Airlie sunset

"Walking" up the coast

 

Wednesday, 17/5/2017

Sailed from Svenson’s beach on the north side of GKI to Port Clinton, a distance of 44 nM.

A strong wind warning with heavy rain was forecast for the rest of the week, so I opted to make the break while it was still fine and sail north to shelter in the inner reaches of Port Clinton, somewhere new to me.

If no one else is leaving, it’s questionable whether to follow the herd mentality and stay, or sail one’s own course.  On closer inspection there are often reasons why others choose to remain where they are, such as engine problems, fear of leaving the flock, or simply plain inertia.  Many of those clinging to their anchors have no other places to be, or any time constraints.  I have both, and a fine day in which to put another 40 miles behind me is not to be lost.

So at 0600, I weighed anchor (still 16kg) and continued north.  It turned out to be one of those glorious day’s sailing that are so few and far between.  The wind never went above 16 knots and stayed comfortably just aft of the beam.  Only later when it backed further to threaten a gybe did I take over hand-steering. Then I really got into the zone.

I can understand why many sailors have written of the great advantages of tiller steering, not the least being the direct feel of the boat and its responsiveness.  Also it’s possible to sit side-on with tiller in hand for hour after hour without the fatigue that those standing behind a wheel suffer.

So what does it mean for me, to be in the “zone”?  When I sit for a few hours hand-steering it does have an interesting effect, almost mesmerising.  It’s a feeling of eternal now, an immediacy and connection to the wind, the waves, the motion, without distraction of mind.  It is a sense of being completely alert and tuned in to the present moment with no strain; being at one with everything, being here and now.  An endless now.  This is what I love most about being out here.

In Port Clinton I anchored near a sleek, magnificent looking sloop of 60 plus feet.  We chatted a little on the VHF radio, it being far too wet and windy to cross the distance between us by dinghy. They were leaving soon, heading to Mackay to sort out a dental problem. Strong wind and rain were no deterrent to them in that fully enclosed yacht. 

It occurred to me how we all are having such different experiences out here on the same water. Some are very much more protected from the elements than others, have water-makers and washing machines.  I might envy those creature comforts for a minute, but then I think of the richness of my proximity to the environment, so much so that I am almost a part of it.  At times it stings and bites me, but I would not trade that for a hot shower. Perhaps in another ten years.

19/5/2017  Island Head Creek

Woke at 0700 to a rainy, windless day.  Batteries were low. I had turned the fridge off overnight to defrost it and save power, but needed to run the engine if turning it back on again on such an overcast, no-solar power day.  Decided to motor out of Port Clinton to the next stop. 

I followed my track in from last year.  This is proving to be such a great help to me, relieving a lot of the anxiety and stress I felt last year when approaching unknown territory.  Having traversed this section of the coast before, up and down, gives me a lot more confidence, knowing what’s ahead.  I noticed a big difference in myself.

The entrance to Island Head Creek is a fairly narrow channel, with breakers washing over the rocky outcrops and shallow shoals on either side.  Add a heavy broadside roll and it’s not easy to hold a straight course in.  I hoped that the thin yellow line on the Navionics chart showing last year’s track was accurate.

Sunday, 21/5/2017

One week since leaving Bundaberg.  Feels like a lot longer.  Departed Island Head Creek at first light (0600 these short days of winter) and made my way to Hunter Island in the Dukes.

 

 I hadn’t originally planned on anchoring off Hunter Island after my awful experience there last year with the strong tidal race, but I followed the herd instinct and joined three other yachts, which appeared peaceful enough. 

Big mistake!  I foolishly thought to myself, it’s not full moon so should be alright; I’ll give it one more go here. The new moon neap tide was just as ferocious and I got into all kinds of strife with my inadequate chain/rode situation.  A restless night of dragging and re-setting rope that kept kinking, knotting and jamming in the rope/chain gypsy was followed by a dismal dawn, with nearly an hour of fighting to get the anchor up. The circuit breaker kept tripping out against a howling cross-wind and tide that had us riding forward with the rope back under the keel.  It took several goes with rolling hitches led back to a primary winch to take the load off, and lots of running back and forth between cockpit and foredeck before I was finally off.  As with last year, I again envisaged myself being stranded on Hunter Island forever.

The next stop was Curlew Island, where there seemed to be an interesting magnetic anomaly on the approach.  The entrance to the northern lagoon is on the far right, or Eastern side of the island.  Despite already sailing further East than my rhumb line, the island appeared too far West, looking almost as if I would miss it entirely. 

 

 

I kept on going without changing course. Then, with less than a mile to go, the GPS showed a sudden Westward deviation, lining the chart up with what I was seeing.

 

 I quickly altered course and the eyeball and chart concurred.  Of course one should always prefer the eyeball, but it was interesting to observe this phenomenon happening right before my eyes. 

Last year, Curlew was a relatively quiet stopover, with an encircling reef and shoal water breaking the swell.  Perhaps due to the bigger tides, this year it was one of the rollier anchorages. 

En route from Curlew to Mackay, I was speaking to youngest daughter Shoni, telling her how fortunate I was to be having positive tidal influence with me all the way, enabling an average speed of 5 knots.  Shoni was rather bemused by this, commenting that it seemed slow, in fact, even slower than walking. 

Yes, I am travelling at a slow walking pace up the coast.  I have 2000 nautical miles to go to get to Darwin.  It’s like walking 2000 miles over the next two months.  Never really thought of it like that before.  Shoni asked if I don’t get very bored and frustrated  by going so slowly.  Not at all; it’s necessary to slow down in oneself.  But yes, part of the frustration is in having to “walk” 2000 miles up the coast  before I even kick off to begin crossing an ocean.  I guess this coastal passage is part of it, but not too many long distance cruisers begin their journey in such a manner.

Mackay Marina, 24^th May.

Even though TC debbie skirted Mackay, there were still signs of her passing nearby.

 

 

 

 

Extremely low tides make the ramp soooo steep for legs that haven't walked for 10 days!

 

In Mackay I did all the usual marina stopover chores: refuelling, filling jerry cans with diesel, refilling gas bottle, taking the bus to town for provisions, doing the laundry, putting on a new fan belt and topping up fresh water tanks. And most enjoyably, taking a few hot and cold running water showers.  I allowed myself two days instead of the one that I usually try to cram it all into, which made it much less hectic.

Friday 26/5 I departed at the respectable hour of 0900, considering I only had a short run of 20 miles to Brampton Island at the beginning of the Whitsundays.  As it turned out, the ebb tide was so helpful I decided to continue on to Goldsmith, an island I haven’t been to before.  I anchored rather too close to exposed rocks which looked like crocodile’s eyes peering at me as the tide dropped and more emerged.  It was another rolly night and the chain was growling, telling me it was more rock than sand on the seabed.  Day-hopping up the coast like this is full of little anxieties, when my mind often runs down the “what-if” trail.  So far, that important element of luck has been with me.  I do my best with the knowledge and skills I have, but never fail to appreciate the hand of fate that guides the uncontrollable.  Every time I leave a potentially tricky situation in one piece I take a moment to give thanks. 

Saturday 27/5.  Another fortuitous tidal assistance today, covering a distance of 32 miles in 8 hours, with very little wind and no motoring.  The first half of the passage was slow until the tide changed at midday. As I approached Whitsunday Passage, boat speed was less than 3 knots, but SOG was up to 7.2.  Anchored in favourite spot at Sawmill Bay, Cid Harbour, Whitsunday Island.  The water is a bit milky but still a beautiful pale jade with sunshine shimmering over the ripples.  There are signs of TC Debbie’s visit.  The treetops are bare, looking as if a bush fire had denuded them.  The general feeling is of recent carnage, but the charter boats are still aplenty, so business as usual.

I wanted to hike to the top of Whitsunday peak but the trail had too many obstacles with fallen trees and branches. One of the loose rocks, slippery with recent rain, toppled me and I landed heavily on my left hip, which is now very sore, despite Arnica.  I have noticed I am not as sure-footed yet as I should be, but it’s early days, so hopefully soon I’ll stop knocking myself about so much.

 

 

 

Dugong beach on a magic day.

 

Trusty inflatable kayak makes going ashore so much easier.

Mother's Day Departure

Great Keppel Island, 16/5/2017

Finally the weather settled, all imminent cyclone threats headed off to NZ, and there were no other excuses not to leave.  Well, there's always at least a dozen, but sometimes prevarication is the mother of perversity.  So Sunday, 14th May, Mother's Day in the land of the land, seemed an auspicious day to leave, it not being a Friday, which non-land dwellers consider tempting fate to overturn everything.

This time I opted for an overnighter up to Great Keppel Island, without stopping at Pancake Creek for pancakes on the way.  The reasons behind this were partly to cover some distance, in case I changed my mind, and also to test the possibility of being able to cat nap for 20 minutes at a time, without the usual nervousness  that something was about to run me down, or I was about to bump into something hard.

It's a common occurrence that there's either too much wind or not enough.  It seemed like a good idea to start the journey without getting hammered too much at first.  Later on, fine, if it has to be that way,  but not right at the outset after months of quiet Marina life.  The old mal-de-mer is still lurking not far away on those first few days before I get my sea legs.

Bundaberg Port Marina doesn't bother dredging the small boat end of town, so Shanti sits in the mud at low tide, which means it's only possible to vacate the berth at high tide. The plan was to slip out at 10 am then head to the slightly deeper fuel dock, do some last minute preparations, scrub the starboard side of the hull, and fill the empty jerry cans with diesel.  Only setback was a sign that read, "No fuel until Sunday."  Hmmm, which Sunday I wondered.

An early start would have been better, in hindsight.

By 1330, I finally cast off.  My plan was to actually sail all the way, meaning to use those white bits of cloth hanging off the big white stick, without running the engine if possible.  I was really over "driving up the coast", which seems to be a necessary evil in order to enter the desired anchorage in daylight hours.  Well so what if I slop about at only one or two knots?  So what if it takes 90 hours to go 130 nautical miles?  Others have done it.  Surely I can too?

Half an hour of motoring out of the river, I puristically cut the engine and commenced a few miles of glorious sailing, before the wind dropped to 6 knots.  I persevered for a few more hours.  It was quite pleasant, and nice and quiet.  I was contentedly bobbing along at 3 knots of boat speed.  Later, only 2.  The night grew darker and colder, and longer.

I'm not sure what exactly it was that seduced me into turning the key.  Perhaps the thought of another couple of nights without sleep.  Perhaps the slight queasiness.  Perhaps the desire to be going somewhere.  Perhaps the fact that on a long distance ocean passage, time is less important because you're going to be out there for months anyway, and making a daylight landfall is a distant nicety, and you can sleep all night long if you want; but it's different on the busy coast.

I ended up motoring for 19 out of 28 hours, and just made it into the southernmost anchorage on Great Keppel Island as total blackness obliterated it from sight.  Then I gratefully slept like the dead.

This morning, I once again turned the key and drove round to a more sheltered anchorage on the northern side of the island.

The water is crystal clear, so I dove on the hull with scrubber in hand to clean off the rest of Bundaberg slime.

For lunch, I ate a salad with the Morton Bay bugs that one of the local fishermen at Bundaberg had given me.  Funny looking critters, but taste delicious, rather like baby lobster or crayfish.

I plan on making an early start from here tomorrow, heading to Port Clinton.  Hopefully with more sailing than motoring!

Weather window

Bundaberg,

May 4th 2017  (Or as someone so astutely observed, Star Wars day) - was to be departure day, in an ideal world without weather.

However, words of wisdom from my son in law, Dr Andrew Watkins, meteorologist at the BOM, suggested the cyclone season may not fit so neatly within its usual parameters of November to April this year, and patience could be the more sensible course.  Clearly Mother Nature doesn't watch the calendar as closely as we sailors do.

After three weeks living in the protected environment of a house in Melbourne, it is easy to forget the weather.  Mostly it was sunny, quite mild for autumn, occasionally rained and blew a little. Nothing of any great concern.  So it seemed perfectly reasonable to come back to Shanti with a departure date in mind.  Wrong!

Looking at the forecast for the coming week - gales of over 40 knots and 2-3 meter seas, with potential for another low forming within the monsoon trough that could develop into another Tropical cyclone Debbie - staying tied up in Bundaberg Marina seems somewhat more appealing than going sailing.



This forecast shows a low approaching the Queensland coast this weekend.



Forecast to slide down the coast toward Bundaberg next week.

TC Debbie left a trail of devastation through the Whitsundays last month. After tracking inland she re-emerged at the coast near here, bringing torrential rain and winds up to 55 knots.  During this deluge my life raft self-inflated.  It was stored in the well under the cockpit floor, which ordinarily is reasonably watertight. It was quite an odd sight to find the floor lifted to a 45 degree angle, as if some subterranean iceberg was surfacing!  Fortunately it could be relatively easily repacked with a new gas cylinder, (after evicting a resident cane toad) and a memo to store in a drier spot.

While in Melbourne, I bought myself a second-hand sextant, just for fun really, but you never know when those satellites that we take so much for granted might be shut down.  I'm looking forward to learning how to use it, kind of like learning a foreign language.  I also bought some bluetooth wireless headphones and scraped together a collection of audiobooks. Should keep me amused for months out on the ocean.

Till then, it's a waiting game ....