Hervey Bay

Well, we arrived in Hervey Bay four days ago after a difficult trip up from Moreton Bay - a lot of close-hauled sailing followed by bashing into headwinds under engine. Damn northerlies!! This is why we hate keeping to a schedule, but we had to get here in time for Michael to start his job, which he did on Friday.

We sailed overnight up to the Wide Bar Bar - the notorious southern entrance to the Great Sandy Straits. The local volunteer marine rescue gave us GPS coordinates to help us safety cross the bar. The approach is really long and unpredictable and has the discouraging local name of "The Mad Mile". Well, we're always up for a challenge! We crossed without incident, but considering the messy surf to our left and scary shallow water to our right it was easy to see how nasty it would be in bad weather. Exhausted, we dropped the pick just inside the entrance in the calm waters of Pelican Bay.

We spent the next few days winding our way up the shallow gutters of the Straits, timing our trip with the tides, fishing along the way and catching undersized mudcrabs. Its sooo beautiful here, and a pretty damn good consolation to the fact that we are going to be staying in one place for a while. The western coast of Fraser Island is densely wooded in parts with mangrove-lined creeks and high sandy cliffs. The beaches are clean and white and gorgeous. The water is WARM and turquoise blue. What a backyard!

On our last night out the weather was atrocious, strong northerlies of course. There was no way we could make it over to Hervey Bay against wind and current before dark so we dropped our anchor out the front of the Kingfisher Bay resort on Fraser Island. This is where we will be taking Michael's parents in few weeks, so it was a good excuse to get off the boat and check out the facilities. They are very welcoming to boaties, and even have showers, a pool and a bar/restaurant that you can visit for free! Well, the food and drinks aren't free, but you can use the pool and showers for nothing. We drank cocktails by the pool before splurging and checking in to a hotel room for the night. Kitty took one for the team and kept watch on the boat, enduring the rough conditions.

The next morning the winds had dropped and we walked down to the jetty to take our dingy back to Bass Voyager and head over to Hervey Bay. What a shock to see that poor old Guppy (our dingy) had gotten caught under the jetty in the bad conditions and torn one of her inflatable pontoons. She was filled to the brim with water, the oars and petrol tank were floating, and the outboard was precariously close to going underwater. We dragged her up onto the dock to drain her and then the two of us balanced tentatively on the remaining inflated pontoon and very carefully motored back to BV. That, coupled with our broken anchor winch (which Michael fixed three times back in Tassie), the tired engine, and the loooooong list of other maintenance jobs, suggests that its clearly time to stop for a while! 11 months at sea has taken its toll on poor BV, but she has taken such good care of us and she deserves some TLC in return. That's my big goal for the next couple of months, while Michael brings home the bacon.

So here we are at the Great Sandy Straits Marina. Hervey Bay seems to have everything you could possibly need, and the town of Maryborough is only a 30 min drive away.  We drove there on Thursday to check out its weekly farmers market and see what the local chandlerys are like. Maryborough is very quaint with lots of historic buildings, and is the birthplace of the author of Mary Poppins. Hervey Bay itself has a beautiful esplanade which stretches for 15kms (maybe more?). Bundaberg is an hour or so north, and Brissy is only 3 hours south. A great location really! BHB (Beautiful Hervey Bay - thanks Aunty Genevieve!) overlooks Fraser Island and at this time of year it is buzzing with tourists coming to see the humpback whales who give birth in the safe waters inside the island. Although known as Hervey Bay its really a chain of smaller villages called Urangan (where we are), Torquay, Scarness and Pialba which have melted together over the years. A great place for a seaside holiday - hint, hint family and friends!!

Now the reason that Ive taken a while to update the blog is that we had a bit of a shock on our second day here. Kitty went missing. We searched everywhere for her, checked all the other boats on our arm of the marina, called the council and all the vets, spoke to all our neighbours ... there was no sign of her. Our worst fear was that she had fallen in the water, and this was kindly exacerbated by a neighbour mentioning that fisherman had seen a bull shark in the harbour recently! We really feared the worst, and I was an emotional wreck. Its ridiculous how much I love that cat! It seemed so unfair - she'd come so far, including two Bass Strait crossings, only to disappear now!! By last night we were almost 100% convinced we'd never see her again, when at about 9pm Michael heard a little "gooong" sound (her weird little broken miaow) on the dock - sure enough it was Kitty, very hungry, but otherwise not a hair out of place. She got a very stern talking to as well as lots of cuddles. And she's been grounded. No more dockside excursions! Oh, and she's going to get a collar, bell and nametag, much to her disgust!

So that's about it for now. Oh, except Michael started work on Friday and it went really well - we went out to dinner with his new boss Lawrie who is a top bloke and has helped us out with a cheap car - a Jeep that I have christened "The Green Machine". A 4WD will be great for exploring the area, lugging the dingy down to the Mary River to go fishing, and checking out Fraser Island.

Here are a couple of pics. You know its been a hard week when there are only a few to choose from! LOL, some people have real problems, eh?? ;o)

Anchored behind the Tangalooma wrecks in Moreton Bay

Michael caught this gorgeous little baby shark in the Great Sandy Strait. My only regret is I didn't touch him before Michael released him! Sandpapery, apparently.

Windless morning in the GSS

Hangin' by the "day-visitors" pool at the Kingfisher Bay Resort

Beached Az! - Passage to Moreton Bay

Sometimes in the sailing life, despite best laid plans and all due diligence, things just don't go as planned.

At dawn this morning we left a lovely anchorage at Jumpin Pin just north of the Gold Coast at South Stradbroke Island. The eastern channel from the Broadwater to Moreton bay has a couple of very shallow patches, but we'd been told it is much prettier than the main channel and from the look of the charts we would have enough water for our 2 metre keel. We timed our departure with the rising tide as we knew at least if you run aground the water will rise a bit more and pop you right off again!

Long story short, we ran aground. Oh, the shame. At least this time Michael was at the helm, not me! There is nothing worse than feeling the boat lurch to a stop with a "chhhhhhhhhhhhhh" sound as the keel digs into the sand. Annoyingly we were following the charts and were right in the middle of a marked channel. Our big mistake was getting to the shallow patch a little too early in the tide.

We tried reversing and motoring forward but BV was stuck tight and leaning over at a 15 degree angle. Michael sounded around the boat with our portable sonar to find a safe path out, and then we ran the anchor out using the dinghy and with a combination of the anchor winch, engine power and the rising tide we got free.

We were surprisingly calm through the whole experience and worked together well to get us out of the situation. The weird thing was, three other boats came pass while we were stuck and not one of them checked to see if we were OK. Who would do that?

The rest of the passage was fine. Michael scoped our course ahead using our handheld sonar and I followed a few hundred metres behind. The feeling of entering the deeper water of Moreton Bay was a huge relief and we cracked up laughing about the crazy experience.

One thing's for sure, the life we've chosen is never boring!

Anyone with a similar draft should consider taking the main channel, or moving with a big high tide over the shallow parts of Tipplers/Canipa Passage.

We're now anchored at North Stradbroke Island and planning our next move.

Slipping Sands anchorage, about 30 seconds before we ran aground. No, we weren't distracted and taking photos!!! Well, Michael wasn't....

A grey and rainy day in Canipa passage.

The last guy that ran aground.

Anchorage on North Stradbroke Island. This is a great spot. Hard to believe that Brisbane is just over there!

Baby mangrove

Beachcombing

With all of the excitement of the last week we have neglected to tell you about meeting up with our friends Kim and Kim from Captain Silver who we met in Tassie earlier this year, first in Stanley on the North West Coast of Tasmania where we weathered 55 knots together on the Stanley Dock. They headed south down the west coast, as we headed east along the north coast. The second time we crossed paths was two months later as we were speeding from Launceston to Hobart to meet Caitlin's flight back to Adelaide for Imogen's engagement party, and the Kims were heading north, back to their home in the Gold Coast hinterland.

We had such a great day with you guys - thank you so much! There is nothing better than exploring a place with locals who know all the best spots. We cant wait to see you again.

Picnic lunch near Mt Tambourine (is that right Kim?)

Exchanging cruising stories and comparing war wounds

View from the St Bernard Hotel, with its beautiful garden