After leaving Musgrave we motored sailed
back to Burnett Heads for a couple of nights to re-provision then start heading
south. It is amazing the temperature difference since we have dropped out of the
Tropics. Trousers, fleeces and wolly hats have all been pulled out of storage
and now we are beginning to live in them. I am glad no-one is here to see our
latest fashions. I seem to remember always having a go at my Dad for wearing
sandals with white socks and I caught myself doing the same with Crocs the other
morning. Will we ever fit back into Sydney life?
Finally we managed some sailing and some
peace and quiet from the engine. Since we have arrived in Oz we have motored or
motored-sailed the whole time due to seemingly incessant lack of wind or wind on
the nose. We arrived at Kingfisher Resort on Fraser Island. A brilliant spot and
amazingly the resort is happy for you to use the pool and hot tub (The hot tub
is actually luke warm but they did give us towels!).
KingFisher Ferry arriving
Mike enjoying the free pool (and
VB!)
QM anchored off Kingfisher Resort
As a belated birthday pressie for Mike
(kitesurfing in New Cal was cancelled) we hired a 4WD and drove it around the
island for the day. It’s a very
cool island with a 75 mile long sandy beach, tropical forest and mangroves.
Fraser Island is the largest sand island in the worlds and after 8 hrs of
off-road driving we had only covered a few tracks! I think Mike enjoyed driving
the 4x4 more than the island…..
The
Truck!
75 mile
beach Lake
Wabby
Mike with Dingo at the Maheno Wreck
Mike obeying the 'rules'
!
Walk in Central Station
75 mile beach
View of Great Sandy Strait
QM at sunset
Our Belgian friends on ‘Narid’ also came by
and anchored with us for a few nights. (Another boat heading north to Asia). It
was great to catch up with them and they brought over some fish they had just
caught so we had a great night BBQ’s and catching up. A Dutch Boat ‘A Kind of Blue’ arrived
and kindly invited us all over for sundowner drinks. They have a “Starlight 40”
which was designed by Stephen Jones the same designer of Quartermoon so being
boat geeks it was great to nosey around and compare.
We are now anchored at ‘Gary’s Anchorage’.
It’s an interesting trip within the
Great Sandy Strait and nothing like we have done so far. It is well marked with
navigation buoys but with the constantly shifting sand bars and murky water, the
depths and channels change pretty quickly.
It may look like you are ok on the chart but at mid tide you can easily
go aground so we were constantly reading the depth gauge. Luckily we made it
with no groundings but even at high tide we had sub 2m under the keel a lot of
the time.
It’s very peaceful here and we are right in
amongst the mangroves. The Tide is dropping fast so we will probably only have a
few cm under the keel at low tide and be surrounded by sand
bars.
'Gary's anchorage'
Mangroves
One
of our early morning visitors
We are keen to get moving south but with
the huge swell and Southerly winds it’s just not in our favour at the moment so
we will just have to stick it out. Wide Bay Bar is the next navigational
challenge and we definitely do not want to be going over that in the large
southerly swell predicted. Our next stop will be Mooloolabah and then down to
Brisbane.
We still hope to make Sydney early
June……
