Types of Yachties

A couple of things I should make clear from the outset, I use the term “yachty” loosely. It refers to any sort of boatie, not just the ones with sails. 

Secondly, I will touch on three different types of yachties but these are by no means the only types of yachties in existence and every type has its exceptions.

Snotty Yachty

The Snotty Yachty has money…. serious money.  You rarely see the Snotty Yachty as they are usually too busy buying and selling small countries to spend much time on their shiny, floating apartment block.  Their marina berth is surrounded in barbed wire.  You try to make yourself feel better by convincing yourself, and anyone else that will listen, that “it’s just no fun when you have a skipper, chef and maid” pfffft!

Not-A-Yachty

The Not-A-Yachty lives aboard a boat but never, ever takes the boat out of its marina berth.  The Not-A-Yachty is helpful and friendly.  They will invite you over for coffee/wine/hash cookies, they will lend you a cup of sugar or an anchor (let’s face it, they don’t need it) but BEWARE…. The Not-A-Yachty loves gossip and within 20 minutes of downing 4 hash cookies they have spread a rumour to all other marina inhabitants that you rape and kill puppy dogs and keep their rotting corpses in your keel.

Grotty Yachty

The Grotty Yachty spends more time “on the hook” than in marinas.  They bathe nowhere near often enough and are easily spotted by the wet patch on their arse from dinghy trips ashore to get rid of rubbish or collect water.  In the event of unexpected visitors, the Grotty Yachty always has a couple of cold beers in the fridge and at least half a bottle of rum (in case of female visitors).  The Grotty Yachty will get their hands dirty for you, go out of their way to do you a favour and would give you the grease covered torn t-shirt (usually the only one they own) off their back.  The Grotty Yachty does not own shoes.

Are you are yachty?  Which category do you fall into?

 

 

 

The Little Engine that Could... Couldn't

I haven’t blogged since my little breakdown when we broke down because I was just a little too depressed.

We sat at Fraser Island for 4 days in dangerous weather conditions.  It was rough and there were quite a few bouts of vomiting and just generally feeling sorry for ourselves.  One day the wind was so strong it unfurled our front sail and tore it.  Thankfully it was only the sun-tough on the edge but we were in strong winds trying to untangle the ropes from around the sail and refurl.  Michael was nearly swept into the water by the flapping sail… things were really pretty shitty.  We couldn’t get to land because the tide was too strong for our little dinghy so we just had to sit on the boat and wait it out.

Finally on the Friday the weather forecast predicted favourable weather conditions for the following day.  I called the Boat Club Marina at Urangan and booked a berth for a week.   I called the VMR and told them we’d be sailing over but would need to be towed in.  All was organised and on Saturday morning we awoke and to our surprise the prediction had been correct (the prediction is never correct).  We tried to lift the anchor but it was stuck fast.  Normally you would drive over the top to release it from the sand but we had no motor.  It took nearly an hour of motorised winching and Michael’s muscle and determination to remove the anchor from its muddy resting place.  We raised the sails and started heading north.

 
You can see Urangan Harbour, it’s about 8.5nm from Fraser Island but you cannot sail straight there …it’s not called Great Sandy Straits for nothing.  Sandbars everywhere and drawing about 2 metres leaves no choice but to go around.  We had to head north for about 15 nm and then back south on the other side of the sandbar for another 6nm but as we had to tack, that ended up being about 12 nm.  The trip took us 8.5 hours.  The VMR then towed us in to our berth at Urangan and it was time to determine exactly how much trouble we were in.

Rescued again

A friend in Sydney has a mate up here who is a diesel mechanic, we contacted him and as he was on holidays he came straight over to look at the motor.  He advised the only thing the motor was now good for was as a reef.  We’d need a new motor. 

 

When we towed our friends up the Fitzroy River, we nicknamed our motor "The Little Engine that Could", now it appears that she can't anymore.

 

Online research and shopping, phone calls and wheeling and dealing, begging and borrowing saw us purchase a 2^nd hand motor that was much bigger and also more powerful than our previous motor.  It wasn’t going to fit so we’d have to raise the floor (despite my father’s suggestions to buy a bigger boat or go through the bottom).

Our new too big motor

The next problem was removing the old motor and getting the new motor into the boat.  We pulled the old motor apart and it was pretty light by the time all the bits were taken off.  The new motor is about 300kgs.   The motor sits under the floor inside… so we couldn’t use any sort of crane to lower the motor onto the boat and besides, we were at a marina and therefore couldn’t get a truck with a Hiab down to the boat anyway.  The mechanic has a truck with Hiab and got the motor to the marina.  A pallet jack got the motor to our boat and a block and tackle set up on the boom both removed the old motor and got the new motor into the helm.  We then had to set up an A-frame type structure with the block and tackle and lift the motor and manoeuvre it into place.  It took 3 of us a couple of hours but we all came out uninjured and feeling pretty proud of ourselves.

Now, I want to give the mechanic a huge wrap.  He invited us to stay (we thought it was just for the night) but he insisted that it was too dangerous on the boat with the mechanical work and that we stay at his place.  He and his wife opened their home to us and made us very welcome.  4 people and 1 dog moving into your place is pretty tough to handle.  After a couple of days we all really wanted to come home but didn’t want to seem ungrateful so just tried to be as unobtrusive as possible.  Each day Michael was driven to the boat to resume work on the motor.  Again, I cannot say how grateful I am to both of them but last night it all went pear-shaped.

Michael was still at the boat and the mechanic’s wife was at work.  The mechanic had spent the day in his shed working on his fishing boat and at about 6.30pm came into the house pissed and told me I’d fucked up his holiday and it was time to leave… now!

I grabbed the kids, the dog, all of our belongings and headed out onto the street.  I didn’t have any cash on me and Michael had the keycard and he doesn’t have a mobile phone.  I didn’t know where I was but had google maps on my phone.  I asked the maps for walking directions from where I was to the boat… 8.8kms.  Three of us (one with weak little spaghetti arms) were loaded up with about 45kgs worth of stuff started following the route on the map… it took us bush.  It was dark and I was trying to see by the light of my phone.  The kids were scared and I assured them there was nothing to be scared of except sore feet and that the whole experience was character building.  About 30mins into our walk home, Jed told me “I don’t like building my characteristics”… at least my son was giving me something to smile about.  We were walking along the path in the bush, stopping every couple of hundred metres because the load we were carrying was heavy.  I could hear animals scurrying about and I wished I believed my own story that there was nothing to be scared of…. then it happened… I fell in a fucking hole and twisted my ankle.  I sat in the hole and I cried… then the kids cried… then the dog licked us.  I picked myself up, dusted myself off, reassured the kids, gave the dog and hug and continued along the path until there was a path leading off to the side that would take us back to a road.  We would take the long route along the road rather than continue along the bush path.  It took us just over an hour to walk 1.5kms.  At this rate we might be home by morning.  On one of our many rest stops a car pulled up alongside us… it was the mechanic’s wife.  She’d got home from work, found out that he’d kicked us out and came looking for us.  She drove us the rest of the way back to the boat.

I really don’t want anyone to think badly of these people and I nearly wasn’t going to blog it… but this blog is essentially for me, a record of all of the good and bad we encounter on our adventure and I feel it would be remiss of me to leave this “character building” experience out of my story.  They have been generous to a fault and as I said, 4 people + 1 dog moving into your home is a lot to cope with.   We are grateful to both of them for everything they did for us.

We’ve got the motor in and wired up… it’s still not working.  More research and forum reading needs to be done and I’m sure it will be sorted out in no time.

Bundaberg to Fraser Island

It started well.  A beautiful sunrise but a lot less wind than predicted so even though our sails were hoisted, we needed to motor also.

 

Hervey Bay is really the only stretch of water we have sailed where you cannot see land anywhere.  On our trip north, we lost gears at the Fairway Marker and it took us 19 hours to sail (with no wind) to Bundaberg.  We hoped today would be better.  It wasn’t!

 

 

I don’t know what it is about the Fairway Marker, but when we got there this time, our motor coughed and stopped.  At least this time we’d done the bigger part of the trip.  Michael opened up the motor hatch to investigate.  I tried starting the motor and just got this awful knocking sound.  Bad fuel? Cracked injector?  Broken piston?  Who knows… but at least we had some wind and the sails were moving us along nicely.  We’ll worry about the motor when we anchor.

 

A couple of hours later, still sailing along beautifully and worrying about how we’re going to fix the motor at Fraser Island, there was a tinny, echo-y sound coming from under the helm.  I ran (yes, ran) inside and opened the hatch.  Looking for anything unusual (I’m actually getting good at that now… once it would have had to have flames shooting out of it for me to notice) I noticed our shiny new gearbox’s rear coupling was sheared completely off.  The noise was the propeller hitting the rudder under the boat.  Fuck, fuck, fuckity fuck!  Our 3 week old gearbox was broken… so was my heart.

 

Broken gearbox coupling

 

We didn’t have far to go and I was needed to navigate Michael through the sandbars so the gearbox would have to wait.

 

We made it to Kingfisher Bay Resort at Fraser Island and anchored.  Don’t take this lightly.  Anchoring whilst under sail is not an easy task.  Normally you would lower your sails, put your motor on, lower the anchor via the winch and reverse to pull the anchor tight in the sand.  When you anchor under sail, you have to turn into the wind so the sail holds no wind, drop the anchor straight down without the aid of the winch and hope your momentum stops before the bow hits the anchor chain.  We managed it after a couple of u-turns.

 

I’ve got to say, at this point I burst into tears.  I’ve tried to be positive.  I’ve tried to face every adversity that’s been thrown at us with good humour, but this just takes the cake.  I’m out of money, patience and the intestinal fortitude to keep going.

 

 I don’t need “I told you so’s” and they will be plentiful forthcoming, I don’t regret embarking on this adventure.  Our family has enjoyed excitement, faced terror, learned lessons, spent quality time together and also wanted to kill each other.  We’ve had experiences money just can’t buy.

 

This will not be the end of our adventure… but right now… I wish it was.

Rockhampton to Bundaberg

We managed to navigate safely out of the Fitzroy River and anchored the night at the start of The Narrows.  The Narrows are a sandy stretch of water between the mainland and Curtis Island just north of Gladstone.  At low tide it is impassable… I think you’d even have problems in a hovercraft, but at high tide is the quick way to Gladstone. 

 

When travelling north we went around the outside of Curtis Island, adding approximately 20 nm to the trip, as we didn’t think we could possibly make it through The Narrows.  Keith and Pauline assured us we could make it though so we took the short cut down to Gladstone.  It was easily navigated at high tide and was a quick and pleasant trip… until we reached Gladstone.  As far as I’m concerned Gladstone is the scariest place in the world.  All those huge container and cargo ships, I feel sort of like I’m riding a tricycle amongst B-Doubles on a Sydney Highway.  It really is quite terrifying.

 

As we were approaching Gladstone Harbour we came to a “fork in the road”.  Looking at the charts, both sides are passable but the right is a little deeper and a lot wider so we decided to take that channel.  I radioed in to Gladstone Harbour Control and let them know of my intentions.  They did not mention dogs, tutus or jellybeans and just told me to keep an ear on the radio for cargo ship movement.

 

 About 1 nm in, we were being pushed right up against the sandbar we were trying to avoid as a great deal of the channel we were travelling in was cordoned off for the laying of gas pipes.  A boat within the cordoned off area came over to us and yelled to us that this channel was closed, we would have to turn around and go down the left channel. Shit, fuck and damn!  Why didn’t the Harbour Control tell me this when I told them where I was going?  I guess I’m not their concern, the container ships are.

 

 

Our track is the yellow line

 

We turned and retraced our path back and just as we hit the point where we needed to turn around, Michael said “we’re heating up… look at the motor”.  I opened the hatch to the motor and was hit with the forceful spray of water.  Our raw water intake pipe had snapped clean off.  Michael stopped the motor and running repairs were required.  The pipe snapped right near the end where it joins to the pump.  As the pipe is copper, not rubber, the pipe was now too short to reach the pump.  Thankfully we had connectors on board so Michael cut a piece of pipe off about two inches long and reattached it with connectors. This bought us about 1 inch and lengthened the pipe enough for it to reach the water pump again.  All of this took about an hour and we were back on our way down the correct channel. 

 

Besides the markers all over Gladstone Harbour being confusing and seemingly making no sense, we managed to get through the Harbour without further incident and made it down to Rodd’s Harbour.  It was getting dark and a storm was approaching so we didn’t push our chances to try to make it to Pancake Creek. 

 

We awoke after the first night to find our anchor had slipped and we’d drifted about 300 metres closer to shore.  We had to move the boat. We didn’t have enough water under us and in a low tide we would’ve been beached.  We decided that despite the weather we would try to make it to Pancake Creek.  We started the motor and hauled the anchor.  I was motoring towards the heads when I noticed we were overheating.   We were in deeper water, Michael dropped the anchor, I turned off the motor and we went to investigate.  Thankfully it was only an airlock in the raw water from the previous day’s repair but the storm had increased in intensity so we decided to stay put for the moment.

 

We got stuck at Rodd’s Harbour for 3 nights. 

 

Rodd’s Harbour to Pancake Creek was a quick, uneventful trip where nothing needed to be patched, fixed or replaced.  We stayed at Pancake Creek for one night and then headed further south to Bundaberg.

 

Pancake Creek to Bundaberg is 66nm but again, they were reasonably uneventful miles.  We saw a whale and had a duck hitch a ride but that was about it. 

 

We spent 3 nights in Bundy, caught up with family and friends and had a carefree time.

Rockhampton

I don’t think I was dry the whole time I was in Rockhampton.  It was hot and I was sweaty.  Being on the river you think “swimming”.  You could swim in the river… if you were willing to take on the sea snakes, eels and crocs.  Needless to say, I wasn’t willing. 

 

We moored at the Fitzroy Motor Boat Club.  It was a non-descript little club that was rarely open but it had showers and a washing machine, that’s all I needed as there was a pub on every corner, so refreshment was never far away.

 

I actually liked Rocky as a town but the Fitzroy River had absolutely no redeeming features at all.  It was the colour of coffee and full of the aforementioned scary creatures.  It floods every summer and is not easy to navigate, even at high tide.

 

We spent a week in Rockhampton.  On our second night we went to The Great Western Hotel for the Young Guns Rodeo.  Kids as young as 4 riding calves up to the big boys riding bulls.  There was bull riding, the bucking broncos and the barrel races.  The rodeo clowns (actually called bull fighters) are amazing.  I reckon the riders have the easy job… try to stay on for 8 seconds and most don’t even achieve that.   The bull fighters worked for 4 hours and constantly put themselves between the bull and the rider… and not a barrel to hide in.

Bucking Bronco

 

 

The rodeo clowns dress like footballers,

is that a not so subtle dig???

 

During our stay Michael helped Keith replace his damper plate and Keith helped us by driving us around while we bought new generators, groceries and miscellaneous knick-knacks.

Michael working on Keith & Pauline's Boat - Tan T'ien

 

Once Michael & Keith got the new damper plate installed in Tan T’ien, we bid farewell to our new friends and headed back out to open waters.

Bound for Rockhampton

No need for an early start so we had an 11.00am beer and discussed our plan.  We offered Keith a case of beer for his efforts on Kidnapped the previous day but he was adamant that what “goes around, comes around” and he may need help in the near future.  He didn’t want to screw with the karma fairies.

 

At around lunch time our little convoy of 2 left Great Keppel for Rockhampton.  It will be a 2 day trip.  The first to the mouth of the Fitzroy River and the second would be the trip up the river. 

 

Great day for sailing.  We hoisted the sails and were travelling along at 7 knots.  Love not using the motor… less things go wrong.  Keith and Pauline on Tan T’ien were motoring and it wasn’t long before we’d lost sight of them.  We were watching the water go from clear blue, to opaque green to muddy brown… paradise was behind us. 

 

At about 4pm my mobile rang (cause I suck at turning the VHF on), it was Keith.  They’d lost their gears.  They were hoisting their sails and would be stopping at Sea Hill and would see us some time in the future.  I assured him we’d meet him at Sea Hill.  We anchored at about 4.45pm and waited for Tan T’ien to arrive.  I don’t think Keith expected his “gone around” to come back as quickly as it did.

About 1 hour 30 mins later, Tan T’ien anchored nearby and Michael jumped in the dinghy to go and see them.  It was their damper plate.  Been there, done that and my bank account bares the scars to prove it!  Nothing could be done before Rockhampton.  Parts needed to be ordered, delivered, fitted.    

The next morning both boats hoisted sails and headed for the mouth of the Fitzroy River.  Tan T’ien weighs 30 tonnes and with the little amount of wind was not going anywhere in a hurry.  We rafted up to them and the boys secured the boats side by side.  Our motor was to propel us all the way to Rockhampton, but the steering was to be done from Tan T’ien.

Tan T'ien under sail

It was fun.  It was like having an extension.  We spent most of the time on their boat as it is bigger and has a lot of outdoor area under cover.  Pauline made sausage sandwiches for lunch and it was a very social event.  With the stop at Sea Hill our 2 day trip had turned into 3 days.  At about 3.30pm we stopped at Botony Point, about 10nm inside the Fitzroy River, and had to wait for the right tide the next day to get further up the river to our moorings.

 

Rafted up

 

 

]

Pauline & Keith - our new terrace style neighbours

Everyone retired to their own quarters and Michael was not to be outdone by Pauline’s lunch efforts and he made up a huge batch of pikelets for the trip into Rocky the next day.

It’s now 20 September and at 9.20am it is the best time for the tides to get to the Fitzroy Motor Boat Club a further 20nm away.  Again hopping from boat to boat, eating pikelets with jam and sharing stories of sailing woe, we made it to our moorings at about 3.10pm.

 

Bugger me with a pitchfork… Rockhampton is hot! From the river, one block up to the pub, the temperature rises 10 degrees.  A couple of cool ales and Keith and Pauline made their way back to their boat whilst we made our way to Macca’s for a disgusting fast food fix.

Great Keppel Island

There was much anticipation for our trip to Great Keppel Island.  My childhood memories were making the expectations high.  It was only a short trip from Rosslyn Bay to Great Keppel and as soon as we got there, we dinghied to shore to check it out.

 

You may remember Great Keppel Island used to have an advertising campaign “Get Wrecked on Great Keppel”… well it’s kind of appropriate now too I guess as it is a wreck!  It was really sad to see.

 

Don’t get me wrong, the beaches are beautiful and the water a gorgeous clear azure blue but the resort, due to development approval not being forthcoming, has closed down and been abandoned.   It’s just like everybody went home for the day and never returned.  The rooms still have furniture in them, there are still mowers, tractors and planes just been left to rust and yet the people still come.

 

Every day the Freedom Cat shows up with a couple of hundred passengers.  There is a pub and some camp grounds but that’s about it really.  I guess it’s a good thing for us as it wasn’t crowded and was a real paradise.

 

We met a great couple, Keith and Pauline from Tan T’ien, and they took us around the other side of the island.  We went ashore and found a souvenir tree.  That’s were visiting sailors leave a momento of some sort on the tree marking their visit.

 

Whist walking around we found a barbecue area set up by passers by.  It had table and chairs, bench, pots and pans, vinegar (for stings) and a request that you remove all of your rubbish.  We even found a chair that once belonged to a friend of ours.

 

During our trip back to the other side of the island, a steering issue reared its ugly head and made sure Michael didn’t have a completely care-free trip to Great Keppel.

 

The steering arm is under the helm and cannot be reached.  We called over Keith, he’s a shipwright, and he helped Michael cut a hole through the floor to reattach the steering arm.  10 hours and 4 sweaty armpits later a case of beer was coming Keith’s way.

 

 

Keith and Pauline talked us into going to Rockhampton to stock up.  We’d been in Great Keppel for 2 weeks we needed to bathe, get groceries and refill the water tanks.

 

Tomorrow we’ll be heading for Rocky!

Cape Capricorn to Rosslyn Bay

We left Cape Capricorn early and sailed to Rosslyn Bay.  We’d booked a marina berth and I was a little excited about bathing… it had been a while.

 

The weather was kind and the sailing was good.  It was an overdue uneventful trip.

 

I called ahead to the Rosslyn Bay Marina to find out our berth number so we could motor straight into our home for the next week.  Armed with all of the relevant information, we approached the marina, turned on the motor (with our newly installed key bypass system), lowered the sails and put her in gear… where’s my fucking gears?  No forward, no reverse, no sails and being pushed into the breakwater wall around the marina.  I knew the uneventfulness wouldn’t last long.

 

We opened the hatch to the motor, jiggled the gear cable and managed to get her into gear.  We motored into the marina and found our berth.  It took a couple of U-turns but we eventually managed to get into the berth without reverse.  I jumped out onto the dock and the kids threw me the ropes.  I tied her to the front cleat but she wouldn’t stop coming.  Michael had turned the motor off but the tide just kept pushing her in.  I was trying to stop 16 tonnes from mounting the dock (and taking out a fire hydrant in the process).  A couple of neighbouring grotty yachties came and helped get her tied up at the back and stop her progress.

 

A shower and dinner out was a lovely but short lived diversion from our gearbox problems.

 

The next day Michael was again head first in the motor (I see more of his arse than anything these days) and the inevitable was confirmed… we need a new gearbox.  The next 24 hours consisted of much internet research, forum reading, phone call making and deal doing until we had one being sent from Sydney.  Now for the waiting…

 

We stocked up on groceries, got a haircut (I am now dye-free and very grey) and spent some time at the Capricornia Cruising Yacht Club, where even the dog is welcome.  It was quite relaxing knowing we couldn’t do anything until the new gearbox showed up.

 

The gearbox showed up late and it was all backwards.  The gear lever was on the wrong side and it was too short to reach the couplings.  Thank God Michael does nothing by the book and managed to bodgy everything so that it fit and worked!  He started the motor and got me to watch the drive shaft.  He put it in forward

 

Michael: Is it turning?

 

Me:  Yes

 

He put it in reverse.

 

Michael: Is it turning the other way now?

 

Me:  Yes

 

Michael:  Great, we have gears.

 

Gears, cheers and beers all round.  A mighty celebration was had as we prepared to leave the next day.

Our shiny new gearbox

 

We were headed to great Keppel Island, only about 10nm away so we didn’t need an early start.  Marina check out time was midday so at about 11.30am we untied Kidnapped from her comfortable  bed, put her in reverse and went forward into the dock!

 

Thankfully we were being cautious and had a neighbouring yachtie hold the bow line while I held the stern line.  No damage was done and we realised that as everything on the gearbox was backwards and bodgied to fit, the gears were now backwards.  Oh well, there’s only two, not that confusing, we can live with it for the moment.

 

Off to Keppel Island to “get wrecked”.

 

Tropic of Capricorn

We left our little paradise of Pancake Creek to continue our journey towards Yeppoon.  The prediction was winds of 10 to 12 knots and as we were running low on fuel this is exactly what we needed.  We got out of the creek to find winds of 2.6 knots.  We turned off the motor and sailed at about 1.5 knots, certainly not what we were hoping for.

Not long after our departure we picked up some traveling companions.  They were so close you could just about touch them and they swam with us for about a nautical mile.  The kids loved it… who am I kidding? I loved it!

 

 

As we were approaching Gladstone, we started the motor up again.  Gladstone is a little daunting.  There are two anchorages, East and North, for huge cargo and container ships.  There were dozens of them anchored.  Between the two anchorages is a Pilot Boarding Area.  This isn’t for fly-boys.  This is where a local captain boards the ship and takes into the harbour for loading/unloading.  If you are over 10meters and enter these zones you need to notify Gladstone Harbour Control, so I get on the radio…

Me:  Gladstone Harbour Control, Gladstone Harbour Control, Gladstone Harbour Control this is Kidnapped, Kidnapped, Kidnapped. Over

(Sounds ridiculous, I know but repeating 3 times is protocol)

GHC: Kidnapped, this is Gladstone Harbour Control.  Over

Me:  Just wanting to let you  know we are approaching the east anchorage on our transit to Cape Capricorn.  Over.

GHC: Black dogs wearing tutus meow at the lake until they get their jellybeans.

(Okay, he didn’t say that but he may as well have… I don’t know what the fuck he was talking about).

Me:  Thanks Gladstone.  Over.

I went out to Michael and he asked what they said.  I told him something about dogs, tutus & jellybeans.  He said “Don’t worry, these ships let out a huge plume of smoke when they start up, we’ll know if something’s about to move.”  We made it across the anchorage and pilot area without incident.

We continued to motor for another hour or so and the wind finally picked up to 8 knots.  We still had the main sail up but hauled the foresail, cut the motor and were humming along at about 7.5 knots.  More dolphins and even a whale and her baby were not too far away.  It was a fantastic way to spend an afternoon.

We sailed over the invisible line that is the Tropic of Capricorn.  I was really excited by this, I’m not sure why.  I’ve been over it in a car when I was a kid and didn’t feel any excitement but sailing over it was different.  Was it because it marked some sort of milestone on our journey?  Our first milestone?  I kind of hope it wasn’t our first milestone as we won’t be sailing over the equator or the Tropic of Cancer so it would be our only milestone.

As we approached Cape Capricorn, our stopover for the night we brought in the foresail so we could motor into our anchorage near the rocks.  As the sail was being brought in, the rope wrapped around the ignition key and ripped it out of the ignition and into the sea.  OH FUCK!!!

There was going to be a witch hunt and as I was at the helm at the time, the pointy black hat was planted firmly on my head! 

Michael managed to turn us around using just the wind and main sail and got us quite close to the bobbing ignition key.  I hung as far over the side of the boat as I could with the net but was just short of reaching it.  If only my arms were 30cm longer (okay, I’d be able to tie my shoes whilst walking and look terribly funny… but I digress).

We have no motor and therefore limited manoeuvrability  and the wind is pushing us ever closer to the rocks, I have no problem letting you I was beginning to panic and my sphincter was tightly puckered.  I ran inside to see what we could use to try to start the motor.  The key is not a precision instrument. It’s like a bayonet fitting on a light globe (albeit a lot smaller) designed to create an electrical loop.  Michael grabbed a padlock key and managed to restart the motor.  Now that we had a motor he headed back in the direction of the lost key but we couldn’t find it.  I’d taken my eye off it!  I was not getting rid of the pointy black hat at any time soon.

Michael gave up the search (but not the yelling) and we headed back into the cove where we would be anchoring.  I was steering and Michael was bringing down the main sail when we lost gears.  We had no drive… that’s one of the ones we like!  We did have reverse though.  God, please don’t tell me I have to reverse park this fucker.  Ask my dad… I can’t reverse park a car let alone a 16 tonne, 42 foot boat!  We managed to drift into shallow enough water and drop the anchor.  Thank God!

The next couple of hours were spent trying to fix the gears… again, Michael managed to fix the problem with nothing more than a screw driver and a pair of pliers then he had to get to work on the ignition.  Using some wires and connectors he created that electrical loop needed to start the boat.

Michael’s getting closer and closer to earning himself a knighthood and I’m getting closer to earning myself a broom to fly on!

Pancake Creek

On 21 August we left Bundaberg for Seventeen Seventy but upon arrival found out our keel is too deep and we couldn’t get into Round Hill Creek even on a high tide so we anchored outside the creek in Bustard Bay for the evening and on the morning of 22 August headed further north to Pancake Creek.

 

Wow.  Pancake Creek is a beautiful spot.  Pancake Creek is only accessible by sea or  small aircraft landing on Aircraft Beach.

 

We did the 7km round trip walk past Aircraft Beach, Bustard Head lighthouse and caretakers cottage which was restored by Shirley Buchanan (wife of former lighthouse keeper, Stuart Buchanan) after it was vandalised and virtually demolished in 1995, then on to Jenny Lind Creek lookout.  Besides the midges it was truly beautiful.

 

Light aircraft taking off from Aircraft Beach 

after dropping off a couple of campers

 

Bustard Head Lighthouse

 

Jenny Lind Creek

 

During low tide at Pancake Creek a huge sandbar is uncovered completely.   This morning we took the dinghy out the sandbar to go for a walk.  It was quite a treasure trove of marine life out there….

 

 

huge sandbar

 

 

A sea snail... it's hard to tell just how big it is but I could've worn the shell as a hat!

 

Starfish

Solider Crabs

Odd man out

 

lugworm mounds