Sail to Hummocky Island

Tuesday 13^th June 2017

It’s moving day today, so we are up early to raise the anchor and head further north. There was some strong gusting breezes through at around 5 am, which were inconsistent with the forecast, but we decided to stick with what the Bureau had forecast and had our sail plan organized accordingly.

Sunrise over Clews Point as we leave Pancake Creek

The anchor was up at 6.30am, and we were out of the entrance to Pancake Creek 15 minutes later. The wind was blowing around 12 knots from the SW, and given the forecast and our experience over the past week, the breeze will drop out late morning , so we decided not to put up the mainsail, and see if we could sail on the Code Zero alone.

In no time we were doing 7 knots and all was looking good, till the wind kept building and we were doing over 9 knots and were having trouble keeping the boat under control, so we ran off and pulled the code zero in, and decided to pull it down and put it away, and just try the self tacking headsail.

We sailed through the anchorage area for Gladstone Harbour, so had to notify the harbour control we were going through and maintain watch on their channel  until we had cleared the anchorage. there were a few ship movements, but nothing of consequence to us. 

The self tacker was fine but needed a few revs on the diesel to keep us on track.  As had been the case for the last several sails, the wind dropped below 10 knots and was behind us, and eventually at around 11.15am, we rolled in the headsail and just motored.

Our destination is eventually Rosslyn Bay (Yeppoon), but the marina entrance is very shallow, so we need to find an anchorage within a reasonable distance so tat we can arrive there at around noon tomorrow to meet the high tide. There are a few options, but our preferred one is Hummocky Island, which would leave us a sail of about 25 nm tomorrow. If the conditions there were not good we could go on to Great Keppel Island which is only around 8 nm from Rosslyn Bay, but it would be a longer dsay and it would probably be dark when we arrived to anchor. We are also not real sure it would offer a lot lot more protection than Hummocky.

approaching Hummocky Island from the South

Anyway, we arrived at Hummocky at 2.20pm, liked what we saw, and dropped the anchor. We were later joined by one other boat that has anchored nearby. The wind is expected to pick up a bit tonight, so it may be a bit rolly, but that’s life in an ocean anchorage.

Safely anchored on the Northern side of the Island we look back on a nice beach

Another small boat jins us at the anchorage and obviously has less draft so can afford to ancxhor a bit closer in

I put out a couple of fishing lines with no result.

Mobile phone reception is poor, but television is excellent. Hopefully we will have a comfortable nights sleep and can head off to Rosslyn Bay tomorrow at our leisure. As usual the sunsets are stunning.