So what is this year's plan?

Bamboozle
Jamie and Lucy Telfer
Wed 25 May 2016 10:23
25:37.967S  152:58.114E

We are back on Bamboozle and on the move again although plans have changed quite a lot in just the last few weeks (yet another change of plan won’t be a surprise to anyone who really knows us).  When we landed back in Brisbane 2 weeks ago the idea was still to just cruise the Queensland coast and the Great Barrier Reef this season. However as we climbed back aboard we both had the same feeling…... maybe it is time to move on and finally leave the wonderful South West Pacific behind.  So we now are joining the Sail 2 Indonesia Rally, meeting in Cairns at the end of June and then clearing out of Australia from Thursday Island in the Torres Strait a few weeks later.  This will take us across into to the SE Mollucas and then along the archipelago of Indonesia via the Banda Islands, Sulawesi, Flores, Lombok, Bali, Kalimantan in Southern Borneo and then on up towards Singapore.

Since that big change of plan there has been quite a lot to do, lots of bureaucracy and paperwork to secure a permit to cruise Indonesian waters on Bamboozle and also a scramble to obtain extendable Indonesian Visas from the Consulate in Sydney. Just as importantly we have had to do a massive amount of shopping, pretty much six months worth of provisions has been loaded aboard and Bamboozle is now way down in the water. Fortunately we had left Bamboozle in great shape and she at least, was almost ready to go even if the crew weren’t!

All our thoughts have been on preparing for Indonesia but of course we still have 1200 nautical miles (2200km) of Australian coastline to navigate before we even get to our departure point and we plan to sail up whole of the inside of the Great Barrier Reef by mid July.  We left the Royal Queensland Yacht Squadron in Brisbane on Monday and after a night anchored out in Moreton Bay (just to make sure everything really was working) we set off yesterday up the coast on what was a wonderful gentle moonlit overnight sail north.  We made our first proper Australian Bar crossing in across the Wide Bay Bar into the Great Sandy Strait first thing this morning (delightfully uneventful!) and are now anchored between Fraser Island and the mainland in the snug and quirkily named Gary’s Anchorage.  Despite Lucy’s concerns we have not yet stumbled over our first Crocodile but we did have a Dugong join us for sundowners!   


Our favourite event of provisioning is the wine tasting night which as you can see this is taken very seriously.



With Bamboozle loaded and ready to go we went off to see some friends at the Sanctuary Cove Boat Show.  Worryingly Lucy particularly enjoyed looking around the larger powerboats and marvelled at their luxury.  Here she is looking very at home on the fly bridge of a gorgeous 50 foot Maritimo Gin Palace.  



Saying goodbye to our Kiwi friends Greg and Debbie who had come over from Auckland for the boat show. Our greatest sadness at moving on around the world is leaving dear friends like this behind…….we will be back! 



The skipper is clearly very happy to be back at anchor (he has particularly enjoyed wearing his England Cricket sun hat all over Australia and, where appropriate, to cheerily remind any locals who it is that currently holds The Ashes).



There was funny co-incidence as we made our way out from Brisbane on the first leg of the long trip that will hopefully see us make it to Singapore by about November.  The first big ship we passed coming down the channel was a huge container ship from Singapore….I think it may take us a bit longer than them to make the passage.