Restocking in Yeppoon to Head further South

Monday 28th September 2015

The focus today is about getting ready to depart tomorrow. It involves refuelling, getting gas bottles filled and shopping for fresh food.

The refuelling is done early in the morning, helping Steve take Wilparina to the fuel wharf early whilst the tide is right, and filling a couple of Jerry Cans of my own on the trip to save a trip back with the trolley.

The gas bottle is filled and we have the courtesy car from the marina booked from 2.45 pm till 4.45 pm  which should be enough time for us to drive into Yeppoon and do our grocery shopping.

Steve and Kim have some friends in Yeppoon that they are keen to catch up with. Their friends are keen to show them their home they have built in Yeppoon, and to have dinner with them. Whilst we are invited to join in, logistically it was difficult and we encouraged them to do their thing and we would do ours.

We were more than happy to have an easy meal close to the marina, and caught up with Steve and Kim later in the evening to finalise tomorrows plans.

The forecast is very benign, so we plan to sail to North West Island, out in the reef, and then to Lady Musgrave.

We may be off the air for a day or two, but should be in Bundaberg on Thursday

Yeppoon

Sunday 27^th September

We woke up to a calm morning after a good nights sleep, and a few over night showers. There was a heavy dew on the deck and it was covered in dead midges. Looks like this would not be a good place to be in dead calm weather.

We had planned to leave for Yeppoon at 7am, but everyone is ready early and keen to go, so the anchors came up at 6.45am and we had a long motor up to the entrance of the creek against 1-2 knots of incoming tide. At least we will have plenty of depth to get out, as the tidal range here is around 4 metres.

On the way back out of the creek, the devastation that cyclones over the past few years have caused up here is very apparent. It looks like most of the trees were stripped of leaves and there is now abundant new growth, but it looks very sparse.

The wind is SE forecast to be 10-15 knots, so it should be a pleasant day, as the sea should have settled down over the past day or so.

Motoring out of Island Head Creek in calm conditions

Southern Headland of Island Head Creek 

The first 3 hours is slow progress achieving only 3-4 knots against a strong Northerly current. The day was a real mixed bag, with some sailing, mostly motor sailing, and just motoring.

The sea state was all over the place in the first half of the trip, and quite rough as we rounded Cape Manifold, after which it flattened out and sailing conditions improved. It seems a number of currents converge off the Cape making it very bumpy, well out to sea. We had 2-3 knots of current behind us.

Some of the lowest tides I have seen are being experienced over the next few days, and don’t want to arrive at Yeppoon to early because there will not be enough water to enter the marina. The entrance depth is only 1.1m LAT, and the low tide of 0.17m was at 2.20 pm. To be safe we plan to enter at 5pm, so had to slow down as we were going too fast and would have arrived an hour early. At one stage we were just sailing on a headsail and still doing 5-6 knots.

Wilparina enjoying a sail before we had to slow down

We were inside and tied up by 5.30 pm, after have to deal with a tidal cross current and wind pushing us off our berth as we came alongside.

There is a big bright moon tonight

Having been at sea for 5 days, we decided to treat ourselves to a nice meal at the marina restaurant, which is one of the best restaurants we have visited this trip.

A Peacefull Day at Island Head Creek

Saturday 26^th September 2015

It was a very peaceful night in Island Head Creek and it was an early night with a good nights sleep.

We have limited internet service here if I send the modem up the mast, and after getting up at 6am for a planned 7 am departure, I checked the weather forecast. It took about 15 minutes just to get some basic info off the BOM site, and it was not good. Wind 15-20 knots from the SE (here that means 20 -30 knots), and big seas have not yet settled. I was on the radio early to Wilparina and we agreed to stay here another day, as neither of us were keen on a repeat of yesterday.

This morning was spent doing boat maintenance, mainly washing all of the salt off the stainless steel and polishing it. The tool draw , which jumped out during the sail on Friday also needed some make shift repairs to the slide rollers, which didn’t handle the unexpected opening when the boat heeled well. Other than that, t was just replacing a few worn split rings on the safety lines and tightening up the staunchions.

Carole baked a loaf of bread, as we are now out of the supermarket supplied loaves. It was a great success.

We had Steve and Kim over for a BBQ lunch and they had spent the morning doing boat jobs as well. We had a nice lunch, discussed our plans for tomorrow with limited internet supplied forecast material and taking into account the tides. 

BBQ on Mica

We need to get out of here at least a mid tide and into Yeppoon at least mid tide, as there are shallow depth issues there in the marina as well. Based on our current infomation, we will head out tomorrow morning for Yeppoon planning to arrive there at around 5pm. We will check the forecast in the morning before we finally commit.

A Challenging Sail to Island Head Creek

Friday 25^th September 2015

The wind settled down last night and there was little boat motion, a much better night for getting some sleep without the worry of depth at low tide since we moved.

The forecast for tomorrow looks good, 10 to 15 knots unfortunately from the SE, so it was touch and go whether we would motor or sail. We left at 7 am to try and capitalize on the South running ebb tide, even though we would have to suffer a bit of adverse current until the tide changed at just after 8 am.

The early motor out was against an knot of current, but when we had cleared all of the shoals and could pick a straight course in the direction of Island Head Creek, it was clear we could sail, albeit with a bit of tacking.

We sailed pretty much all of the way, in very lumpy conditions once the tide changed to give us some extra boost with the unfortunate consequence that the wind picked up over 15 knots and we were in a wind against tide situation. Steep short waves appear and bashing into them isn’t a lot of fun, but running across them is a lot easier. We had a combination of both, and were glad to arrive at Island Head Creek, despite making good speed all day sailing, it was mostly at 30 degrees apparent wind.  Unfortunately on arrival it was low tide, a very low tide.

Approaching the entrance to Island Head creek

Having not been in here before, we were wary of the shallow entrance, but have the benefit of a rising tide should we get grounded. Smithy had zero depth under him at the lowest point, and we gingerly worked our way in until we were in more than adequate depths. We had received some advice from a passing yachtie who overheard us conversing on the VHF and said there was adequate depth if you stuck to the centre of the channel. We talked to him after we were in, and found out he had a catamaran. The old adage of keel boats never following catamarans still holds.

Following Wilparina in through the very shallow entrance

Once the depth drama was over we noticed something missing from our mast, it was our radar.  We lost it overboard somewhere on the trip and are astounded we didn’t see or hear it fall, even though there were plenty of distracting noises.

All that is left is part of the radar mount and the cable

We motored down the creek to look for some shelter from the breeze, which was now close to 20 knots. There is not a lot of relief from the wind, but at least the water is flat and there is no swell or surge.

When putting the sail away, I noticed it had oil sprayed all over the top section, adjacent to the radar mount, which was self leveling with hydraulic damping. It now appears that the hydraulics may have blown up and the radar would have been swinging uncontrollably, and somehow let go.

Hydraulic oil on the sail

I will get a rigger to have a look at it and take it up with  the insurance company at the next port.

We went over to Wilparina for sundowners and discuss tactics for the next few days. The forecast for today, that seemed so suitable, turned out to be anything but. Tomorrow we will poke our nose out and possibly just do a short transit to Port Clinton (only 13 nm) and see what the conditions are like, if the forecast is suitable. The big seas may not have abated.

A Wild Night at Hunter Island

Thursday 24^th September 2015

It was a wild night at Hunter Island with the Southerly change coming in 5 hours earlier than forecast and winds gusting to 30 knots. It is a relatively shallow anchorage and we are in a period of very low tides, so keeping an eye on the amount of water under us added to the excitement.

At midnight there was lots of activity on Wilparina, and then on came the navigation lights and they headed out to deeper water to re anchor. Apparently their anchor alarm went off with only 0.8 m of water under them and the tide not fully out till 1pm. We had 1.2 m at low tide but kept an eye on it for an hour either side of the change and we were also ready to move if it got down below a metre. With the strong winds and associated swell it was a bumpy old night and not a lot of time was spent sleeping.

We were up at 7 am and now had 5.2 m of water under us, but pulled up the anchor at 8 am and moved further out to give us an extra metre of depth as tonight’s tide will be lower than last nights by 0.5 m.

The tidal range in this area is huge , 4-5 m and there is scant information available for individual anchorages, so you just need to monitor what is happening based on the data you have, and be prepared to move. It is a bit of a compromise between getting out of the wind and having enough depth at low tide, with enough chain out to allow for an up to 5 m change.

Wilparina anchored a long way out because of the huge tidal range. We are out at the same distance from the beach now.

The wind is abating in the morning but still in the 15 to 20 knot range. The last few days have been quite cool and there is a heavy smoke haze over the mainland from bushfires. We could smell the smoke last night.

Of the six boats that were here last night, 2 have headed North (on a great breeze if you are going in that direction), and the other 4 of us are still here waiting for better conditions for travelling South tomorrow.

We do not leave our boats today as it is still blowing hard. We are in touch with Wilparina on the VHF radio and have agreed to leave tomorrow morning at 7am for Island Head Creek or Port Clinton, depending on the conditions. Either way, we are unlikely to have an internet connection for 1 or 2 days, so the blog will be updated when we get to Yeppoon on Saturday or Sunday depending on the weather and tides.

The Duke Islands

Wednesday 23^rd September 2015

There were only three boats anchored at Curlew last night, surprisingly quiet. Other than Wilparina and ourselves, a catamaran arrived in the late afternoon.

Keen to keep moving South, we pulled up anchor at 6 am again this morning to do a short dash, around 30 nm, to Hunter Island before a forecast increase in wind strength arrives late morning. Hunter is a good anchorage to sit out Strong SE trade winds.

North Eastern tip of Curlew in the morning sun

Wilparina motoring South from Curlew in light conditions

Approaching the Duke Islands 

We were anchored at Hunter by 11.30 am, and the wind didn’t really start to come in with any strength till early afternoon. We motored/motor sailed all of the way to Hunter in light SE winds.

On arrival at Hunter once again we were the only boats here, although the catamaran we saw last night at Curlew arrived about an hour after us. Another 3 arrivals turned up in the afternoon. The wind did come up as forecast, but a few hours later than expected.

Mark and Janet are further down the coast, sailing to Keppel Island today. Janet reported the catch of her first spotted mackerel.

We had a relaxing afternoon, catching up on a bit of sleep, doing some chores and Steve and Kim came over for sundowners, having spent a good few hours clearing a toilet blockage that was previously thought fixed. All appears well now.

It is an early night for all of us, and we will be staying here tomorrow to dodge the Southerly change coming up the coast. There were gale warnings on the Capricornia Coast today