Cruising on Mica: Sail to Masthead Island

Tuesday 19^th September 2017

As planned, it was an early start leaving the marina at around 6am. Dalwhinnie managed to sneak out unnoticed first up, we were next , closely followed by Moonshadow. There was a nice around 8 knot SW breeze blowing (which seems to be the regular morning breeze here), so mainsails were up soon after leaving the marina, and we had a nice sail for only about 40 minutes with the main and Code Zero, before the wind started moving east.

As we passed Great Keppel Island we were surprised at the number of boats anchored there

It was back to motor sailing with only the main and pushing a bit of tidal current, until around 10 am, when there was a enough North in the breeze to get a headsail up again, this time the self tacker, as the angle was too fine for the Code Zero. The tide was now running with us, so we were moving along at around 6-6.5 knots on low engine revs. The breeze never got above 10 knots all day.

Soon there was enough angle to get the code zero up again, and we were motor sailing at 7 to 7.5 knots, pretty much for the rest of the trip.

The breeze was light all day, mostly around 5-6 knots, and it was a bit overcast and quite cool. There was also a bit of haziness across the water.

Dalwhinnie in the balmy conditions

Along the way we were approaching a trawler who appeared to be changing his course to put himself on a collision course with us. As we got closer, we could see he was at anchor, out in the middle of the ocean, probably all asleep.

There was also a cargo vessel coming back out to sea from Gladstone heading in our direction, but I could see from the AIS we would pass in front of him by about 1nm.

We arrived at our destination, Masthead Island in around 9 hours, as spent the next 30 minutes trying to find somewhere to anchor. On this occasion, the cruising guides are not too helpful, and the charts pretty inadequate.

After several attempts we ended up anchoring in around 18m of water, in hopefully a sandy patch scattered with rocks and coral. I guess we will all find out in the morning when we try to raise our anchors. We arrive at low tide, so can clearly see the exposed reef, but there is an extensive reef system around this island and we have anchored deep, hoping to keep away from most of it.

Our anchoring research was extensive, before we eventually just decided to drop it.

Pip and Marg went out in their dinghy , which has a see through section in the bottom, to check out the terrain, and came back having seen a few coral heads in the are we are anchored , so hopefully there are no major changes of direction with wind and tide overnight.