Tweed to Grafton and back or Cap Rails to Hatch Covers, Groundings and Sunsets.

The Ivory marina at Tweed Heads is a top spot to hang around and fairly cheap for this area!  The pontoons are attached to a pub with cold beer and $10 rump steaks!  It has some disadvantages with some noisy nights but it really hasn't bothered us too much.  It's also a fairly short bike ride to a couple of shopping centres.

When Terry got back from Adelaide we got stuck into the cap rails.  They are the wooden (teak) bits that go all the way around the perimeter of the boat separating the dry from the wet.  The main rule in sailing is to stay on the dry area inside the cap rail as nasty things can happen if you stray onto the wet.

The cap rails had taken a beating over the years with nicks and scratches allowing sea water to the bare wood in places.  This caused the varnish to lift around the damage allowing more water to enter.  Then mould got a foothold and it was not possible to do repairs.  Yep, we should have looked after it better.

We stripped it back to bare wood which sounds easy but took much sweat and tears.  Some of it came off easily (fingernail underneath and pull) but other bits were very tenacious. A mix of scraping with a tungsten blade and a heat gun we found to be the easiest way to get the stubborn bits off.

Then sanding with 80 grit, 120 grit and finally 240 grit paper until it was as smooth and flat as we could get it.  It was all wiped down then on with 6 coats of Marine Spar gloss varnish (Feast Watson).  We stopped at 6 because we wanted to do some sailing :-)

We also tried an oil finish (Intergrain Ultradeck) on the teak handrails which worked really well and also left a glossy finish.  Three coats were enough and the beauty of this is that it is not a varnish so we should never have to go back to bare wood again!

So we went sailing...  And here's a link to the track we took.  It should open in Google Earth. Ballina to Grafton and back to Tweed Heads

When we initially came north, we wanted to stop in at Yamba and cruise up the Clarence river but the bar when we arrived at the river entrance, we hove-to on the leads and watched the swells breaking over the bar.  It didn't look promising and when we heard from the local marine rescue that the fishing trawlers were not going out, we chickened out and carried on overnight to the Gold Coast seaway instead.  But we always knew we'd be back as the Clarence is supposed to be well worth a visit.

So we headed out from Tweed Heads south for the Clarence.  The first leg took us to Ballina where we stayed for a couple of days.  The anchorage is on the opposite side of the Richmond River from the town and was a bit tricky to get into.  There was a dredge working and the outflow pipe was right across the entrance but we figured it out in the end and dropped the anchor.

Ballina is a really nice spot!  There's a public jetty right in the centre of town (supposed to be 2 hours only but we eventually found out it doesn't apply to dinghies) and the river front is a nice, peaceful place with some quite interesting sculptures.

We left Ballina behind us and headed down to Yamba/Iluka and the Clarence.

First stop over the bar was the Iluka boat harbour.  This is quite shallow but large enough to be able to find a spot pretty easily. We stayed for a couple of days before arranging for a bridge opening at Harwood and moving on up the river.

The Harwood bridge is a lifting span bridge which means a chunk of road is lifted vertically up to allow shipping through.  The road is actually the Pacific Highway which is the major road between Sydney and Brisbane!  I actually felt a bit guilty holding up all that traffic while we tootled along under the bridge at 5 knots.  Sorry folks. (P.S. Terry here... I didn't feel guilty at all.... THE POWER!!) :D

The first stop upstream from the bridge was Maclean. This is a really interesting town with a fervent Scottish heritage.  They provide a public floating dock right next to the main street with room for two 40' boats with water and free electricity where you can stay for a max of 24 hours or longer if there are no other boats waiting to get on.

A great facility and a credit to the town!  They are planning to build another one from what I can gather and good on them!

I'm sure Terry will tell you all about the bagpipes on Anzac day :-)

We moved on up the river to Brushgrove next.  On the way, we passed a few prawn trawlers and every single one of them seemed to have a heron on the arms holding the net!  Weird..

Brushgrove is a small village on a fork in the river and another public dock.  No water or power this time so we dropped the anchor instead and spent some time dawdling around before heading off again.  There was a quite spectacular sunrise on the second day with the river covered in mist.

Bridge at Brushgrove

Misty morning at Brushgrove

Sens de la Vie (Meaning of Life) floating in the mist

Next stop was Ulmarra.  This is a really nice town with a great pub close to the floating dock and some great people.  We anchored opposite the town for another couple of nights and noticed this nice looking boat anchored just up from us.  It actually belongs to Alan Lucas who wrote the definitive anchorage guide to the NSW and Queensland coasts.  The two books we own of his (Cruising the NSW coast and Cruising the Coral coast) have enabled us to get into some really nice spots and helped enormously with local knowledge almost all the way up the coast.  Both are really worth having!

You don't see this every day either!

From here we carried on all the way to Grafton which is as far as we could go due to the fixed span bridge there.  We anchored initially close to the bridge and took the dinghy under the bridge (about a mile or so) to a public dock next to a pub (of course!) by the rowing club.  Grafton is a big town and it even had a Bunnings.  We needed that because we noticed our anchor light at the top of the mast had failed and the lantern we use on the back of the boat at night had basically rusted away.  Bunnings had a good quality waterproof "indestructible" lantern which we've been using since.  And we actually remembered to keep the receipt because it has a 3-year warranty :-)

I climbed the mast and to check out the light but  no amount of cursing or percussive maintenance helped.  I've never seen this type of light before and for once, we didn't carry a spare (Jack?).  We'll make do till we get back to Tweed Heads and figure out what to replace it with.

Masthead anchor light

We spent about a week in Grafton all told with a few trips into town and some bike rides.  We also posted off our Nikon camera for repair from there.  It's the second time it's been in for repair and we are not happy about it.  Some of the photos were showing coloured artefacts at the top and bottom.  We noticed it clearly in Brushgrove after looking at the misty morning photos although Sarah had noticed it while we were still in Adelaide over Christmas.  Anyway, I hope this is the last time we have to get it fixed!

There's a power line just downstream of Grafton which was a bit scary..  Having worked close to power lines before, I did not want our mast anywhere near them!  We have a masthead to waterline height of 15 meters which I physically measured back in Botany Bay.  The charts showed the power line clearance at 19 meters but as we got close to it, the sign said 17..  I know you need to keep at least 2m away from 128kv lines so I was panicking a bit till I read the sign properly.  It said "Max vessel height" so we still had at least 4m clearance.

17m Maximum Vessel height

I don't want to get much closer than this to high voltage wires!

It got pretty foggy on the anchorage the last night we were there!

You can clearly see the artefacts in this photo!

We pulled up the anchor and headed back down river stopping at the same places as before but using the pontoons and sampling the pubs (when they were open) this time.

Back in Maclean, we took up the offer from one of the locals to have a walk through a remnant of temperate rain forest on his property.  He was a Pom and had bought the block of land a long time ago building a road up to the top of the hill and a house there.  He's actually selling the block at the moment as they need to move to a more manageable house but it's way more than we could look at.  It's an absolutely magnificent property though! Some red cedar trees for which the Clarence valley was once famous, large gum trees with a closed canopy above and lots of vines and ferns.  There's a couple of waterfalls and two spring fed creeks a dam and lots of birds and a great view from the house.  Awesome.

That's Maclean on the other side of the river

From Maclean, we booked another bridge opening (thanks again folks) and motored down to Yamba this time (instead of Iluka).  There's a training wall on the Yamba side of the river with two openings and they both look similar on the charts.  I decided that we would go through the first one we came to as the second meant doubling back.  That turned out to be a pretty stupid mistake!

As we approached it, we both started to get a bit nervous.  It was very narrow..  The main chart showed the depth through there at 2m, the navionics app on our tablet showed it at 1.5m and Lucas had it at 1.1m.  The tide was around 0.8m so worst case I figured the actual depth at the time would be 1.9m.  We draw 1.6 or so meaning we would have at least a foot below the keel.  Pretty tight but shallow water is nothing new to us so we slowed down and went through at about 1 knot.   We were nearly through with the depth sounder showing 2m when we both felt a thud.  The rock wall was obviously not fully removed in the gap and we had touched it!

Don't go through this gap!

Not a nice feeling I can tell you as we both listened for the bilge pump starting up.  We have a full keel with a very solid base so I was not overly worried but it did raise my heart rate up somewhat.  We were kept busy then as we felt our way through the very shallow channel into the Yamba marina where we had booked a night for a good shower.  I told the chap at the marina our story and he said "We really need to put a sign on that gap as it's caught a few people out".   At least I'm not the only idiot sailing around :-).  So I now have yet another scary "whoops" moment to add to the list of things my brain wants me to relive as I'm trying to sleep!

We'll get the keel checked out by Matt (the resident diver) at Ivory Marina when we berth there later this week.

We motored over to Iluka the next day to get a quicker start out through the bar heading back to Tweed Heads.  The other gap was much bigger!

We left Iluka through the bar at dawn the following day (sorry Terry) and headed back to Ballina.  Not much wind but it was in the right spot early on to get the asymmetric (reacher) out and we made good time under sail for about 3 hours.  Then the wind turned to much to the south and died so we motor sailed the rest of the day.

We had been into Ballina before and it was very calm when we arrived.  We turned into the anchorage and headed around to where we anchored last time but went a tad too wide and ran up into a steep mud bank.  Grounded again (a regular occurrence..) with about a 10 degree list to starboard.  The tide was rising so it wasn't a big issue but the wind was pushing us further into the shallows so I dropped the dinghy, grabbed the kedge anchor and took it off to windward as far as I could.  Terry got right onto the winch and like a real grinder, winched us off.  We sheepishly took off again and anchored for the night.

There are two types of sailors from all accounts.  Those who admit they have run aground and those that lie.

We left Ballina at dawn (sorry Terry) and motor sailed back down to Tweed heads and anchored on the river just north of the golf course.  It's a nice spot but very shallow on the way in.  I think we touched the ground again at one point.  Just a hint of hesitation with the shallow alarm going off and the sounder reading near enough zero.  Ho hum..


One of the jobs on my list is the cabin hatch covers.  They are all looking a bit sad so I removed the mid hatch cover the day and sanded it back to bare wood on the outside and cleaned it up on the inside.  I've now got three coats of varnish on it and I'll put another two coats on tomorrow.  Fixing boats in exotic places.  The very definition of cruising in a yacht!

So, we're back at Tweed and we have "done the Clarence"!  It wasn't really what we expected in the end.  It was a really nice bit of slow travel with good facilities and we met some very interesting people.  But the river passed through farming country when I think we expected national parks.  Maybe we were spoiled by Broken Bay which we would go back to again and again.

We go back into the Ivory marina in a couple of days before we fly back to Adelaide and head over to the UK.

Some more sunsets and sunrises on the Tweed River for your enjoyment :-)

Phew, up to date finally!

(Terry here again... HE'S up to date. I'm absolutely, sadly lacking in the old update department. I have this major problem with procrastination, something i really must deal with one of these days. :)  )

Location: Grafton NSW 2460, Australia
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Back in Tweed after Christmas

Time to catch up I think and there's a lot to catch up on!

Shaggers was awesome but I'll let Terry give you the run down when she gets around to her next update.

 

The exhaust riser has been fixed!  I got the riser welded temporarily in Mackay and we continued to head south looking to leave the boat in Tweed Heads while we headed back to Adelaide for Christmas.

Nice sunsets at Mackay!

I had a heart stopping moment on the way south from Wide Bay down to double island point!  The most scary thing that's ever happened to me I think.

As we left Wide Bay, I caught the end of some chatter on the VHF about something called "Shark Rock" but I didn't really think much of it at the time. I'd set a waypoint off double island point and we were tracking to it.  Tracking works well on our nav unit (Raymarine) as it puts a dotted line on the chart showing the forward track (route).  My normal routine is to set the waypoint and start the go-to and then zoom in on the route and follow it on the chart all the way to the waypoint to make sure there was nothing in the way. This time, I was not so careful.  I did have a look along the track on the plot but didn't zoom right in.  

So, I'm queueing music on the media centre and looking up every now from behind the wheel but not moving around much.  Terry had crashed after the early start through the Wide Bay bar and it was a gorgeous morning with only a small swell and not quite enough wind to turn the engine off.  

Suddenly, I looked up and noticed a small patch of white water about 200 meters ahead and a couple of degrees off our port bow.  I took it out of auto and made a course change to starboard while I worked out what the hell it was.  It turned out to be Shark Rock (also known as Wolf Rock I think)!  

It was awash with only about a meter of black jagged rock showing.  The depth sounder was showing 30 meters of water under the keel and the coast was about 3 miles off the starboard beam!  I passed it very slowly about 50 meters away and it looked very sharp and extremely hard.  The depth never changed and remained about 30 meters the whole time! 

One thing I do know about sailing is to stay away from the hard bits but to find this nasty, tooth of really hard stuff just poking right up out of the sea bed in the middle of a nice clear patch of ocean freaked me right out.  It's the stuff of nightmares believe me and I shudder every time I think about it which is still (4 months later) a couple of times a week!

When I looked on the plot to find out what it was, there's this little tiny cross with a label (awash) that only shows when you zoom in!

Unfortunately, I didn't get a photo of it as I had to go below to change my pants.

It's here.  Don't hit it.

Two lessons I got from this.  The first is to zoom right in along your projected track and look carefully for little tiny crosses.  The other is more basic.  When you are on watch, you have to move around.  Sitting in one spot with the mast right in front of you is a really bad idea.  I know both of these things and I'm normally very careful, but the nice day, pleasant sail and good music just conspired to nearly cause a disaster.  Wolf rock, I've since found out, is a great place to dive if you want to see grey nurse sharks!

Tweed is really nice!  We've got some friends here (Hi Dennis and Vaila!) who were happy to look after the boat for us and the marina is great and a good price so it's just about perfect.  Shops are only a short bike ride away and the pub at the marina sells local ale!

Back to the exhaust..  I sent the old one (with the temporary weld) back to WM Marine and asked them to use it as a template for a complete new part using stainless pipe with the correct wall thickness.

They miss-understood my email though and built a brand new one but also fixed the old one so I now have two identical risers and it cost about 3/4 of a boat unit..  The old one was apparently fixed with me paying just for the parts (about 10" of 1 1/2" stainless pipe) and them absorbing the labour so I couldn't argue about the price really.  So bottom line is I've got a complete spare riser to stow somewhere.

Anyway we ended up leaving the boat at Tweed Heads and headed back to Adelaide for Christmas.  We were there for nearly 3 months in the end.  I worked for two of them (kitty building) which was very handy.  Terry also arranged for some tests to be done to see if she could donate her kidney to her sister Barbara (Hi Barb!).

I got back to the boat at the end of February but Terry has had to hang back for the last of the tests.Time to catch up with some work on the boat. There's a list I'm keeping but it never seems to get shorter.

The big job is the cap rails which are peeling so that all has to be scraped off back to bare wood and then re-varnished. I was tempted to just oil the wood to save future work but we agreed we should put in the extra work to keep the old girl looking top notch.  But the weather is against me, too much humidity and some showers so I started on the interior instead.

The floor was getting quite dull and scratched so I'm working on that right now.  I'm also polishing some of the brass while the varnish dries :-)

I'm using Cabots CFP Floor in a satin finish.  It's apparently a really hard wearing polyurethane and we chose satin because it hides minor scratches better than gloss.  The current finish is either a satin or semi gloss.  We do have high gloss finishes on the top surfaces of the tables and cabinets and they still look good so we'll probably leave them for next time.

Choosing the right product is not an easy job.  Everyone has a different story when you do the research and the different types are rather mind boggling.  It's more of an art than a science that's for sure.  Anyway, Cabots have a good rep and there were not many options at Bunnings :-)

I've worked out that I've done about 48km on the treadly since I've been back at the boat.  Finding gaps in the rain is the hard part, the cycling is actually quite pleasant apart from the up bits.  The down bits are a breeze though.  Some enterprising fella will one day invent a way to cycle that's all downhill and make a fortune!

Cabin sole storage locker lids

Main cabin sole hatch above diesel tank

Shiny

Really shiny :-)

Phew, done for now.

Location: Tweed Heads NSW 2485, Australia
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Exhaust Woes

When we got our new engine, I really thought I'd seen the last of exhaust issues other than routine maintenance.  Well, we did have nearly 6 months without a serious mishap..

Yesterday I was doing some routine maintenance lying down on top of the motor to reach a through-hull sea water intake valve and lightly nudged the riser for the exhaust and the bloody thing moved!  It's really NOT supposed to move.  It's supposed to be completely rigid welded to a 10mm thick stainless steel flange attached with 4 good sized bolts to the back of the exhaust manifold.  I should have been able to swing on it.. 

Those who follow this might remember the problems we had with the exhaust on the old Westerbeke engine .  I personally had that beast welded three times and now our brand spanking new motor has a similar problem.  Slightly annoying. 

This is actually a serious issue of course because it allows engine exhaust gasses into the boat..  The break had a lot of soot all around it except for a shiny spot about 2mm long which must have been the only bit attached when I nudged it.  Apparently the soot builds very quickly so it may not have been leaking for long but still a bit scary..

Busted riser.  Left hand end is the flange that bolts to the exhaust manifold, around the bend at the right hand end is the water injector (sticking up) and the section of pipe that the flexible hose to the water lift muffler goes onto.  The part fits vertically with the right hand end bend at the top

So, I pulled the bloody thing off incidentally getting really fine fibreglass splinters all over me from the lagging (what was wrong with asbestos??) which itched like f**k until I could get into the shower.  Then called three welders from a google search all of which went to voice mail. 

Funnily enough, I met Matt the other day..  He is a welder from Brisbane on his boat (a UFO 34) also waiting for Northerlies to get home. I stopped by to ask his advice and he said that although the riser is quite short, it still needed a brace to help prevent failures around the welds due to vibration.  Good advice I think.

After the shower, I asked at the marina office if they knew a reliable welder and got the number for Fleet Industries in Yeppoon who were happy to do the job so I grabbed the courtesy car (thanks Keppel Bay Marina!) and took it down to them.  They were really helpful and suggested a brace from the flange to the right hand bend to try to prevent a re-occurance.  I hope to pick it up this morning and re-fit it (more itchy and scratchy from the lagging :-( ) so we can still leave on Wednesday for Bundaberg.

I also had a chat with John Wichard (the engine supplier) and he said he would make me up a new riser using this one as a model but using 3mm pipe instead so I might get him to do that anyway while we are in Adelaide for Christmas and keep this one as a spare.

The mechanic who fabricated the part is going to help pay for the work..  He would fix it for nothing if I returned it to him back in Pittwater but that would mean another weeks delay.

None of the original three welders I rang have got back to me yet BTW..

Still fixing boats in exotic locations :-)

Keppels to Shaggers or Gear Levers to Cabin lights

Too busy having fun to keep this up to date so a quick run through our trip from the Keppel Group through to Gloucestor Bay for the Shaggers rendezvous.

From Roslyn Bay (Keppel Bay Marina) we headed North into the Whitsunday Islands with Dallas and Erica on their 40' Benetau "Momentum"  Leaving the marina at dawn (sorry Terry) got quite interesting when the gear lever on the pedestal decided to fail.  Luckily we had backed out of the pen and I'd moved it into forward gear before the lever came off in my hand.  It's attached to a stainless steel shaft that disappears into the pedestal.  The shaft has a threaded hole through it and the lever is held onto the shaft by a screw.

Gear Lever on the Edson Pedestal.  I've replaced the original pan-head screws with hex heads

I've had some trouble with this before with both the gear lever and the throttle which is the same design but on the other side of the pedestal.  Even though we have a high end, US designed and built, "Edson" pedestal, the design is pretty poor IMHO.

There is no keyway, flat or splines on the shaft and lever which means that a screw through the top of the lever into the shaft has to cope with the shear forces when you try to rotate the shaft using the lever (if that makes sense).  So what happens is that the screw comes slightly loose and the lever starts to rotate slightly on the shaft, work hardening (weakening) the screw until it shears and you're totally screwed (scuse the pun).

I've replaced the original pan head screws on both sides with hex heads for now so I can get them a bit tighter but it's only a temporary fix really as they still come loose within days.  Splines on the rod and lever would have been a much safer and obviously better way to do this because when the screw shears, you lose control of the gearbox (or throttle) with potentially serious consequences.

I put the lever aside, grabbed a set of vice grips from my tool bag and clamped them down on the shaft as a temporary fix and refitted the lever with a new screw  later.  Getting the sheared piece of screw out of the shaft is tricky mind you!

We headed off under engine but the wind came up and we managed to turn the engine off a couple of hours later and had a broad reach North in South West winds around 10 to 15 knots right up to our first stop which was Pearl (my mind says Pearl but my fingers keep typing Perl for some reason) Bay.

We only stayed for one night unfortunately as it was a lovely bay with big wide sandy beaches and well protected from the South West winds we were having.  We did manage to try out our new camera (Nikon Coolpix P900) there for the first time though.  The zoom lens with image stabilization on this camera is pretty amazing!

First image is of the shore with a white dingy left of centre (14mm focal length)

This is zoomed right in on the dinghy (350mm focal length)

The rear of the dinghy cropped from the above photo

Admittedly, the first image is wide angle (14mm focal length) but the clarity of the second image at 350mm focal length hand-held from an unstable platform (Venture) is pretty astounding in my view.

Unfortunately, the camera failed a few days later as I'm sure Terry will tell you all about and we are currently waiting for it to be returned to us under warranty.

From Pearl Bay we headed up to a lovely anchorage on the North West side of Hexham Island.  We spent 3 nights there in the end and it was just lovely.  The anchorage was quite calm and the beach fantastic.  I got totally involved with a nesting pair of Kestrels there taking hundreds of photos which Terry is still sorting through to add to her blog entry.

We left Hexham on the 9th August and headed up to the Percy Island group.  The Percys have a real reputation in cruising circles and it was a "must visit" stop on our way North.  We anchored for a few hours on the North coast of South Percy for a while to let the swell die down a bit before we headed in to the main anchorage on Middle Percy which is not very well protected.

We spent a relatively quite night at Middle Percy along with about 12 other boats and left the next day.  Just before we left though, we had our most amazing whale encounter so far in this trip as a couple of Humpbacks were playing outside the bay for 10 minutes of so breaching and slapping their tails.  They were a long way off but not too far for the Nikon.  Watch this space for the update from Terry.

We moved on quickly to avoid some nasty weather heading our way.  There were some options for hiding from it in anchorages but we decided to head to Digby and Mackay instead.  We motor sailed most of the way and got in to Digby quite late in the day, stayed overnight and left early the next day for Mackay Marina.

 Sunset at Digby Island taken from Momentum during sundowners

Sunrise at Mackay Marina

We enjoyed our time in Mackay but headed North again when the weather cleared again with Dallas and Erica on Momentum.  Well we headed off together but they had to turn back before we left the marina due to an unfortunate encounter with the rock wall.

Dallas was steering and trying to investigate a problem with the auto-pilot and lost situational awareness for a few seconds while the boat turned slowly (he was only doing about 2 knots at the time) towards the rock wall.

It happens to us all.  My latest similar story (and I've got a few buried forever in my head) occurred only two days ago when we were heading through the Gloucester passage.  I very nearly went the wrong side of a cardinal mark (very, very bad idea) in the tight channel when I was distracted for a few seconds by an eagles nest on a channel marker.

To get back to the story, I was about 50 meters behind them and shouting at him to take care but he didn't hear me above the engine noise and hit the rock wall head on.  Luckily, the damage was confined to a dent in the bow (boats are very strong there) just under the waterline but it needed repair so they headed back into the marina to arrange a haul out. 

It just goes to show that even moving at our slow speeds, you really need to concentrate or things can go wrong really quickly.

From Mackay, we headed to Brampton Island which is really the first of the Whitsunday Islands.  Fantastic sailing weather heading North in 10 to 15 knot SE winds and we had the engine off most of the day.  It was a bit rolly due to the left over swell from recent bad weather but on the whole, gorgeous :-)

Brampton is a beautiful spot with an abandoned and run down resort.  Again, I'm sure Terry will fill you in later but it was quite eerie to walk around. Unfortunately, the Nikon failed during one of our walks on the island refusing to turn on so we we needed to get somewhere with a post office to post it off for repair under warranty.

Venture in the anchorage at Brampton Island

We stayed there a couple of days and left in the afternoon on the 15th August for Goldsmith Island. It was a very lumpy ride through to Goldsmith as there we were motor sailing NW in stuff-all knots of SE winds.  Not very pleasant.  We went south of Ingot Island while Momentum (who had joined us in Brampton the day before) went North of Goldsmith and we both arrived at the anchorage at the same time.

Sunset at Goldsmith Island

Goldsmith anchorage was bit rolly as we were anchored quite a way out from the beach.  Anchoring in the Whitsundays is quite tricky but I think I'll leave the details for another post.

From Goldsmith we had a pleasant sail up to Lindeman Island where we anchored for another couple of nights pleasant nights.  The anchorage here (Plantation Bay) was special for the night time displays put on by the garfish!  Whole schools of fish were jumping out of the water all around us for hours.  I suspect there were predators about but it seemed like they were just happy to see us there :-).

From Goldsmith we headed up to Airlie Beach which known as the gateway to the Whitsundays.  It was an awesome sail all the way with the wind behind us but just strong enough to keep us from rolling and pushing us along at 6 knots most of the day.  We saw some whales about 1/2 mile away and Terry was pretty sure one of them had a white back but it was tricky to be sure due to the white caps in the 15 knot breeze.  It would be pretty awesome to see Migaloo!

We anchored off the beach in a mooring field close to the Whitsunday Yacht Club and paid the club for the use of their dinghy dock and facilities.  We took a taxi into Cannonvale to post of the camera and re-stock for the Shaggers rendezvous.

From Airlie, we headed out again aiming to be at Cape Gloucester for the Shaggers rendezvous on the 25th.  We had a really nice sail over to the Stonehaven anchorage on Hook Island.  The anchorage has some public mooring buoys but the were all taken so we had to anchor in 13 meters of water.  I'm not keen on anchoring in deep water but we had no choice this time.  The first time round, we couldn't get the anchor to set (I could hear it dragging over a rock shelf believe it or not) but it did set ok a bit further around the bay.  I put 75 meters of chain out and set the anchor alarm.  In the end, we had a quiet night and the anchor was fine. The following morning we picked up a mooring and stayed another night.

Misty morning in Stonehaven anchorage, Hook Island

The weather was changing again with Easterlies coming along and Gloucester Bay is almost directly West from Hook Island so we decided to head over to Double Bay East on the mainland in the SE winds and then head North to Gloucester Bay in the Easterlies to come.

Double Bay was another nice anchorage.  It's quite shallow but with good holding and provides good shelter from the SE and East winds.  It's supposed to be good fishing and we did have some luck but we couldn't identify the fish (very small) that we were catching so we let them all go.

Dinghy on the beach at Double Bay

We stayed two nights in Double Bay and then headed North up the coastline through the Gloucester Passage to the resort.  The expected Easterlies didn't really arrive and the seas were mirror smooth so we had to motor all the way.  Gloucester passage was a bit tricky as there was a 2 or 3 knot current pushing us through.  The channel makes a hard left hand turn at the narrow and shallow spot to round a South cardinal mark so you turn left, but the current still pushes you straight on..  So we arrived at Shaggers :-)

We picked up our mooring on the Tuesday and I then spent all of Wednesday trying to fix one of the cabin lights.  Which brings me to the odd title of this post..

Cruising is often defined as "Fixing boats in exotic locations" and it really is true!  The list of things needing to be fixed never seems to get any shorter and so we do tend to spend a lot of time at anchor in glorious surroundings getting something or other working again.

The problem with the cabin light was an odd one. The light began to flicker a few days ago and then failed completely.  Measuring the voltage at the light showed 10 volts which was a bit odd but as soon as you put any load on it, (like an led globe) it dropped to 4 volts which is probably less than the working voltage of the led.  Further testing with a fly lead showed that it was the positive wire that had the fault (not the negative wire).

The light is fed from a circuit breaker but all the lights on the port side are fed from the same breaker.  They are bundled together (9 wires) and crimped into one fitting screwed to the breaker making it impossible to identify which wire goes to which light fitting without pulling it all apart.  In any case, the wires lead from the breaker panel down into the bilge and under the fridge so it's impossible to trace the cable to replace it as well.

At the light end, there was only about 5mm of movement in the wire which disappears into a 8 inch teak disk glued to the roof above the head lining making it essentially impossible to tug on the wire to watch which one moves at the other end without pulling off the head lining which was never going to happen!
 So, I ended up threading a new wire from the light fitting on the starboard side inside the head lining over to the broken one on the port side and terminating the original positive lead.

The strange thing is I'm enjoying every minute of this!  Weird eh..

Location: Rosslyn QLD 4703, Australia
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Keppel group

We spent a couple of nice nights at Roslyn Bay.  The marina is well kept and the people very friendly.  We did some washing, filled the water tanks and headed off to Great Keppel Island for a looksee.

The wind was from the South East so we went to the Northern side of the Island where a couple of anchorages have protection from Southerlies.  There were a lot of boats in the preferred anchorage (Second Bay) so we dropped our anchor in Leekes beach initially and then moved into Second Bay the next day.

Venture at anchor off Second Beach GKI

We ended up staying for 3 uneventful nights just off this beautiful, pristine white sandy beach with crystal clear water all around.  This really was like paradise.

We ducked back over to Roslyn Bay when the weather turned foul and hung there for a couple of nights waiting for an parcel to arrive from Adelaide which I'm sure Terry will tell you all about.

In the end, the parcel didn't arrive (long story) and we hopped back over to Great Keppel Island again for 3 more nights this time in the Fishermans Bay anchorage on the West side of the island before heading back to Roslyn Bay on the Tuesday to pick up the parcel and head further north.

Foggy morning at anchor in Fishermans Bay, GKI.

Location: The Keppels QLD 4700, Australia
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No emus but plenty of cheek.

Straw Backed Ibis on the lawns at Rosslyn/Keppel Bay Marina.

Rosslyn and Emu Bays

After a bit of a rough passage north, our next stop off was at the lovely port of Rosslyn, and the lovely Keppel Bay marina therein. The marina is in a sheltered 'bay' overlooked by the bluff (which looks very much like the Bluff at Encounter Bay in SA).

With a great coffee shop/restaurant, small chandlery, friendly people in the boats, even friendlier and helpful  people working there, and a bus right at the front door, we had no problem staying a few days. Fully self-contained bathrooms and a couple of laundry rooms made it nicer still although, for the first couple of days we used the public showers (not as nice) before realising there was a whole other block of roomy and very private facilities specially for marina users. D'oh!! There is also an excellent fisherman's market close to the marina. Well worth checking out.

Plenty of space to sit, relax and enjoy a coffee and cake.

 

View of the bluff from the marina

I needed to see a doctor while I was there and the marina staff not only recommended one for me, they also made the appointment, which was awesome. What wasn't so awesome was the bike ride to get there, much of which was up some quite steep, long hills, although that had the advantage of being downhill on the way back. I keep telling myself that riding the bike is a great way to keep fit, and it will be if it doesn't kill me first.

The view between Keppel Bay Marina and Emu Bay; The Keppel Group.

The bus service that passes through Keppel Bay is also fantastic, stopping right outside the marina entrance. From there, we caught the bus that took us along the esplanade that looked out to the Keppel Islands and on to Emu Bay, a gorgeous, very pretty little town with an interesting boardwalk and war memorials and a lovely surprise, a sculpture called the 'Singing Ship'. Unfortunately for us, the ship was not singing on that particular day due to lack of wind, but it was still interesting to look at. I think a visit to YouTube might be in order so that I can check out the tune.

The Singing Ship: Emu Bay

The singing part of the Singing Ship, silent when we were there but apparently awesome when the wind blows.

One part of the War Memorial that depicts the ill-fated Gallipoli landing. Painted on glass, if you line up the horizon at sunrise and the photo, the effect is both quite sad and profoundly beautiful.

War Memorial, Emu Bay.

Emu Bay also has a really great bakery where everything is straight-out-of-the-oven fresh. Sadly, though, the whole area around Rosslyn and Emu bays are not quite far enough south to escape cyclones and signs of the latest one was evident in a few places.

Fresh sausage rolls being made in store.

Cyclone damage in Emu Bay. We saw a lot of damage around Rosslyn as well.

Thar she blows!! Remnants of bygone whale stuff.

 We also caught the bus the other way, to Rosslyn Bay where we needed to do a bit of a shop. Again, we found Rosslyn to be a really nice place but one that we didn't explore as much as we'd have liked due to the knee goblins. Oh well. :)

While we were still in the marina I was lucky enough to be invited to coffee with a great bunch of local women and spent a good couple of hours chatting while Dave got a break from me.

P.S. The marina café has some amazing cakes, but be on guard and protect your pastries at all times from the cheeky blue faced honey-eaters that clean up all of the scraps, much like little, brightly coloured seagulls and who seem to enjoy eating a whole lot more than just honey.

One of the offending honey-eaters. How these little buggers aren't podgy is beyond me, given the amount of food they eat, and not one bit of it is honey. :)

Location: Rosslyn Bay, Rosslyn QLD 4703, Australia
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