Mooloolaba

Monday 5^th June 2017

No trouble sleeping last night, we were both very tired. It is another sunny morning and after a healthy cooked breakfast, we set about our chores.

Getting fuel here requires a walk next door to the Fishermans Co-op, so I head off with the jerry cans to top up our back up supply. Carole is cleaning up the boat.

Once the administrative stuff is out of way with the marina staff, I walk into town to get a refill for our soda king machine whilst Carole hoses down the boat. We took quite a bit of water over the deck yesterday, and it is nice to get rid of all of the salt. The walk turned out to be about 8km, and in the meantlme Carole managed to do the laundry as well.

Lunch back on board was home made pumpkin soup and a toasted sandwich, great comfort food.

We still have some fresh food shopping to do, so this afternoon we walked back into town to go to the supermarket. On the way, we noticed that one of our other Hanse friends, are on the marina, so we called by their boat, Soleil, to see if they were on board. Fortunately, they were there, so we settled in for a bit of a chat, before agreeing we should continue on shopping and they also had commitments, but agreeing to catch up on Mica for sundowners at around 5pm.

 On our walk back from town along the waterfront we noticed another Hanse at anchor in the river.

Another Hanse, Le Madre, is anchored in the river near the Wharf Marina

As we walked through the carpark near the Coastguard Station, we noticed a number of Etchells on trailers parked there and quite a line up of arrivals coming in.  A quick check on Google showed that the Australasian Winter Championships are about to take place here starting on Thursday.

After a few enjoyable drinks and catch up on Mica, we all needed to eat and Dave and Di decided to join us eating around at the Fishermans market, only a short walk from the marina. The format here is basically you order your food from the takeaway restaurant and can eat it up in the restaurant overlooking the river. In previous years, you could also bring your own wine, which we did. We were politely informed that the rules had changed, but were allowed to consume our BYO if we kept the bottles out of sight.

Carole, Di and Dave enjoying sundowners on Mica

Sunset at the marina

It was great to catch up with Dave and Di, with whom we shared a few adventures on our last trip up here in 2015. They will be in Mooloolaba for several more weeks due to family commitments, but we hope to catch up again later in the trip.

Tomorrow we are heading for Wide Bay Bar, planning to cross close to the evening high tide. We will leave Mooloolaba at around 6.30-7 am, and it should be a reasonably leisurely sail up to Inskip Point.