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.