much and had a closer, though very wary look. I panicked even less when I realised that these 'bugs' were nothing but husks, the creepy sheddings of something even larger, which luckily we didn't see. Yep, they could be the stuff of every entomophobe's nightmare!  I even got brave and moved the corpse on to the table to take a closer look.

It was a big bug! I was ever so brave!

A little more exploration in the opposite direction to the dingo encounter was made. We practised our 'twitching' (bird photography)  before we succumbed to the distant beckoning call of boat caffeine. Luckily the talky man had departed the beach to find other ears to bend, so we tootled back to the boat. It had been an interesting day!

White cheeked honey eater

Oyster catcher

Easter yellow robin.

A female honey-eater of some kind.

End of part one.... stay tuned for part two of our Fraser Island exploits :)  

Location: Garry's Anchorage, Great Sandy National Park, Queensland, Australia
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Through the Great Sandy Strait

We left Tin Can Bay on Saturday heading North again.

The plan was to potter up the Great Sandy Strait to Bundaberg where we would re-provision again before heading further north and that's how it went.

The first stop was Pelican Anchorage again where we had stayed after crossing the Wide Bay Bar.  Heaps of room in there to anchor and we had a lazy afternoon watching the boats come and go.

Our next stop was Garry's Anchorage.  This is a channel between Fraser Island and Stewart Island protected from all points and well worth the stop.  We had a couple of nice lazy days there and took our first walk on Fraser Island.  I'm sure Terry will tell you about our Dingo encounter which was quite surreal to say the least.

Dawn at Garry's Anchorage

We headed off in the morning to catch a good tide through the shallows at  Tooth Island.  This is the point where the tide parts in the Sandy Strait with an outgoing tide flowing North on one side and South on the other.  The Navionics android application showed it's value here for the first time as the sand banks shift quite rapidly.  Crowd sourced data included in the application helped a lot as it showed one of the channel markers had been moved a good 200 meters whereas the chart on the main chart plotter showed the new marker position as solid ground.  It was quite weird watching our course on the chart plotter moving over solid ground when we were in 2 meters of water!

We anchored North of the shallows in South White Cliffs which is another really lovely spot, sheltered and picturesque before heading off in the morning to Kingfisher Resort. 

Venture at anchor off Kingfisher Resort

We took the dingy in to visit the resort the next day.  It was low tide and I'd calculated that we would be back after exploring around high tide which meant carting the dingy right up the beach to the high water mark.  It was about 100 meters or so and very tiring.  A couple of people were launching their dingy at the time and they kindly lent a hand hauling it up the beach.  We stood around chatting for few minutes before one of the chaps pointed out at the water and said "that's not our dingy is it?".  Unfortunately, they left their dingy just out of the water while they helped us up the beach and the tide had come in enough to float it off..  There was an offshore breeze so it was happily heading off to the mainland about 2 miles away.

One of the chaps stripped off and dived in trying to reach the boat but gave up pretty quickly.  So we hauled our dingy back down the beach and launched it on a rescue mission. 

Returning from the rescue mission escaping dingy in tow.

In the end, I think we hauled that dingy over 300 meters that day.  Not much fun but it did make us decide to get the dingy wheels out of our rear lazarette and bolt them on (this turned out a bit of a saga for another day).

We spent a couple of days anchored off the resort exploring and relaxing and then did the big push for Bundaberg.

We pulled the anchor up at about 6:00am on the Friday and headed off along with Acropora (Peter and Kath from Gelong) for Bundaberg.  Acropora is a Savage 42 built in Australia for use as charter boats.  It's a lovely centre cockpit, masthead sloop with good sheer lines and a traditional stern.  They poled out their big genny and sailed "goose wing" most of the way to Bunday while we struggled to keep up.  The wind was predicted to die right down to nothing so I didn't raise the main at all but sailed downwind with the staysail and yankee.  In the end, the wind stayed at around 10 knots all day but from right behind us.  I thought about pulling up the main a few times but it meant taking down the yankee and staysail and turning back into the wind and I got lazy and left it was it was.

We arrived in Bundy quite late in the arvo and pulled into a berth at the Marina at about 17:00 and crashed for the night.

Location: Burnett Heads QLD 4670, Australia
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Top Times in Tin Can Bay

I have decided that I am now so far behind in the blog, I'm starting again (from now) and will be adding the old blog updates as a big flashback to the past, surprise type thing. I think part of the problem is, I generally have a lot of photos, which use a lot of data to upload, and the need to constantly refresh the blog page when photos are added and moved about also uses a lot of precious data, so I'll attempt to get myself to a library and do the big updates when we're in a large town. At least that way I may be able to manage.  Also, though it kills me to do it, I'll try and be a bit more discerning when it comes to photo content... less is more. :) This may or may not work out... we'll see eh? 

July 2nd and 3rd  - TIN CAN BAY

We arrived in Tin Can Bay on the afternoon of July 2nd and instantly liked the place, and the awesomely friendly locals. The town is a lovely spot, with beautiful scenery, manicured parks and gardens and what sounds to be around a bazillion birds! It was the first time since coming up the NSW, Queensland coast that we had heard so much bird-life. It was a shame that we were only going to be spending one night here.

Some of the major chatterboxes at Tin Can Bay... thousands of Lorikeets.

After a most gorgeous sunset and after dark, we wandered over to the opposite side of the spit to 'the best takeaway shop in Queensland' according to the locals. It was pretty good but the view was better, with the moon rising over the dark, glassy water in the bay and not a breath of wind, it was a beautiful sight.

Sunset and still waters in Tin Can Bay Marina.... enough said... :)

The prettiest moonrise we've seen so far.

In the morning the birds certainly did a cracking job of replacing an alarm clock as the noisy little squawkers, tweeters and screechers began their morning raucous pre dawn. Ah well, it was nice to hear birds again. We had a leisurely breakfast and got the bikes out ready for a long trundle around town to see what we could see and to find the shops in order to stock up. Since it was fairly early, we dropped by the famous dolphin feeding but discovered upon arrival that we were just a little too late for the feeding. I was very disappointed but there was little we could do about it, so we carried on to the shops, checked out the local caffeine and sugary cake distributor and then went back to the boat.

A sad, sad sight on the way to the shops.

Later that afternoon Dave realised that the wind generator really needed putting back together so he decided that another night at the marina would be a great idea. Better than fixing the generator, it gave us another opportunity to get to the dolphin feeding earlier the following day. Totally awesome!!

Nellie feeding Mystique

Another beautiful day arrived with the same chorus of rowdy babble and chitchat from the birds. Soon after 7am we set off on the bikes for the dolphin feeding. When we got there a crowd was already gathering so tickets were purchased and coffee was ordered and we waited. Initially everyone was allowed on to the tiny beach area but then it was only fish feeder permit holders (of which I was one, Dave was just going to observe) who could go down. It's always a bit of a guess as to how many dolphins may turn up for a feed, especially on a Saturday when many dolphins follow the fishing boats out. On this particular morning only one, an old alpha male named Mystique showed up.

Mystique... a lovely old fellow.

After coming from the beach, the permit holders lined up at the small 'shop' and waited to be given our little bucket with our one fish in it. Somehow I ended up at the very back of the line and while I was there I was joined by a lovely woman Cait and her young daughter Nellie, who were on holidays and had been hoping to feed the dolphins but had arrived too late to get a fish. We got to chatting and I could see that Nellie was disappointed. I just couldn't have that and so I did what I had to do and offered Nellie my fish and we'd all go down to the water together. :)

I was a little worried that by the time we got to my fish (number 50 apparently, which was the limit) he'd be full or will have decided enough was enough and just leave, but the woman who was handing out the buckets assured me that all of these fish were nothing compared to what he would normally eat and that these particular fish were a delicacy for him. Okay then... all good.

Nellie, Cait, Dave and I went down to the waters edge and Nellie and I waded in. I held out the bucket and she took the fish by the tail and Mystique inhaled that fish straight down as though it was his first for the day. It was awesome and I know that that gorgeous little girl was thrilled with it. It made my day. That afternoon, on their way to Dreamland at the Gold Coast, Nellie drew me a most wonderful picture of a baby tiger. It made my day all over again. :D

A cheeky cormorant waiting for fish

This pelican had an att-it-tooood!

That afternoon we left the lovely hamlet of Tin Can Bay and once again made our way to Pelican Bay for the night. Tomorrow we leave again.... Fraser Island, here we come.

This bird.... just because!!

Location: Tin Can Bay QLD 4580, Australia
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I think I prefer bars that serve alcohol and more on the hungry prop

We left Double Island Point at distressingly early o'clock (sorry Terry) to get up to the first waypoint for the bar crossing just before high tide.

Sunrise on the way to Wide Bay

It actually wasn't a problem getting up early as we had a horrible night due to a 1 to 2 metre north easterly swell coming into the bay.  I had a stern anchor out which did a pretty good job of holding the stern into the swell but the boat was still pitching a lot and the very loud periodic groaning and complaints from the snubbers at both ends was extremely disconcerting.

I also got the impression that the all-rope stern anchor rode was stretching a lot and springing us back putting even more tension periodically on the bow snubber.  Difficult to prove but I suspect it was one of the issues.

We've been in some rolly places before (Farm Cove by the Opera House springs to mind) but this was an order of magnitude worse.

I had to get up around midnight and sat at the bow for a while trying to figure out a way to reduce the noise.  I eventually put out a bridle consisting of two mooring lines, one from each hawsepipe at the bow and attached the snubber to them to take the strain off the bow roller.  That did reduce the noise a bit but it reduced my anxiety a lot more which let me sleep for a couple of hours.  I don't like seeing those sort of loads on the bowsprit.

Terry got up at about 1:00am anyway and eventually kipped on the sea berth as it was a bit quieter there.  We decided not to stay in rolly anchorages ever again!

Wide Bay Bar is navigated using two waypoints (A and B) supplied by Coastguard Tin Can Bay.  I had these plotted on our chart plotter and also allowed about 100m room around waypoint B as suggested by the Coastguard as the sand bar is moving north apparently.

We arrived at the first waypoint spot-on 6:45am, half an hour before high tide along with 4 other boats and headed in towards waypoint B.  We managed to get behind them all so we could watch the fun and they could break the trail.

In the end it wasn't too bad.  It was very rolly after the turn at waypoint B with some big waves every now and then and it was pretty disconcerting to see large breaking waves about 100 meters off the port side at a couple of points but we had confidence in the coastguard people and we actually had smiles on our faces for most of the trip in.

Having said that, a bar serving ale is most definitely much more entertaining and far less stressful!

Some video of the crossing.

We dropped anchor again just around the corner in Pelican anchorage at about 8:30am, had some breakfast and went directly to bed for a few hours well deserved sleep.

Oh and do you remember from the last blog post that we lost our paravane and lure to the god of fisherfolk and a hungry prop?  Here's a pic of me in the water cutting the line off the prop.

Tired and very wet cutting about 30 meters of 50lb fishing line from the hungry prop

And you'll never believe it but, when I pulled up the stern anchor, the paravane and lure along with about 10 metres of line were snuggly attached to it :-)

So who's smiling now fisherfolk gods!

Trolling. How to fish badly.

We left Mooloolaba this morning at very early o'clock (sorry Terry) and headed for Double Island Point to wait for conditions to cross the Wide Bay bar.

Double Island Point from the south

The Wide Bay bar is said to be one of the worst (if not the worst) river bar on the East coast.  Bars are mean things with a reputation for nasty surprises and scary rides.  We've crossed a few now with no problems at all but that's mainly because they scare me sh**less so I make sure conditions are perfect before I make an attempt.  Adrenaline is over-rated when you're cruising IMHO.

We decided to go up to Double Island Point just south of the bar and anchor there waiting for the best conditions we could arrange.  Crossing the bar is best done on a high tide in the morning and with a swell less than 1.5 meters.  Wednesday morning looked good and Thursday morning looked even better.

Tackling the Wide Bay bar is like a right of passage for east coast cruisers.  You start about 3 miles off shore and head for some leeds (navigation aids) on Fraser Island until you line up with the leads on Inskip point and turn to follow them.  This dog leg takes you through some relatively deep water between two shoals, so you have breakers on both side but only the swell in the channel (in theory).  This is very scary because one thing that keel boats (actually any boat) must avoid is breaking waves.  Your rudder and prop lose traction and you turn into a chunk of plastic for the waves to play with.  Anyway, more on that later after we've actually done it.

To get to the point of this story, on the way up the coast, we thought we'd try out our new lure and paravane.  Trolling..  It worked well the first time we tried it in Morton Bay (thanks Thiels!).  We didn't catch anything but it did follow us around for a while.

So I put it out and promptly forgot about it.  A couple of hours later, we rounded the headland and anchored in the bay feeling pretty pleased with ourselves.  Me especially as I had put out a second anchor from the stern to hold the stern into the Easterly swell stopping the rolling!

Then just as I was settling, I noticed the trolling line was still out.. Worse, it was very tight over the stern..  Worse still, it broke when I tried to retrieve it leaving me with about 2 meters of badly twisted line in my hand.

As you've probably guessed, we had reversed over it when we set the anchor and it was wrapped around the prop!

So I spent the rest of the arvo diving down on the prop cutting away fishing line :-(

My guess is that the god of fisherfolk looks like this:

.

Location: Queensland, Australia
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The difference between feet and meters

We went over to Tangalooma on Moreton Island with Andrew and Robin Thiele for some snorkelling on the wrecks over there.

Good sailing weather with a forecast of 10 to 20 knots through the day and we had an average of about 12 knots on the beam most of the day meaning we sailed the whole way doing around 6 knots with all the sail up except for a single reef in the main (yep, I'm overly cautious).  Awesome stuff.

We got to the channel into Tangalooma around 12:00 pm and it was raining heavily so I hove to with the Yankee and reefed main in the East channel to wait it out.  We'd just settled when I noticed a rather large ship heading towards us so we had to hustle to get the boat sailing again.  We cleared it by a mile but the combination of turning off the AIS alarms (too many false alarms), really bad visibility and lack of local knowledge conspired to get the adrenaline going.  Not so awesome.

We anchored between the wrecks and the beach, had lunch and watched the world go by for a while.  As you can see below, we were very close to the wrecks and we were looking forward to swimming over in the morning.

One of the wrecks just off our starboard side at sunset

I noticed that when the tide changed, the current swung us right around pushing us to the south against the 5 to 10 knot southerly.  This meant that at the next change, we would have quite a strong current and the wind combining to push us to the north.  This sort of thing had happened in the Brisbane river and it caused our anchor to break free and re-set (which was pretty scary) so I decided to sleep in the cockpit overnight and monitor what happened when the tide changed again at 1:30 am.

So the alarm went off at 1:30am and I watched the boat swing around through bleary eyes.  The wind had strengthened to about 15 knots as well so the combined wind and tide fully tested our anchor.  Just as I was dozing off again, I noticed a large yacht moving slowly past in reverse between us and the wrecks!

I woke up quite quickly then and hopped onto the back porch to see what the hell was happening.  A big masthead sloop (50' or so) was slowly dragging it's anchor along the channel about 10 metres away from us and even closer to the wrecks.  I yelled out and shone a maglite into the port lights and eventually (it took a while..) saw some movement on the boat and the panic started.

They had some strife..  The anchor decided to hook up to something (probably one of the wrecks) and they couldn't get it free.  The boat was swinging sideways into the wrecks one minute and wildly out almost on the other side of Venture the next.  Bow thrusters blasting and big handfuls of engine trying to get control and break the anchor free.  They really needed to calm down and just maintain position (keep station) off the wrecks for a while to figure it out but they were way too busy and freaked to think of that.

In the end, the chap dashed back to the cockpit and returned with a hacksaw and cut the anchor chain next to the windlass.

They drifted away almost hitting some other boats and landing on the beach before taking off quite fast up other side of Venture and out towards Tangalooma resort.  We waved at them as they went past and someone yelled out thanks.

Terry took some video but it's impossible to make anything out in the dark except the fancy blue lights under the sugar scoop stern.

The following morning you could see that they'd gone up past the jetty at Tangalooma into the shallows to the south and anchored there.  It was low tide now and you could see the boat was resting on the ground as it was tilted over to starboard about 10 degrees.  Whoops..

A nice boat at peace after all the drama.

The skipper came past in his Jet Ski later which he carried on it's own davits (believe it or not) and tried to explain what happened but it was clear he was really embarrassed and just wanted to be somewhere else.

I think he made two mistakes.

The first and most basic is that he didn't properly set his anchor!  His explanation was that his first mate had called out the anchor rode length on the link counter in the cockpit at 60 when he was on the bow setting the anchor.  He assumed she was talking meters and told her to pull up rode to leave 40 out.  Unfortunately, she was working in feet.

They were in 7 meters of water at the time with a rising tide so with only 40ft out, the scope was around 2:1 and the anchor would be completely useless.  Even with the original 60ft of chain (3:1) any serious tug on it would break it free I'm sure. 

Secondly, he didn't set an anchor watch.  You can be as confident as you like in your anchor but to set it and forget it is a big mistake.  There are a heap of technical ways to warn you if your anchor breaks free or drags and there is the basic Mark-1 eyeball, checking regularly through the night.  Either would have prevented the drama.

Not to brag but on Venture, we had Terry's phone and the tablet both running anchor watch applications (geo-fences basically) and I was also worried about the tide change because we were so close to the wrecks so I made sure I was awake at the critical time.

Chances are that the boat would have kept dragging along the channel and the anchor would have set itself in the shallows to the north of the wrecks without mishap.  After all, it had already dragged past several boats and between Venture and the wrecks.  He would have woken up to find his boat about 3 miles north of where he anchored it with no obvious safe path through the anchored boats and the wrecks!  Can you imagine his surprise :-)

There really is a big difference between feet and meters!

We went snorkelling later but I'll let Terry tell you about that.

Location: Queensland, Australia
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A strange thing happened on the way from Brisbane to Manly

We left Brisbane Thursday morning heading for Manly.  It was very foggy, but this story starts before this trip.

You can just see how the top floors in the two buildings are in the sun.

The KISS generator failed in Sydney as it shook itself to pieces in the "really big winds" in Pittwater in April.  I took it apart and ordered some parts to fix it including new magnets for the rotor and a new stator.  Rotor and stator had met catastrophically when the front bearing failed causing the magnets on the rotor to overhead (through friction) losing their oomph.

While waiting for the parts I stored the bits of the generator including the rotor (with the old, failed magnets) on the quarter berth.

The parts arrived while we were in Brisbane (thanks Phil!) and I replaced the magnets on the rotor and stored it back on the quarter berth.  The new magnets are really strong by the way and very difficult to handle as they desperately, maliciously and single mindedly wanted leap into contact with anything metal or each other!  Awesome fun :-)

Anyway to get back to the story, we left Brisbane and headed for a marina in Manly where we're going to hang for a week or so and on the way, we found the expensive Balmar 110A alternator on the engine did not seem to be working any more.

Bugger..  No charge to the batteries and no tacho.  We left it till we got to Manly and I started trying to sus out what was wrong and we worried all the way that we were going to need an injection of a boat unit at least to fix this.

Everything looked fine, no fuses gone and manually "exiting" the field coil on the alternator generated a magnetic field so the alternator was probably ok..  The regulator also seemed alright apart from not actually kicking the alternator into gear (exiting the field coil).


So I'm trying to figure out what's going wrong without paying for a marine electrician, reading the manuals forwards and backwards looking for clues when it hit me..  The regulator has a magnetic reed switch for programming and guess what, it's mounted on the other side of the bulkhead from the KISS rotor stored on the quarter berth!

So, move the rotor, turn the motor over and all's good with the world :-)

The rotor was stored there for ages with no problems, it was only after I'd replaced the magnets that it caused me strife.

It's strange how mundane things can sometimes conspire to cause really complex and difficult to resolve issues.

Bums bay through the Broadwater to Brisbane

We left Bums Bay (aka the Marine Stadium) on Wednesday 10th June after an enjoyable time with the local cruising folk and Terry's niece Catherine.  Terry will fill you in on the details at a later date I'm sure.

The Marine Stadium, Gold Coast (AKA Bums Bay) just south of the Gold Coast Seaway and right next to Sea World.

We wanted to dawdle up through the Broadwater to Morton Bay but things conspired against us, sort of..

We only did a short hop on Wednesday up to the Dux Anchorage in Tipplers Passage.  It's a great spot with good holding fairly close in to South Stradbroke Island.  It needed to be good holding as well as we had 30 knots of wind and some pretty strong currents at times.  We are pretty confident in our anchor (a 45lb genuine CQR) nowadays after we have gone through some pretty serious stuff on the way up the coast and it didn't let us down with no movement at all overnight.

We use a couple of different apps on our phones to perform our anchor watch.  They are both basically geo-fence type tools.  You "set" it when you drop the anchor and give it a safe radius from the anchor for the boat to be in.  If the boat (or really the phone) drifts out of that circle, then it sets off an alarm. 

On the whole, they've worked ok but they do use a lot of battery (running the GPS) so we make sure they are plugged in and on charge overnight.  I'm having some real problems with my phone though (still waiting for Kogan to deliver my new one..).  It tends to reboot at random times so I can't really trust it at the moment.

On Wednesday we decided to watch the weather for a while (Terry got to sleep in) before moving on as we were still getting 25 to 30 knots in the gusts and I wasn't keen on moving from a (proven) well-set anchor to an unknown anchorage.  On the other hand, we had found a reasonable deal ($220) for 3 nights in a marina right in the CBD as long as we could get there before 2:00pm on Friday and Brisbane was still nearly 60 miles away.

In the end, we figured the strong wind warning didn't really apply to us in the protected waters of the Broadwater and we left just after lunch heading up to the top of Russell Island, another 20 odd miles closer.  The wind picked up just as we left of course but it was behind us and didn't cause any real worries.

Anchoring was a bit of a challenge as it was raining and getting quite dark.  The first time we put the anchor down, we found we'd set it within range of a vacant mooring that was only marked by a tiny yellow buoy which we hadn't seen on the approach so we had to pull it up again and re-set it further away.  We had a bit of an uncomfortable night due to the wash from ferrys and other passing traffic and I wouldn't recommend it other than it's good shelter from southerlies.

On Friday, we left early (basically daybreak) for the last 40 odd miles to Brisbane.

The wind was still quite strong and we had an assist from the current so we made really good time in the end averaging over 7 knot's up to the river entrance but that slowed down to less than 4 knots as we went (a long way) up river against the ebb tide.

We eventually arrived just as the tide changed (by design of course) allowing us to dock without incident on the upstream side of F fingers at the Dockside Marina.

Venture at the Dockside Marina on the Brisbane river with the CBD in the background.

And we are here through to Monday when we'll either anchor in the river for a couple of days or move directly to another marina in Morton Bay.  Thiels and Robin are joining us on the 20th for a few days and we figure we'd take a berth in the Bay while they are here.  I also need a stable platform to re-build the KISS generator as the parts have arrived from the US so we might just get onto the berth a few days early :-)

Location: New Farm QLD, Australia
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Coffs Harbour to Iluka/Yamba. But wait, there's more..

We left Coffs in the (very) early morning aiming to be in Yamba/Iluka late that afternoon to coincide with a flood tide.

Sunrise heading out from Coffs Harbour for Yamba/lluka

Coffs was getting to us a bit. The anchorage was pretty exposed to swells and the wind conspired to keep us broadside to them setting up a wicked roll most of the time so we were eager to move on.  We were also looking forward to our first visit to Yamba/Iluka at the mouth of the Clarence River.

We had a weather window starting Tuesday going through to Thursday with some big winds forecast for Friday.  Tuesday was out because the bar at Yamba was likely to be closed.  Thursday looked the best for getting into Yamba but Wednesday also seemed like it would work given the following cautionary text in the forecast captured on Tuesday morning:

   Caution
          Large and powerful surf conditions are expected to be hazardous
          for coastal activities such as crossing bars by boat and rock
          fishing, easing in the afternoon.

The "... easing in the afternoon" made sense as the wind was also easing on Wednesday.  Our "Plan B" if we couldn't get into Yamba was to keep going overnight to the Gold Coast.  The other option (leaving on Thursday morning) would be safer for getting into Yamba but meant much less wind and a risky  "Plan B" (if the Yamba bar didn't co-operate) due to the strong winds due Friday arvo.

So we got to Yamba/Iluka at about 13:00 and as we crossed the leads (checking conditions as we always do) we could see surf breaking in the channel.  Bugger..  I later found out that I should have read Tuesday nights forecast a bit more carefully as they had removed the "...easing in the afternoon" bit.
 We hung around for a couple of hours (hove-to with the full main only) hoping conditions would ease but it wasn't to be.  I phoned the Yamba marina to cancel the berth we had arranged and the owner said that there was no activity down at the trawler berths so no-one was going out over the bar to go fishing either.  That confirmed our decision and we headed off to the Gold Coast.

It wasn't an easy decision to make because Terry (as those who have been reading this blog already know) has trouble with night sailing needing serious and consistent use of a bucket but the alternative was to try surfing in 10 tonnes of full keel cruiser which seems like a "bad idea" :-)

In the end, it was a lovely night!  The moon was nearly full and we had a Westerly breeze of around 10 knots pushing us along in a glorious beam reach at over 6 knots (probably assisted by a smidgeon of northbound current..) all night long.  To top it off, Terry did two long bucket-free night watches!

We were both up to see the sunrise and toasted our transit from NSW to QLD with Baileys.  We are now we're anchored for at least one night in Bums Bay (yes that really is an anchorage on the Gold Coast) and we'll be moving on up through the Broadwater to Brisbane over the next week or so.

The bar at the Gold Coast Seaway.  Nice and flat with no surprises.

Location: Philip Park, Seaworld Drive, Main Beach QLD 4217, Australia
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