Remember all the close-up pictures? You must have seen this coming:
And lastly, something more arty:
Tuesday morning, Steve delivered a new board, and after a few last minute chores, we were off. The original plan was to head out the Gold Coast Seaway to the Coral Sea and then make "directly" for Mooloolaba on two jybes: one out to the NE until level with the top of Moreton Island and one back to the NW into Mooloolaba. A total of about 100 NM but easily dooable for us with an early start and the right winds. However, since we had a late start and the winds were (still) contrary, we changed plans and followed a meandering course through the tidal estuaries that separate North Stradbroke Island from the mainland.
Even with the change of plans Karin and I were jazzed to be on our own.
I wasn't too keen on 40 nm of buoy-to-buoy navigation and I was even less keener when we skipped a couple of buoys and suddenly found ourselves watching in horror as the depth meter dropped to 0.8 meters. Fortunately, the wind had built up a chop and I had already slowed down a bunch because the water looked suspiciously shallow. We were just able to execute a U turn and, if a 5 ton boat can be said to "tiptoe", to tiptoe back to the channel.
Technically, we can't float in eight tenths of a meter, and that anomaly was soon explained when I checked the offset on the depth sounder and discovered that the sounder assumed that it was at the waterline when it was actually half a meter or so below it. In honor of our escape (near escapade) we decided not to set the offset. Half a meter is a handy thing to have lying around.
I had hoped for some sailing but we had the wind dead on the
nose the whole way, 40 nm to the little town of Dunwich
on the east shore Moreton bay. The anchorage was supposed
to be good for S/SW winds and the winds were supposed to
move to the S/SW. Also, there was no one else around
and I didn't want a lot of witnesses to our first anchoring.
And it was getting late. Worst case scenario: lots of
witnesses and darkness.
Anchoring went perfectly and we enjoyed the last few hours of daylight swimming and fishing before eating dinner. The water was still cool and a little cloudy (concealing life forms of unknown malignancy?) so I had to prove that it was safe to swim.
Another reflection picture. I shudder whenever I anticipate the inevitable
night shot/reflection/bodypart closeup, but it is coming.
For a while, winds were
light and from the SE, just as predicted. But after dinner, the winds
came up a little and we were soon bouncing in the chop sleeping the
uneasly sleep of the newly anchored. Anchors, once set in a
particular direction are usually pretty stable, but over a night
one has to contend with changes in tidal current, changes in wind
direction and all of the unpredictable interactions between them.
The type of anchor we use, a plough, works very well in the dense
Ozzie sand and will usually reset itself when the pull
changes direction.
"Usually."
An ugly word when you're ready for a night's rest. Concerns about the exact meaning of "usually" and the bouncy conditions kept us awake most of the night. I checked the anchor every couple of hours or whenever the boat started making a new noise. Which it did frequently as the winds never let up.
All in all, anchoring out is conducive to getting an early start on the next day. We ate breakfast, and picked up the anchor uneventfully though I did have a momentary spike of panic when I realized that the squiggly red line on the chart that I'd ignored meant "submerged cable." Turned out that we were well south of it. Anyway, in pleasant contrast to the previous day, we were going to be able to sail pretty much all day. Plan was simply to sail up Moreton bay, out into the ocean and on to Mooloolaba, probably 40 nm. The winds still had not shifted back to the SE, instead they were light (5 - 10) and from the SW, the worst angle as we had to jybe back and forth down Moreton bay instead of running straight down it as we could have with a SE wind.
Still we had a great time. It was nice and sunny and we flew
the spinnaker for most of the morning. Otto (our autopilot)
did most of the steering so all we had to do was watch out for
other boats and decide when to jybe. The wind gradually
died and by lunchtime we were barely able to keep the spinaker
flying. Three knots against a two knot current wasn't going
to get us anywere, so we took down the sails and motored north.
There aren't a lot of choices for anchorages in northern Moreton Bay. The best of a bad set of choices (assuming that the winds finally turned SE overnight) seemed like Tangalooma Wrecks. Tangalooma is a resort that sits in a shallow bay on Moreton Island (east side of Moreton bay). About twenty surplus ships have been scuttled forming a barrier parallel to shore yielding an anchorage that is OK in winds with a lot of east or west in them and poor in any other conditions. The main point is to avoid any inadvertant contribution to the wreckage. There were three other boats already anchored in the narrow slot between the wrecks and the beach; we picked a spot a bit out of the slot so as not to crowd anybody. Endless Summer is a light boat with a lot of surface are exposed to the wind and will not necessarily swing the same as a heavy boat which responds more to the tide and less to the wind.
The evening was windless and warm and we had a great time motoring around the wrecks and climbing the nearby sand dunes.
But, without puting too fine a point on it, our anchorage at Dunwich was actually pretty good. At Tangalooma we pitched, heaved, and turned pirouettes as tide, waves and wind fought for control of the boat. Lots of new noises. Very disconcerting to sit up in bed and look out the hatch expecting to see the lights of the resort and instead to find darkness. I had though that we could come up with some sort of schedule by figuring out when the tide was due to turn and setting an alarm for just after that so I could go and check the anchor, but things seemed so unpredictable that we just punted on anything more scientific than an alarm every 90 minutes. 90 minutes because that was as high as our egg timer went. We may have actually slept some of the first 90 minutes.
We didn't even bother with breakfast before leaving.
While wide, the mouth of Moreton bay has many shoals. The shipping
channel to Brisbane weaves back and forth and first part of our trip
was in that channel. This is just one of several freighters we had
to dodge.
After a few miles in the main channel, we were able to take a smaller channel which we had all to ourselves. Four red buoys later, we were finally in the open ocean.
Wasn't long before we could make out Pt. Cartwright. The entrance to Mooloolaba
harbor being just behind it. A quick radio to the yacht club turned up an
easy berth.
As we came rount the point, 3 or four dolphins swam with us for a bit, almost as if to say goodbye for a while. We sailed into the lee of Pt. Cartwright, rounded up to douse the sails and motored into the harbour. Finding a new berth in a strange harbour is always a little daunting but we found the end of C finger just as described and the docking was mercifully easy. Just let the wind blow us gently into the float.
And, three days at sea (Karin hadn't even been on land) was over. A real eye-opener for me. I hadn't appreciated how committed you are as soon as you leave the dock. You're in this completely foreign element that demands constant attention, constant forethought and you can never give up on that for a moment until you're safely docked again.
After cleaning up the boat, we swarmed ashore and headed for the swankiest resteraunt serving a full menu at 2pm. Land felt really strange; the odd rocking I experienced caused me to look at all the other people and wonder who else was feeling that, who understood? Turns out, our waiter was a sailor, hopefully a better sailor than a waiter.
We've scrapped the idea of going to Great Keppel Island as it would have required constant sailing, some of it likely to be quite rough. Instead we're going to explore around Frasier Island for a week or so and then head back down south when we get a good nor' easter.