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.