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……