Manly - RQYS
Quartermoon
Mike Share & Sammy Byron
Mon 23 May 2011 09:48
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Time to hit Manly! We wish it was Manly NSW but we
still have quite a few miles to cover until we arrive there. Managed to
fool a few people when we said we were planning on arriving in Manly that
evening.
The last time Mike and I were in
Manly, Brisbane was about 4 years ago when I introduced Mike to dinghy sailing
and team racing. Unfortunately the weather was exactly the same then as it
is now. Freezing cold and pissing down. Really quite
miserable.
We decided to take a berth at the
very friendly Royal Queensland Yacht Squadron which was a relief. Great club
but on querying the depth of the berth as we were slightly concerned we
only had 0.3m below the keel and the tide still had to drop 0.8m we were
politely told that everyone sits in the mud here and if you don't run aground in
the area then you can't say you have really sailed the bay!
Ok....Ok...
Frazer and Rachel Dalgleish came to
visit us at the marina, lovely to see them and meet all the wee ones.
Roger (Rachel's uncle) also came to say hello and stayed for a few beers.
He had hauled his boat out at RQYS and was currently doing some work on her.
Roger works for Queensland Maritime and is in charge of all the waterway
maintenance so we decided to quiz him on our plans to head through the
inland waterways to the Gold Coast. Having heard many stories of groundings
we were a bit concerned. He kindly informed us that everywhere had been dredged
to a depth that would allow QM a safe passage apart from the Jacobs Well area
which may be tricky even in high water. High water is only at
night at this time of month, so we had to weigh up what to do. Quite a
number of other cruisers with more draft than us had managed to
scrape through around high tide but that could have been spring tides
for all we knew. Rather than head all the way back up Moreton Bay,
we decided to take the risk.
  We went to grab some dinner at
the local town of Manly but on heading out we bumped into an old friend Tony
(English guy we met in New Caledonia) from 'Complicity' a Sparkman
& Stevens 35. It was fantastic to see him and after a few beers
headed to the village to find some food. No such luck, it's a Monday, 8pm
and we are in Australia - no where seems to be open to serve food even the
chippy is shut! We had to resign ourselves to a liquid dinner with Tim (Tony's
crew member) in the Manly Hotel.
A quick shop and goodbyes
to Tony and Tim who are planning on completing their circumnavigation. We wish
them all the best and hope to see them one day in Portsmouth for a few real
ales.
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